Every once in a while I come across an MMO here at MMO Fallout and think to myself, “oh yea, whatever happened to that game? It never launched, or if it did I certainly haven’t heard anything about it.” Huxley is just that MMO. In fact, the last time we discussed Huxley here at MMO Fallout was over the fact that it did not make its intended release for 2009. So what in god’s name happened?
For the uninformed, Huxley is an Unreal 3 Engine first person shooter announced way back in 200x with the intention of release on PC and Xbox360, the latter of which was indefinitely put on hold. Originally designed to be an MMOFPS with over a hundred players per battle, budget restraints forced Webzen to reduce their capacities down to simple 32 v 32 matches, essentially making the game Unreal Tournament but only on those servers with the RPG mod enabled. On the PvE side, Huxley might have resembled Hellgate Global somewhat, with players grouping up to tackle instanced dungeons filled with monsters.
In June 2009, Huxley had its first closed beta test, followed by another in July. Following, Huxley went into open beta on May 3rd, 2010. On December 30th, 2010, Huxley’s Korean services shut down completely. Following the closure of the Korean service, work on the international version has apparently come to a complete stop, with Webzen not even acknowledging the game’s existence on their website anymore. Curiously however, the page for Huxley still exists, although it hasn’t been updated since the game’s original anticipated launch date of 2007, and if you can find Webzen game cards in your local stores, odds are they still have the Huxley name on them.
So it looks like Huxley is dead in the water. Not such great news for those who participated in the beta and found the game immensely enjoyable, but closure to those of us who may have lost touch with the game’s progress over the past couple of years.
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