Could something new be in the works at Trion Worlds, maker of internet game Rift?
Several domain registrations in the past week seem to point to the possibility.
Trion Worlds’ CEO Scott Hartsman and brand protection agency MarkMonitor registered a slew of names related to an unannounced project called “Trove”.
MarkMonitor, which is also the registrar for TrionWorlds.com, privately registered names for the phrase “Play Trove” in a number of different extensions like PlayTrove.com and PlayTrove.net. Each of the names reside on Trion’s name servers at TRIONWORLDS.com. While Scott Hartsman scooped up names for “Trove Game” such as TroveGame.com and TroveGame.net.
Trion Worlds Inc. even shows up on the WHOIS record of some “Trove” domains.
None of the domain names currently resolve to a website. But based on the sheer number and timing, one would expect an announcement to come soon.
Here’s a look at some of the domains that were registered:
http://whois.domaintools.com/playtrove.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/playtrove.net
http://whois.domaintools.com/playtrove.org
http://whois.domaintools.com/playtrove.us
http://whois.domaintools.com/playtrove.ca
http://whois.domaintools.com/playtrove.de
http://whois.domaintools.com/playtrove.co.uk
http://whois.domaintools.com/playtrove.eu
http://whois.domaintools.com/playtrove.info
http://whois.domaintools.com/trovegame.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/trovegame.net
http://whois.domaintools.com/trovegame.org
http://whois.domaintools.com/trovegame.ca
http://whois.domaintools.com/trovegame.de
The last time I wrote about Trion, the company had unveiled Defiance after paying $90,000 USD for the matching domain Defiance.com.
Stay tuned.
UPDATE 1 November 15, 2013:. Trion Worlds has announced Trove. You can watch the video below.
Talking about this story: VG247, Play3-Live, Buffed.de, GameStar and Joystiq