"Goodbye, Mr. Anderson"

[Hutch]

"Why, oh why, didn't I take the blue pill?"

Matrix Online shutting down July 31

Official forums announcement

"Shutdown FAQ"

[Hawkbit]

So much for SOE not shuttering games when they fail to make a buck.  Vanguard better watch it's back. 

MxO is one of the very few MMOs that I never got around to trying.  The first movie blew my head, I enjoyed it immensely.  The second and third movies are some of the worst movies ever created.  I wish they'd never been written.  I was (am still) so pissy about the sequels that I never bothered to try the game. 

[Tale]

Some people say movie IPs are a crap idea for MMOGs. But surely the world's best known IP about fighting bad guys in a virtual world had more potential than this? Relatively few gamers are aware a Matrix MMOG exists, even though it's such a marketable concept.

[rattran]

It got some marketing at launch and after the SOE thing, but it never looked interesting enough to try. I watched a bit of gameplay at one of the SOE fanfair thingies, never really sparked for me.

Even for free, it didn't look good enough to try.

[Merusk]

My only memory of this game will always be the game clerk at Best Buy trying to talk my wife into buying it instead of WoW when she went to pick-up her copy.   "It's way cooler than that elves and crap. It'll do a lot better."

[Yoru]

I remember trying it in beta and finding it a buggy wreck. Between that and the "interlock" combat system being utterly retarded, I never looked back.

[Mrbloodworth]

It had some interesting features, but ultimately its design would be its downfall. Mostly the handful of building layouts, and really repetitive Mobs.

[Draegan]

I never played and I often forget that it ever existed.

[tmp]

If nothing else, it was good example for the "zomg why do i have to fight animals in computer game" crowd, how much quicker fighting nothing but humans in various outfits can get utterly boring.

[HaemishM]

I tried it after release. Woof. How this got past the alpha stage I'll never know. I have never played an MMOG where I felt LESS involved in the actions of my character. It was the worst example of hit autoattack and sit back that I've ever played, and that was with ACTIVELY NEEDING TO FIRE OFF ATTACKS. I felt completely disconnected from my character. It was terrible. It's about 2-3 years too late for the shuttering IMO.

[WindupAtheist]

Wow, there must have been NOBODY left playing.

[Shatter]

I find it interesting because that was part of the Station Pass fee($30/mnth).  If they are shutting it down it probably means there were so few people playing that the cost of the servers and general upkeep wasnt worth it to keep alive anymore even when people could play it as part of the pass.  Since I cant go to those links(dam websense) I will assume they also arent reducing the Station Pass fee down either are they?  SOE is basically the graveyard of games, EQ1, SWG, VG, Planetside, and even EQ2 isnt doing well right now.  They cant drop many more games because they Station Pass would have to be kicked to the curb. 

[Mrbloodworth]

That, and they have free realms, and what, 2 MMOs coming online soon?

[Zzulo]

didn't they kill Morpheus in this game?

[Merusk]

Wow, there must have been NOBODY left playing.

To get a general idea of how few people there were I took a quick trip to the forums.  "General Discussion" still has items on the first page from May 19th.   The "Omg they're shutting down" thread has only 105 replies after 14 hours of being up.  Yes, it's very very empty.

[Mrbloodworth]

didn't they kill Morpheus in this game?

Yes. and its canon too.

[Ratman_tf]

Some people say movie IPs are a crap idea for MMOGs. But surely the world's best known IP about fighting bad guys in a virtual world had more potential than this? Relatively few gamers are aware a Matrix MMOG exists, even though it's such a marketable concept.

Potential for what? "Let's make a Matrix MMO! Moneyhats!", "Let's make a Star Wars MMO! Moneyhats!", "Let's make a Playboy MMO! Moneyhats!"

[Ghambit]

Honestly, I actually liked a lot of the design of this game (I played it quite a bit).  Their dev-cycle was also pretty interesting to behold.  But, here's why it failed:

1)  They rush-released the title to the ire of the testers (whom were actually assigned into moderated focus-groups to work on elements of the game).  Basically, they flushed the entire reasoning behind the structured beta... and released with little to no solutions to the problems they found

2)  #1 really explains it all but I'll get more specific.  The world-design was groundbreaking at the time, only they didnt take advantage of it.. so it ended up being a huge game for no apparent reason.  They never put in driving (which was a major part of the Matrix), nor guild bases (we had to just "dub" our own).  There was no real interactivitiy with the environment, but they had all the pieces there to do it.  i.e. thousands of rooms and buildings with no real purpose

3)  Since the game largely bombed, they couldnt maintain enough staff for the other "groundbreaking" element, which was the active story-driven plotlines.  Basically, GMs would pop in as major characters and inject drama into the game.  I gotta say it was a pretty cool mechanic and usually they were a lot of fun.  BUT, they didnt run with it.  It was sporadic, too scripted, and GMs seemed to not have that much control... which is somewhat understandable since it's a coveted IP.  Also, typically these were just ratrace minigames or "games of chance" instead of goals one could individually achieve... so you'd go through the trouble of being part of an event only to really get nothing out of it but "enlightenment."  In the end, one player out of thousands would gain the glory.

4)  They didnt run with the "game within the game."  There was eventually supposed to be elements that called your REAL phone or house or interacted with you in some way.  They never did it.  The "real world" was an integral part of making this game work and they turned their back on it in every way.  At the very least it should've been a playable zone within the game itself.  Being constantly "in the Matrix" kind of made the whole premise of the Matrix itself pointless.  The closest they got was a few Lost-style easter egg hunts with peripheral websites, etc. (which were cool mind you, it just wasnt done enough)

I could go on and on...  it really just boils down to the game releasing too soon and bombing way too soon to fix it.  Honestly, it's quite a shame because of all the IPs out there I believe this one was the coolest and had the most potential if done right.  Sony just phucked it up.  edit:  Warner Bros. phucked up the game and Sony just took it over and did nothing with it.

Would be a GREAT game to open-source but because of IP B.S. we all know that wont happen.  A shame really.  <a single tear falls from my cheek>

[Zzulo]

didn't they kill Morpheus in this game?

Yes. and its canon too.

[Ghambit]

But eh, Morpheus DOES get to bang Niobe repeatedly in the game... before he was "killed"

[Dtrain]

One thing the game did well, it had a very interesting exterior cityscape for an MMO in an urban setting.

Of course everything else, and the gameplay especially, was disgustingly bad.

I put up with that crap long enough to get level 10 and super jump to the top of buildings. Once I did that, I looked around at the pretty city from a new angle and said to myself: "So this game is nothing but the same missions in the same buildings over and over again for XX more levels? NO THANKS!"

[WindupAtheist]

Matrix was one of those games I always meant to try, but never quite got around to. The kung fu, super jumps, and clothing all looked cool if nothing else. But nothing about it really grabbed me, either.

[tmp]

To get a general idea of how few people there were I took a quick trip to the forums.  "General Discussion" still has items on the first page from May 19th.   The "Omg they're shutting down" thread has only 105 replies after 14 hours of being up.  Yes, it's very very empty.

I checked it out of curiosity, the game doesn't even offer a free trial. They could replace the main page with big "Fuck off, we don't want your money" at this point, since it boils down to the same thing.

[sam, an eggplant]

MxO sold through a whopping 40k copies in the first 3 months after release. Around that time the title was sold to SOE and all the users had to re-register with sony. Most tellingly, they had to provide their credit card information for billing, so everybody too lazy to quit had an easy out, the very thing that killed AC2. Realistically, they were probably under 15k subscriptions in june 2005. So... anyone think those numbers have grown since?

[Venkman]

So much for SOE not shuttering games when they fail to make a buck.   

Wuh? They've been carrying this title for over four years. This is the same company that still has Planetside live. So you gotta know there's other factors here (probably along the lines of their monthly take falling below their minimum guarantees to the licensor, or having done so for a long time or something).

[Hawkbit]

So much for SOE not shuttering games when they fail to make a buck.   

Wuh? They've been carrying this title for over four years. This is the same company that still has Planetside live. So you gotta know there's other factors here (probably along the lines of their monthly take falling below their minimum guarantees to the licensor, or having done so for a long time or something).

Exactly.  Isn't this their first title they're killing off?  Like, ever? 

[Numtini]

So much for SOE not shuttering games when they fail to make a buck.   

Wuh? They've been carrying this title for over four years. This is the same company that still has Planetside live. So you gotta know there's other factors here (probably along the lines of their monthly take falling below their minimum guarantees to the licensor, or having done so for a long time or something).

I thought they meant in the sense that there was some conventional wisdom that games would survive in perpetuity as being useful to make station pass look good.

[Koyasha]

It seems likely to me that the licensing contract is expiring or something of that nature, and they're trying to charge more for the license than 'another game on the station pass to make it look good' is worth to renew it.

[Venkman]

So much for SOE not shuttering games when they fail to make a buck.   

Wuh? They've been carrying this title for over four years. This is the same company that still has Planetside live. So you gotta know there's other factors here (probably along the lines of their monthly take falling below their minimum guarantees to the licensor, or having done so for a long time or something).

Exactly.  Isn't this their first title they're killing off?  Like, ever? 

Bleh, looks like my last post was eaten.

Yea, I think you have a good point here. They haven't shut down anything else as far as I can tell. Can't be a money thing if they're still willing to host Tanarus. What's that now, 13 years?

Maybe WB wanted the rights back so opted to not renew a deal? Maybe MxO is just too different from the other games to be compelling for Station Pass'ers? I gotta imagine that's the only reason PS, VG, and PotBS are able to keep going. But then how much does SWG appeal to an EQ2 player either?

[Tale]

Some people say movie IPs are a crap idea for MMOGs. But surely the world's best known IP about fighting bad guys in a virtual world had more potential than this? Relatively few gamers are aware a Matrix MMOG exists, even though it's such a marketable concept.

Potential for what? "Let's make a Matrix MMO! Moneyhats!", "Let's make a Star Wars MMO! Moneyhats!", "Let's make a Playboy MMO! Moneyhats!"

The Matrix has MMOG gameplay at its core. The movie storyline directly involves training skills to use on missions in a virtual world, to fight the bad guys who run it.

You don't have to make up a reason for the player being there - they are supposed to be a resistance fighter in a world inside a computer. They are supposed to be levelling up, raiding, acquiring martial arts disciplines, coming up with better weapons, etc. There is unlimited potential for what environments the bad guys create inside their virtual world and what form they take. You also have the "real world" outside the matrix to use as your Moon of Luclin/Shadowlands/Outland.

Failing at Matrix MMOG is epic fail.

[Ratman_tf]

The Matrix has MMOG gameplay at its core. The movie storyline directly involves training skills to use on missions in a virtual world, to fight the bad guys who run it.

I'd say the Matrix gameplay would be more like a 3rd person fighter/shooter than any MMOG I've seen. Maybe Tab Ras or Planetside, but then they'd have to add HTH combat... nah. I think it's a huge stretch.

Then we get to learning skills, which you just upload. 100th level fighter... bzzzz ding! No leveling required.
The rest is psuedophilisophical zen rigamarole, good luck modeling that with numbers in a computer game. "Your skill in 'There is no Spoon' increases by +1!"

I never played MXO. Hell, I've got an unopened box on my shelf....  But it sounds like SWG with less nerdrage. You can't capture the "spirit" of the franchise by reducing it to combat routines and quest flavor text. You have to come at it from another angle. And so far, no development company or game has had that kind of potential yet.

[Venkman]

One thing the IP has over SWG is that at least in the Matrix game, everyone would expect to be overpowered compared to the rank and file. In the end they could have just made a Goth CoH with only melee skills and been done with it.

[Numtini]

It deserved to die before it was released. What a horrible mess.

[UnSub]

What should be remembered of MxO is 1) it's ability to fully respec skills easily after you bought them. You could literally change your entire 'class' (such as it was) and skill layout when at a phone booth. Also: lots of in-game teleportation made it easy to get around. Finally, they did have an ongoing storyline. The "they killed Morpheus" isn't that  in the context of an ongoing story. (The most  bit of the story was when one faction got 'cheat codes' or superpowers like laser eyes.)

But combat was dull, missions were incredibly repetitive and it was hard to find things (certain buildings / locations / people were significant) when you started up. This might have worked at launch, when everyone was a newb sharing information, but when you are playing an near-empty game and all the characters you see are max level, it makes it very hard to get into.

EDIT: Should add that, to my knowledge, only 4 devs have been working on this title for at (minimum) the last 12 months. Plus the lead dev just left the title. The closure makes sense.

[taolurker]

I played this in beta, and also after it was enabled for Station Pass play. During beta it was a complete mess, and in between bouts of crashing and poor performance I easily submitted 30-40 bugs that I believe the game released with.

After upgrading computers, and returning with the Station Pass, it definitely was more stable, but many of the same bugs were still present (including one with stacking DoTs that did more damage then they were supposed to, which was finally fixed 2-3 years after release when everyone had exploited it to power level).

It was trying to be a fighting game, with four "modes" of attack, "Heavy attack", "Light Attack", "Throw" and "Defense", but these only changed the type of auto attack your character did (or Auto blocking if on Defense). In between changing modes, you could spam "specials", until it somehow included that attack into the mode you were using. They never repaired how specials' effectiveness was gimped by the mode selected, so basically only the Heavy Attack one was worthwhile for all of beta and months into launch. These modes also spanned all combat types, and using a gun compared to martial arts didn't really make much difference.

The lock on to enemies was stupid and warped your character 50% of the time, and fighting multiple enemies was instant death because of it. The missions were all in identical looking rooms of buildings you rode an elevator up to, and at least half of the missions would have every enemy attack at once, swarming and warping through walls to your character.

The skills were a nice tree based system, with the unique ability to respec your entire skill tree at any time, but it was still based on a level points system so you could only ever spec to a certain power level and not above. Skills were buyable or player crafted, so increasing in skills you either needed to learn how to respec and make yourself, or spend tons of credits that were hard to come by. I actually liked the skill system, but by level 13 I'd decided that it was too grindy to get new powers, because you either needed hundred of dropped "bits" to make them or way too many credits with travel to insanely dangerous areas to buy them.

There was some kind of faction device that was supposed to represent competing sides, but I also don't think they were ever more than a different route of missions to take with different enemies to fight. I never witnessed any kind of raiding, and high levels used to gather in hubs dueling one another over and over. It might've been interesting if the story was still evolving and if there was more than just identical random missions to do.

Sony easily dropped the ball by not spending some dev time fixing things and keeping a live team to run events, not to mention the wasted potential of the billboard ads revenue that Massive put in game before the Sony buyout. The only game that billboard ads truly fit into, with three year old ads displaying, meant someone dropped the ball.

SOE is probably closing this game because of the license and costs to keep the Matix IP from WB and the Wachovski brothers. Cheaper to just drop it, especially with how much it sucked coupled with lack of active players.