So YOU'RE the other person who remembers this MMO! :-)
CZ had an interesting setting - a prison planet - and seemed to be doing something a bit different, but then Microsoft bought the rights to the BigWorld tech off Microprose and the title died a slow death. Meanwhile, BigWorld has given the MMO world nothing worth noting.
Others have come in to comment about Gods and Heroes - I was in the beta for several months. The Gods system was interesting - you pick a patron god and he gives you extra powers. The pets system was interesting in theory - you could get a team of pets around you to help, although healer AI was broken so it didn't heal you. Also, everyone got access to a special 'personal camp' instance that let you upgrade your pets (in theory). Combat animations - including grapple animations - were very good for the most part.
However, the game was going to launch with no crafting or PvP and you need these things to compete, even if you do a half-ass job on them. The original character advancement system was scrapped in favour of a skill tree system because players were finding the original system too hard. There were a lot of bugs still to fix and the world was comparatively small to walk around in (zone maps weren't that big and sometimes you were forced to walk around a landmark that blocked the 'short' path).
G&H was cancelled at the point that it was considered (or was very near) feature and content complete for launch. It needed a lot of bug fixing, but it was ramping up for launch before the pin was pulled. If it had launched it wouldn't have competed that well, but might have got a crowd that would have kept development on it (and perhaps STO) going.
That said, all in all its cancellation wasn't a big loss to the MMO market.
Originally posted by xxpigxx Star Wars Galaxies was the exception. The ONLY reason it failed was the NGE. If it were not for that, the game would still probably be blistering and bustling with activity.
SWG's failure was launching without jedi, stars or wars. NGE was a symptom of the original failure, not the point where it actually failed.
People dont seem to learn, when u take a movie or TV series and attempt to make a game from it (be it mmo or single player) it generally fails, with few exceptions.
To prove my point a few failed mmos: Matrix, Star Wars Galaxys... and most probably Star Trek...
But dont get me wrong, i'm looking forward to the new Star wars MMO, Old republic... hopefully it will be an exception to the rule ^^
Star Wars Galaxies was the exception. The ONLY reason it failed was the NGE. If it were not for that, the game would still probably be blistering and bustling with activity.
SWG was barely clinging to life for a long time. It had one of the worst launches in MMO history, introduced the worst game mechanic in MMO history (unlocking Jedi), and was so poorly optimized no one could go in a city without nearly crashing. The only thing that kept that MMO out of the garbage bin was the Star Wars License.
The new SW "MMO" looks even worse. Basically just a glorified single player game.
When reading through the featured games listed, I wonder how many of them had their futures altered by the emergence of WoW, and how many that never made the list.
----- The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
The one thing I liked about Perpetual's Trek Online was that you weren't automatically a captain, you went in to the different job types they had (medical, engineering, sciences, etc.) TBH, I didn't want to be Kirk, I wanted to be Scotty! Now it's just going to be you and a bunch of npc's running the ship rather than having active players doing stuff like that. A captaincy is something to be earned, not given.
To quote from TNG's ep "Relics".. "Captain I may be in rank, but I never wanted to be anything but an engineer." - Scotty
I really wanted to play G&H. Im still not sure I understand what happened.
From my complete outsider's point of view, it looked like Perpetual evaluated the likelihood of G&H being a success and generating enough profit to justify its launch vs. the expected profit off of Star Trek Online. So rather than having their resources split between two titles, the more profitable one - STO - was selected and G&H was mothballed.
Given that Perpetual didn't take long to announce their own bankrupcy, restart as P2 and buy all the assets of Perpetual at discounted prices in order to try and keep STO going it is apparent that there were some major internal issues relating to expenditure that they could never get sorted. (Of course, then STO went to Cryptic and P2 announced it was getting out of the MMO business before finally closing, thus ending the ironically named Perpetual Studios.)
Trials of Ascaron - a game with several never before seen races and permadeath.
Shadowrun - would have been a great cyberpunk MMO. Technology meets magic. Microsoft got the rights to the name made a real dumb FPS out of it and shitcanned the making of the mmo because the fps failed. Never , should have been an fps.
Trials of Ascaron - a game with several never before seen races and permadeath. Shadowrun - would have been a great cyberpunk MMO. Technology meets magic. Microsoft got the rights to the name made a real dumb FPS out of it and shitcanned the making of the mmo because the fps failed. Never , should have been an fps.
The guys who were working on the Shadowrun MMORPG with MS permission got the rug pulled out from under them shortly before the FPS came into the spotlight. The group is now known as Sixth World Games and since have been working on a new "Cyberpunk" inspired private project.
You also now have a new Shadowrun MMORPG being created through SourceForge called "Shadowrun: Awakened". It's been in development for a couple years now and is shaping up quite nicely.
So YOU'RE the other person who remembers this MMO! :-)
That's me! Actually I used to know someone who worked on this project. Apparently they had the rug pulled out from under them by Microsoft about the same time as Mythica. There was a massive shake up there just prior to the 360 launch and numerous titles deemed uncertain of returning a solid profit were canned at this time.
Once I was invited to their office on a visit to Sydney to see the game and it looked extremely playable at the time with twitch-based, real-time combat. It was stable and responsive and they had some really good ideas particularly relating to cooperative gameplay and problem solving. Apparently for a time it was also Identity Zero.
I've had this video laying on my hard-drive for some time. Given it's six years old I'm sure there's no harm in uploading to Youtube now for general consideration and musings on 'what might have been'...
Back when we were playing UO (pre-Trammel) and we longed for a game with as much freedom as UO, but with a less exploitable noto-system (blue PKs, thanks for helping ruin UO), those 2 games used to be our carrot-on-a-stick. People who wanted more linear, competitive level-like gameplay migrated to EQ, the rest of us never ever got lucky.
They finally gave us SWG, only to ruin it with ridiculous JeDi-systems (both holocron- and questbased systems were gamebreakers) and the legendary craptastic CU and NGE.
So, for me, the dreams that never meant to be: Middle Earth Online by Sierra, and DAWN by Glitchless.
I was really looking forward to UXO and Mythica at one point. Now I don't look forward to anything until 6 months after it is released. It saves me some disappointment.
... This is where I draw the line: __________________.
Why on earth did these poor people give up on this treasure. I believe this game honestly had some great qualities.
I was in the beta and enjoyed it so very much. I remember every time the server went down I'd be aching keenly for them
to bring it back again.
They had enjoyable classes that in my experience all seemed to be well thought, playable and equal.
I do hope that someone picks this game up and lets it loose. It was so close to gold. I am sure there is a very easy way to make it free to play. Guild Wars did it and if not then there's always micro purchases.
I can tell you with authority as I had an inside sources in Mutable Realms - Wish was canceled due to lack of interest from the potential subscribers. Not enough people signed up for the beta. Those people who were invited into the beta didn't stick around long, - some only played a couple of days. I think the writing was on the wall. If people wouldn't play for free, they wouldn't pay to play. While promising, it didn't have the word of mouth buzz and hype needed to get a large number of people to come and try it. It was determined the game would likely not be profitable, and the plug was pulled.
Must be nice to have sources on the inside... Turns out, I was actually on the dev team for that one when it was cancelled and I don't recall getting a reason.
I don't remember exactly how many people signed up for beta, but I DO know that it was quite a large number for an indie company at the time, and I remember that people were pretty pleased with it
Guess your sources must have been better than mine. In the office I worked in. I'm not saying that wasn't the reason, I'm just saying.
My source was in upper management. I spoke with him the day the game was canceled and he relayed the explanation above. I was in no way involved in the project mind you, just knew the guy personally, and was in the beta. Once I heard the news, I contacted him. He wasn't in the Halifax office, however, but I am sure you knew who he was.
Comments
So YOU'RE the other person who remembers this MMO! :-)
CZ had an interesting setting - a prison planet - and seemed to be doing something a bit different, but then Microsoft bought the rights to the BigWorld tech off Microprose and the title died a slow death. Meanwhile, BigWorld has given the MMO world nothing worth noting.
Others have come in to comment about Gods and Heroes - I was in the beta for several months. The Gods system was interesting - you pick a patron god and he gives you extra powers. The pets system was interesting in theory - you could get a team of pets around you to help, although healer AI was broken so it didn't heal you. Also, everyone got access to a special 'personal camp' instance that let you upgrade your pets (in theory). Combat animations - including grapple animations - were very good for the most part.
However, the game was going to launch with no crafting or PvP and you need these things to compete, even if you do a half-ass job on them. The original character advancement system was scrapped in favour of a skill tree system because players were finding the original system too hard. There were a lot of bugs still to fix and the world was comparatively small to walk around in (zone maps weren't that big and sometimes you were forced to walk around a landmark that blocked the 'short' path).
G&H was cancelled at the point that it was considered (or was very near) feature and content complete for launch. It needed a lot of bug fixing, but it was ramping up for launch before the pin was pulled. If it had launched it wouldn't have competed that well, but might have got a crowd that would have kept development on it (and perhaps STO) going.
That said, all in all its cancellation wasn't a big loss to the MMO market.
SWG's failure was launching without jedi, stars or wars. NGE was a symptom of the original failure, not the point where it actually failed.
Star Wars Galaxies was the exception. The ONLY reason it failed was the NGE. If it were not for that, the game would still probably be blistering and bustling with activity.
SWG was barely clinging to life for a long time. It had one of the worst launches in MMO history, introduced the worst game mechanic in MMO history (unlocking Jedi), and was so poorly optimized no one could go in a city without nearly crashing. The only thing that kept that MMO out of the garbage bin was the Star Wars License.
The new SW "MMO" looks even worse. Basically just a glorified single player game.
Darkfall Travelogues!
Yes, back in the day, I was really hyped on Gods and Heroes. Too bad about Perpetual.
Out of this list, I felt that Wish has the greatest chance to really change the 'status quo' of the (at the time) stagnation of MMO design.
When reading through the featured games listed, I wonder how many of them had their futures altered by the emergence of WoW, and how many that never made the list.
-----
The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
My top 3 would be
UO2
Multiplayer Battletech 3025
and the original Horizons
dragon empires was the one i missed most
UO2 shuld never have been scrapped and EA inexperience in mmorpg showed there.to let the ultima franchise die is such a big shame.
it should have been there with the everquest name if not higher
BUMP
QQ
an older article worth reading
Famous (and infamous) tales of PC game delays and cancellations.
www.1up.com/do/feature
EQ2 fan sites
I really wanted to play G&H. Im still not sure I understand what happened.
WISH! I loved that game
Played beta and couldn't wait for its release...then it was randomly cancelled 
The one thing I liked about Perpetual's Trek Online was that you weren't automatically a captain, you went in to the different job types they had (medical, engineering, sciences, etc.) TBH, I didn't want to be Kirk, I wanted to be Scotty! Now it's just going to be you and a bunch of npc's running the ship rather than having active players doing stuff like that. A captaincy is something to be earned, not given.
To quote from TNG's ep "Relics".. "Captain I may be in rank, but I never wanted to be anything but an engineer." - Scotty
I remember BETA testing WISH when the announcement came to shut it down. I thought to myself, "Yep, that's about right."
Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
From my complete outsider's point of view, it looked like Perpetual evaluated the likelihood of G&H being a success and generating enough profit to justify its launch vs. the expected profit off of Star Trek Online. So rather than having their resources split between two titles, the more profitable one - STO - was selected and G&H was mothballed.
Given that Perpetual didn't take long to announce their own bankrupcy, restart as P2 and buy all the assets of Perpetual at discounted prices in order to try and keep STO going it is apparent that there were some major internal issues relating to expenditure that they could never get sorted. (Of course, then STO went to Cryptic and P2 announced it was getting out of the MMO business before finally closing, thus ending the ironically named Perpetual Studios.)
Dragon Empires (Codemasters) belonged on there more than STO or G&H.
Bear "replicant" Powell
"I am Shaolin-Style!"
Trials of Ascaron - a game with several never before seen races and permadeath.
Shadowrun - would have been a great cyberpunk MMO. Technology meets magic. Microsoft got the rights to the name made a real dumb FPS out of it and shitcanned the making of the mmo because the fps failed. Never , should have been an fps.
The guys who were working on the Shadowrun MMORPG with MS permission got the rug pulled out from under them shortly before the FPS came into the spotlight. The group is now known as Sixth World Games and since have been working on a new "Cyberpunk" inspired private project.
You also now have a new Shadowrun MMORPG being created through SourceForge called "Shadowrun: Awakened". It's been in development for a couple years now and is shaping up quite nicely.
Bear "replicant" Powell
"I am Shaolin-Style!"
So YOU'RE the other person who remembers this MMO! :-)
That's me!
Actually I used to know someone who worked on this project. Apparently they had the rug pulled out from under them by Microsoft about the same time as Mythica. There was a massive shake up there just prior to the 360 launch and numerous titles deemed uncertain of returning a solid profit were canned at this time.
Once I was invited to their office on a visit to Sydney to see the game and it looked extremely playable at the time with twitch-based, real-time combat. It was stable and responsive and they had some really good ideas particularly relating to cooperative gameplay and problem solving. Apparently for a time it was also Identity Zero.
I've had this video laying on my hard-drive for some time. Given it's six years old I'm sure there's no harm in uploading to Youtube now for general consideration and musings on 'what might have been'...
www.youtube.com/watch
Enjoy.
Nice list, but : I miss Dawn and MEO on it.
Back when we were playing UO (pre-Trammel) and we longed for a game with as much freedom as UO, but with a less exploitable noto-system (blue PKs, thanks for helping ruin UO), those 2 games used to be our carrot-on-a-stick. People who wanted more linear, competitive level-like gameplay migrated to EQ, the rest of us never ever got lucky.
They finally gave us SWG, only to ruin it with ridiculous JeDi-systems (both holocron- and questbased systems were gamebreakers) and the legendary craptastic CU and NGE.
So, for me, the dreams that never meant to be: Middle Earth Online by Sierra, and DAWN by Glitchless.
Was in GnH beta too. Not bad, nice graphics, maybe the best graphics with AOC but a diablo like for me. With a lot of bugs.
Lets see here:
1: Crap.
2: Crap.
3: Crap.
4: Crap.
5: Awesomeness.
I'm Awesome, Deal With It.
I was really looking forward to UXO and Mythica at one point. Now I don't look forward to anything until 6 months after it is released. It saves me some disappointment.
...
This is where I draw the line: __________________.
Gods and Heros was the big one for me too.
Why on earth did these poor people give up on this treasure. I believe this game honestly had some great qualities.
I was in the beta and enjoyed it so very much. I remember every time the server went down I'd be aching keenly for them
to bring it back again.
They had enjoyable classes that in my experience all seemed to be well thought, playable and equal.
I do hope that someone picks this game up and lets it loose. It was so close to gold. I am sure there is a very easy way to make it free to play. Guild Wars did it and if not then there's always micro purchases.
Whoever owns it now hear my plea LET IT FREE!
Must be nice to have sources on the inside... Turns out, I was actually on the dev team for that one when it was cancelled and I don't recall getting a reason.
I don't remember exactly how many people signed up for beta, but I DO know that it was quite a large number for an indie company at the time, and I remember that people were pretty pleased with it
Guess your sources must have been better than mine. In the office I worked in. I'm not saying that wasn't the reason, I'm just saying.
My source was in upper management. I spoke with him the day the game was canceled and he relayed the explanation above. I was in no way involved in the project mind you, just knew the guy personally, and was in the beta. Once I heard the news, I contacted him. He wasn't in the Halifax office, however, but I am sure you knew who he was.