NCsoft To Use Unreal Engine 3 For Forthcoming Titles

MMO developer and publisher NCsoft (City of Heroes, Lineage series) has announced that it has licensed the Unreal Engine 3 from Epic Games to develop “two unannounced, top-tier massively multiplayer online games.” NCsoft developed Lineage II and is currently developing Exteel using the Unreal Engine 2. No details on the upcoming MMO titles were revealed, but the news follows other recent licensing of the Unreal Engine 3 by developers including 38 Studios, which will also be using the engine to power its forthcoming MMO project. Publisher 2K has also announced that it will be using the engine for a number of yet unannounced games, chosen especially, says 2K, for its cross-platform performance on PC and consoles. "Unreal Engine 3 has a well structured rendering pipeline, and its graphical quality is superb thanks to advanced lighting and shadowing systems," said Young-muk Choi, lead programmer, Development Unit, NCsoft. "Tools within the Unreal Editor empower us to instantly produce and optimize our outputs, and we especially love how the engine enables designers to easily prototype concepts without the need for programming."