The story of Alganon has not always been a pretty one, as we’ve covered as far back as 2010, when a row started between then game president David Allen and his replacement Derek Smart, which escalated to a lawsuit that was ultimately settled. After that, the game plodded along until Smart took the game offline in 2017 for “server maintenance and migration” as a result of Smart’s company, 3000AD, taking ownership of the title. What has followed since has been literal years of promising from Smart that Alganon would return.
That promise has now been refreshed by Smart as of 2023 with a tweet that reads, “It’s coming…” along with a new video detailing the old game and a blog post. To its credit, the video takes an extremely close look at nearly every aspect of Alganon, from character creation to classes to gameplay elements for PvE players, PvPers, crafters, and social butterflies alike.
Accompanying the video is a long Steam blog from Smart that explains what’s been going on behind the scenes over the last few years since his company purchased the game. “[M]y original plan was to do an international sub-license (or collab sale) deal which would bring it back bigger and better worldwide (the game was never released outside of North America), [but] I never came across a deal that I liked,” he says. “Then the pandemic happened, and everything went sideways.” Since last August, Smart says he’s moved the game servers closer and got it all back online; though making the legacy equipment work with modern hosts was apparently a major challenge, it was overcome and work on the codebase began.
As for when it’s launching, Smart isn’t saying yet.
“In the ‘fun stuff’ dept, the long-term goal is to continue doing minor backend and client updates to Alganon, redo (where needed) the art assets, improve on the graphics engine pipeline where most needed, do another expansion pack (which, as before, will have all the bells and whistles), and devise a re-release plan that benefits the game as well as ensure continued funding for its live ops. And yes, I do have a timeline, but I’m not inclined to share that yet. But as I stated in my previous update, the re-release will be a staggered one tagged as alpha, beta etc. until everything in my roadmap is completed and tagged as a final release.”
“Alganon will be back,” he concludes. “It’s ready when it’s ready; but right now, it’s not ready.”
If it’s been a hot minute since you saw this game, or if you’ve never seen it before now, the video waiting below can get everyone caught up to speed, even if it doesn’t answer the question of when Alganon will return.
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