It always pains me to see an MMO fail before it is even launched. As is the case with Mechscape, Jagex’s upcoming Science Fiction MMO, a spiritual successor to Runescape, as CEO Mark Gerhard confirmed to Eurogamer today that the title is indeed canned.
In an interview with Mechscapeworld.com, Mark Gerhard had this to say:
“Sadly the game was not as complete as we wanted and we spent the first few months trying to “fix” the game where we could. About a month or so ago we took the decision to stop trying to “fix it” as we still wouldn’t have the game we wanted and the game certainly did not meet all the objectives and specifications established in the original game design document and therefore it would be better to go back to the founding principles and build the game we always wanted –Andrew [Gower] is now overseeing the project and working very closely with the team to build Stellar Dawn, not all was lost as we naturally have developed the game engine substantially over the last few years and the new designs benefits massively from this as well as a ton of experience within the team as to what works and what doesn’t. So whilst the content and a lot of the game play will change from what was previously built almost everything else will go straight back into Stellar Dawn.” – Mark Gerhard
With the death of one comes the rise of another. Innovations brought about by the production of Mechscape have gone towards the production of Stellar Dawn, a different yet somehow similar MMO to the little guy who never had a chance.
Hopefully Jagex has learned the same truth that Richard Garriot learned with Tabula Rasa: Just because you are an established name, does not guarantee all of your products will succeed.
On that note, it is good to see Jagex catching up to the rest of the mmo world in terms of features. The company just launched a name changing service, and is currently beta testing a feature to see a log of your character’s activity, including amount of time played (see WoW Armory)
MMO Fallout 
It’s sad to see that Jagex have spent so much money on Mechscape, only to see it flushed down the drain.
Hopefully Stellar Dawn is much better! This Stellar Dawn Help Site is pretty decent too, if you’re interested.
Keep these articles coming, I’m excited for Stellar Dawn!
It always stinks to see a title go to waste before it even launches, but in this case it looks like a lot of stuff from Mechscape will find its way into Stellar Dawn.
Jagex took a big step in making this move, I must say. They could have gone the route of certain other MMOs, and release a poorly built title and drastically change it over the course of the following year, but they chose to forgo the cash invested.
Anyway, it is good to see that it will be releasing next year.