Dragon Empires
Encyclopedia
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
massively multiplayer online role-playing game
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....
developed by UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
-based Codemasters
Codemasters
The Codemasters Software Company Limited, or Codemasters is a British video game developer founded by Richard and David Darling in 1986...
. Its main focus was player versus player
Player versus player
Player versus player, or PvP, is a type of multiplayer interactive conflict within a game between two or more live participants. This is in contrast to games where players compete against computer controlled opponents, which is correspondingly referred to as player versus environment...
clan action to take control of 50 cities in five empires within its world.
Development
On September 20, 2001 Codemasters unveiled development of Dragon Empires and initially slated it to launch in October 2002. The game received enthusiastic response from gamers, with 120,000 signing up to beta-test the game. Reviewers also appreciated the game for its graphics and gameplay. One reviewer said,Boasting amazing graphics with a deep player-influenced world that promises to become more addictive as content is added, Dragon Empires looks promising. … if the words "amazing graphics" and "incredible game" were synonymous, Dragon Empires would be one of the greatest games to hit the MMORPG scene thus far.At the 2003 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, Codemasters demonstrated a prototype of the game engine and awed critics with breathtaking renderings of the game environment. As development progressed, the release date was pushed back multiple times, to October 2003 and then to spring 2004.
Cancellation
On 3 September 2004 Codemasters announced that they had ceased game development citing technical issues. Three days later, Dragon Empires producer Gary Dunn explained that their serverServer (computing)
In the context of client-server architecture, a server is a computer program running to serve the requests of other programs, the "clients". Thus, the "server" performs some computational task on behalf of "clients"...
code was incapable of supporting the number of clients expected for a massively multiplayer game. This prompted a six-week review of the game's viability, which found that the cost to fix the difficulties would be high and the decision was made instead to cancel the title.
Despite the cancellation of several MMOs in 2004, Ed Relf, marketing brand manager at Codemasters maintained that the tightly packed MMORPG market was not a reason for the discontinuation. The Dragon Empires community started a petition hoping to renew development in the game. However, the game's official website was closed some time after June 17, 2005.