Dragon Empires: Codemasters’ Cancelled Clan Warfare MMO

Note: The original interview with Peter Tyson, Community Liaison Manager for Dragon Empires, conducted by Robbie “Fleshmaker” Coker in 2002, is preserved on the Internet Archive. The quotes below come from it.

Dragon Empires was Codemasters’ big fantasy MMORPG: clans fighting over cities, a player-driven economy and dragons ruling five empires. More than 120,000 people signed up for a beta that did not exist yet. After three years of delays, Codemasters cancelled it in September 2004. Here is what the game promised, what Peter Tyson said about it, and what happened to the project and the people around it.

What Dragon Empires Was

Codemasters announced Dragon Empires on September 20, 2001. It was made by Codemasters’ California studio, built from former Sierra On-Line staff, and the first target was 2002. The game was PC only.

The pitch was a world shaped by clan warfare. There were 50 capturable cities across five empires, three races (Human, Shadow and Dragonblood), real-time combat and sieges. Player-versus-player fighting was part of the design, not an option: players who attacked others were marked as outlaws and hunted by the dragons. Codemasters also hired fantasy author Piers Anthony to write material for the game.

What Peter Tyson Said About the Game

Tyson’s answers show a team that knew exactly what kind of MMO it wanted to make. Most of them are about the same idea: a world players could actually change.

A World Run by Clans

“What makes a truly dynamic world is a player directed one,” Tyson said. “What you do can literally change the game for other people.” He warned that a bit of PvP is not enough, because it only appeals to some players.

So Dragon Empires tied city ownership to the economy. Clans that owned a city earned tax on goods bought and sold in its central marketplace. Clans could also vote for or against other cities, and those votes decided whether a city was open for capture. “All clan heads should brush up on their Machiavelli readings!” Tyson joked. He expected blocs of clans to use their votes to keep their enemies under almost constant attack.

Each clan also chose what its city specialised in. Over time the city got better at making those goods, crafters moved in, and the flow of resources changed. When a city changed hands, its specialities changed and merchants moved again.

Clans Optional, but Rewarding

Joining a clan was not required, but Tyson said there was “a lot of fun to be had”. Small clans that did not want to run a city could hire themselves out as mercenaries and fight other clans’ battles. Clans would get in-game email, polls, possibly elections, and their own pages on the game’s website.

Story Without a Single Player Plot

Tyson admitted that story is hard in an MMO: “If you don’t have any, people complain, have too much and people say you might as well make a single player game.” The plan was a world history that would never be fully revealed. Players would “dig around on the site and in the game” to piece it together, and after launch the GMs and the team’s writer would continue the story through new quests and events.

Weather, Sound and Balance

He listed lightning, rainbows, snow, blizzards, rain, thunder and rolling clouds, plus mountains, secret valleys, forests, rivers and oceans. The team wanted sounds to change with the place, so a cavern would sound different from a forest. The minimum specification was expected to be around a 500 MHz PC with a GeForce 2, with a 1 GHz machine and a GeForce 3 recommended.

On balance, he promised the team would spend “as much time looking at balance issues as we will at bug issues” during beta, because “frequent and thorough testing is the only way to deal with the problem.”

Why Dragon Empires Was Cancelled

On September 3, 2004, Codemasters said it had stopped work on Dragon Empires because of “technical issues”. Three days later, producer Gary Dunn explained that the server code could not handle the number of players an MMO needed. After a six-week review, Codemasters decided fixing it would cost too much. Marketing brand manager Ed Relf denied that the crowded MMO market was the reason. Fans started a petition to save the game, but it went nowhere.

Former Codemasters marketer Bruce Everiss later gave a much less flattering account on his blog. He said the project started as a plan to upgrade The Realm, one of the first MMORPGs, from 2D to 3D. That was dropped, and a new game began with a very small team that kept growing “without proper management or marketing analysis” and without “strict budgetary control”. In his words, “within Codemasters the whole project became a standing joke.” He also noted that the community manager left while the team kept growing.

According to Everiss, a new finance director finally analysed the project and reported to the board. “They had sleepwalked into disaster when all around them watched.” The game was shut down that September.

Where Are They Now?

Peter Tyson

Tyson’s own author bio, written in the style of a Dwarf Fortress character, says he was born in New Zealand in 1975 and became a Community Manager at Codemasters in spring 2002. In autumn 2005 he became an administrator in the New Zealand Government.

He kept writing about games, though. His Dwarf Fortress tutorials on his blog became popular, and in 2012 O’Reilly published his book Getting Started with Dwarf Fortress, a 180-page guide to one of the hardest games ever made. Going from promoting a complex MMO to teaching people Dwarf Fortress has a certain logic to it.

Codemasters

Codemasters did not try to build its own MMORPG again. It went on to publish other studios’ online games in Europe, such as The Lord of the Rings Online, and concentrated on what it did best: racing games like DiRT, GRID and the official F1 series. Electronic Arts bought Codemasters in 2021.

Dragon Empires’ Legacy

Dragon Empires is mostly remembered as a warning: announced too early, built without enough control over budget or scope, and stopped by server technology that never worked at MMO scale.

Its ideas were good, though. City ownership tied to taxes, clan votes on which cities can be attacked, cities that specialise in goods, and mercenary clans are all features that sandbox MMOs explored in the following years. Tyson’s description of a world where “what you do can literally change the game for other people” still sounds like the pitch for a modern sandbox MMO.

Were you one of the 120,000 who signed up for the beta? Share your memories in the comments, or through our contact page.

Frequently Asked Questions

Was Dragon Empires ever released?
No. Codemasters stopped development on September 3, 2004, after years of delays. Only a limited closed beta ran, starting in February 2004.

Why was Dragon Empires cancelled?
Codemasters said its server code could not support enough players for an MMO, and a six-week review found the fix too expensive. A former employee later blamed poor management and budget control.

Who developed Dragon Empires?
Codemasters developed and was to publish Dragon Empires. The work was done at its California studio, which was built from former Sierra On-Line staff.

How many people signed up for the Dragon Empires beta?
About 120,000 players signed up for the beta.

What happened to Peter Tyson?
He left the games industry in 2005 to work for the New Zealand Government, and in 2012 wrote the O’Reilly book Getting Started with Dwarf Fortress.

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Last updated: October 2026.