The Asian gaming companies are flush with home-grown massively multiplayer online role-playing games, along with a portion of those will be making their way for the West. This week, Korean MMORPG company Bluehole Studio announced the development of En Masse Entertainment, a whole new subsidiary dedicated to bringing "global" games to Tera XBOX Items Western audiences.
En Masse is led by many veterans in the Western MMORPG scene. The publishing arm is headed up by Dr. Jae-Heon Yang, who previously served as chief technical officer at NCsoft. Patrick Wyatt, whose extensive credits at Blizzard Entertainment include work within the Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo franchises, can serve as En Masse's chief operating officer. EA, Microsoft, and NCsoft vet Chris Lee fills the role of v . p . of publishing. Aion producer Brian Knox will reprise that role at En Masse.
En Masse's first project are going to be Bluehole's Tera Items, a fantasy-themed MMORPG that emphasizes real-time, dynamic combat. While details on the overall game remain largely under wraps, players will probably be able to pick from six different races, who must "work together for your common good." En Masse also asserted individual player actions will come with an impact for the "balance of power" inside the game.
TERA is scheduled to launch with the PC in Korea in 2010, with all the Western rollout that you follow. En Masse intentions to debut the project with the 2010 Game Developers Conference, which takes devote San Francisco from March 9 to 13.
