Alganon

Last month at E3, Quest Online announced that DC Comics is publishing an Alganon comic based on the game's upcoming Rise of the Ourobani expansion. The first issue of that comic will be featured at the DC Entertainment booth at San Diego Comic-Con through July 24. Here's the plot:

"Alganon – Fall of the Ourobani tells the story of Bana’serit, a young leader of the Ourobani. Under assault from rival factions, Bana’serit seeks out a mythical weapon in a desperate attempt to secure the safety of her people. This limited edition comic reveals the series of events that lead into the upcoming Alganon expansion pack, Rise of the Ourobani."

You can read the first few pages of the comic on the official Alganon site. The comic also includes a code for a free in-game item.

UPDATE: You can now download the entire comic for free on the Alganon site!

It's been more than a year since Alganon adopted a free-to-play model, and it looks like Quest Online has some big plans in store for the game. The team made a handful of important announcement at E3 today:

• The first Alganon expansion, Rise of the Ourobani, is scheduled to be released by the end of the year. It introduces a new playable race and player housing.
• DC Comics will be publishing an Alganon comic based on the Rise of the Ourobani expansion. It will be available later this year for free through various publications, including the iPad.
• The two US servers will be merged into a single server this month. A European server will be opened by the end of the month. Localized Asian servers should be available shortly.
• Two non-MMO games based on the Alganon lore are in development by third party partners. Both games will be simultaneously released on PC, Android and iOS platforms in the coming months and will allow the transfer of perks to Alganon.

For more details on all these announcements, check out Alganon's June newsletter.

Derek Smart took over as president of Quest Online with the sudden departure of co-founder and CEO David Allen. A post by Smart in the Alganon forums alluded to much more going on behind the scenes, so we tracked him down to get the details on the game that has had some of its own controversy since its ill-fated launch in December.  

After a weak "soft launch" in December, Alganon is headed for a huge makeover, according to new Quest Online President Derek Smart. Quest went through a major shakeup that brought Smart in and saw founder David Allen leave.

After only a few months of availability to consumers, the developers at Alganon have opted to drop the subscription fee to their game. Although they're not moving to a straight free-to-play model, they've decided to go the route that we've seen with Guild Wars in the past and allow gamers to play their game for free once they've made their initial purchase.

For the entire story, you can either continue reading or head on over to the Alganon official site to check out their post and discussion.