The MMO that was two-games in one universe is now one. City of Villains was a natural followup to the excellent City of Heroes, but it wasn't really an expansion, nor a sequel either. It left the game in an Us vs Them situation, not just in the intended gameplay of the factions, but with which product you actually purchased. Well now they've merged.

Whether you purchased the City of Heroes box or City of Villains, it doesn't matter anymore, you'll have access to both sides.

The merge is part of the player perks NCsoft is promoting to ease any fears with their full acquisition of the game from Cryptic Studios, announced yesterday (press release).

Yesterday, a msg was forwarded from a friend that felt like they'd "died inside a bit". At first I was boggled, I didn't think they were interested in Gods and Heroes or anything else I'd heard recently. Then I checked the news--

EA has officially begun an acquisition of BioWare and Pandemic Studios. BioWare has the full press release available in PDF format.

It appears that EA's primary interest is increasing their RPG holdings, especially with the unnamed MMORPG from BioWare. A very wise choice for EA for the future. My take on this though is that BioWare is the pinnacle of independent game design, while EA has the notorious reputation of stifling exactly that sort of thing.

Slashdot and everyone else has been reporting it: Sigil Games' assets were predictably bought out by Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) this week, followed swiftly by terminating all but 50 of the employees. Sigil has a huge debt to Microsoft still, so the dissolution of the company and sale of all assets was to be expected.

The most interesting reporting has been done by F13.net who have two interviews up: one with a terminated employee and another with Brad McQuaid himself, titled appropriately: The Hub of All Blame.

For me, the biggest issues with Vanguard were graphical: It was ugly and even on a mondo PC it got an awful framerate. The combination of those two factors always spells doom for any game, MMO or otherwise. If you're going to push the boundaries of minimum system requirements, your game should be absolutely stunning to look at. With the bar set by WoW's low requirements and beautiful art direction, Vanguard never had a chance regardless of the rest of the game.

SOE's only promised change for Vanguard is to improve the performance, but I can't see them optimizing it enough or making it pretty.