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How The Matrix Online Went Wrong

Posted by Soulskill on from the not-like-this dept.

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."

6 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. From TFS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  2. How The Matrix Online Went Wrong by erroneous · · Score: 5, Funny

    1. Not being World of Warcraft.
    2. There is no two.

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    erroneous: look me up in a dictionary
    1. Re:How The Matrix Online Went Wrong by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Funny

      SOE: Where MMOs go to die.

      Or rather, where MMOs go to be on perpetual life support at least as long as they can somehow justify the 2.33 supporters working on them. Look at the games that are currently on the SOE-IV:

      EQ: Once the gem of MMO gaming, today the grandfather that sits in the corner reminiscenting of the ol' days of yore when battles were heated, death was painful and clerics had /quit on a hotkey.

      Ultima Online: EQ's childhood friend, they usually hang out in the same corner in front of of the tiled stove, bickering who has the better wartime stories.

      EQ2: EQ's stepchild that EQ doesn't really take all that serious because he's simply not tough enough. He started out really tough and beat up a lot of the kids so they didn't want to play with him, and when he started to mellow out his tough friends dumped him too. Now he's in the SOE retirement home along with the older folks.

      Vanguard: He's a little slow, to be honest. Never had a lot of friends and people said he's been a bit preterm, and that's why he was dumped by his parents to spend his life in the SOE orphanage.

      SWG: Now here is a hero of yore. He sure was a movie star and he still acts it, but it's been a while since he's been on the silver screen. He still claims he has it, but usually you find him sitting there with UO and EQ trying to get a bit of warmth from the stove, but they say he smells kinda funny. And his asthma breath sounds creepy.

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      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  3. MxO an example of Rampant Corporate Stupidity... by Yahya+Ibn+Tuma · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

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    YIA
  4. Re:From the article by Jedi+Alec · · Score: 5, Insightful

    EVE is not for anyone any more. Advancement is done using the progress quest engine, so at this point, if you haven't been paying for the game since nearly the beginning, your ambitions are going to have to be limited to "find someone who's been playing since the beginning and join their coalition as a lowly minion for life."

    Bleh, I've been playing since 2006, and a new player is more than ready to fly besides me and seriously kick ass in less than 3 months or so. Training skills is easy. Getting people to stop whining about everything and just go out there and have fun fighting is *hard*.

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    People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
  5. Re:So? by noundi · · Score: 5, Funny

    "There can be only five."





    Wait -- what?

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    I am the lawn!