While the guns-on-cars theme seems as natural to us as "snakes on a plane", the massively multiplayer car-P-G Auto Assault clearly hasn't resonated with gamers. Players found themselves adventuring in a post-apocalyptic world that was just a wee bit too empty due to abysmal subscriber numbers. As a result, parent publisher NCSoft announced today that all of Auto Assault's servers will merge into a single one located in North America.

Forum postings from European gamers have highlighted concern about high latency (or "lag") for players attempting to connect to the US-based "Nexus" server. However, players are hopeful that the higher populations will make convoys easier to form for group-based adventures.

In a bid to make the merge as painless as possible, all of the characters in your account (up to 12) will be freely transferable without penalty. The developer, NetDevil, will continue adding content for the game, including a Coliseum mode it plans to roll out by the end of July.

We think that Auto Assault may deserve another look come Thursday: with fast-talking French, autobahning Germans and wrong-side-of-the-road Brits set to invade US highways, things may get pretty interesting.

July 12, 2006