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The Agency: The Agency Cancelled
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
Sony Online Entertainment has confirmed that along with the layoffs and studio closures that leaked onto the web today, The Agency has closed its doors.
Although news is bad for the fans of the perpetually flagging FPS-style spy MMO, things look decidedly better for fans of the EverQuest and Planetside franchises as the developers were quick to point to those two upcoming titles as the reason for Agency's cancellation.
"As part of a strategic decision to reduce costs and streamline its global workforce, SOE announced today that it will eliminate 205 positions and close its Denver, Seattle and Tucson studios. As part of this restructuring, SOE is discontinuing production of The Agency so it can focus development resources on delivering two new MMOs based on its renowned PlanetSide and EverQuest properties, while also maintaining its current portfolio of online games. All possible steps are being taken to ensure team members affected by the transition are treated with appropriate concern.
MMORPG.com will keep up to date on this story as it develops.
*SOE quote originally found at Massively.com.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
bloody shame
Wow, looks like DCUO tanked bad. I wonder if they´re streamlining the VG team down from 1 devs to 0 devs.
I think EQ3 will get canned aswell in 2-4 years, people aren´t going to be willing to pay for unsupported games. This is the reason I don´t play VG anymore.
<aref="http://www.enjin.com/"; alt="rift guild hosting"><img src="http://sigs.enjin.com/sig-rift/14060_d62c0a5a4ba0df2e.png"></a>;
I think that the janitor is the only person left working on Vanguard.
Vangaurd last dev was fire almost 2 years ago, EQ2 devs now double, That has been while there has not been in update in over 15 months.
I would bet that eq3 (eq next) is goign to be canned, they are already getting tons of negative feedback from eq2 and eq1 players on how cartoon/wow like its being made. I don't know anybody who wants to play a game where the lore has been reset 3000 years in the past of the two games we already have.
I was surpized to read that swg did not get the axe.
Considering that the agency was going to use the same targeting system as dcuo, and almost the same engine the had no choice but to give it the axe.
Too bad. I was REALLY waiting for this one.
Thank's for crushing my hopes again SoE : /
If they'd moved people over to develop the EQ and PS games, maybe that would "look decidedly better for fans of the EverQuest and Planetside franchises" but closing three entire developer studios doesn't seem like something positive. More support isn't going into EQ3, more money isn't either. This is about cutting support and costs. I feel for the developers and their familes, but couldn't care less about SOE as a company.
I'm more worried about PoxNora. You sell your soul for some stability and the corporation gobbles you up.
MTG:T did suck terribly, though, so I blame Denver.
http://forums.station.sony.com/vg/posts/list.m?topic_id=55395
Just love how they make a big deal about an announcement to keep the players they have in Vanguard, but don't take any time to give a state of things to come
Not really, if someone follows a little the MMO industry, that was predictable (check my sig)
Apparently at SoE no one understand what is a MMORPG anymore (since WoW came out basically)
SoE = Everquest
They sit on a golden IP with a unique Lore but they don't understand what to do with it.
Get on with the job Mr Smedley and please, if that's gonna be another EQ2 it's better you save your money (or Sony money in this case)
About time, just kill the whole Sony mmo division.
Save The Agency!
Please sign the petition.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/savetheagency/
Save The Agency!
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/savetheagency/
HOW IN THE HELL DOES SMED STILL KEEP HIS JOB????
I've felt like this for years. It's like an aging wine that's past it's peak and is declining in value.
I derive my strength from passion. Do you feel that? That is what seperates you and I, Jedi!
Isn't it obvious? His is a rare breed, a once thought extint & long forgotten species... a twin finned butt shark. He has a fin to message each butt cheeck while he brown noses the SOE execs...
Darn this is one SOE game I was willing to give them another shot on.
I'm not surprised to be honest. Of all the upcoming MMOs, The Agency hasn't garnered that much hype or attention and I think SOE is realizing it's too much of a niche game and being as they are hurting already with EQs, DCUO and such releasing another niche game isn't a money maker. Especially after seeing Rift launch and do well by following the WoW "style" of game mechanics.
I wasn't really impressed with the few videos we were shown anyway. Makes me wonder if they did a case study/player survey of a select handful of people and it wasn't popular with them. Movies do it with advanced screens and sometimes they will can or greenlight movies based on the results.
Wow after all these years of development... that is a major set back.
I think MMOs are too expensive and risky to create. In the end I think Cryptic had the right idea but the wrong implementation, but we need to see more 3rd party/"white label" MMO engine usage. Cryptic had their own homebrewed "white label" engine... but a bit like we moved from building community and e-com websites from scratch, we slowly moved to having everyone mostly using 3 main "CMS" (Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress, etc) and building their "modules" within those CMS's infrastructure.
This even for the major website projects.
Now I know there are some WL MMO engines out there but (with one exception I'll mention later) you don't see AAA titles being developed on them yet. So, as an example (and this will displease some on paper anyways) but I could see Blizzard white-labeling it's engine, and every new MMO would literally be a WoW-clone, however only the skeleton would have to be a WoW clone (patching, lighting effect etc). Right now what we're seeing is companies take all sorts of different skeletons, and try to map on it something very similar to a WoW-skin because it's too expensive to take risks. I'd rather see cheaper built MMOs, more offer and let the market be guided by what people want rather than what people want being guided by what's available.
You might say... why would Blizzard do this? Well they would not right now. But as MMO Engines mature and become competitive, there is no reason for them not to maintain their hold on the market... and this is how WoW will keep making money for them even 15 years from now.
For the sake of having more stable MMOs at launch, improving dev time (5 year dev cycles is just way too much, diminishing risk (to foster more experimentation), to offer more out of the box features AND platform support... the industry will have to move to integrated solutions.
Typically you see a "3rd party MMO engine" and there's is 1 client... which is the company who made the engine and their homebrewed no-name MMO. However things are changing. As I said before there's atleast one AAA title that I know of being developped on a 3rd party engine. If you look at SWTOR for example, they are actually licensing the HeroEngine... they are making SWTOR on the same platform as games like Hero's Journey, Faxion Online, Stray Bullet Games, Gatheryn... It's rare to see AAA titles do this but SWTOR's success and the coming to maturity of MMO engines will change how the market operates. The HeroEngine will grow from this and become all that much more interesting to other devs. Would be competitiors like "private engines" will want to compete (ie Blizzard) once they see big players are interested in buying their products. This is their chance to make money independently of game publishers. Big publishers are going to try to get their hands on those solutions and control them. Within the next 5 years the industry is gonna completely change... it's completely unnatural to see such a success like Blizzard with no successful challengers and such a poor offer in MMOs.
... maybe I should have made this a blog entry :P
Gotta keep that dust off the the servers so it doesn't get in the vents.
A true bullshit artist this guy is.
Seriously, he could resign right now and go on the seminar circut instructing other executives on how to survive multiple catastrophic failures.
What? SOE having big troubles? Gee whiz, what a shame.
(SWG refugee)
The idea of a spy MMO really caught my eye...until I saw it was SOE. Then is just disappeared from my radar entirely. Hopefully, some other studio will either pick it up, or bring us something similar. Maybe without zombies, demons and fireballs?
-- Xix
"I know what you're thinking: 'Why, oh WHY, didn't I take the BLUE pill?'"
Sweet...
this means more resources will be going to their IP's that matter - Plantside2 and EQ3..
Though Im still skeptical of SOE after giving birth to that imposter they call an Everquest game (EQ2)
The Agency? it was nothing but an after thought from the beginning of its announcement.Nothing but a waste of time and money.
Wasnt this one just about done? I thought it was originally to be released at the end of 2010 but got pushed back a bit for some last minute tuning up. Really sad that it was so close to being ready for Beta and then gets closed down.
As interesting as the Agency sounded (and you can see how it piqued my interest back in the beginning...so many years ago), it's primary problem was that it was an FPS that they were going to charge for -- that simply wouldn't complete with the free-multiplayer servers of every other major fps franchise (tf2, CoD, Halo, UT, etc.).
A shame no developers were spared for vanguard, as others have stated.
Correction:
Q3, UT, CS, and TF2. Halo and CoD are crap.
When did you start playing "old school" MMO's. World Of Warcraft?
Too bad but not enough people are willing to pay a monthly fee for a FPS game.
The agency should have been a B2P game like any concole FPS that you play online.
It is at least good that they keep working on EQ Next.
Ah nuts, was almost looking forward to this one. Oh well, there are other worlds to visit.