Romero going MMO

John Romero has one of the longest--and most infamous--resumes in the game industry. He cofounded id Software with Tom Hall, John Carmack, and Adrian Carmack, helping to develop some of the most influential shooters of all time, including Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Doom II. Since that time, he's been involved in plenty of gaming drama, from the heavily hyped letdown of Daikatana to his unceremonious departure from the troubled production of Midway's Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows.

For his next trick, the notorious game designer is apparently going to pull a massively multiplayer online game out of a hat. On this official blog, www.Rome.ro, Romero tossed up a haughty post confirming the project. "Many people already knew I was making an MMO for about the past 4-5 months but evidently there are a lot more who didn't know," he wrote, "and the torrent of diarrhea from people's posts on the Net about it confirms just how out-of-date most people's knowledge of my history is after the id or Ion era."

Romero went on to confirm yesterday's report on Computer & Video Games, which revealed his MMOG plans. That article quoted him as saying the budget for the MMOG was "much more" than Seven Sorrows' $10 million price tag. "It's a lot of money, this is the most money I've ever spent on a game," he told the UK-based site. The article also mentions that Romero cofounded the as-yet-unnamed developer making the game. Romero had first referenced the company in a forum post on his Web site last August.

Romero also promised C&VG that the game would be "very different from any other MMO for some special reasons" and would not be shown to the public until 2007.