Yesterday, Sony Online Entertainment representative Daniel Myers announced that The Matrix Online will be shut down on July 31st. The game launched in 2005 after several delays and false starts, and shortly thereafter SOE bought the rights to operate the game from developer Monolith. Now, four years later, the game will join the ranks of closed MMOs. In a forum post, Myers said, "The team will also be whipping up an end-of-the-world event. It won't be quite the same as having over 100 developers in the game as Agents like when we ended beta, but we have 4 years of tricks up our sleeve. It'll be a chance to revisit all the things that make MxO the memorable experience it is. And how could we pull the plug without crushing everyone's RSI just one more time?"
I didn't know there was a matrix MMO- and I'm pissed to hear it's shutting down, because I would've played it. No point in signing up now though. Shame.
You didn't miss much. It was over-priced and buggy. The game seems to have fallen victim to the SWG (Star Wars: Galaxies) syndrome, only right out of the gate.
I have to admint that during the beta it was a good back and forth with the developers, but 2005 was just way to late. Maybe a year or two after the first movie, but by 2005 the steam has gone out. The end of the beta rocked, but after about a month or two, it just felt like SWG.
I mean they killed Morpheus! That didn't even bring in the numbers. Only reason I am going to log in is to see the ending.
I didn't know there was a matrix MMO- and I'm pissed to hear it's shutting down, because I would've played it. No point in signing up now though. Shame.
Look at it this way: maybe you'll get lucky, and someone will fork OpenSim [opensimulator.org] to create a clone.
I didn't know there was a matrix MMO- and I'm pissed to hear it's shutting down, because I would've played it. No point in signing up now though. Shame.
Look at it this way: maybe you'll get lucky, and someone will fork OpenSim [opensimulator.org] to create a clone.
Why would you want to fork it? OpenSim looks like you could build an MMO over the top of it without any adaptation at all.
You don't want to play a game in OpenSim. You can't even reasonably navigate structures which have reasonable-scale-doorways, everything has to be built over-sized if you want people to be able to walk through it. OpenSim is interesting and amazing but it's a shame they can't get right what works in every first person shooter every conceived.
On the contrary, hearing about something doesn't mean it's any good, either.
The contrary would be: "Everyone's heard about WoW precisely because it's so bad."
I played it for a few months, and liked it for the most part. Actually, it's the first computer game I've ever spent money on. Then I got to the raid-scheduling part, and realized my life is worth more than that.
The Matrix Online was _painful_. The information about what widgets were needed in what order to develop what new devices and abilities was far, far too complex and far, far too painful. You had to play it for at least six months, with a a very detailed notebook on hand, to work out enough detail to begin to survive Player versus Player with the people who refused to sleep and exchanged all their information offline or bought guides.
I agree, I played WoW for years and raided for the last 2. Bliz has a good product, but the end game content has become time consuming to the point you're playing 20-40 hours a week just to do any of it, if you do not meet those schedules the guilds will ultimately bench or boot you for someone else who can meet the schedules required to master the complexity and beat these bosses.
Under 50? No small number - it's part generational gap, and partly because most of the older people I know are too busy for it. That said, Niris has a point - WoW is colorful, popular, and fun, just like McDonald's.
Having heard of WoW is very different from actually having time to play it, it seems like it's been featured on several fictional shows, been parodied, and I think I read that some regular talk shows covered it.
Yeah its hard for a game to get much word of mouth publicity when you can't tell people what its like because they have to experience it for themselves.
In general, what kills most MMOs is releasing too soon. If they release too early and ruin their first impressions with people, there is really no way for them recover. They need subscribers since box sales can only do so much. This is also the key reason why you're seeing fewer MMOs and more delays these days.
I had exactly the same reaction. With all the money they waste on bad advertisement, seems like they couple have put a few dollars toward letting people know this existed.
One of the few MMOs where basically everyone was looking for bugs.. cause if you were in the matrix, that's what you'd be doing too:)
I think the most fun I ever had was when our little clan would stand around in the park and run into an area that we weren't allowed in... an agent would show up and we'd all kick the shit out of him, not that we had a chance of defeating him, and then run back into the park.. where he wouldn't follow us. Basically bear baiting.:)
But like all MMOs, it eventually became about the grind.
There's no grind in guild wars. It's against their philosophy. In fact, when I played, my dude was maxed out way before I ran out of quests. The game has a few problems, but the grind isn't one of them.
As of the latest WoW expansion, the grind is pretty much gone. They massively sped up leveling through the original content and first expansions (1-70) and the new 70-80 content is well-paced and actually Fun to play.
In fact, the forums are now full of people whining that things are "too easy" and that content is being cleared too fast (by people other than them..lol)
Even if one argues that WOW went from being a million times too grindy to a thousand times too grindy, it still got better by a factor of a t
It won't continue as the game is about a movie only; nobody will interest in the game as nobody will interest in putting more effort in products related to an old movie.
Sure The Matrix trilogy is a good movie (yes I have DVDs of The Matrix trilogy), but once the story ends (The Matrix Revolutions), people won't focus on/ talk about it anymore.
Sure The Matrix trilogy is a good movie (yes I have DVDs of The Matrix trilogy), but once the story ends (The Matrix Revolutions), people won't focus on/ talk about it anymore.
Well it's a trilogy, not a movie. And two of the movies sucked. And one was alright but still overrated.
I was thought they got too preachy in the second and third and missed a great opportunity for a killer twist to end it. I always thought after Cypher tried to make the deal with Agent Smith to get back to the Matrix that it would have been a damned cool twist if in the third one he went to the machine city and found out that...there simply was NO Zion. Nobody had ever actually left the Matrix at all. That Zion was simply a sub program for those that refused to accept the "reality" of the Matrix proper and that "Zion" was wiped out every so often to keep those who refused to believe from "infecting' those that did and throwing the whole thing out of whack.
They would then show him the 'real" world, that thanks to the war was uninhabitable by all life and then be given the choice: either allow a good portion of "Zion" to be wiped out so they will quit screwing up the Matrix, try to get those in Zion to accept that they will NEVER get out, as there is no where to actually go that they could survive and thanks to their doubts they will be forced to live out their days in "Zion", or allow those in Zion to keep screwing with the Matrix causing the eventual collapse of the Matrix and forcing everyone to live in the crappier Zion program.
That would have been a better ending than all the messiah junk they piled on in the second and third. Pretty much the only thing that kept me from falling asleep during the second and third was Smith. Smith for me was the only thing worth watching in the second and third, as he seemed to me the only one that just didn't seem to be a sheep going along with whatever the Oracle said.
Which is why I am frankly surprised that the MxO lasted as long as it did. When you base a game on a franchise that 2/3rds of the movies feel like "Spaceballs 33 1/3rd: The search for more money" I just didn't see how they would be able to build up a big enough fan base to keep it going. The characters and 2/3rds of the movies just weren't that interesting IMHO.
If the world would have been nice, then they could have just stuck the meatbags on a little island away from everything, like that island with the rhesus monkeys.
No, it would have been a better story with a LOT more ethical conflict if when he got to the machine city not only did he find out there was NO Zion, but that the machines had kept the true history of the war. There he would find out that the AI was basically treated as a slave race, forced to work in dangerous jobs, to be sexual servants,etc and w
That's a really interesting point. I wonder how many MMO developers have ever thought about ending their game gracefully. A storyline you could whip out once subscriptions fell to a certain level.
Well, A Tale in the Desert [slashdot.org] has this. They end the game and start another version after a certain period. That game is the exception to a lot of rules, though. If it wasn't so mismanaged it'd be a close second to WoW.
Not a good idea though. Remember that the ultimate goal of any commercial game is to make lots of money. They cost a lot to develop, you want a big return. Well, you get that if you get a lot of subscribers who stay on a long time. So you don't want to end a game when there's still lots of people playing.
Also you'll likely piss off a lot of people. While there are plenty of people who play a game for a time, get bored, and move on to something new, there are plenty who don't. There are people who really com
Not a good idea though. Remember that the ultimate goal of any commercial game is to make lots of money. They cost a lot to develop, you want a big return.
"The Matrix" is fundamentally no different from Disney's online "Pirates of the Carribbean." When the big tent comes down and the franchise grows cold you are the last living cell in the dead body.
The franchise product that is solidly anchored is rare.
The iconic DC Comic character exists in recognizable form as early as 1940. He will have a had a long
WoW's 3.0 patch had a fantastic world event. Ok, the random citadels spawning mobs in the most desolate areas was lame but the zombies and the plague made it the most memorable couple of days in the game.
Fun fact; the MMORPG was actually considered canon. So when the game ends, that, rather than the third movie, will be the actual end of the story.
The fact that, from what I read at least, it was so story driven in nature was probably what ensured that it only had a finite lifespan. If WoW's devs hadn't screwed the class dynamics to the degree they have since 3.0, that game could have conceivably lasted more or less forever on the basis of the pre-existing content, without any further developer interaction.
MxO, however, was different. It was apparently built around ongoing episodic/developer involvement, and comparitively speaking there apparently wasn't a lot of repetitive/static content at all. As a result, once the devs stopped doing the live stuff, the game itself would die.
The franchise has existed for ten years, and that is a better run than many get; I know the screenplay of the first movie more intimately than Muslims are supposed to know the Qu'ran. Although I've still got it on my hard drive, I also wouldn't have watched it more than probably three times in the last five years; I saw it literally close to 100 times within the first six months of its' release, and I've since got it out of my system.
Reading this and a number of the comments, connected with the question posted to/. a few days ago about severe gaming addiction, I kind of wonder if, at some point, all MMOs need to die? Like a good television show, you get to a point where the show needs to be retired. It's lived it's life and been popular and made money. I think this is probably natural and needed. This gives the creators a great opportunity to move on to another MMO, or a different project entirely - flex their creative muscles in a different way.
Actually in my opinion, many of these MMOGs could have epic endings as part of the game. Then you restart it again (or not if you have the next version ready).
I used to play an online webgame where the ending was part of the game AND inevitable. Players could also do stuff to cause the game to end early - so there would be people who'd choose to try to end the game early, and others who would try to stop them.
While some people might not like the idea of having to regrind to build their chars up again, they could just reduce the amount of grind involved in getting the chars up.
Because it doesn't matter that the players get to heroic levels fast, you need them at heroic levels for the ending. And after the ending they start again from scratch.
I figure the biggest problem is almost everyone might be online for the ending and that'll crash the servers:).
Yeah, if only SOE had open sourced the Matrix world...
Where Morpheus makes Neo read the matrix mailing list archives instead of giving him the pill.
And instead of the climactic battle with Agent Smith, watch as Neo instead goes to the Matrix bugzilla and files a dupe bug report of an Agent attempting to kill him that's been open since the first alpha.
In the exciting conclusion, the bug is patched but Neo doesn't have the right version of the new sound library they threw in with the bugfix release.
Will he track down the new library version, compile and install the new dependencies that aren't in his package manager, install the library, and compile the new Matrix in time?!
Unless they promised that the service would go on forever, there has been no breach of contract.
Everyone knows that businesses and products fail. You have to make the decision of whether to deal with a vendor based on past performance. I won't buy the average Ford vehicle because Ford makes stupid, unnecessary changes to a given motor every couple years, even if they're still using it, that defeat parts interchange. I have a Ford truck because it has an International motor, and I know I can get parts even if I take the truck to another country.
I'm pissed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I'm pissed (Score:4, Informative)
You didn't miss much. It was over-priced and buggy. The game seems to have fallen victim to the SWG (Star Wars: Galaxies) syndrome, only right out of the gate.
Parent
Re:I'm pissed (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean they killed Morpheus! That didn't even bring in the numbers. Only reason I am going to log in is to see the ending.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Does that mean there's a DANCER archetype?
Oh joy!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I didn't know there was a matrix MMO- and I'm pissed to hear it's shutting down, because I would've played it. No point in signing up now though. Shame.
Look at it this way: maybe you'll get lucky, and someone will fork OpenSim [opensimulator.org] to create a clone.
We can rebuild it. We have the technology.
Re: (Score:2)
I didn't know there was a matrix MMO- and I'm pissed to hear it's shutting down, because I would've played it. No point in signing up now though. Shame.
Look at it this way: maybe you'll get lucky, and someone will fork OpenSim [opensimulator.org] to create a clone.
Why would you want to fork it? OpenSim looks like you could build an MMO over the top of it without any adaptation at all.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
We can rebuild it. We have the technology.
But we don't want to spend a lot of money.
Re: (Score:2)
You don't want to play a game in OpenSim. You can't even reasonably navigate structures which have reasonable-scale-doorways, everything has to be built over-sized if you want people to be able to walk through it. OpenSim is interesting and amazing but it's a shame they can't get right what works in every first person shooter every conceived.
Re:I'm pissed (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't know there was a matrix MMO- and I'm pissed to hear it's shutting down, because I would've played it.
The fact you never heard of it kind of proves how good it was. I mean, when was the last time you met someone who was under 50 and never heard of WoW?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
On the contrary, hearing about something doesn't mean it's any good, either.
The contrary would be: "Everyone's heard about WoW precisely because it's so bad."
I played it for a few months, and liked it for the most part. Actually, it's the first computer game I've ever spent money on. Then I got to the raid-scheduling part, and realized my life is worth more than that.
Re:I'm pissed (Score:4, Interesting)
The Matrix Online was _painful_. The information about what widgets were needed in what order to develop what new devices and abilities was far, far too complex and far, far too painful. You had to play it for at least six months, with a a very detailed notebook on hand, to work out enough detail to begin to survive Player versus Player with the people who refused to sleep and exchanged all their information offline or bought guides.
You may enjoy that, but I found it painful.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I agree, I played WoW for years and raided for the last 2. Bliz has a good product, but the end game content has become time consuming to the point you're playing 20-40 hours a week just to do any of it, if you do not meet those schedules the guilds will ultimately bench or boot you for someone else who can meet the schedules required to master the complexity and beat these bosses.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Having heard of WoW is very different from actually having time to play it, it seems like it's been featured on several fictional shows, been parodied, and I think I read that some regular talk shows covered it.
Re:I'm pissed (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah its hard for a game to get much word of mouth publicity when you can't tell people what its like because they have to experience it for themselves.
Parent
Re:I'm pissed (Score:4, Insightful)
Is there a failed MMO graveyard? Like a wiki where we could post MMOs that have died and analysis of what went wrong?
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
In general, what kills most MMOs is releasing too soon. If they release too early and ruin their first impressions with people, there is really no way for them recover. They need subscribers since box sales can only do so much. This is also the key reason why you're seeing fewer MMOs and more delays these days.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Don't feel too bad, you didn't miss much. It was a failure from the start; that's why it's shutting down.
RSI (Score:5, Informative)
http://matrix.wikia.com/wiki/Residual_self_image [wikia.com]
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Thanks, I was going to ask that. I was thought it was weird that they were making one final attempt to give their most loyal players Carpal Tunnel.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Residual Self-image
My wiki's bigger than yours. [wikipedia.org]
I played for about two years (Score:5, Informative)
One of the few MMOs where basically everyone was looking for bugs.. cause if you were in the matrix, that's what you'd be doing too :)
I think the most fun I ever had was when our little clan would stand around in the park and run into an area that we weren't allowed in... an agent would show up and we'd all kick the shit out of him, not that we had a chance of defeating him, and then run back into the park.. where he wouldn't follow us. Basically bear baiting. :)
But like all MMOs, it eventually became about the grind.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
> all MMOs
There's no grind in guild wars. It's against their philosophy. In fact, when I played, my dude was maxed out way before I ran out of quests. The game has a few problems, but the grind isn't one of them.
Re: (Score:2)
As of the latest WoW expansion, the grind is pretty much gone. They massively sped up leveling through the original content and first expansions (1-70) and the new 70-80 content is well-paced and actually Fun to play.
In fact, the forums are now full of people whining that things are "too easy" and that content is being cleared too fast (by people other than them..lol)
Even if one argues that WOW went from being a million times too grindy to a thousand times too grindy, it still got better by a factor of a t
Sounds normal to me (Score:2, Interesting)
It won't continue as the game is about a movie only; nobody will interest in the game as nobody will interest in putting more effort in products related to an old movie.
Sure The Matrix trilogy is a good movie (yes I have DVDs of The Matrix trilogy), but once the story ends (The Matrix Revolutions), people won't focus on/ talk about it anymore.
Re:Sounds normal to me (Score:5, Funny)
Revolutions? trilogy?
They only made one Matrix movie. *drags you off screen*
Parent
Re:Sounds normal to me (Score:5, Interesting)
They only made one Matrix movie. *drags you off screen*
Too bad they never made any sequels. [xkcd.com]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And if you like continuous gunfire part three was fine.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well it's a trilogy, not a movie. And two of the movies sucked. And one was alright but still overrated.
Re:Sounds normal to me (Score:5, Interesting)
I was thought they got too preachy in the second and third and missed a great opportunity for a killer twist to end it. I always thought after Cypher tried to make the deal with Agent Smith to get back to the Matrix that it would have been a damned cool twist if in the third one he went to the machine city and found out that...there simply was NO Zion. Nobody had ever actually left the Matrix at all. That Zion was simply a sub program for those that refused to accept the "reality" of the Matrix proper and that "Zion" was wiped out every so often to keep those who refused to believe from "infecting' those that did and throwing the whole thing out of whack.
They would then show him the 'real" world, that thanks to the war was uninhabitable by all life and then be given the choice: either allow a good portion of "Zion" to be wiped out so they will quit screwing up the Matrix, try to get those in Zion to accept that they will NEVER get out, as there is no where to actually go that they could survive and thanks to their doubts they will be forced to live out their days in "Zion", or allow those in Zion to keep screwing with the Matrix causing the eventual collapse of the Matrix and forcing everyone to live in the crappier Zion program.
That would have been a better ending than all the messiah junk they piled on in the second and third. Pretty much the only thing that kept me from falling asleep during the second and third was Smith. Smith for me was the only thing worth watching in the second and third, as he seemed to me the only one that just didn't seem to be a sheep going along with whatever the Oracle said.
Which is why I am frankly surprised that the MxO lasted as long as it did. When you base a game on a franchise that 2/3rds of the movies feel like "Spaceballs 33 1/3rd: The search for more money" I just didn't see how they would be able to build up a big enough fan base to keep it going. The characters and 2/3rds of the movies just weren't that interesting IMHO.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If the world would have been nice, then they could have just stuck the meatbags on a little island away from everything, like that island with the rhesus monkeys.
No, it would have been a better story with a LOT more ethical conflict if when he got to the machine city not only did he find out there was NO Zion, but that the machines had kept the true history of the war. There he would find out that the AI was basically treated as a slave race, forced to work in dangerous jobs, to be sexual servants,etc and w
I mean it when I say "The End" (Score:5, Interesting)
It strikes me that an online RPG might begin with a book: a three or four year story arc that has a clear beginning, a middle and an end.
It would be a particularly rewarding experience for those who came in and early and stayed the course.
But you could enter and exit at any point with some sense of achievement - and a unique experience of the game.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, A Tale in the Desert [slashdot.org] has this. They end the game and start another version after a certain period. That game is the exception to a lot of rules, though. If it wasn't so mismanaged it'd be a close second to WoW.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not a good idea though. Remember that the ultimate goal of any commercial game is to make lots of money. They cost a lot to develop, you want a big return. Well, you get that if you get a lot of subscribers who stay on a long time. So you don't want to end a game when there's still lots of people playing.
Also you'll likely piss off a lot of people. While there are plenty of people who play a game for a time, get bored, and move on to something new, there are plenty who don't. There are people who really com
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not a good idea though. Remember that the ultimate goal of any commercial game is to make lots of money. They cost a lot to develop, you want a big return.
"The Matrix" is fundamentally no different from Disney's online "Pirates of the Carribbean." When the big tent comes down and the franchise grows cold you are the last living cell in the dead body.
The franchise product that is solidly anchored is rare.
The iconic DC Comic character exists in recognizable form as early as 1940. He will have a had a long
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
WoW's 3.0 patch had a fantastic world event. Ok, the random citadels spawning mobs in the most desolate areas was lame but the zombies and the plague made it the most memorable couple of days in the game.
As the Oracle Once Said... (Score:4, Funny)
Everything that has a beginning has an end, Neo.
The definitive end of The Matrix (Score:3, Insightful)
Fun fact; the MMORPG was actually considered canon. So when the game ends, that, rather than the third movie, will be the actual end of the story.
The fact that, from what I read at least, it was so story driven in nature was probably what ensured that it only had a finite lifespan. If WoW's devs hadn't screwed the class dynamics to the degree they have since 3.0, that game could have conceivably lasted more or less forever on the basis of the pre-existing content, without any further developer interaction.
MxO, however, was different. It was apparently built around ongoing episodic/developer involvement, and comparitively speaking there apparently wasn't a lot of repetitive/static content at all. As a result, once the devs stopped doing the live stuff, the game itself would die.
The franchise has existed for ten years, and that is a better run than many get; I know the screenplay of the first movie more intimately than Muslims are supposed to know the Qu'ran. Although I've still got it on my hard drive, I also wouldn't have watched it more than probably three times in the last five years; I saw it literally close to 100 times within the first six months of its' release, and I've since got it out of my system.
Adios, Neo. It's been a great ride.
Not the only MMO to recently get End of Life'd (Score:3, Informative)
Should all MMOs die at some point? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:well that's good at least (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to play an online webgame where the ending was part of the game AND inevitable. Players could also do stuff to cause the game to end early - so there would be people who'd choose to try to end the game early, and others who would try to stop them.
While some people might not like the idea of having to regrind to build their chars up again, they could just reduce the amount of grind involved in getting the chars up.
Because it doesn't matter that the players get to heroic levels fast, you need them at heroic levels for the ending. And after the ending they start again from scratch.
I figure the biggest problem is almost everyone might be online for the ending and that'll crash the servers
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah they did basically the same thing with planetside too.
Re:More proof (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, if only SOE had open sourced the Matrix world...
Where Morpheus makes Neo read the matrix mailing list archives instead of giving him the pill.
And instead of the climactic battle with Agent Smith, watch as Neo instead goes to the Matrix bugzilla and files a dupe bug report of an Agent attempting to kill him that's been open since the first alpha.
In the exciting conclusion, the bug is patched but Neo doesn't have the right version of the new sound library they threw in with the bugfix release.
Will he track down the new library version, compile and install the new dependencies that aren't in his package manager, install the library, and compile the new Matrix in time?!
Stay tuned.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If not, then are they guilty of breach of contract -- especially for those who have bought it recently. Or have I got the wrong end of the stick ?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:More proof (Score:4, Informative)
Or have I got the wrong end of the stick ?
Unless they promised that the service would go on forever, there has been no breach of contract.
Everyone knows that businesses and products fail. You have to make the decision of whether to deal with a vendor based on past performance. I won't buy the average Ford vehicle because Ford makes stupid, unnecessary changes to a given motor every couple years, even if they're still using it, that defeat parts interchange. I have a Ford truck because it has an International motor, and I know I can get parts even if I take the truck to another country.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
most MMORG boxes have fine print that the company reserves the right to end the online features with 30 days notice... this is it!
Of course I still see boxes of Tabula Rasa on shelves... nobody's bothered to tell the stores the game's closed!