Rumours abound: Raph Koster, amongst others, has departed SOE, possibly for Bioware; all extant SWG boxes have been pulled off shelves prior to a new full price box in July and LucasArts has pulled the Star Wars licence (or license if you insist) from SOE with and Bioware taking it over.

Some of this smells of wishful thinking from annoyed ex-fans of the original game - Raph, for all his skills, was in charge for the original version of SWG which, whilst seemingly a bigger draw than the new version, was deemed unsufficiently Star Warsy for Lucasart's tastes. I can't see them giving him a second bite at the cherry when he failed at the first (not that I've played the original SWG - but it always seemed more tilted towards MMOG-as-World rather than the casual-friendly Star Wars game Lucasarts wanted). Nevertheless, I could see the other decisions being made and being and kept under wraps as much as possible to avoid spooking the remaining SWG subscribers.

Update: Raph is leaving SOE. Everything else has been denied.

This kind of thing is one of the cooler aspects of MMOGs I think.

“The Dereth Museum was founded in Morninthaw 25, 67 P.Y. by Damien Sarin, the original author of The Aerlinthe Report. Its goal is to promote understanding through the arts, natural history and science. Since its inception, the Dereth Museum has been guided by three important principles: the collections are to be held in perpetuity in their entirety; they are a community enterprise available to all, down to the newest inhabitants of Dereth; they are cared for by full-time specialists.”

The Dereth Museum