Rubies of Eventide MMO Shutting Down?

Bruha writes "Over at Rubies of Eventide Warcry it has been announced that the fantasy-based PC MMO Rubies of Eventide will be shutting down operations in December unless they can find some way to pay the bills. The owner of the company sent out an announcement where he said those paid up to that point will be receiving refunds and pointed out that they just did not have enough players anymore to continue: 'Our customer base continues to decline; as of yesterday we had only 806 paying customers (we lost another 41 over the weekend).'" Are there just too many MMOs out there, thus spreading players too thin, or are these problems down to the state of this particular game?

Comments

Pretty clear solution to me...

[Ayanami Rei]

turn the servers (and the source code?) over to hardcore fans.

Apparently a few of them don't mind it being beta... maybe they'll get some people in on it to polish it up.

I mean, even if it has to be under an NDA so the people who steward it don't sell the ideas to competing game publishers.

Re:Not even a thousand paying customers?

[pelsmith]

>>How about a TMO (tiny multiplayer online)

Now that is a good idea, and I will bet it is one that we eventually settle into.

I'm not talking about the 16 player maps, or even the 64 player maps. I am talking about a server specifically designed to house about 400 people, with a guesstimated 100 playing at any given time. Games designed to operate at this level will be able to cover every possible genre.

First though, the finances must be nailed down and publicized. Once everyone has a basic game plan on how to pay the ISP charges while still staying small, the uber-geeks with a lot of talent and passion and time on their hands will get together with their best story telling buddy and create amazing limited scope adventures.

Sorry to see it go

[Kirruth]

Well, I came into the game in the last two months, and found it to be alot of fun.

I guess they made a few mistakes, like putting unimplemented skills in the skills list, rather than doing what other games do and bringing them in later and charging for them. But it probably had more skills actually implemented than many other such games. The content was all there, but a little hard to find. Cool if you like that kind of thing, but not if you're the typical l335t gamer. Graphics were fine when I got there.

The thing about it was it wasnt put out by an huge, evil megacorp, but a small independent company. We need to get our heads around the fact that games are like movies or bands. Little indy games are cool, like little indy movies or unsigned bands that nobody has heard of. They are not going to be as slick as stuff from the big guys perhaps, but then you are not handing over a cheque to people who would sue you at the drop of a hat.

I am amazed that people who will have nothing to do with Microsoft or Sony on the PC, will own a Playstation or XBox. It's time we wised up.