Dungeon Keeper was a Peter Molyneux game before that name became associated with grandiose claims that could never be fulfilled. It was a fantasy city-builder with RPG elements. You were the master of a dungeon and this meant expanding your capacity for loot, attracting more powerful monsters to protect it and defending your lair from troublesome heroes and rival Dungeon Keepers. Though it got very repetitive very quickly, it had a charm and elegance that few games of its time could manage, enhanced by some of the best mission narrations ever seen in gaming. I loved it, and still do.

So the news that EA has licensed the name to a China based MMO company is surprising. If this is just a matter of branding, I’m astonished that the now eleven year old Dungeon Keeper name has relevance to a mass audience of any kind. It’s one thing to resurrect Majesty or Tropico for an RTS audience, but another one entirely to make a genre shift and use the name.

Will Dungeon Keeper Online be an online RPG or RTS? No idea. Will people be able to play the heroes? How many Dungeon Keepers can there be on map?