EA also closed up Westwood. Some of those guys went on to make huge games with Valve, among other big companies, so don't weep. While E&B may be gone, the people who created it are still getting along.
Earth & Beyond has my vote and it's still sorelly missed even all this time.
Dang EA, this was the 2nd MMO i played that they bought just to close down (i used to play Legends of Kesmai when EA bought the Online Service GameStorm to close it down and redeirect players to Ultima Online)...
...since their main focus seems to be The Sims line of games... maybe they should launch a game where the Sims were a bunch of clueless suits of a gaming company that didn't had a clue what they were doing and needed player help to get out of gaming crapper... "The Sims: Art Electronics"
EnB was so unique.. I never got to endgame and never saw anything like boss fights.. but the game was just fun and relaxing to play. The controls and flight just felt ´perfect´... I really love the graphics too.. I still remember my ship name.. The Exodus.... in honor of my leaving UO for EnB.
Some of the others on lhe list i tried, but they were more hype than fun. TR in particular was never fun for me. I played it because of RG and all the craziness outside the game, but in the game it was just not fun.
E&B is the one MMO that i miss the most. There was a group doing a private server rebuild of the game but that seems to have failed. Was really hoping they would pull it off so i could play that one again.
I so wish they could bring this one back.
It has not failed. read back a few post for the current link. It is alive an well.
I miss Asheron's Call 2 so much. Towards the end, the game was at the state it should have launched in, but alas, MS forced the release far too early. AC2 had so many unique class mechanics for the time, like the tactician or hivekeeper. I really miss the game.
Honestly, I would be willing to pay a duo sub for AC1 and AC2, just open a couple of AC2 servers make the game free and make the first 50 levels a never ending trial. If you want to go to Hero Island and beyond for leveling, then you'd need an "asheron's call" package, and get access to both for one low price.
Better yet, add freemium for the both and add things like additional playable races for purchase.
"What players? BEFORE NCSoft announced they were closing the game it was down to 20k subs or less. TR as good as it was at times had some parts that simply ruined the game. The war was boring. The PVP was atrocious and the crafting horrible. The bane just never felt like an enemy worthy of having kicked us off of Earth."
Ya, I agree. That game started off really good and just felt lame later on. It's like the developers put their heart and soul into the beginning of the game to hook people but didn't bother with the rest of the game?
Earth and Beyond was my first MMO that i actually paid attention to.....stopped playing it because we couldnt it afford it and when i finally could again.....DEAD GAME. i still have the disks here and ocassionally look at them when i'm digging through stuff and get a tiny little tear in my eye.
From above played only Chronicles and Tabula Rasa. For the first I lost interest in few weeks, stopeed to play Tabula Rasa after few days with pretty a lot of unused time of 30 days free time. Record of all times. Never looked back. So at least for this two do not agree at all with op. Best? Nope, bad, uninteresting games. So only possible solution for company was to cancel. I also understand that somebody put a lot of time and effort in ... but this is not guarantee something will be success.
People supporting AC2 utterly miss the point that Turbine prostituted the IP in order to put out a class based game more similar to EQ. They marketed it to their original player base as a true sequal and pulled from that crowd hoping for support of their new baby.
It was new Turbine leadership (with MS thrown in at the time) who misled their cult-like fanbase into thinking AC2 was an actual sequal. The primary reason the game failed was not due to the early release. It was due to the original player base rejecting it and the company they fell in love with and the fact the game wasn't good enough to hold the interest of the other gamers they hoped to tap. AC1 had many players return but it had hurt it's numbers and further pushed Turbine onto the mmo cloning bandwagon it has become ever since. Turbine had killed their cult status forever because of AC2.
AC2 should have been an entirely different IP and later made a true successor to AC. As it stands now there is no word if AC will ever gain a real sequal and each passing year the IP becomes less and less known.
I don't care in the least why you liked AC2 (the class concepts were interesting but the world uninspired and skill trees a mess beyond repair ... too much rose tinted glasses out there) but one should understand how Turbine played a bait and switch, backstabbing the very playerbase who supported them from day 1 by stealing their own IP in order to clone another mmo model with hopes of sweat money.
AC was a labor of love and a game for the players.
AC2 was a money grabbing scheme which failed because ultimately it wasn't a good game and was driven by a company who lost vision and passion for game making. Even now they only strive to 'rent' IP's like LotR and D&D and *GAHGASPWEEEEZE* Harry Potter?!?!?
R.I.P. Turbine and the path finding balls they once owned.
I am still very confused how ANYONE could fail with a MMO based on the Matrix... It practically writes it self... You don't even have to invent a reason to explain why there are game mechanics... The movies have done that for you.
Still that was one crappy game and SoE is in no way to blame for it's death... Blame WB for that if anything.
Agree.
Matrix is the perfect IP for a mmo
Gameplay wise Matrix Online was an awesome game.
The skill trees were just great and gave lots of flexibility in gameplay and gave players the ability to create unique characters. Something you now see in Trion's game Rift and the upcoming mmo The Secret World.
The combat system, eventho a bit clunky at the beginning was actually cool when you got the hang of it.
It had a great community and large following during Closed Beta and shortly after launch.
They executed a lot of things very well, like gameplay, world design, art.
Where it failed at was on the technical side of things.
There was a huge exploit in the game at launch, which was abused by many, especially on PVP servers, which caused the PVP servers to become totally unplayable within a week, with max level/max skill players ganking and griefing every zone in point in the new player areas. And with no safe zones whatsoever it became litterly a campfest and impossible to start playing on the PVP servers. These players litterly caused a selffulfilling prophecy by killing off the PVP servers right from the get go.
Worse was how Monolith and WB were handling these exploits and refused to ban these exploiters, leaving these problems in place and exploiters continueing rampaging the PVP servers to their death.
Then there were the Live server events that caused the servers litterly to crash and being down most of the time for days on end during the course of these live events.
And as they had these events pretty much 1 to 2 times a month... the servers were crashing and down half the time... pissing off pretty much everyone.
As 3-4 months later they still weren't able to fix the server stability issues and were stupid enough to launch a comeback and invite your family campain, AGAIN causing all the servers to crash in the coming weeks after. It was totally ridiculous.
It was really a shame, as I was part of Closed Beta for months and really loved the game! But just like pretty much everyone else, I got totally fed up with the server stability issues and the server crashing and being down half the time.
But the final nail in the coffin was after SOE took over and a weird issue with textures and shadows cropped up with players running newer videocards and Vista / Windows 7. An issue within the engine they were never able to fix nor get sorted with ATI / NVidia.
Tabula Rasa was good in the beta, the way they stopped listening to people failed the game - I would have subscribed for it but they made it a grind instead of fun, sad time that was.
Earth and Beyond I still have fond memories of and it was weird that they cancelled the game as the space flight was really solid and fun experience.
E&B was different in a cool way. However, AA and TR should never have gone live as they did. I really felt that the developers ignored beta testing feedback (mine as well as many many others) for both of those and the games suffered for it. I never had a chance to play TCoS or AC2 so I can't really judge them.
Tabula Rasa and EnB were the two that I really enjoyed from that list. With TR, there were times when I'd jump into a battle with my character and start tossing bombs and then turning on my machine gun, and it was just a blast (for lack of better word). During those times when you were trying to hold a position against overwhelming odds just can't be seen in any other game that doesn't cause you to die immediately (or be overpowered to the point where you just can't die). I never had so much more fun before.
Where TR was lacking was in higher level content. There wasn't anything to do but fight. And after some time, that gets old.
EnB was another game that suffered from lack of content. Once you hit a certain point, explored the universe, there really wasn't much more to do. There needed to be further exploration and discoveries to keep the game going. Sadly, they focused on the lower end content and let the higher end stuff just rot. And rather than fix that, they just shuttered the shop.
Both were great games that didn't live up to their potential. And that's the tragedy.
What should be done with all of these games is that they should be sold to a developer who can then create a single player (or multi player) environment so that those who enjoyed the universe can continue to enjoy it but through a different experience. Sadly, they never do that. There are so many games that can be developed based on what was already created. Sadly, they will want to protect their property so much that they'll do nothing with it rather than give it back to their fans.
I've played every game on that list. The truth is I can see why they died out but I also can see where the potential was and when it was lost.
Spellborn: I didn't play it much but when I got the chance to sit down with it I just remember that other games had my attention at the time and I felt that the game wasn't solid enough to hold me.
Auto Assault: I loved this game but I wont lie, I left it. I liked it because it was fast paced, I had a house and an avatar (to bad housing was done badly). The problem was they had too much trinity in it, You know your fighter/cleric/dps feel to it and the population was small to begin with. It was nearly impossible to do anything in the gamen because most of the content required you to have a group.
Tobula Rasa: Fun game but it lacked a lot. I never could put my finger on it but I always felt the game could be so much more but it just wasn't. What bothered me was that you fought the same ant-human like badies from 1-end game and even though it was a war game that never goes over well with players. I just remember that the game lacked so much, no pvp, no housing, no other races at launch. Lord British himself probably killed it for me because hearing that he was on board made me think that the game was going to be a "UO in space" but it turned out to be a half cooked "WoW in space" and people reacted accordingly.
Earth & Beyond: I remember at the time the game didn't fit my desires for a space MMO. It was similar to fighter class ships and I wanted something similar to EVE or STO. I always regret not giving that game a longer chance. Afterall it had avatars at launch and EVE is just now getting them.
Ashron's Call 2: This game was tough to swallow for me. I was an avid fan of AC1 and I didn't apreciate at the time that "post-apaclyptic" fantasy feel that they had going. I was just upset that all the buildings were destroyed and I couldn't "walk inside them". I think the truth was that back then I hadn't gotten my fill of AC1 and so I did go back. It would have been nice to see if AC2 could have lasted if the uber rich company of Microsoft could have spared its couch change to keep its servers running.
I played Tabula Rasa in beta and really liked it. I was busy with another game at the time but bought the box and had plans to get to playing it sometime.
Now it is gone, ah well, I hope they bring it back even in some f2p format.
Comments
EA also closed up Westwood. Some of those guys went on to make huge games with Valve, among other big companies, so don't weep. While E&B may be gone, the people who created it are still getting along.
I played them all except chronicles of spellborn..
Auto assault was to me the coolest of the lot..
Playing GW2..
Earth & Beyond has my vote and it's still sorelly missed even all this time.
Dang EA, this was the 2nd MMO i played that they bought just to close down (i used to play Legends of Kesmai when EA bought the Online Service GameStorm to close it down and redeirect players to Ultima Online)...
...since their main focus seems to be The Sims line of games... maybe they should launch a game where the Sims were a bunch of clueless suits of a gaming company that didn't had a clue what they were doing and needed player help to get out of gaming crapper... "The Sims: Art Electronics"
E&B is the one MMO that i miss the most. There was a group doing a private server rebuild of the game but that seems to have failed. Was really hoping they would pull it off so i could play that one again.
I so wish they could bring this one back.
It has not failed. read back a few post for the current link. It is alive an well.I miss Asheron's Call 2 so much. Towards the end, the game was at the state it should have launched in, but alas, MS forced the release far too early. AC2 had so many unique class mechanics for the time, like the tactician or hivekeeper. I really miss the game.
Honestly, I would be willing to pay a duo sub for AC1 and AC2, just open a couple of AC2 servers make the game free and make the first 50 levels a never ending trial. If you want to go to Hero Island and beyond for leveling, then you'd need an "asheron's call" package, and get access to both for one low price.
Better yet, add freemium for the both and add things like additional playable races for purchase.
+1
"What players? BEFORE NCSoft announced they were closing the game it was down to 20k subs or less. TR as good as it was at times had some parts that simply ruined the game. The war was boring. The PVP was atrocious and the crafting horrible. The bane just never felt like an enemy worthy of having kicked us off of Earth."
Ya, I agree. That game started off really good and just felt lame later on. It's like the developers put their heart and soul into the beginning of the game to hook people but didn't bother with the rest of the game?
Hmmm Chronicles of Spellborn was published as F2P by Acclaim.
But I think it was the European server.
Earth and Beyond was my first MMO that i actually paid attention to.....stopped playing it because we couldnt it afford it and when i finally could again.....DEAD GAME. i still have the disks here and ocassionally look at them when i'm digging through stuff and get a tiny little tear in my eye.
I still miss AA
From above played only Chronicles and Tabula Rasa. For the first I lost interest in few weeks, stopeed to play Tabula Rasa after few days with pretty a lot of unused time of 30 days free time. Record of all times. Never looked back. So at least for this two do not agree at all with op. Best? Nope, bad, uninteresting games. So only possible solution for company was to cancel. I also understand that somebody put a lot of time and effort in ... but this is not guarantee something will be success.
People supporting AC2 utterly miss the point that Turbine prostituted the IP in order to put out a class based game more similar to EQ. They marketed it to their original player base as a true sequal and pulled from that crowd hoping for support of their new baby.
It was new Turbine leadership (with MS thrown in at the time) who misled their cult-like fanbase into thinking AC2 was an actual sequal. The primary reason the game failed was not due to the early release. It was due to the original player base rejecting it and the company they fell in love with and the fact the game wasn't good enough to hold the interest of the other gamers they hoped to tap. AC1 had many players return but it had hurt it's numbers and further pushed Turbine onto the mmo cloning bandwagon it has become ever since. Turbine had killed their cult status forever because of AC2.
AC2 should have been an entirely different IP and later made a true successor to AC. As it stands now there is no word if AC will ever gain a real sequal and each passing year the IP becomes less and less known.
I don't care in the least why you liked AC2 (the class concepts were interesting but the world uninspired and skill trees a mess beyond repair ... too much rose tinted glasses out there) but one should understand how Turbine played a bait and switch, backstabbing the very playerbase who supported them from day 1 by stealing their own IP in order to clone another mmo model with hopes of sweat money.
AC was a labor of love and a game for the players.
AC2 was a money grabbing scheme which failed because ultimately it wasn't a good game and was driven by a company who lost vision and passion for game making. Even now they only strive to 'rent' IP's like LotR and D&D and *GAHGASPWEEEEZE* Harry Potter?!?!?
R.I.P. Turbine and the path finding balls they once owned.
You stay sassy!
Gameplay wise Matrix Online was an awesome game.
The skill trees were just great and gave lots of flexibility in gameplay and gave players the ability to create unique characters. Something you now see in Trion's game Rift and the upcoming mmo The Secret World.
The combat system, eventho a bit clunky at the beginning was actually cool when you got the hang of it.
It had a great community and large following during Closed Beta and shortly after launch.
They executed a lot of things very well, like gameplay, world design, art.
Where it failed at was on the technical side of things.
There was a huge exploit in the game at launch, which was abused by many, especially on PVP servers, which caused the PVP servers to become totally unplayable within a week, with max level/max skill players ganking and griefing every zone in point in the new player areas. And with no safe zones whatsoever it became litterly a campfest and impossible to start playing on the PVP servers. These players litterly caused a selffulfilling prophecy by killing off the PVP servers right from the get go.
Worse was how Monolith and WB were handling these exploits and refused to ban these exploiters, leaving these problems in place and exploiters continueing rampaging the PVP servers to their death.
Then there were the Live server events that caused the servers litterly to crash and being down most of the time for days on end during the course of these live events.
And as they had these events pretty much 1 to 2 times a month... the servers were crashing and down half the time... pissing off pretty much everyone.
As 3-4 months later they still weren't able to fix the server stability issues and were stupid enough to launch a comeback and invite your family campain, AGAIN causing all the servers to crash in the coming weeks after. It was totally ridiculous.
It was really a shame, as I was part of Closed Beta for months and really loved the game! But just like pretty much everyone else, I got totally fed up with the server stability issues and the server crashing and being down half the time.
But the final nail in the coffin was after SOE took over and a weird issue with textures and shadows cropped up with players running newer videocards and Vista / Windows 7. An issue within the engine they were never able to fix nor get sorted with ATI / NVidia.
Tabula Rasa was good in the beta, the way they stopped listening to people failed the game - I would have subscribed for it but they made it a grind instead of fun, sad time that was.
Earth and Beyond I still have fond memories of and it was weird that they cancelled the game as the space flight was really solid and fun experience.
I still miss Tabula Rasa. It had its problems but it was something I was really able to get lost in.
+1
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
R.I.P TCoS!
That game still holds a special place for me. Beautiful art, fun combat system and the only MMO where I've ever read all the quests.
It had incredible potential. I only played it a month or two before the bugs and some broken mechanics became too much. But I enjoyed that time.
O_o o_O
E&B was different in a cool way. However, AA and TR should never have gone live as they did. I really felt that the developers ignored beta testing feedback (mine as well as many many others) for both of those and the games suffered for it. I never had a chance to play TCoS or AC2 so I can't really judge them.
Tabula Rasa and EnB were the two that I really enjoyed from that list. With TR, there were times when I'd jump into a battle with my character and start tossing bombs and then turning on my machine gun, and it was just a blast (for lack of better word). During those times when you were trying to hold a position against overwhelming odds just can't be seen in any other game that doesn't cause you to die immediately (or be overpowered to the point where you just can't die). I never had so much more fun before.
Where TR was lacking was in higher level content. There wasn't anything to do but fight. And after some time, that gets old.
EnB was another game that suffered from lack of content. Once you hit a certain point, explored the universe, there really wasn't much more to do. There needed to be further exploration and discoveries to keep the game going. Sadly, they focused on the lower end content and let the higher end stuff just rot. And rather than fix that, they just shuttered the shop.
Both were great games that didn't live up to their potential. And that's the tragedy.
What should be done with all of these games is that they should be sold to a developer who can then create a single player (or multi player) environment so that those who enjoyed the universe can continue to enjoy it but through a different experience. Sadly, they never do that. There are so many games that can be developed based on what was already created. Sadly, they will want to protect their property so much that they'll do nothing with it rather than give it back to their fans.
My blog:
http://www.littlesarbonn.com
I agree. Unfortunately, the problem is NCSoft being unwilling to sell it.
I've played every game on that list. The truth is I can see why they died out but I also can see where the potential was and when it was lost.
Spellborn: I didn't play it much but when I got the chance to sit down with it I just remember that other games had my attention at the time and I felt that the game wasn't solid enough to hold me.
Auto Assault: I loved this game but I wont lie, I left it. I liked it because it was fast paced, I had a house and an avatar (to bad housing was done badly). The problem was they had too much trinity in it, You know your fighter/cleric/dps feel to it and the population was small to begin with. It was nearly impossible to do anything in the gamen because most of the content required you to have a group.
Tobula Rasa: Fun game but it lacked a lot. I never could put my finger on it but I always felt the game could be so much more but it just wasn't. What bothered me was that you fought the same ant-human like badies from 1-end game and even though it was a war game that never goes over well with players. I just remember that the game lacked so much, no pvp, no housing, no other races at launch. Lord British himself probably killed it for me because hearing that he was on board made me think that the game was going to be a "UO in space" but it turned out to be a half cooked "WoW in space" and people reacted accordingly.
Earth & Beyond: I remember at the time the game didn't fit my desires for a space MMO. It was similar to fighter class ships and I wanted something similar to EVE or STO. I always regret not giving that game a longer chance. Afterall it had avatars at launch and EVE is just now getting them.
Ashron's Call 2: This game was tough to swallow for me. I was an avid fan of AC1 and I didn't apreciate at the time that "post-apaclyptic" fantasy feel that they had going. I was just upset that all the buildings were destroyed and I couldn't "walk inside them". I think the truth was that back then I hadn't gotten my fill of AC1 and so I did go back. It would have been nice to see if AC2 could have lasted if the uber rich company of Microsoft could have spared its couch change to keep its servers running.
What about...
Motor City Online, that game was AWESOME. It was the only TRUE gearhead car game online.
Then there is...
Multiplayer Battletech : 3025 by EA. Another outstanding MMO concept crushed by bad plans.
Neocron2, that was another great online game that was canceled, and really the only futuristic game that didnt have ships or space.
So much crap, so little quality.
I played Tabula Rasa in beta and really liked it. I was busy with another game at the time but bought the box and had plans to get to playing it sometime.
Now it is gone, ah well, I hope they bring it back even in some f2p format.
auto assault + F2P model + lessons learned + revised ways to implement MMO elements = resurrection? crosses fingers.
<a href="http://www.enjin.com/"; alt="guild hosting"><img src="http://sigs.enjin.com/sig-ffxiv/29734_e07e81c20cf5935f.png"></a>;
earth and beyond was my first mmo, I miss it so much, there are servers for it that people made but it just isnt the same, I soo miss you .
playing eq2 and two worlds