first off, one shld understand the various roles each of these companies provide. in actual fact, Dreamtime Interactive holds the copyrights to the original game, not EA or CA. i'm really not sure who put up the original money for development, but EA is, these days, primarily a distributor, not a developer. i'm not even sure EA has their own in-house development any more. CA (Creative Assembly) are the folks that actually made the game, or at least the bulk of it. they seem to be the folks that did the coding. however, the original idea 'seems' to have been spawned from Dreamtime. so perhaps Dreamtime did the original designing, Creative did the original coding, and EA did the testing and shipping and lent their big brand name to the thing. this is certainly not necessarily an accurate and total view of all that each company did, but rather just a cursory look. but, it does show that Activision isnt likely to suddenly take over the coding aspects of the game and suddenly provide a multiplayer campaign. i would think that would have to come from CA and they are ostensibly working on M:TW. EA also provides the servers for the current online portion of the game. so, what is most likely to happen is that the only new thing that will happen is that Activision will now do the quality control, online servers and shipping of the new game. they will have NO say in the current stw/we/mi...i think, unless of course they struck some kind of deal with EA to take over the servers for stw/we/mi, but this isnt very likely.

thus, there is almost no chance that Activision is going to suddenly provide an MPC for stw/we/mi, and almost no chance that they will have much say about a M:TW MPC.

and as for whether dreamtime or creative are going to make this attempt again or not isnt being discussed in public. like Target says, they learned that lesson from the earlier hypes.

so, if yer lookin for an online campaign, i suggest you contact dreamtime or creative, not EA or Activision.

there are also a number of inherent real time problems with an MPC that incorporates turn based and real time battle such as Total War, which i'm sure CA can attest to ;), so, i wouldnt be too anticipatory re an MPC showing up for stw/we/mi or even for M:TW.

it would be a nice 'gift', as you put it, but it's also a very unlikely one.

K.


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