Warcry spoke with NetDevil CEO Scott Brown on the demise of Auto Assault, and it looks like the game is effectively toast. From the article:
"We talked about it and sort of left it where it is," Brown told WarCry in a phone interview late Thursday. "We just couldn't come to an agreement."
NCSoft owns the intellectual property that is Auto Assault. This means they own the name, the story, the idea, the art and anything that directly relates to the game. The code-base and engine that power the game remain the property of NetDevil.
Unfortunately, this is the position you don't want your favorite MMO to end up in--dead with no hope of resurrection from the original owners. The impetus will now lie in the community to develop some opensource version of the server software. But, with reports of the US server having around 100 people online at any one time (sorry, I read it in one of the multitude of posts over the last few days but haven't been able to locate the quote), it makes me wonder if the emulation software really has any chance of getting built. If you want to fill out a petition (which I don't see doing too much), I ran across the following link.
For everyone who is a player/fan of Auto Assault, you have my condolences. It's tough to see something that you've invested so much emotionally into die. Here's hoping I won't have to face the same thing with Vanguard... ;)
