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Ultima Forever Shutting Down August 29th

With Mythic Entertainment dead and buried, the last remnants of the company are beginning to fall. Ultima Forever is the latest domino to fall, with Electronic Arts announcing that the servers will come down on August 29th.

While the past year has certainly been quite the adventure – in Britannia and beyond! – that adventure is now drawing to a close, as the time has come for us to say goodbye. As of Aug 29th 2014 (11:00 AM EDT), Ultima Forever will be shutting down its online services, and will no longer be available to play.

Ultima Forever launched in 2013, where the initial excitement over another Ultima game quickly made way for disappointment. What might have been a promising title was bogged down thanks to a greedy and overbearing cash shop. In honor of the last month, players will receive boosts to rewards and have armor degradation disabled.

(Source: Ultima Forever)

CCP Shutting Down DUST 514 Oceania Servers

CCP has announced that the Oceania servers for DUST 514 will be shut down following regularly scheduled maintenance on Monday, July 28th. In a post on the forums, CCP Frame stated that a low population on the server led to players from other regions using it to set up rigged battles against one another.

Following the shutdown, players on the Oceania servers will be redirected toward either the Asia or North American servers, depending on their location and ISP.

(Source: DUST 514)

Age Of Empires Online Shuts Down Today

Age of Empires Online takes its last breaths today. The pseudo-MMO adaptation of Microsoft’s popular series never fully caught on thanks to its limited content and rather expensive cost of purchases, as well as the cheaper, more readily available alternative titles in the series. We learned last year in January that content development had ceased, and finally in October that the servers would come down in July due to the closure of Games for Windows Live services.

With full Age of Empires titles on sale for cheap, players found little reason to throw down $20 to unlock a single civilization. Following an unsuccessful Kickstarter campaign for an RTS called Wildman, Gas Powered Games laid off a number of staff and sold off to Wargaming.net.

Ridge Racer Driftopia Cancelled Mid-Beta

Bandai Namco has announced that Ridge Racer Driftopia will shut down its servers on August 15th. The free to play racing game launched September 9th on the Steam Early Access with the hopes of launching on the Playstation 3 down the line. Players are able to purchase vehicles, experience, and other items via the in-game cash shop, and the game is still available on Steam for the time being.

“The leading developer and publisher wanted to take this opportunity to thank all its players for their permanent support and dedication! All the feedbacks will be taken into account for the upcoming projects.”

Bugbear Entertainment’s next car game, appropriately titled Next Car Game, is also on Steam Early Access albeit at a price of $30 for admission.

(Source: Gamespot)

Mythic Entertainment Closes Its Doors

Electronic Arts has announced that Dark Age of Camelot developer Mythic Entertainment has been closed down. Mythic Entertainment are the creators behind Dark Age of Camelot and were acquired by EA Games back in 2006. Mythic Entertainment’s luck ran out when Warhammer Online launched to overwhelmingly negative reception. While Warhammer Online would not shut down until 2013, Mythic made an attempt at a MOBA game based on the Warhammer fantasy lore. The Warhammer MOBA was cancelled mid-beta due to similarly poor reception.

Mythic also released Ultima Forever and Dungeon Keeper, mobile free to play titles based off of classic properties. Ultima Forever has fallen off of the rankings and Dungeon Keeper is ranked 260 in strategy games on the iPhone. Development of Dungeon Keeper will transition to a new team.

“We are closing the EA Mythic location in Fairfax, Virginia, as we concentrate mobile development in our other studio locations. We are working with all impacted employees to provide assistance in finding new opportunities, either within EA or with other companies via an upcoming job fair.”

Broadsword Online has been in charge of Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot for the past few months already, and service will be uninterrupted.

(Source: Gamasutra)

World of Darkness Cancelled

CCP has officially announced that World of Darkness has been cancelled. Some of you may remember that, last month, CCP’s annual financial report stated that the company had written off a piece of software as no longer having any value. It looks like that property was World of Darkness. In his note accompanying the announcement, Hilmar Veigar Pétursson states that the team was unable to deliver the experience that they wanted, and as a result development has ceased and some 56 employees have been laid off.

The decision to end the World of Darkness MMO project is one of the hardest I’ve ever had to make. I have always loved and valued the idea of a sandbox experience set in that universe, and over the years I’ve watched the team passionately strive to make that possible. To our current and former employees and fans of World of Darkness, I am truly sorry that we could not deliver the experience that we aspired to make. We dreamed of a game that would transport you completely into the sweeping fantasy of World of Darkness, but had to admit that our efforts were falling regretfully short. One day I hope we will make it up to you.

To those of you keeping a magnifying glass on World of Darkness, this news should not come as a shock. Between multiple layoffs and comments that World of Darkness was very low priority for CCP, with nothing to show for so long, it was only a matter of time before CCP cut their losses and moved on.

(Source: CCP)

End of Nations Is Dead: Stripped From Trion's Website

If you’ve been following the development of End of Nations, the announcement that development on the title has stopped will be of no surprise. It is almost hard to believe that at one point, nearly a year and a half ago, End of Nations almost reached open beta status. Following a round of layoffs at Petroglyph Entertainment, however, Trion announced that development of the title would be moving in-house and that further beta tests would be on hold “until further notice.” Trion later confirmed that the game would be revamped from an MMO real time strategy game into a MOBA.

A company changing focus that late in development is never a good sign, and End of Nations’ death was essentially guaranteed when “open beta soon” became “on hold until further notice,” and then “join our alpha test” a couple of months later. It looks likely that this may be the last time we hear about End of Nations, as Trion has pulled down the official website and the Trion’s own website makes no mention of the game any more. Trion’s statement to the press confirmed that the game has indeed been halted.

As we informed EON’s community last fall, internal development on End of Nations was put on hold in late 2013 while we evaluated potential paths forward for the title. We’re currently focusing the company’s energy and creativity on Rift, Defiance, Trove, ArcheAge and some new projects that we will be revealing soon.

End of Nations seeing release at this point would be a miracle the likes of which the world has never seen. The impossible kind.

(Source: Polygon)

Another Strong IP Bites The Dust

If we have learned anything here at MMO Fallout over the past five years, it is that a strong property means absolutely nothing when it comes to the success of an MMO, or any video game for that matter. In case you didn’t notice this idea in place with the launch of Warhammer Online or the plan that The Old Republic would sustain itself on subscriptions alone, you can take a look at the latest casualty: Doctor Who.

Doctor Who: Worlds in Time is an MMO-lite launched in March 2012, that will have already shut down by the time you read this. Worlds in Time was a decent puzzle game, but ultimately became repetitive and unsustainable over a prolonged service. The developer, Three Rings, is responsible for a few titles you may be familiar with: Spiral Knights and Puzzle Pirates.

The moral of the story is that not every IP needs an MMO. I’m looking at you, Fifty Shades of Grey Online.

Whatever Happened: The Missing Ink

Here at MMO Fallout, we occasionally like to ask and answer a straightforward question: Whatever happened to that one game we heard about a while back? While looking through the game list, I realized that we haven’t heard from The Missing Ink in nearly a year. Experimental MMOs and indie games built by small studios tend to go for long periods of time with no press coverage and then, out of the blue, we find out that they had already shut down well over a month ago. Sorry Fusionfall!

The Missing Ink is the latest project by RedBedlam, the UK developer responsible for the now defunct MMO Roma Victor. What set The Missing Ink apart from the rest was its unique art style, with characters all crafted out of two dimensional drawings on paper. It didn’t break any new ground, but the presentation was charming enough to warrant some off-again on-again gaming. Part of the fun was simply logging in every now and then to see how the early alpha client was progressing.

As you may have figured, The Missing Ink has shut down without any kind of mention by the game media. The servers went down at the end of January alongside an announcement that the game will receive a full overhaul and release later this year.

“As a result of the feedback from this community and our internal test team, we’re started work on a brand new game design for The Missing Ink. We’ll obviously be keeping our lovable 2D characters whilst expanding the explorable 3D worlds and much, much more.”

The good news is that The Missing Ink will hopefully find its way back into our hearts later this year. The bad news is that it will have to share that space with Sonic drive-ins that will be opened up in my neighborhood soon. Until then, follow The Missing Ink on Twitter.

Less Than Massive: Irrational Games Closure

Ken Levine announced today that he plans to shut down the Irrational Games studio following the release of Bioshock Infinite’s next DLC, Burial at Sea Part 2. Levine and a select group of other developers from the studio will form anew under Take-Two Interactive in order to work on smaller games that provide a closer relationship with the customer.

The Bioshock franchise will remain with Take-Two Interactive.

(Source: Gamasutra)

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