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Comments: 144 +- Games: How The Matrix Online Went Wrong on Monday July 27, @05:17AM
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As the July 31st deadline for The Matrix Online's closure looms, Gamer Limit is running a story discussing the game's shortcomings, as well as some of the decisions that led to its failure. Quoting:
"I honestly thought the writers must have absolutely hated the remaining cast of The Matrix Trilogy or something, because they constantly seemed to go out of their way to phase out existing characters in favor of newer ones. The cast overall basically made me, as a player, feel distant from the main storyline and made the entire game feel like a Matrix side story instead of the continuation it was meant to be. ... When MxO first launched there was an entire team dedicated to playing the game as Agents and other key characters as a means to further in-game events and directly interact with players, giving players the feeling that they truly were making a difference. After the SOE buyout of the game the LESIG team was reduced to playing minor characters before eventually being phased out and replaced with a Live Event Team (LET) comprised purely of volunteers."
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SOE Pulls the Plug On <em>The Matrix Online</em> 111 comments
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So? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So? (Score:5, Funny)
Honestly, who cares?
I bet all 5 players are very disappointed.
Parent
Re:So? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:So? (Score:5, Funny)
Wait -- what?
Parent
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
From TFS (Score:5, Funny)
I honestly thought the writers must have absolutely hated the remaining cast of The Matrix Trilogy or something
Editors, please correct this. Everyone knows that there was only 1 Matrix movie.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
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Haha.. I actually sat down and watched all three in sequence recently, and they're not bad when taken as a whole. True, the latter two lack the mindbending experience of taking the red pill, but so does the first once you've already seen it. The biggest stumbling block in the suspension of disbelief is the idea of using humans as an energy source, which is the premise that covers all three films. Once you get past that, the movies make an entertaining narrative.. although I still had to fast forward past
Lacked The Matrix cutting edge feel (Score:3, Interesting)
To me, MxO just lacked the wonder and glory of the films. The obviously had to take a lot of shortcuts and compromises to fit it into a Diku-esque MMORPG and well, there was a lot to live up to for Matrix fans and it just plain felt non-cutting edge.
As one of the comments on the source article states "it catered to gamers instead of fans". Specifically they created a game firmly within an existing genre instead of something specific to The Matrix. I know that's easy to criticize, but regardless I think it's true.
Re:Lacked The Matrix cutting edge feel (Score:4, Insightful)
You say "films" as if there was more than one.
-dZ.
Parent
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I was a little incredulous that in this setting, they chose to confine the player to a bland city of greys and browns.
They could have taken the player on a joyride through any number of settings since /reality itself/ is malleable in the Matrix universe.
How The Matrix Online Went Wrong (Score:5, Funny)
1. Not being World of Warcraft.
2. There is no two.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Not even trying to be WoW, I think you mean. All of the SOE games have been resting on the laurels of Everquest's engine for years, with the exception, perhaps, of space combat added eventually in Star Wars Online. The game worlds show little in the way of ongoing development that would justify even a portion of the subscription fees. If they phased out characters from TMO, it's probably because they paid royalties initially to make the game sound good, but as usual, were counting on the community of pla
Re:How The Matrix Online Went Wrong (Score:5, Funny)
SOE: Where MMOs go to die.
Or rather, where MMOs go to be on perpetual life support at least as long as they can somehow justify the 2.33 supporters working on them. Look at the games that are currently on the SOE-IV:
EQ: Once the gem of MMO gaming, today the grandfather that sits in the corner reminiscenting of the ol' days of yore when battles were heated, death was painful and clerics had /quit on a hotkey.
Ultima Online: EQ's childhood friend, they usually hang out in the same corner in front of of the tiled stove, bickering who has the better wartime stories.
EQ2: EQ's stepchild that EQ doesn't really take all that serious because he's simply not tough enough. He started out really tough and beat up a lot of the kids so they didn't want to play with him, and when he started to mellow out his tough friends dumped him too. Now he's in the SOE retirement home along with the older folks.
Vanguard: He's a little slow, to be honest. Never had a lot of friends and people said he's been a bit preterm, and that's why he was dumped by his parents to spend his life in the SOE orphanage.
SWG: Now here is a hero of yore. He sure was a movie star and he still acts it, but it's been a while since he's been on the silver screen. He still claims he has it, but usually you find him sitting there with UO and EQ trying to get a bit of warmth from the stove, but they say he smells kinda funny. And his asthma breath sounds creepy.
Parent
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so what does that make PlanetSide?
Redheaded bastard stepchild, abused and neglected and chained to the basement wall.
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Maybe that after ... what? 4 years? ... they STILL didn't manage to come up with a German translation that doesn't reek like an egg left for a week in an old boot out in the Sahara sun?
Not "RP-Able" (Score:5, Interesting)
I noticed that when I tried to come up with a "Matrix RP" idea. It was easy to write the rules (you could easily adjust GURPS to encompany some of the Matrix specials, stack it on GURPS Martial-Arts and you're set). It was insanely hard to come up with good ideas for stories. Basically:
What the heck are we doing here?
Let's face it. The Matrix is no place to hang out. There's no good reason to go in except two:
1. Find "The One".
2. Meet the Oracle.
That's it. Any fight, anything you could accomplish, anything at all is meaning- and pointless. It's insanely dangerous (not only can you get killed inside, your body is a sitting duck outside while you're in) and there's nothing sensible to do.
Now, I never played MxO, to be honest. Mostly because I couldn't imagine what I should "do" or "accomplish" in the game. Beat up Agents? What for? Level buildings? Not only are they virtual, but they're even virtual in the virtual world.
Essentially, I think I would have felt like playing someone playing an MMO. And playing it myself is already pathetic enough for my tastes.
Re:Not "RP-Able" (Score:4, Informative)
"Essentially, I think I would have felt like playing someone playing an MMO. And playing it myself is already pathetic enough for my tastes."
God bless The Onion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw8gE3lnpLQ [youtube.com]
Parent
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The matrix is basically an analogy for religion. Most religious people eventually decide that "normal" or "mundane" life is pretty meaningless in some way or another --- either because the "real" world is in the afterlife, or (more importantly and more commonly) because the real world
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Hmm... so I couldn't find a reason and meaning in the Matrix because I can't find reason and meaning in religion?
Ok, snideness aside. You can't make sensible puzzles in MMOs. It just doesn't work. It's a nice time sink for the fast players, everyone else will read it up on the internet. How do I overcome an opponent through some higher development? I ask the relvant wiki.
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Nope, never said that at all. It might be true that if you could find a particular kind of reason and meaning in The Matrix (as portrayed in the 1st movie) then you could also find it in religion (if you looked equally hard), but B does not imply A if A implies B.
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I noticed that when I tried to come up with a "Matrix RP" idea. It was easy to write the rules (you could easily adjust GURPS to encompany some of the Matrix specials, stack it on GURPS Martial-Arts and you're set). It was insanely hard to come up with good ideas for stories. Basically:
What the heck are we doing here?
Let's face it. The Matrix is no place to hang out. There's no good reason to go in except two:
1. Find "The One".
2. Meet the Oracle.
That's it. Any fight, anything you could accomplish, anything at all is meaning- and pointless. It's insanely dangerous (not only can you get killed inside, your body is a sitting duck outside while you're in) and there's nothing sensible to do.
That's actually what killed the second two movies. (Yes, I know "There are no sequels.")
The first movie was driven by "Just what the hell is going on here?" There were new revelations each and every step of the way up until Neo becoming godlike. That's the end of the story, there really wouldn't have been much to tell subsequently. It's like trying to make a sequel to Lord of the Rings. Yes, things did indeed happen after the destruction of the Ring. And since the Scouring of the Shire was left out of the m
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But when it all comes down to it, all of the above feels dramatically unnecessary. Every bit of the essential Matrix story was told in one movie and trying to add to it will just be a mess, just like the sequels, just like the game.
You said *exactly* what I'd been thinking a week or so back. The Matrix was a film that *suggested* it was part of something more, that made you want more, that attracted the kind of obsessive fanbase that wanted more.
And yet when I thought about it I realised that, despite all impressions to the contrary, what was great about The Matrix was wrapped up and self-contained in the first (and "only") film for pretty much the reasons you give. It wasn't actually that good a candidate for a sequel.
It still might
Re:Not "RP-Able" (Score:5, Interesting)
There has been a fabulous script (whether real or fake, I cannot tell, but it was stunning) for the 2nd Matrix movie, floating around the web a few weeks before the movie came out. It was absolutely insanely great and cool at the same time, filled with memorable quotes and quibs at the first part. One of the arching plots was that Smith would have found himself an "Anti-Neo", a human able to bend the Matrix as well as Neo, using him to fight Neo in a way he simply cannot due to the limitations of his programming. And to teach him, much like Morpheus taught Neo. It smelled a bit like Star Wars, but it was actually pretty well written, with witty little bits of inside jokes.
The reason to go back into the Matrix was simply to have Neo destroy the building he worked in, where he himself (with his coworkers) built the Matrix, a revelation and parallel to how human "designs its own prison" in reality as well. It would come to a showdown where Smith would, quite similar to how it has been done in the "realized" M2 movie, fight Neo as multiple copies, but essentially allowing Neo to kill him over and over, only asking him over and over "do you realize what you're doing", until Neo realizes what he does: He does not fight Smith. He kills humans. Dozens. Thousands. They litter the streets and he realizes that he cannot actually beat Smith, all he can accomplish is to kill every single human in the sim. A fallout of a few billion human lives to bring down a single simulation... is it worth it?
A great scene later was described where Neo and Smith spend a few script pages just talking, both of them knowing that the other can't really harm them in any way. I don't remember the details, but I remember I never saw anything as deeply intriguing. It's interrupted by Smith's protectee who tries to fight Neo (and almost kills him).
Neo finally contacts Morpheus and tells him he can't just kill off the planet, which reveals how much of a zealot Morpheus really is, and how little he cares about humans, telling Neo that if this is the price, so be it. Kill 'em all, cap the coppertops, as long as the machines fall that's the price to be paid.
It eventually ends in a fight where the others manage to actually best an agent and Neo retreating into a church in the matrix to ponder his situation and his options.
In general, when I read the script, I was hooked (if anyone still knows a link, it was by leagues better than the crappy gun-fu matrix ripoff we got sold as M2). You may understand my disappointment when I finally got to see the movie that was actually made.
Parent
Found it! (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.screenplays-online.de/screenplay/118 [screenplays-online.de]
Read it and tell me this wouldn't have been better!
Parent
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And that's what today's MMO makers fail to see: You have to get the leaders. The followers will follow to wherever they go. Yes, the followers will stick around longer and they are the ones you want to come because they will stay long after the leaders went off to jump on the next big thing.
But they won't come unless you have the leaders to take them there. Yes, they are choosy. They have a vast amount of MMOs to choose from because they are usually "insiders". They read the relevant pages, they follow the
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I think you're right on both of those points.
I play LOTRO quite a bit, along with DungeonRunners. I eventually quit WoW after many years because the quests started to bore me, and the 'suspension of disbelief' got too difficult to sustain. I also really detested the anime armor. Just plain stupid looking.
LOTRO has, for me at least, good suspension of disbelief. It works for me, for now.
DungeonRunners is silly and funny, though it has enough only content for roughly 1 month of play. Max.
I tried to like SWG,
After the SOE buyout of the game (Score:3, Insightful)
Really?
Do I need say more?
Whatever SOE touches turns to.... (Score:4, Insightful)
People may not remember, but it wasn't Sony who first designed EverQuest, it was 989 Studios. Sony is the company that BROKE the game, and as time went on, it became more and more broken due to basic mistakes that Sony made.
So, whatever SOE touches tends to turn to crap. Sony as a company may have some good products, but SOE has a proven track record of taking a good product and ruining it with stupid decisions on the design end of things.
Re:Whatever SOE touches turns to.... (Score:5, Informative)
989 Studios went through a lot of names, but they were almost always an internal studio of Sony. The project that became Everquest was started by Sony Interactive Studios America, which became 989 Studios when two divisions merged to form SOE. 989's PC development arm was spun out as Verant Entertainment three months before Everquest shipped, and they were back into SOE within a year. So yes, Sony did first design Everquest.
Parent
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
As usual, Penny Arcade is years ahead of the curve on figuring these things out:
http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/8/25/ [penny-arcade.com]
989 studios (Score:2)
Anyone remember Jetmoto 2?
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From the article (Score:4, Insightful)
"In my opinion, this is way too early to give up on any MMORPG title since these kinds of games usually take a bit to get going, WoW didn't start off as the juggernaut it is today either."
Sure WoW has been building for a long time, but its launch was so strong that their biggest issue was underestimating how quickly they'd have to expand their server base. There were tremendous complaints about the lag early on as servers were absolutely swamped.
If you don't have a strong opening, it's going to take something remarkable to build the base required to justify the expense of a major MMO. From what I've seen major commercial MMOs that have weak releases rarely reverse that condition. Most simply limp along. A weak release can be the kiss of death for several reasons, including low player density driving off the few players you do have, and lack of a sufficient mass of customers to generate positive buzz and drive long term growth.
Basically, you don't throw good money after bad.
"After the SOE buyout of the game the LESIG team was reduced to playing minor characters before eventually being phased out and replaced with a Live Event Team (LET) comprised purely of volunteers."
When your game isn't bringing in enough money to justify a paid team of in-game actors, of course there are going to be cuts. This is a business. How much sooner would doors have had to close if the budget had not been scaled back? Of course this costs customers, but it very much seems that there were already not enough customers to justify this level of cost. It's no secret that most MMOs already have incredibly lead customer service departments. This is, I epxect, basically like employing a second CS department.
"You could never be an equal to a storyline character."
Welcome to MMOs.
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I was about to post that, but you beat me by some hours.
WoW had an insanely STRONG opening. Stronger than even they expected. They scrambled to slap together new server clusters in record time and hired GMs left and right because they met their planned/hoped ANNUAL player count in less than a MONTH. It was, the strongest release I can remember, no other game had such an air of hype, and no other game has ever lived up to its hype as well either. I hate WoW for killing MMOs for me (I prefer games where you h
Re: (Score:2)
I prefer games where you have to be able to play and have to make right decisions to succeed, and now every MMO maker tries to copy the "WoW success concept"
Have you looked into EVE? It's not for everyone, but you sound like you might like it. A trial is available. Join us and fight some Minmatar scum in the name of the Empress :)
Re:From the article (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you looked into EVE? It's not for everyone, but ...
EVE is not for anyone any more. Advancement is done using the progress quest engine, so at this point, if you haven't been paying for the game since nearly the beginning, your ambitions are going to have to be limited to "find someone who's been playing since the beginning and join their coalition as a lowly minion for life."
It was a clever idea, but if a game is going to last, there has to be a way for new players to reach the level of other players in just a few months (i.e. wow's level cap), or a principle of conservation of stats so that advantages are offset by weaknesses giving new players a chance to compete/contribute, or a periodic reset, or some kind of way to keep things interesting so that new players aren't kept forever below long or overly dedicated players like some kind of horrid caste system.
Parent
Re:From the article (Score:5, Insightful)
EVE is not for anyone any more. Advancement is done using the progress quest engine, so at this point, if you haven't been paying for the game since nearly the beginning, your ambitions are going to have to be limited to "find someone who's been playing since the beginning and join their coalition as a lowly minion for life."
Bleh, I've been playing since 2006, and a new player is more than ready to fly besides me and seriously kick ass in less than 3 months or so. Training skills is easy. Getting people to stop whining about everything and just go out there and have fun fighting is *hard*.
Parent
Re:From the article (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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you can be just as effective in a new character after a few months in the same ship as my 2003 character, just I have a lot more choices.
That proves the opposite of the point you are trying to make. New players in World of Warcraft have every bit as many options as longer term players have once they reach the level cap. Of course, people whine about that too ...
Oh and the number one thing people whine about economically (mount money) is about to get nerfed when the 3.2 patch goes live.
The number two thing was the %s profession (latest previously scheduled one was Jewel Crafting) getting nerfed. Instead of nerfing JC, Blizzard has apparent
MxO an example of Rampant Corporate Stupidity... (Score:5, Interesting)
It was all wrong from the start. The whole "game" was thrown together by a bunch of idiots who sacrificed gaming to the stupidity of corporate synergism.
Seriously, during the Warner Bros. era, MxO had a cancellation policy similar to AOL at it's worst(i.e. they employed the same gimmicks and tricks that AOL did to "retain" customers), BECAUSE AOL,WB,MONOLITH PRODUCTIONS AND MXO WERE ONE AND THE SAME BACK THEN.
I've experienced MxO under Warner Brothers *and* under Sony Online Entertainment, and, hands down, Warner Brothers was the worst MMOG,MMORPG company that ever existed.
I say this because of that stupid "SOE destroyed MxO" meme that plagues discussions regarding the game. Hardly. The Matrix Online lasted 88 days before Time Warner-AOL threw in the towel, and never had over 40,000 paying customers at the height of it's power and influence. Sony kept it going for nearly four years in spite of it being an unpopular game.
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I don't know who owned it when I played the game, but I gave up after only about two days of total boredom and decided to cancel my subscription. Only, at that point I discovered I had to CALL THEM UP and ask them to cancel it. And then had to answer a bunch of stupid "why are you cancelling?" questions.
That kind of hassle, instead of just clicking a button online to cancel, is a sure way to make sure I'll never play another game from your company again for the rest of my life.
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That kind of hassle, instead of just clicking a button online to cancel, is a sure way to make sure I'll never play another game from your company again for the rest of my life.
From that statement, I know you played MxO during the classic period of Time Warner-AOL(March-May 2005). If you think AOL(and AIM) was/is God's gift to the internet, The Matrix Online is/was the game for you.
All of this nonsense was brought to you by Jace Hall (AKA Jason Hall) here's his IMDB page:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0995 [imdb.com]
Maybe it's not all the game's fault... (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe the low popularity had something to do with the sinking ship it was attached to. The Matrix Online came out one year after the sequels. There were a lot of people who lost faith in the franchise by that point. Many fans felt let down and many non-fans were very aware of how poorly the movies were received. And it sure didn't help that many of those who did like the sequels had the condescending attitude that those who didn't like the sequels just didn't "get" it. Like it was that hard to pick up the philosophical themes. By the time the MMO launched, a lot of their potential customers who were fans of the Matrix were turned off by the idea of more Matrix material and the Matrix series' reputation was damaged enough that non-fans weren't that tempted to give it a try. I doubt even an above-average MMO could survive in those conditions.
Why MxO went wrong. (Score:2)
After those no one but the really hard core fanboys were interested in it. If the films had been good there would of been interested and had a larger intitial population some of those staying to see the game improve. With the lack of a large population no matter how much money sony pumped into the game, after the initial people pulled out and ran, was going to save it.
So... (Score:2)
The Anarchy Online syndrome (Score:2)
Soe morons again. as always (Score:2)
these fucktards didnt only fuck up millions of people's gaming experience regarding one major fantasy world, but TWO.
one would think that after the SHIT they made in the name of 'Star wars galaxies' out of the mega star wars saga, no SANE individual would sell ANY intellectual property's rights to make a game to those humongous losers. but lo ! matrix universe is fucked up forever too now. unbelievable. really unbelievable.
get this into your heads rights holders : SOE FUCKS UP YOUR FANTASY UNIVERSES. DONT G
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Warhammer Online also had the misfortune of being run by GOA here in Europe, which is a death-sentence to any MMO.
Too bad, the game had (and still has) huge potential, but I'm guessing that it's now on Mythic's back-burner and they just want to keep it running while they squeeze out a few more subscription dollars.
(played since open beta, still play occasionally, but not at all happy with where the game is)