Trion wants to evolve the MMO

The CEO of online games publisher and developer Trion Worlds has told MCV that he wants his company to help evolve the MMO market.

"When we set up Trion Worlds, I already had a good idea of what did and didn’t work online," founder Lars Buttler, who is the former VP of global online at EA, told MCV. "Old MMOs were static and couldn’t evolve.

"Casual sites like Pogo showed me the benefits of social interaction. And big blockbuster titles seemed to treat online as an afterthought. I’d also learned that it pays to develop quality and if you want to be a long-term leader online, you need to build content that is social and evolves dynamically.

"That would be very difficult to do at a large company, where you always have to meet your sales targets – it makes innovation harder to accomplish. We wanted to take the industry a step forward."

Trion’s first game, PC MMO Rift, will be released in the UK on March 4th.

"We felt our initial product should be an evolutionary step," Buttler added. "Our first title Rift is the spiritual successor to Ultima Online and EverQuest Online, the longest-running MMOs.

"Rift will be followed by our MMORTS End of Nations and our joint action MMO project with SyFy. Having spent so much time developing our technology, we’re now really excited to be working on these great games."

To read MCV’s full interview with Buttler, click here.