The Broken Dreams Project: MMOs broken on the wheel of reality

[UnSub]

Taking the cue from here:

A compendium of canceled or shut-down MMORPGs (including those on life support, or ahem, lol support).

Suggested format:

Company Name:
Game:
Current Status: Cancelled / Shut Down / Raised from the Dead (any others?)
Made It To Launch? Yes / No
Important History & Reason For Shutting Down:

Rules, such as they are:

 - MMO actually needs to have been cancelled / shut down / revived / be on hiatus to count. None of this "UO died the day that Trammel was introduced" because y'know, UO is still around.
 - A bit of thought and research goes a long way. As does grammar and spelling. Opinions are fine, but it's good if these line up with the facts somewhat.
 - Linking to other sources / analyses is a good thing. Especially if it backs up your opinion.
 - Personally I think a screenshot of a dead game helps show what was or could have been (especially as games get older), but let's not go stupid about it. Images can be resized by using the [img height=480 width=640] command.
 - Dates are good for perspective. Doesn't have to be down to the day, but month and year help paint a picture.

Existing lists to kick things off:

Darniaq's Thread on cancelled / closed MMOs, which contains links to other lists
Broken Dreams Project page
MMORPG.com Article: The Four Shortest Lived MMOs, but I'm sure we can do better than that.

Compiled (but truncated) list:
Mythica
True Fantasy Online
Tabula Rasa
Hellgate London
Mythos
Imperator
Gods & Heroes
Seed
Ballerium
Dune Generations
Society
O.V.E.R
Dust of Life
Confrontation Unlimied
Sigma Triad: First Conflict
Future Lands
Eschaton: Chain of Command
Sovereign
Task Force Pacific
Shadowbane
Wish
Ultima Worlds Online: Origins
Ultima X: Odyssey
Auto Assault
Air Warriors
Earth and Beyond
Faces of Mankind
Seed
Shadow of Yserbius
Underlight
The Sims Online
Space Cowboys
Legends of Kesmai
Middle Earth Online
Fury
Asheron's Call 2
Motor City Online

[Trippy]

What's the point of this topic?

[NiX]

To flesh out the Broken Dreams section of the Wiki. I hope.

[UnSub]

To flesh out the Broken Dreams section of the Wiki. I hope.

This.

[UnSub]

Company Name: Majorem
Game: Ballerium
Current Status: Shut Down
Made It To Launch? Yes
Important History & Reason For Shutting Down:

Ballerium was developed by Majorem, an independent group of Israel-based developers who set out to make an MMORTS. I've had a search for an article on the apparently revolutionary tech they apparently developed for it (supposedly a map that generated around its players meaning that players could never run out of world) but it looks like the internet has eaten it. Also, since you can see the full map here I've got to assume such an evolving map tech never came through.

It looks like Ballerium's first planned launch was for 2004. Beta testing was underway from about February 2004 to November 2004 when Majorem announced they were shutting down for lack of funds.

Interplay came to the rescue, then failed to come through with the cash, meaning that Ballerium was revived and dropped in short order. Majorem kept themselves afloat by taking donations from the community (and I'm sure from their side not eating much) through 2005 and 2006.

November 2007 came with the announcement that Sleepy Giant was going to publish the game and in December 2007 it went live. However it never really attracted that large an audience, so in July 2008 the servers came down. Again. But for the last time, it seems. 

Why did it fail? From my beta play time the newbie experience was very limited - walk around, kill stuff to lvl up your units, repeat - because the veteran players had already dominated the map. You could join up with them, but then you were stuck in a waiting game for one of the guilds to try something. There was no real introduction to the game - you got dumped into the world and were expected to just pick it up from there. Travel time was slow enough to get irritating. Maps would reset when a certain proportion of cities / area was controlled by one guild / alliance, but it appeared to me at the time that the winning side preferred not to tip over the balance to that point, preferring to dominate but not win.

It did have some interesting ideas - the world was persistent, so if you didn't log your characters off at the right building you would come back to find your side all dead or scattered to the four winds. Units had a lot of diversity and the team had spent a lot of time trying to come up with a different kind of fantasy lore involving different races and aspects of the moon.

Ultimately though Ballerium was the kind of game you'd ask yourself, "Why am I playing this?" and there would be no good answer.

Some video of Ballerium to see what it was like.

[Trippy]

Why not actually list the games from the Wiki then instead of making people come up with a 3rd(4th/5th/...) list of games again?

[UnSub]

Because this was how things got rolling before with other things that are meant to end up on the wiki?

If it's not appropriate, feel free to den the thread and I'll grab the info out of it for other purposes.

[Trippy]

I don't know anything about the project so do whatever you like. I'm just confused because:

1) There are (at least) two lists but neither one is a superset of the other so it's like there's two separate projects going on that have nothing to do with each other.

2) You are asking people to collaborate on a Wiki page using forum software, which kind of defeats the point of having a Wiki. I can understand not forcing contributors to get Wiki accounts, essentially funnelling all contributions through the forum first, but then like I said I think you should tell people what games you need info for here so people aren't having to constantly flip back and forth.

[schild]

1) There are (at least) two lists but neither one is a superset of the other so it's like there's two separate projects going on that have nothing to do with each other.

Yes. Correct. There are in fact more than two things going on that have nothing to do with each other.

2) You are asking people to collaborate on a Wiki page using forum software, which kind of defeats the point of having a Wiki. I can understand not forcing contributors to get Wiki accounts, essentially funnelling all contributions through the forum first, but then like I said I think you should tell people what games you need info for here so people aren't having to constantly flip back and forth.

Wiki is for archiving. Forum is for discussion. But yes, a list here would be good. Editing top post.

[Lantyssa]

I'll see if I can find my MPBT3025 screenshots and then add it.  If I feel like doing research.  I might be incapacitated tonight.

[NiX]

Mythica is the first to be posted.

[Nija]

Company Name: SSI (Strategic Simulations) / TEN (Total Entertainment Network).
Game: Dark Sun Online
Current Status: Cancelled / Shut Down / Raised from the Dead (any others?) Shut Down
Made It To Launch?      Yes
Important History & Reason For Shutting Down: TEN shut down and closed it's doors in 1998, taking DSO with it. It was one of the first fully graphical MMOs and was very PVP friendly, with virtually a virtually wide open PVP ruleset. The game quasi-turn-based and featured AD&D rules (I'm not sure which version of AD&D though - it's been awhile) and as such it made it possible for very overpowered character builds to be used and exploited by various people and guilds. While the user base was low compared to games today, this was considered Mass Multiplayer in 1996. The PVP landscape is not considered to be the one limiting factor to userbase growth. The extra charge of membership to online networks, such as TEN,  and the infancy of internet credit card transactions kept interest low and populations down.

[HaemishM]

$30 a month for the TEN service and a ruleset full of loopholes and exploits big enough you could drive a truck through them killed DSO. It was my first MMO. PVP was an accident - the developers never bothered to turn off the ability to attack anyone anywhere. It also did drive off a good portion of the playerbase. It was also the first time I ever experienced a camp check or many other of the flaws of online gaming.

[Venkman]

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm getting a big sense of deja vu here.

Seems like this topic has come up a few times since my thread, itself probably the eleventh time the topic's come up since WT.o. So here's me supporting the wiki.

Oh, and copy/paste:

[schild]

Darniaq, you're linked in the FIRST POST in this thread and have been since the day it was posted.

[UnSub]

Mythica is the first to be posted.

Do you want the Ballerium article above re-written in that format NiX?

I keep meaning to get around and do Gods and Heroes, but have been pretty busy recently.

[Venkman]

Darniaq, you're linked in the FIRST POST in this thread and have been since the day it was posted.

Jesus Christ I'm having a problem reading today...

[NiX]

Do you want the Ballerium article above re-written in that format NiX?

I keep meaning to get around and do Gods and Heroes, but have been pretty busy recently.

I think that format serves that section well. Keep it clean for the most part. Timeline is good for making sure information is kept to fact rather than opinion. If you come up with something, post away and I'll put it up. I think right now we have it set so only admins can edit/post.

[UnSub]

NECROING because I really did mean to do this earlier. And then do another update for G&H or MXO or something.

--

Game: Ballerium
Company Name: Majorem
Current Status: Shut Down
System: PC
Lifespan: 8 months

2001:
Majorem establishes itself. Located in Israel, Majorem intended to develop massively multiplayer technology that could then be licensed to third party developers. Funding came from a combination of grants and licensing agreements.

Ballerium, Majorem's first title, appears to get a website on January 5, 2001.

2002:
Majorem hypes its OPIUM development toolset. What's OPIUM? Online Persistent Infrastructure for Unlimited Multiplay.

March 18, 2003
Majorem's first title, Ballerium, is set to go into Zero Phase beta testing on April 7, 2003.

Planned release at this point was 2004, with a planned public beta set for Christmas 2003.

2004
Beta testers were slowly added to Ballerium's testing pool. Despite plans of release in 2004, several posts were made by Majorem citing a lack of funds for development - it was flagged on October 26 and again on December 23. Sanctum was the publisher at this time, but they appear to have run out of funds prior to release.

However, hope was on the horizon - Interplay had picked up the "almost finished" Ballerium and promised a 2005 release.

June 15, 2005
Work on Ballerium once again comes to a halt as Interplay goes into financial difficulties and doesn't come though with the money.

Majorem continues to keep Ballerium going however as they attempt to find another publisher. Further development sees funding come out of their own pockets.

March 30, 2006
Ballerium re-opens with a new source of funding.

December 14, 2007
Ballerium finally goes live, published by live games operator Sleepy Giant.

July 31, 2008
Ballerium has its game servers were taken offline permanently and the game effectively ended. Majorem appears to close at the same time.

Personal Opinion
Why did Ballerium fail?

As can be seen above, obviously a huge number of issues came from publisher shenanigans. Another factor is that the MMORTS field hasn't yet really taken off - although their have been some successful titles, it really is a niche sector to try and succeed in.

From my beta play time the newbie experience was very limited - walk around, kill stuff to lvl up your units, repeat - because the veteran players had already dominated the map. You could join up with them, but then you were stuck in a waiting game for one of the guilds to try something. There was no real introduction to the game - you got dumped into the world and were expected to just pick it up from there. Travel time was slow enough to get irritating. Maps would reset when a certain proportion of cities / area was controlled by one guild / alliance, but it appeared to me at the time that the winning side preferred not to tip over the balance to that point, preferring to dominate but not win.

It did have some interesting ideas - the world was persistent, so if you didn't log your characters off at the right building you would come back to find your side all dead or scattered to the four winds. Units had a lot of diversity and the team had spent a lot of time trying to come up with a different kind of fantasy lore involving different races and aspects of the moon.

Some video of Ballerium to see what it was like.

[FatuousTwat]

I was one of the first selection of beta testers for that game, which was lucky (if you want to call beta testing a shitty game lucky) because it was the first MMO I ever tested.

[Venkman]

Per Ratman's thread in PC/Console, Dungeon Runner's shutting down on 1/1/2010.