Standing Stone Games is something along the lines you're talking about (http://standingstonegames.com/ http://standingstonegames.com/) with Dungeons and Dragons

Standing Stone Games is something along the lines you're talking about (http://standingstonegames.com/ http://standingstonegames.com/) with Dungeons and Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online. I can't remember all of the details, but basically Turbine (the original studio) was acquired (Warner?) and the new owners wanted to focus on mobile games and basically were going to abandon the MMORGP titles. Somewhere, somehow, some of people involved managed to convince the right people to basically allow them to create a new studio for the purpose of running and continuing development of those games. Again, I could have some of that wrong as that was awhile ago... but that's the gist. I'm sure both games still would have had a reasonable player base to make it feasible.