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How The Matrix Online Went Wrong
As the July 31st deadline for The Matrix Online's closure looms, Gamer Limit is running a story discussing the game's shortcomings, as well as some of the decisions that led to its failure. Quoting:
"I honestly thought the writers must have absolutely hated the remaining cast of The Matrix Trilogy or something, because they constantly seemed to go out of their way to phase out existing characters in favor of newer ones. The cast overall basically made me, as a player, feel distant from the main storyline and made the entire game feel like a Matrix side story instead of the continuation it was meant to be. ... When MxO first launched there was an entire team dedicated to playing the game as Agents and other key characters as a means to further in-game events and directly interact with players, giving players the feeling that they truly were making a difference. After the SOE buyout of the game the LESIG team was reduced to playing minor characters before eventually being phased out and replaced with a Live Event Team (LET) comprised purely of volunteers."
Honestly, who cares?
I honestly thought the writers must have absolutely hated the remaining cast of The Matrix Trilogy or something
Editors, please correct this. Everyone knows that there was only 1 Matrix movie.
To me, MxO just lacked the wonder and glory of the films. The obviously had to take a lot of shortcuts and compromises to fit it into a Diku-esque MMORPG and well, there was a lot to live up to for Matrix fans and it just plain felt non-cutting edge.
As one of the comments on the source article states "it catered to gamers instead of fans". Specifically they created a game firmly within an existing genre instead of something specific to The Matrix. I know that's easy to criticize, but regardless I think it's true.
1. Not being World of Warcraft.
2. There is no two.
erroneous: look me up in a dictionary
I noticed that when I tried to come up with a "Matrix RP" idea. It was easy to write the rules (you could easily adjust GURPS to encompany some of the Matrix specials, stack it on GURPS Martial-Arts and you're set). It was insanely hard to come up with good ideas for stories. Basically:
What the heck are we doing here?
Let's face it. The Matrix is no place to hang out. There's no good reason to go in except two:
1. Find "The One".
2. Meet the Oracle.
That's it. Any fight, anything you could accomplish, anything at all is meaning- and pointless. It's insanely dangerous (not only can you get killed inside, your body is a sitting duck outside while you're in) and there's nothing sensible to do.
Now, I never played MxO, to be honest. Mostly because I couldn't imagine what I should "do" or "accomplish" in the game. Beat up Agents? What for? Level buildings? Not only are they virtual, but they're even virtual in the virtual world.
Essentially, I think I would have felt like playing someone playing an MMO. And playing it myself is already pathetic enough for my tastes.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
XKCD 566
Really?
Do I need say more?
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
People may not remember, but it wasn't Sony who first designed EverQuest, it was 989 Studios. Sony is the company that BROKE the game, and as time went on, it became more and more broken due to basic mistakes that Sony made.
So, whatever SOE touches tends to turn to crap. Sony as a company may have some good products, but SOE has a proven track record of taking a good product and ruining it with stupid decisions on the design end of things.
"In my opinion, this is way too early to give up on any MMORPG title since these kinds of games usually take a bit to get going, WoW didn't start off as the juggernaut it is today either."
Sure WoW has been building for a long time, but its launch was so strong that their biggest issue was underestimating how quickly they'd have to expand their server base. There were tremendous complaints about the lag early on as servers were absolutely swamped.
If you don't have a strong opening, it's going to take something remarkable to build the base required to justify the expense of a major MMO. From what I've seen major commercial MMOs that have weak releases rarely reverse that condition. Most simply limp along. A weak release can be the kiss of death for several reasons, including low player density driving off the few players you do have, and lack of a sufficient mass of customers to generate positive buzz and drive long term growth.
Basically, you don't throw good money after bad.
"After the SOE buyout of the game the LESIG team was reduced to playing minor characters before eventually being phased out and replaced with a Live Event Team (LET) comprised purely of volunteers."
When your game isn't bringing in enough money to justify a paid team of in-game actors, of course there are going to be cuts. This is a business. How much sooner would doors have had to close if the budget had not been scaled back? Of course this costs customers, but it very much seems that there were already not enough customers to justify this level of cost. It's no secret that most MMOs already have incredibly lead customer service departments. This is, I epxect, basically like employing a second CS department.
"You could never be an equal to a storyline character."
Welcome to MMOs.
I beta tested this game. It was released with a huge amount of bugs (such as the fall through lift and die or get stuck in a room and cannot leave it).
These issues were raised multiple times in beta and nothing was ever done, as such the game withered and died. A lesson to be learnt, keep what's good, fix what's broken. If you don't, the game will die. Look at Warhammer Online, it's going the same way.
It was all wrong from the start. The whole "game" was thrown together by a bunch of idiots who sacrificed gaming to the stupidity of corporate synergism.
Seriously, during the Warner Bros. era, MxO had a cancellation policy similar to AOL at it's worst(i.e. they employed the same gimmicks and tricks that AOL did to "retain" customers), BECAUSE AOL,WB,MONOLITH PRODUCTIONS AND MXO WERE ONE AND THE SAME BACK THEN.
I've experienced MxO under Warner Brothers *and* under Sony Online Entertainment, and, hands down, Warner Brothers was the worst MMOG,MMORPG company that ever existed.
I say this because of that stupid "SOE destroyed MxO" meme that plagues discussions regarding the game. Hardly. The Matrix Online lasted 88 days before Time Warner-AOL threw in the towel, and never had over 40,000 paying customers at the height of it's power and influence. Sony kept it going for nearly four years in spite of it being an unpopular game.
YIA
Maybe the low popularity had something to do with the sinking ship it was attached to. The Matrix Online came out one year after the sequels. There were a lot of people who lost faith in the franchise by that point. Many fans felt let down and many non-fans were very aware of how poorly the movies were received. And it sure didn't help that many of those who did like the sequels had the condescending attitude that those who didn't like the sequels just didn't "get" it. Like it was that hard to pick up the philosophical themes. By the time the MMO launched, a lot of their potential customers who were fans of the Matrix were turned off by the idea of more Matrix material and the Matrix series' reputation was damaged enough that non-fans weren't that tempted to give it a try. I doubt even an above-average MMO could survive in those conditions.
I don't know who owned it when I played the game, but I gave up after only about two days of total boredom and decided to cancel my subscription. Only, at that point I discovered I had to CALL THEM UP and ask them to cancel it. And then had to answer a bunch of stupid "why are you cancelling?" questions.
That kind of hassle, instead of just clicking a button online to cancel, is a sure way to make sure I'll never play another game from your company again for the rest of my life.
Very simply, films number 2 and 3.
After those no one but the really hard core fanboys were interested in it. If the films had been good there would of been interested and had a larger intitial population some of those staying to see the game improve. With the lack of a large population no matter how much money sony pumped into the game, after the initial people pulled out and ran, was going to save it.
That kind of hassle, instead of just clicking a button online to cancel, is a sure way to make sure I'll never play another game from your company again for the rest of my life.
From that statement, I know you played MxO during the classic period of Time Warner-AOL(March-May 2005). If you think AOL(and AIM) was/is God's gift to the internet, The Matrix Online is/was the game for you.
All of this nonsense was brought to you by Jace Hall (AKA Jason Hall) here's his IMDB page:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0995727/
Notice that he lists producer credits for StarCraft(1998) and World of Warcraft(2004) in spite of the fact he worked for Monolith Productions and/or Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment during those time periods. I smell a rank con-artist. I suppose by some miracle he *could* have had a hand in the production of those games, but I don't think so.
YIA
989 made some good games.
Anyone remember Jetmoto 2?
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." - Pablo Picasso
does this mean I beat the game?
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
I'd played this from Beta and for the first 18 months or so. I had some friends who were on as well, and it was my first MMORPG game. I'm a fan of the film, but generally enjoyed the way the game was put together, the combat system (though never did quite get around Combat 2.0) and how a team could work together by changing specific skills for a mission or even on the fly, if you needed a medic etc. I liked that flexibility, and the ability to wander around places from the film(s), and particularly going to places you shouldn't be and being chased by agents etc was alot of fun. The live events were ok, but seemed to lag terribly at the finale, which caused the game to quit sometimes which was annoying. The thing that eventually killed it for me was the perpetual promised updates and new skills that never seemed to show up, and the ever rarer live events, it seemed once you hit level 50 there wasnt much else to do apart from start a new character. I did go back after 6 months for a little while, but nothing much had changed (the promised changes hadnt arrived) and many of the players I knew had gone so I left again. I kept meaning to have another look but guess that ship has sailed now.
When you make it so the optimal way to beat a level is to run through quickly it avoiding all the enemies, your game is no fun unless its Sonic the Hedgehog the MMORPG.
God spoke to me.
In a MMORPG you can't have EVERYONE participating in the main plotline of the Matrix. You can't have Neo and Trinity hanging out simultaneously with thousands of players, they really need to introduce hundreds of new characters in the Matrix universe and let you interact with them instead, but still keeping the feel of the movies.
That really left me shaking my head in the Star Wars game. Here I am some first level nobody, and who comes to rescue me from jail? HAN SOLO!! Right...
these fucktards didnt only fuck up millions of people's gaming experience regarding one major fantasy world, but TWO.
one would think that after the SHIT they made in the name of 'Star wars galaxies' out of the mega star wars saga, no SANE individual would sell ANY intellectual property's rights to make a game to those humongous losers. but lo ! matrix universe is fucked up forever too now. unbelievable. really unbelievable.
get this into your heads rights holders : SOE FUCKS UP YOUR FANTASY UNIVERSES. DONT GIVE THEM THE CHANCE TO FUCK YOURS TOO, LIKE THEY DID TO OTHERS.
Read radical news here
There is no more spoon
Let's put the genes back in Genesis.
Isn't the whole problem of any MMO with a storyline is that you *can't* have an effect on the game world? No matter how often you win, no matter how often you stop the necromancer from drowning puppies, the next set of n00bs to come through has to do the same things and you have to interact with them. If they wanted to do something different in The Matrix, maybe they should have REALLY done something different, put a Thirteenth Floor spin on it and introduced new layers of meta-worlds. Level up far enough, and you wake up again, in the new real "real world"... "Oh, Zion? That was a simulation..."
http://www.screenplays-online.de/screenplay/118
Read it and tell me this wouldn't have been better!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Sidestepping the whole Warner vs Sony tangent, I'd seriously like to know how much creative content the Wachowskis contributed. I got the distinct feeling that the idea of the Matrix made for a good world, but in practice it came across as rather shallow. Surely there must have been key comic book industry writers that were approved by the Wachowskis to generate game content. Personally, I always thought the Matrix should have been just one layer to the a game world, where bluepills became redpills and travelled between the Matrix and the real world in an effort to further objectives against the Machine City, to further what Neo started. It was clear to me that as long as 01 was in existance, humans could never be free. Staying inside the Matrix exclusively seemed like a waste of time.
I played MxO early on. I actually wanted to experience the continuing story and tried to like it, but two things killed it for me:
1. The control scheme was terrible. It couldn't decide if it was an FPS or an RTS control scheme, making it a real pain to actually look at what you wanted to look at and position your character with any precision, especially in cramped interiors.
2. Some kind of nanotech magician character class totally alien to the films was not just present, but overwhelmingly dominant in its effectiveness over the gun/martial arts styles that were emblematic of the setting.
For great justice.
Never buy a game from a company when you don't know what company?
Aside from the recursive strangeness of the whole idea of Matrix Online, an online virtual world modeled on an online virtual word, I didn't know it actually existed, so maybe a little marketing would have helped.
What I would like to know is where is the code going to go?
Are they going to sell it to some super fan or just pack it away in their petabyte storage server?
The graphics in the game are amazing, it's just the GUI, the combat and the lack of additional gameplay that really suck... which is basically the rest of the game.
SOE buys and kills another game? Im shocked. Really.
Wow! Change the game names to people names and you've got the seed of a Hollywood blockbuster!