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General: The MMO Cancellation Quiz
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
MMORPG.com's Jon Wood has put together these general questions about MMO cancellations to test your knowledge.
When a new MMO launches one of two things will happen: either the game will do at least moderately well and continue to thrive, or it will eventually flounder and die off, forever relegated to the cancellation shelf. Sometimes it happens after the game has had a long and somewhat productive life. Other times, games are cut down before they even see the light of release day.
This weeks quiz is designed to test your knowledge of MMOs of times gone by, from cancellation dates to circumstances. Good luck!
1. Despite being a part of Sony Online Entertainment's Station Pass, this game was cancelled in July of 2009. Like a number of Station Pass games, SOE did not develop this title, but rather acquired it from a company called Monolith Productions.
The Matrix Online: Based on the exceptional 1999 Keanu Reeves film (I know it sounds like an oxymoron) and its two sequels, this IP seemed tailor made for an MMO. Over time, however, the IP's popularity waned and along with it interest in the game until SOE finally shut the doors at the end of July 2009.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
Thanks for this quiz as I have been trying to remember the name of the company that originally was charged with making Warhammer Online. Their artistic direction, and gameplay direction, was so much more appropriate than what WAR turned out to be under Mythic in my view. It was a truly dark, Sleepy Hollow type world.
Ah, if only they were allowed to finish it and Sierra was allowed to complete MEO. One thing's for sure: I'd actually be subscribed to an MMO right now!
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
Did WISH even make it out to be cancelled? I thought it died in production stage. I played the beta so I knew it was going to die either way.
http://www.greycouncil.org/
It was cancelled in beta.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Technically there were two Middle Earth Onlines, and LotRO IS MEO.
There was a version in 1999 being made by Sierra that went under. Then in 2003-2004, Turbine started developing Middle Earth Online using the Asheron's Call 2 engine. It was advertised as "Come live in MIddle Earth". They showed it off at fan gathering Turbine Nation in 2004 and 2006. I was in the alpha for it. It was a sandbox style PvE MMO with an alignment system and all sorts of interesting stuff.
Then they won some court battle to develop it without Tolkien Enterprises and changed it to Lord of the Rings Online, loaded it up with instances, and made it a linear storytelling game focused on combat, completely destroying the pre launch community. Almost none of them ended up playing, including the fans that had organized Turbine Nation, and the prominent kinships like Elves of Imladris. Announcing a split between EU and NA servers was the final nail in the community coffin. A bad bit of PR most don't remember. It was effectively an NDA to a game that wasn't launched yet, but many were still upset. The MEO community was easily the best I've ever been a part of, the older/more mature nature of the fans (fans of the book mostly) helped that become so.
So anyway, LotRO = a modded MEO. Ah, dang WoW, you claimed another good MMO and made it into a clone.
MEO would probably (had the gameplay and mechanics been there to go with a more open ended story) be the game I would still be playing today. LoTRO just doesn't do it for me with their bastardization of the LOTRO lore.
Of course SOE cancelled Matrix Online. The only reason Sony picked it up in the first place (this is conjecture of course based upon the timing of announcements) was so they could get the rights to make DC:U. Marvel Online was in the works at the time and SOE was desperate to keep stem the tide of their decreasing relevence in the online gaming space.
Auto Assault was a fun fun game, but it was just missing too many parts. Tabula Rasa was killed by Garriot's own overhyping of the game. There was no way that they could have come as close to the grandeur that he had promised and then the execution of what they had just left so much wanting that it was doomed.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
Same. I love open ended games, and their emphasis on making a home in Middle Earth would have been great with the community they had gathered. All very smart mature people, lovers of the books, and loremasters in their own way. It would also have been pretty roleplay heavy. But, very much like old SWG was about living in the Star Wars world, and the devs wanted it to be about "fighting" through "epic" linear encounters that really mess with the Middle Earth lore. So many free roaming boars, ugh.
MEO, the unnoticed NGE.
Hehe nice quiz, got 3 out of 5 right. Of all the canceled game WiSH is the most disapointing. It's when devs ideas meets budget restrictition. How many good MMO could we have seen is budget would have allowed devs to everything they WiSHed.....
I wish Climax had finished making Warhammer Online. We would have a bloody, dark warhammer mmo instead of what we ended up getting from EA/Mythic.
I had also expected there to be one for Dark & Light. Oh well, we know that one ended badly anyways.
Warp
1.5/5
kinda jaded that you consider Auto Assault sci-fi yet you call it post apocalyptic later on...
Can't believe i didn't get the Warhammer one, i think the year confused me
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds
-Solid non level based game
-Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
LOL, nice work pointing out that Auto Assault actually lasted longer than the in-house developed TR. The NetDevil guys I've talked to are too nice to blame NCSoft for the debacle that was AA and its quick shutdown, but from their other remarks it's pretty clear that too many compromises with the publisher doomed the product.
I also got the sense from them that they tried to continue to operate the game at the studio level when NCSoft decided to cut its lifeline, but NCSoft decided they'd rather see it die than let NetDevil take it back and run it on a shoestring. A shame.
Nothing about Earth and Beyond, the Sims Online, Ashron's Call 2, Shadowbane or Horizons?
Hmm what happened to my comment? Oh well
Mr Tan it's just a quiz that's all and not a history of cancellations.
I'm a bit amazed I knew all the answers to this quiz. I guess I did because all these titles come from the time I still felt that the MMO genre could bring out incredible games instead of titles that are at best, merely adequate. With the exception of The Matrix Online (well and Tablua Rasa after they canned the fantasy version and made it sci fi) I was very interested in all of these games. The two that sting the most because they will never see the light of day are Climax's version of Warhammer and Sierra's Middle Earth Online. I think both games would have been incredible.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
I enjoyed Tabula Rasa during beta, and then changes were made before release. Then, I and other beta players knew the game wouldn't last. Most of us didn't even buy the release.
WISH was canceled due to it money gujys pulling out and having no funding
I find it interesting when people say "Oh, this game would have been so much better if X company had gotten a chance to finish it instead of Y." Yeah, I'm lookin' at you, LotRo vs. MEO peeps. There is absolutely no conceivable way you could know that you "would be subscribed to an MMO" right now if MEO had been finished. Seriously. None. Well, not unless you are the Doctor and have a TARDIS hiding in your backyard and travel to some alternate time when the game was finished, played it for the duration of it's natural life, and then came back to our world to share with us the great news. That's the thing about history. Sure, we can look back and say, "If this had happened, then this would have resulted." But the fact is that history has flown forth in one direction. MEO may have been a great game...and it may have gone the way of so many other MMOs out there that started off with promise and hype and ended up in the toilet.
Like the quiz said, it never made it out of beta.
I think the point people are trying to convey is that they would have rather had a sandbox Middle-earth world, like MEO, rather than a themepark Middle-earth world like LotRO.
Well actually, MEO and LotRO were both made by the same companies. They just changed design/game philosophies about a year before launch and totally rejigged it from a sandbox to a theme park.
And yes, I do know I would have subscribed to it, because I played it, saw it, and was in the alpha, and loved all the design decisions I saw on the website. Me, and many people like me, left after they NGE'd it.
Long story short, I would much rather have had a sandbox MEO by Turbine than a WoW clone LotRO with half baked combat by Turbine.
I remember following Westwood developing it, not Turbine.
There were two Middle Earth Onlines.
There was the defunct/cancelled Sierra made MEO, and the MEO that got changed at the last second into LotRO, developed by Turbine and Vivendi. I don't think Westwood had a hand in either.
But the LotRO you know now, was once called MEO, from 2004-2006 or something. The MEO before that was 1999-2001 I think.
Turbine was behind the now NGE'd sandbox MEO, which became LotRO.
The Matrix Online eventually failed due to some pretty bad design decisions. Letting anyone be anything, with only 1 character slot meant no rerolling. That is one thing that helps keep mmos active is people playing alts. Plus the melee combat was done poorly. You go from a 3D virtual world but when pulled into melee it goes into a side scrolling "street fighter" type scenario.
I wonder how Warhammer Online would of been had EA not finished it up. Don't tell me "no Mythic did it" because there is no Mythic anymore since they were absorbed into the EA collective. Heck, EA even fired Mythic's founder and head Mark Jacobs.
Auto Assault had potential, I just think that "Twisted Metal Online" was not something that the mass public was really asking for.
Tabula Rasa's failure I pin squarely on Richard Garriott. It had his name on it but shortly after release he went MIA from it to live out his fantasy of going into space. Apparently he asked for more time off, so NCSoft gave him all the time he wanted.
A bit weird there's not a mention of the worst shutdown in the gaming history - Asheron's Call 2, by Turbine. That got it's full paid boxed expansion released on May, 2005 with claiming everything is all right, people are coming back in waves etc, and then 2 months after in July, 2005 came in another announcement - that all servers will be terminated until the end of the year with no compensation or future discounts whatsoever for the existing customer-base (which was around 10-15k at that time).
REALITY CHECK
*sniff* Rest in peace, Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa. You shall be avenged!
Horizons is still running and surprisingly updated albeit under a different name. Istaria - Chronicles of the Gifted