f13.net

SURPRISE! (http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/12/13/news_6114999.html) ... Not.

If it's done by Spring I'll be surprised. Normally I wouldn't even post news like this on such a mediocre game (if it's even mediocre).  But it's fun seeing ridiculous amounts of money thrown at shitty games only to watch them crash and burn like every intelligent gamer out there said they would.

Fixed.

Fun fact: Coding's only functional since a week on the QA server.

Oops, I think I broke the NDA, but right now I stopped caring. They're throwing a new (personally favorite) subsystem at us, and don't give us the means of testing it, like skill boosters and shit like that. It's basically a more versatile version of COH, but how the beta's run made me lose the faith meanwhile.

And every fucking patch's like a gigabyte, thanks to the great resource packaging and managing. Each time a minor thing was changed, the whole container file it was in needs to be downloaded. No delta containers or something. SWG was better at it.

I stopped testing Matrix Online.  At least for now.  

It's still in beta, so I won't surprise anyone when I say it needs a lot of work.  But don't post that on the beta boards.  From my experience, it's full of fanboys who flame even valid criticism.  They need more mods or more active mods to make the boards a place for constructive feedback.

Then again, that was a couple of months ago and it might have changed since I last checked.

/e shrugs.

That will give me another three or four months for my apathy towards this game to grow into a infinitely compressed black hole that could very well destroy the universe and everything in it.

If they're pushing it back to finish stuff, that's good. If they're pushing it back so they can spin their heels, that's bad. Why is my money on the latter?

This isn't about WoW, please lock. kthx.

Of course the game will come out and suck ass possibly AO-style.

Duh.

Even though they have delayed it for the extra three months that people keep saying that MMOGs needed when launched, I predict that at launch most people will still say that the game needed another three months in beta.

Well, the funny part was that they announced they were pushing it back to Spring only a week or two after they had announced a ship date of January 18th or something.  It's like someone at WB looked at their latest version and said, "You're going to release this crap?  Like hell you are!"  Any way you slice it, it doesn't look like the left hand knows what the right hand is doing.  Good that they caught it and reconsidered, but bad that they ever made the wrong announcement in the first place.

Bruce

Don't get me wrong, I like The Matrix Online and all, but were it to be released this Winter right after World of Warcraft and Everquest 2's release, it would be be fresh meat thrown right into the shredder.   What a waste, I wanted to make a steak out of that.   Provided TMO doesn't get canceled outright, I think it'll benefit from the additional three months leeway that delaying until a Spring release gives  them.

How can you make steak with shredded meat?

Duct tape!

So.. how many times do you get accosted with some sort of Spoon reference?

Precisely, I'm saying that it's good to delay it in order to prevent meat->shredder interaction.

Every time we open up the character advancement screen.

Salisbury.

(Although my original comment was to avoid having the meat of MTO hit the shredder of EQ2/WoW's recent release in order to create steak instead of hamburger, I'll add:)

Apply enough Worcestershire sauce and I'll challenge you to tell the difference.

(Now if only we had a MMORPG equivilent of Worcestershire sauce.   Hype?  Nah, hype is more like the magazine advertisement that makes the steak look like it weighs 20 lbs but then you get the actual steak and it's 4 oz of Grade D.)

Its funny, I beta tested MXO for about 2 monthes, ran into some massive login problems after a big patch, and literally forgot it existed for about 3 monthes.  Thats the game in a nutshell - too bad it didn't come out before WoW and EQ2 so we could watch it get crushed by the big boys.

Retroactive crushing is the new rage!

Redated for March 22nd.

Same week as:
The PSP
Dragonshard
Silent Hunter III
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
and
Wario Ware: Twisted!

I wasn't aware anyone had the balls to release stuff on a console release date. Haven't they learned anything from Hollywood? Or did they only learn to repeat the mistakes?

From the cluebat: Don't bring a knife to a gunfight.

I understand the NDA was just dropped. Let me think what I would say...

Combat is better then SWG....

So is the combat in pretty much every DikuMUD derivative.  Is that the best you can say?

Alkiera

Regrettably, I think that is his point. That is the nicest thing he can say about it. At least, that is my impression.

There's probably quarter-end financial considerations. I.e. if WB's first quarter ends March 31st, then they want to get in at least a week's worth of sales in to show some sort of revenue for that game.

Ok - nice things to say. If EQ2 and WOW didn't exist - I think this would be a great EQ2 clone with some incredible visuals. Character facial/height/fat customization is a bit lacking. But the amount of clothing available pretty much means you will be wearing a different color of vinyl then the person next to you. And you will be wearing vinyl.

Combat looks nice, and with the hotbar buttons it can be a bit strategic, (Ok - not really). Either you will die or win a fight no problem solo. Superjump is somewhat fun, but I am not sure what "The Matrix" offers that EQ2 or WOW doesn't, other then the world.

It doesnt bring anything new to the table that I could see. But it's a laggy EQ clone, set in the Matrix universe.

Did I mention it's a pretty EQ clone? Someone might want to talk about how revolutionary the skill system is, but I never had enough memory to be more then one thing at a time.

This amazes me.  The old pen and paper Shadow Run had an interesting version of the Matrix - even if they predated the movie.  Anyway, this is pretty disappointing to hear.

What about all the stuff I keep hearing about clues and puzzles scattered all over the game?  The ability to affect huge plot arcs?  All of that stuff that made me say "I gotta get me some of that"?  Complete lies?  Knocked off the schedule?  Or is it even remotely possible (pleasepleaseplease) that the beta testers just haven't gotten that far yet?

Ahh - the billboards and graffiti clues to more stuff you mean. I filed that under necromancy in UO.

Help me out, I didn't play UO.   :|

Yeah I'm with Samwise, I asked some people if any of the stuff that seemed to imply player driven content/story was at all true. 

They all answered:  "dude I dont beta that piece of sh** anymore because it was so lagged/stupid/bugged/didn't work, they should pay me to play that game".

So yeah if anyone is a really big fan and still has this installed any word on how much vaporcontent the devs are spewing out their ass when they say "players will influence and direct the storyline, like not in the you completed the quest everyone else in the world will complete way".

You can use the vaporware scale:

1) As vapor as Charr the Grimm Fate being picked back up and released w/ everything they wanted to do. (kudos to anyone who ever read about this game, god it sounded so good).

2) As vapor as every original feature for Horizons being patched in

3) As vapor as WoW's PvP system...

Necromancy was promised in UO about 5-6 years before it ever came to fruition. It was also promised as a free feature, then ended up being included in an expansion pack lo those many years later.

Hrnm.  Bummer.   :-(  I'd still like to take a look at the game for myself if they ever get the stability and performance issues ironed out.  Which may or may not happen.

And it ruined a perfectly good turn of a phrase.  "When necromancy gets in!" used to be said in the same context as "When Hell freezes over!"  Sort of how the refrain of "Bring back precasting, beeyotch!" was ruined when they brought back precasting.

Beeyotch.