Quote Originally Posted by Larirawiel View Post
You have to look at in a historical context. They started to make the game ~2005. Which engine, you could licence at that time would be way better than Crystal Tools for a MMORPG? Propably there was not a single one. So they decided to make an own engine. Other studios like Bioware or Zenimax Online used the HeroEngine. But they had to modify it heavily to make it work. And their MMORPGs still had really huge performance problems.
Lineage II (released 2003) was using Unreal Engine 2, and it worked quite well, even with the large open world and 100+ player sieges. The engine's successor, Unreal Engine 3, was also available in March 2004.