A new Lego MMO. From Funcom.

So, what's Funcom planning to do now that The Secret World has gone gold?

Start work on a new MMO based on Lego. Lego Minifigs, specifically

Of course. Since Lego Universe did so well...

Wow... I did NOT see that coming...

Okay, six months after the initial announcement... and... no further news on the Funcom site. "LEGO Universe" (LU) took four years to develop, but that's probably not a good standard for Funcom to try to meet. Or perhaps it was affected by the (temporary) layoffs of August 2012? (Which may be a routine part of their dev cycle, from what I've skimmed.)

The LEGO Collectible Minifigures (http://minifigures.lego.com), as a toy product, are still going strong, with several additional series (three series a year, 16 figures per series) promised.

There was info on Eurogamer in August (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...) that alleged "collection and teaming up with friends and playing together" and an interview on GameSpot from October (http://www.gamespot.com/news/lego-gr...) that says the LEGO Group (TLG) learned from LU.

Making some wild guesses: the Funcom game will be smaller than LU, more modular (re: scenes where minifigs can interact), without combat, and TLG will package a code with each toy. (As precedent, the "Hero Factory" figures include a code for points in the Flash games at lego.com.) Chat will be even more restricted than in LU. (LU artist Mike Rayhawk theorizes that one reason for its shutdown was cold feet, when TLG realized what reputational damage could result if a predator snuck past LU's restricted lexicon, chat-moderators and build-monitors.)