Here’s the link:

Sony Online Entertainment has announced that it has acquired “key assets” of online trading card game developer Worlds Apart Productions (Star Chamber). Certain employees from Worlds Apart will form the core of the new SOE-Denver, adding to SOE’s worldwide group of studios including San Diego, Seattle, Austin, and Taiwan.

Based in Denver, Colorado, Worlds Apart Productions has been building and operating online games for 10 years, currently including online CCGs like The Lord Of The Rings Online TCG, Star Trek Online CCG, and even an online CCG based on NCSoft’s MMO title Auto Assault, as well as the aforementioned Star Chamber.
…
The newly formed SOE-Denver’s core technologies have far-reaching potential, such as the ability to integrate board or card games into existing SOE online games, as well as the creation of new games altogether.

First off, congratulations to Scott Martin and his team, some of which I know – albeit casually – from MUD-Dev. It’s always nice when someone manages to cash in for years of toil.

It’s also nice that someone is getting serious about integrating CCG aspects into an MMO. For example, Pokemon would be a great license for an MMO – the collecting game can serve to replace the grind. If balanced like Magic the Gathering, you could have a free-play system that required monthly fees or booster pack purchases to get the really cool collectables.

That being said, there will be a real temptation here to make a ‘money game’. Magic is a money game- they have a relatively small number of customers buying a lot of cards. This is a very different spending pattern than you see in a WoW/EQ style monthly fee. The big danger with money games, if the history of all the Magic wannabes is any indication, is hitting critical mass – finding enough other players willing to invest into any given CCG. The paper CCG industry averages one success every five years.

And of course, the other question is whether Sony will change a game that isn’t a money game into one. They’ve already experimented with that with the Station Exchange. And SWG clearly shows they’re not afraid of a little paradigm shift. So it’s going to be interesting to see where things go from here.