An auction was held earlier this week to sell off the IP assets of 38 Studios and Big Huge Games. Evidently, Rise of Nations and the “Big Huge Games” name were sold for a combined sum of $320,000 to an as-yet-undisclosed buyer. The auction, overall, had twenty interested parties, five of whom took part in the actual telephone conference that was the format for the sale.

What did not sell, however, was the Amalur universe:

As for 38 Studios’ in-development MMO set in the Kingdoms of Amalur universe Project Copernicus and social media and gaming platform Helios, the court-appointed receiver for the assets Richard J. Land did “not receive acceptable offers for the remaining lots,” and “intends to continue to engage in negotiations with interested parties.”

Sources involved in the bidding process told Joystiq there were legacy issues with both the “Rise of” and Amalur intellectual properties, particularly with their former publishing partners Electronic Arts (Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning) and Microsoft (Rise of Nations, Rise of Legends). Even if the properties were purchased, the buyers would still need to deal with some terms made during the original agreements.

I won’t quite go so far as to say that my faint hopes for a worthy sequel to Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning have been entirely dashed, but…nearly so.

Still, we might get a new Rise of Nations out of this, so there’s that at least.