Auto Assault Goes Sunset Tonight

Mytob writes "Today is the last day of service for NCSoft / Net Devil's Auto Assault. The game, which has never proved that popular, will have its service terminated at midnight central time. Refund emails have already been sent out, and end-of game events have been happening since last week. From the Auto Assault Website: 'We are now in the final week of Auto Assault and to mark this occasion on Friday night we'll be doing all sorts of nutty things in-game — whatever you request, we'll try to make happen. Most of the fun will be in and around Ground Zero (don't worry if you don't have a high-level character, we'll boost you), but we'll be doing other stuff all around the game. We plan on starting around 9PM CDT (if not before) and should last right to midnight when the servers are shut down for the final time.'"

Nice try, but (mostly) too shallow

I've played in the beta, and AA had a few nice aspects that almost made me buy it.

The good things were
-halfway decent driving physics (albeit not perfect)
-innovative and interesting crafting system
-nice graphics

and the bad:
-Absolutely no death penalty, making combat somewhat meaningless
-got quite repetitive after level 20
-combat way too dependent on level: a mob 5 levels below you could hardly hurt you and vice versa...
In the end it was fun for three months of beta but by the release time I had grown somewhat tired of it. Now playing EVE which is still fun after 8 months :-)

Poor auto assault

I found Auto Assault to be a SUPER fun game...except for the fact that there was hardly anyone around.

Unfortunately, it was a vicious circle that caused things to get to this point...no one wanted to play it because the world was so empty, thus causing the world to STAY empty.

Shame...I loved it.

Re:Poor auto assault

This can really kill any online game. It's a chicken-and-egg problem, although even if that problem gets solved, it can really kill a game if subscriber count dips for any reason.

For example, this is a basic VERY concise history of Dark Age of Camelot:

Game launches successfully (I've heard that it is still regarded as the least buggy MMOG launch ever. This is sad since DAoC still had lots of annoying bugs.

First game expansion is well received

Not realizing that the reasons most of the DAoC subscriber base were playing DAoC instead of Everquest was because they hated certain aspects of EQ such as sitting around camping a rare mob spawn for hours on end, Mythic decided to try and capitalize on EQ's popularity by releasing a new expansion (Trials of Atlantis) which had very EQ-like mechanics. (Super-rare mob spawns as opposed to the previous DAoC model of super-rare drops off of mobs or drops off of super-hard mobs requiring lots of teamwork to beat.)

Playerbase almost universally hates ToA and constantly bitches about it to Mythic. Mythic ignores the bitching because people aren't quitting. Mythic does not realize that most of the complainers are just waiting for another place to go - While they like DAoC far less than they used to, there still aren't better options.

Eventually, Blizzard Entertainment provides just the option that over half of DAoC's playerbase is waiting for.
DAoC's subscriber count drops rapidly over the period of only a few months

Mythic finally realizes just how much ToA was hurting them, and starts fixing it

While the game is vastly improved (and in my opinion, is far better than WoW in terms of game mechanics), the fact that the playerbase is totally skewed towards hardcore players shifts RvR (Realm vs. Realm) mechanics in such a way that casual players can't compete. As a result, despite the reason for people originally leaving for WoW being gone, the reduced playerbase of DAoC makes people stay with WoW (or other games - EVE in my case).

DAoC is stuck in a chicken-and-egg situation in which they can't gain new/casual players until they gain more casual players.

Game mechanics-wise, I would rather be playing DAoC than EVE. But the decimated playerbase means DAoC is no longer fun, despite good game mechanics.

Open Source it.

Hopefully, the company will release the server & client code as open source; they can then watch in frustration as dozens of servers & tens of thousands of players jump on it.
I guess if it was me I would just open source the client, and release the server as a binary; that way you could still, in theory, make money by providing new material while getting away from hosting, hardware & advertising costs.
hmmm.

Re:Open Source it.

Every time some commercial MMO gets the sunsetting treatment someone has to drag out the, "I hope they release the code" rallying cry.

It's not going to happen. AA is but one MMO title that NetDevil produces. They would be pointing a gigantic gun at their collective feet if they were to release the networking code that, presumably, is used within their other commercial games. On top of that, within the realm of the client, there are possible middleware licensing issues with the 3D engine, video playback, physics system, etc.. that would prevent any opening of the code.

Never got it to work with wine

I really liked this games concept, but I didn't get it to work on wine.

Oh well, its nice that they've realized its time to close down, nothing is more pathetic than MMO's that keep on trying even though they were outdated in 2003 or something.

Too bad, I guess

This was the first time I'd even heard of this game. It looks really cool. But I wouldn't have played it, since there's a monthly fee, and I really can't scrape up the cast for that most months.

And yet Galaxies staggerers along

I just hate to see something diffirent die..

Re-release it as a sequel to 1985's Autoduel!!!

When I first heard of Auto Assault, I thought someone had finally remade AutoDuel [wikipedia.org], still my single favorite video game of all time. Then I found out there was no single-player experience, just a MMORPG. Bleah.

Please re-release Auto Assault with a deep single-player experience! Granted, I'll never leave the house again, but I didn't really want to anyway.

Open up the server!

What would be a great gesture now is to release the server application to the game community.

Let people run their own hobby servers.

The game was too simple

When I first heard of Auto Assault I envisioned it as something like the Car Wars RPG. Instead, the game was a fairly straightforward RPG action game with cars as avatars. I think the game would have held my interest longer if there had been more customization options, more complex missions (multi-player 'convoy' escort quests, infiltration quests involving both time in and out of the vehicle, etc), and a way to get out of the darn vehicle. In short: I don't want to be a car, I just want to drive one.

Re:And so the first one dies.

Who wants to take bets on by how much the suicide rates will jump when it does, no matter when.