Tag: The Matrix Online

The Matrix Online Had Less Than 500 Players


The-Matrix-Online

It’s been four years since The Matrix Online was shut down, it is time to move on Omali! That’s what you think. Gamescom is up and running, and that means commentary by Sony Online Entertainment on past games. Linda “Brasse” Carlson, Director of Global Community Relations at Sony Online Entertainment commented on the old and mostly forgotten MMO at Gamescom, noting that the game had fewer than five hundred players at the time it was shut down. The cost to maintain the game, Colson says, became too great and the servers had to be shut down regardless of the “close and tight knit” community that still played.

Now tell us how many players Star Wars Galaxies had when it shut down.

(Source: Polygon)

MMOs: Bring Them Back, Or Let Them Lie


I love reading about MMOs being resurrected, almost as much as I hate reading about MMOs being resurrected. On one hand, it’s great to see that a game I once thought dead has attracted the attention of another enterprising company. But then I sit back and ask myself, “do I really want someone else touching my game? Tainting my memories?”

So I will be publishing several lists of dead MMOs, and whether I feel they should be brought back or if they have given us all that they can.

The Matrix Online

As much as many of us would love to see The Matrix Online make a return, the franchise hit its heyday a long time ago and it is not coming back. Bringing back The Matrix Online would be a financial investment not only in infrastructure but requiring new people to learn how to code and maintain the system, an investment that only a person of questionable sanity would be willing to forego.

There isn’t enough interest in the Matrix anymore to justify bringing this ancient one back, so sorry but:

Verdict: Let It Lie.

Bringing Tabula Rasa back would require a bit of a lore-shift for the MMO. After all, since NCSoft worked the closure into the game, when the servers shut down on February 28th, 2009, it resulted in the AFS forces detonating a massive bomb that resulted in the mutual destruction of the AFS and Bane forces. So that leaves us with humanity: dead, and Bane: dead.

Of course, re-writing history is the easy part. But were someone to purchase the rights and the code, they would find the remnants of what could have been a masterpiece, and was gearing up for just that when NCSoft shuttered the title. Somewhat like Star Wars Galaxies, in the months after NCSoft announced the shut down, Destination Games worked tirelessly to introduce many of the features players had been asking for and probably quitting over since the game launched.

Buying Tabula Rasa would be far easier and likely much less expensive than working on an original sci-fi MMO of the same variety.

Verdict: Pitchblack Games Should Buy Tabula Rasa

Absolutely not. Take this from someone who supported Earth Eternal through every company and iteration the game has gone through so far. I personally found Earth Eternal to be a charming game, but commercial success this game is not. Consider the fact that even when Earth Eternal was 100% free to play, that no one was playing should be an indication that any money spent into reviving this title for a third run would be wasting money that could have gone to a more productive service.

Like a bonfire.

Verdict: Its Zombified Corpse Has Liquified. Stop.

Sure, why not. Lego Universe was a great game and there are many reasons it should be brought back, not the least of which being that LEGO continued the great NetDevil tradition of poorly advertising their game and then wondering why it didn’t gather the attraction they so desired. If LEGO Universe is to be brought back, however, some changes should come with it.

For starters, LEGO could do well with a similar subscription plan to Wizard 101: allowing families to bundle their subscriptions for a discount. Additionally, the game would need a more open trial system than it had pre-shutdown, and LEGO would have to do some real advertising.

LEGO Universe has potential, and not the kind that you use to describe a broken system. The game is fine, more people just needed to know about it.

Verdict: Resurrect it.

I have no idea how much it would cost to translate Everquest Online Adventures to a download-format and bring it back on the Playstation Network, but I’m guessing it would be expensive. When EQOA shut down, it wasn’t because the game was busted or Sony was going under, but simply because the game had become old.

There were no new players coming into Everquest Online Adventures, and for good reason: The Playstation 2 is a dead console and the Playstation 3 is not backwards compatible (sans 1st generation). Additionally, finding new copies of Everquest Online Adventures was near impossible, or otherwise extremely expensive. Unlike other MMOs, EQOA never had the opportunity to transition to a download format, and once the game was off store shelves, its death sentence was written.

Unfortunately, translating the game to be playable on new Playstation 3’s may be too expensive or even impossible on the very antiquated engine.

Verdict: Resurrect If You Can, Though You Probably Can’t.

Pottermore, Tribes, and Lessons From The Matrix Online…


The Matrix Online was a great concept, not only because it took the living world presented in the film and transformed it onto a virtual medium that looked and felt a bit like City of Heroes, but because it presented a way to continue the series rather than simply flesh out a never-ending point in the middle of the movies. Whenever I talk of The Matrix Online, I’m obligated to point out that one of the shortcomings of the game was that it was released after the final two movies, when reception of the franchise was rather low.

I was in the process of talking about the long-forgotten Harry Potter MMO when I heard about Pottermore, an upcoming “service” that may or may not be the game we heard talk about dating as far back as the release of Goblet of Fire (and probably even further back). My original topic, which I am replanting here, was whether or not a Harry Potter MMO could release in time to capture the interest in the franchise. Then it struck me, the Harry Potter IP is massive enough that such a question is irrelevant. Unless the game is terrible, there is no reason to assume that reception would be lackluster because of disinterest in the IP. So this topic is no longer about Harry Potter.

Instead, let’s talk about some of the other games that were announced over the past year that would warrant more concern. First in line, I want to talk The Mummy Online, announced one year ago, because I know I’m not the only one who was not only surprised that the franchise warranted enough interest to create a game, but that the series was still running (The Scorpion King 3 releases this December). There is also the issue of translating the franchise into a game, done once before with rather poor results. That being said, The Mummy Online still has a good chance of finding its niche, given a low barrier of entry (free to play game).

To further this topic, I’d like to travel back in time to a game that hasn’t seen light since 2004: Tribes. With Tribes, I only need to say one word to get the fans rallied to plaster this page with graffiti: Vengeance. If the Tribes MMO launches this year, as hoped, the series will have been inactive for seven years. That’s long enough for most of the remaining community to have lost interest in any reboot of the franchise, although time will tell if that is indeed the case.

So we’ll see if some of these old-name IP’s are strong enough to stand the test of time.

A Live Community Is A Happy Community


Han Solo works Black Fridays in the electronics section of Best Buy.

Massively has an excellent interview with Lydia Pope, community manager at Sony Online Entertainment overlooking Star Wars Galaxies. Despite all of the rage one might find toward the aging Star Wars MMO, those who do play the game are just as involved as those who played in years past. So much so, in fact, that Lydia feels strongly enough to say that Star Wars Galaxies has one of the most active communities on Sony Online Entertainment’s list of MMOs. With the GM-run events, players are still coming out in droves to run their own events.

But why does Star Wars Galaxies have such an active community? Lydia believes it is partially due to the game’s built-in social aspects. Player owned houses, hubs, emotes, the Galactic Senate, etc, allow a level of interactivity between players and between GM’s that other games just don’t offer. In fact, Lydia explains that community leaders are not an appropriate answer to better feedback.

“[In] our other games, where we have community leaders, we don’t get that in-depth with the feedback.”

An active community is a happy community, and can really boost morale to a game. Back in the times of Ultima Online, players may remember Richard Garriot running around as Lord British (alongside Lord Blackthorn), and then years later as General British during Tabula Rasa’s short reign. Say what you want about the guy, but it is nice to be able to post on the Alganon forums and get a response from CEO Derek Smart and other devs. Some of you who played The Matrix Online will remember the events that took place in that game as well.

Of course, if you hadn’t noticed from my listing of Tabula Rasa and The Matrix Online, an active community does not a healthy game make alone. It does, however, increase the odds of someone sticking around who may have become bored and quit early on.

The Matrix Online: What Happened


I’ve been sitting on the “What Happened” articles for Shadowbane and The Matrix Online for some time now, although I can’t explain why I’ve been waiting to put them out. With the upcoming shutdown of Dungeon Runners and Metaplace, I might as well get caught up on my shutdowns.

The Matrix Online launched back in March 2005, and truly had a lot going for it. An ever changing world, MxO had one of the best story systems in the MMO industry: One that changed by the week. Story progression took the part of new missions every few weeks, while live events were the main staple of immersion; with developers taking the part of the game’s NPCs and acting out live events, including the assassination of Morpheus. Players were brought into the storyline through hints of the following events that would appear over the city, such as certain billboards, or suspicious agents appearing.

Continue reading “The Matrix Online: What Happened”