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General: Massively.com is Closing, Officially
BillMurphy
Former Managing EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 4,565
This is not something we want to write, even though Massively is our closest competitor. The venerable MMO news and opinion site is being shutter down on Tuesday, February 3rd as a part of parent company AOL's restructuring.
Editor in Chief Bree Royce took to the site to announce the closure:
This week, we learned our AOL overlords have decided that they no longer wish to be in the enthusiast blog business and are shutting all of them down. This mass-sunset includes decade-old gaming journalism icon Joystiq, and therefore, it includes us. February 3rd, 2015, will be the final day of operation for Massively-that-was.
I would like to be able to tell you truthfully that this is an equitable and just decision that makes some sort of logical sense, but the reality is that our overlords' decisions have always been unfathomable. I know more of what I know about corporate from reading tech and finance news than through my own job. We all suspected this was coming eventually a year ago when a VP whose name I don't even know and who never read our site chose to reward our staggering, hard-won 40% year-over-year page view growth by... hacking our budget in half. There's nothing to do in the face of that kind of logic but throw your hands in the air. It's not about merit or lack thereof, and it's not about journalism or gaming being dead or anything grand like that, so there's no point in taking it personally.
Some will take this closure as a sign of the times, or a sign of the MMO decline... this isn't that. Those may be true in some sense, but Massively had/has been doing fine for years. This is a clear case of people at top cutting those below them to save their numbers when they go to a shareholder meeting.
If I have one wish, it would be for Massively and Joystiq and others affected to get bought up by someone with sense to rebuild the sites instead of wasting their brand and loyal communities.
But that won't happen, because the world's not fair. Instead, we're losing a valuable resource for our favorite genre's fans. If there's anything to come of this, hopefully some of those fine people at Massively get jobs elsewhere in the industry. Their voices will be missed.
Here's to you all at Massively... we salute you.
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
Comments
/salute.
I haven't seen twitterings of movements from staff at Massively and WoW Insider. I really hope for their sakes that works out for them.
That´s bad.
Team up with them, I think they were good people.
Let´s be honest this site needs a fresh design anyway. And offer a premium ad-free account FFS. I´ll pay for it, don´t worry.
It's too bad. I'm glad MMORPG is being supportive instead of being that bully on Simpsons who says "HA-HA!"
City of Heroes was also sundowned to make the corp numbers look good. IMHO such things are fundamentally deceptive because they're present a distorted picture of the kind of job they've been doing.
I'll be honest. The reason I always went to Massively first, over MMORPG (which will now have to be my temporary home for a bit), is that Massively always had a better layout to their site. New articles were right there at the top, and it was all in a nice clean blog format, on a WHITE background. It was easy to navigate, crisp and to the point. Yep... the layout of the website was what made the difference to me, not the writers.
The website at MMORPG has always been so cluttered and busy in appearance. Theres too many little broken up sections just on the front page, the white text on black background is harsh on the eyes... and nobody really needs that dedicated spot for the columnists. Thats just clutter. If the same article is popping up in several places on a front page, its clutter. I just want news, thats it.
Farewell massively, hello clusterpuck.
3 sites in the background while I'm at work always. Massively, MMORPG, ESO forums.........
Sad.
View more silliness at http://www.youtube.com/thehiveleader
All I can say is awesome! I haven't been to that page of sellouts for at least a year (or whenever management changed)
Good riddance.
Sad to hear. I just used it for a quick front page article check but a great source for news.
Hopefully MMORPG can pick up the slack in the article area. Massively seemed to have more insider info. Indie developers seem eager to provide information and shouldn't be hard to get real insider information for MMORPG.com.
You stay sassy!
Utterly ridiculous!
Massively is a fantastic website, and I am going to miss them immensely.
As you said Bill, hopefully someone buys them up who has the sense to keep a good thing going. Very sad and I am so sorry to all those who are affected by this stupidity.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Real classy...
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
It's very sad. It's one of the few remaining sites that has any influence over MMO companies - most of them would instantly respond to Massively's articles while ignoring players. It's been a great site for news.
I'd certainly see no reason for any staff (or members) here to gloat. More resources, more articles, it's good for everyone. This is very bad.
I saw that the staff hope to form some sort of new site, I hope that's the case, and it gets support.
I would hope that we here at MMORPG would never be that unprofessional. I have always regarded the folks at Massively as colleagues one step removed and a couple of them are even friends outside of 'work'. I wish every one of them lands on their feet and succeeds in their next adventure.
AOL, need they say more?
New players can get a welcome package and old/returning players can also get a welcome back package and 7 days free subscription time! Just click here to use my referral invitation
For those lamenting that we're a bit overdue for a redesign? Never fear. It's coming, and sooner than you think.
We may even have a teaser for you next week.
RE: Massively? Syp (Justin) is one of my oldest gaming blogger buddies. We "came up" together from blogging. He and the rest of the staff are great, and I really wish I could just bring them all here.
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
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Why don't you do that then? Fire some of your staff and go pick up the cream of the crop, maybe give everyone pay cuts to make room in the budget? What do you say Bill? For mankind?Ridiculous decision !
Massively, MMORPG and TenTonHammer (before design layout mind you) have been my daily updates for everything MMO and RPG related.
These are people who know what they're talking about, I very much hope this team can continue in some form!
Joystiq is closing. And all its side blogs.
But regardless its also shows that MMO are slowly dieing as a genre of gaming.