Shut down – Page 6 – MMO Fallout

Ubisoft Shutting Down Mighty Quest and Ghost Recon Phantoms

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Ubisoft has announced that it will sunset two of its free to play titles in the coming months. The Mighty Quest For Epic Loot will shut down on October 25th while free to play shooter Ghost Recon Phantoms will go offline on December 1st.

GR Phantoms has been a tremendous undertaking and we really relished the opportunity to bring to you a different take on the GR franchise. We are proud of what we have achieved but of course, a game like this would be nothing without its community. We’d like to sincerely thank you for your support, enthusiasm, patience and above all, your loyalty. For the hours played, the fun in your company, the never ending deaths at Balaklava Sub-Pen, the fights to control Tomsk-9, the sounds of shotguns and the fear of the P90 SD WAR, we are grateful.

If you look at Ghost Recon Phantoms on Steam Charts, you see a game that is still pretty well populated despite its age, albeit one that is progressively slipping in traffic with each month. As I write this, close to three thousand people are playing on a Sunday afternoon. As it stands, the current base is not spending enough to keep the game viable as low revenue was cited as one of the primary reasons for shutting the service down. As it stands, however, GRP’s run of four years is rather standard for a shooter’s life expectancy.

The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot, meanwhile, has seen a severe drop in Steam traffic, down to just a few hundred over the past six months. As a mostly single player game with a cash shop, Mighty Quest’s appeal was always bound to have some issues with consumers despite the overall game being rather fun.

Ghost Recon fans can look forward to the release of Ghost Recon Wildlands on PC, PS4, and Xbox One in 2017.

(Source: Steam)

Planetside Shutting Down July 1st

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April and May were really exciting months for us with the release of the new Construction System, base revamp of Indar, and new population caps to improve battle flow. It’s been exciting to watch all of you experiment with base design and shift battles in new directions. A big thanks to all of you who have jumped in to try it out and given us feedback.

While we hope you are as excited as we are about the recent changes, we do have to make a more solemn announcement. On July 1st, at 4:00 PM PT, we will be closing the PlanetSide 1 server. PlanetSide 1 has a very important history with Daybreak Games and a special place in the hearts of those who work on its successor. While we have run the game for free since 2014, due to evolving business needs and technical requirements it has become necessary to conclude this service.

We hope you will take this opportunity to enjoy the remaining time available with each other and please help us give PlanetSide 1 the sendoff it deserves.

Planetside was supported likely only by the grace of John Smedley and nostalgia, and since Smedley is no longer present and Daybreak has been axing projects left and right in an effort to reduce spending, it was only a matter of time before this ancient shooter got the axe.

(Source: Planetside 2)

Funcom Shutting Down Lego Minifigures Online

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You know that there is trouble when a developer actively points out the best time to get out of their contract. We learned earlier this year that Funcom’s license with Lego Minifigures Online ends in October 2016, so there shouldn’t be a surplus of surprise that the title is being sunset at the end of September.

It is with a heavy heart that we announce that LEGO Minifigures Online will be closing on September 30th, 2016. We know that many of you are still enjoying your adventures in the game, and this has been a difficult decision for us to make but unfortunately, the time has come to retire LEGO Minifigures Online.

Lego Minifigures originally launched as a free to play game in 2014. When the title failed to meet expectations, Funcom transformed the game into a buy to play model, effectively locking out anyone who had previously played but not purchased anything. The poor performance of the model was attributed to overestimation of buying power, according to Funcom’s quarterly report from May 2015.

(Source: Funcom)

Darkfall Goes Offline

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Darkfall has gone offline, and Aventurine doesn’t know when, or if, it will be returning. Unholy Wars, the official version, went offline with a post on the official forums explaining to players that economic conditions in Greece have made the game unsustainable. While they hope that the disruption is only temporary, for now it should be considered indefinite.

We have been involved with Darkfall for over 13 years now and it is our hope that we will be able to continue well into the future with your support. Unfortunately, and against our best efforts, the conditions in Greece have caught up with us and do not allow us to continue operating the game as we have been so far. We hope that the disruption of Darkfall Unholy Wars service is temporary and that we will be back soon in a more sustainable format. We apologize for the inconvenience to all that are affected.

Rumors of Aventurine being in a bad situation have been rampant ever since the developer decided to license the original Darkfall out to two separate developers at the same time.

(Source: Darkfall)

Nosgoth Shutting Down Next Month

Nosgoth will shut down its servers at the end of May, according to a post on the official website. Anyone who made a purchase after March 1st will be automatically refunded as soon as possible, likely within the next two weeks.

It is with a heavy heart and an immense sense of sadness that we must announce the end of Nosgoth’s development. Servers will continue to run until 31st May 2016, during which time you will be able to play the game as normal. After that date, Nosgoth will be taken offline for the last time.

Nosgoth is a team-based shooter based on the Legacy of Kain series, launched on Steam in 2015. Steam Charts shows an average of one thousand concurrent players over the past few months. The announcement doesn’t mention much about the future of the Legacy of Kain series, other than to say that it independent of Nosgoth’s performance.

(Source: Nosgoth)

Indie MMO Revival Ends Development

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Indie sandbox MMO Revival has announced that development has ceased due to lack of funds.

Starting in the very new future, you will find that homes are no longer for sale through the Dunwich and Innsmouth section of our website and future patches to the client are, at least as of now, highly unlikely. I will never give up on Revival, and I know I’m not alone, but we just don’t have the resources at our disposal that we need, and the sacrifices necessary to acquire them don’t make much sense given our goal, here.

When we first set out to build Revival, we had access to expertise and resources that aren’t available today. Making up for their loss, be it as simple as lacking sufficient animators or as complicated as losing access to certain networking expertise, has been a costly affair, far more costly than we can honestly afford to bear. So, what does that mean? Is Revival completely dead?

Not particularly, no, just delayed indefinitely. Founders will still have access to their renovation kits, their properties, etc, with no intention of shutting those down for the foreseeable future. In addition, it looks like development will still continue on Revival in some fashion, even if it is unpaid and slow. Founders will also receive Steam keys for two other games, Nexuiz and Moving Hazards.

(Source: Revival)

Only A Couple of Months Left Before Wildstar Sunsets, According To Insider

The wounds haven’t even begun healing from the announcement earlier today that Carbine Studios would be cutting as much as 40% of its work force, and according to insider reports the layoffs are not complete. In fact, if this source is to be believed, NCSoft has already made the decision to pull the plug. According to an article on Polygon, employees were notified following today’s layoffs that more are to be expected in the run up to the game’s closure later this year.

NCSoft later responded to the article, confirming not only the layoffs but that the plans to launch Wildstar in China have been scrapped. Despite this, the publisher is still standing by its claim that it remains committed to continued operations in North America and Europe.

Earlier this morning, Carbine Studios completed a reorganization of its operating structure. Moving forward, the studio will focus on operating and updatingWildStar as a live game in the US and Europe. As part of this change, the studio has canceled its plans to bring WildStar to China.

It’s interesting to note that it was just a few days ago in 2008 that producer Starr Long posted a statement to assure players that NCSoft was still committed to Tabula Rasa before announcing it shuttering later that year. See if you can find the similarities between Long’s statements regarding layoffs in 2008:

“Once all is said and done, we will still have a substantial live team for industry standards… NCsoft has committed a lot of money and resources into continuing post-launch development of Tabula Rasa.”

And NCSoft’s statement to Polygon today.

“As for WildStar, we remain committed to the game. Over the next few weeks and months we will deliver a significant update to the game, kick off a variety of community events, and continue our work on new content that we will talk more about in the near future.”

In my previous coverage of Wildstar, I noted that the game’s future rests heavily on a successful Chinese launch. With those dreams shattered, perhaps the Wildstar community should begin shopping around for a new home.

At this point in the timeline, it looks like the upcoming China launch may be Wildstars best, and only, bet at salvation. Assuming NCSoft is willing to shoulder the title to that milestone, we’ll likely be hearing in 2017 about whether or not this title goes on the chopping block.

(Source: Polygon)

City of Steam Is Shutting Down This Month

City of Steam developer Mechanist Games has announced that services for the MMO will shut down later this month. The game launched in 2013 and was named MMO Fallout’s ‘Most Disappointing MMO of the Year,” due to a partnership with R2 Games that saw many of the game’s mechanics simplified or outright removed and the overall meta-game transformed into a mobile grinder with energy and an overwhelming cash shop.

The announcement focuses on the declining support of UNITY in browsers.

But we’re sorry to say that this chapter of The New Epoch is coming to an end. A number of factors went into this decision, the decline of Unity support in the browser is one of them – Google Chrome no longer supports NPAPI plugins like the Unity Webplayer, and Microsoft’s next browser, Edge, won’t either.

While City of Steam was relaunched as Arkadia, the changes made to the game between closed and open beta unfortunately kept many players from coming back. The game has been in maintenance mode since November 2014 and no one has bothered to moderate the forums since at least August of last year, leaving nearly dozens of pages of spam.

(Source: City of Steam)

Soldier Front 2: Highly Reviewed, On Steam, Also Defunct

Soldier Front 2 is one of many free to play first person shooters on Steam and, if you’re anything like me, you may have stumbled upon it while browsing your recommended queue during the holiday sale. It may have even caught your eye, being a free to play shooter with a “very positive” community rating, and you may have downloaded it only to find that the game doesn’t launch. Instead, you get an error mentioning issues connecting to the server.

You see, Soldier Front 2 shut down months ago, yet the game is still available to download from Steam. The store page for SF2 no longer lists extra DLC packs, however they are still available for purchase for anyone unlucky enough to stumble upon and ignorant enough to buy without attempting to launch the game first. And should anyone get that far down the rabbit hole, the booster-nature of the DLC packs means that they are all ineligible for a refund.

(Source: Steam)

Dragon’s Prophet Shutters In America

Dragon’s Prophet is no longer available for North American players, as Daybreak Game Company (formerly Sony Online Entertainment) has parted ways with developer Runewaker Entertainment. The shutdown was first announced last month with the notice that the game would continue operating as is in Europe and Asia as those regions are handled by different publishers. Players initially suspected that the game was set to shut down when it did not make its way into the All Access pass.

You can try to find the announcement on Daybreak’s website, but it looks like they took no time in obliterating the Dragon’s Prophet website, which is no longer present.

(Source: Dragon’s Prophet)

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