Speculation Much?

I have seen many of these things when people leave an online who was keeping the story going and all that.  I started playing Matrix Online as I was getting bored with wow and all the bs that comes with it.

Just maybe we are all speculating that this is the end of MxO or Warner Bros and SOE wasn't happy with the results of rarebits efforts. 

It wouldn't surprise me if Warner Bros and SOE have secret plans to revive the story to their liking and not ours.  Many MMO's go through restructuring efforts to bring fresh people in with fresh ideas.

I remember the beta phase of this game well as I was in it but I never grabbed the game after it went live.  Now that I see the improvements made to MxO I am happy to keep playing until SOE decides to shut it down. 

Matrix has a great story and it's thrilling but some people don't share the same views when it comes to story telling like the developers and License holders do.  Again Business side of things suck.

I do not foresee MxO shutting down like ala Tabula Rasa.  As long as SOE and Warner Bros are still getting paid, they will keep things running and update things accordingly.

I have been in MMO's too long to know this is a fact of the business side of things. 

-Alethios

youve got some good points, but you need to look at SOEs other ventures, i.e the Agency and DC Online etc they are going to be the big sucessful ones as they are new, and they are the ones they want to be sucessful, MMOs go through restructures and big changes when they are the main project for the company running it, the project in demand, MXO is not the project in demand for SOE, and not the sole project they put all their effort into which is why we are suffering

You're hopeful. You'll learn.

If SOE/WB/Wachowski or any combintation therein had was planning on restructuring MxO and it's storyline I think we would have heard something.  Instead we have an eery wall of silence from everyone regarding Rarebit's departure and the future.

As for SOE making money, and will therefore pump in updates.  In the perfect world such a thing would be true.  In reality, they probably see alot of people staying subbed because they have said they will "be here till the end".  Then they just need to keep the server power switch in the "on" position.

Alright...  I don't know how to make this sound anything but elitist, so I'll just go:

I have no idea how long you've been here, Alethios.  You said you were in beta, but never got the game until it went live...  your forum handle says you've been a member since today.  With this, I can only assume that you were in beta, didn't buy the game when it came out, and only just now started to really play the game.

That's great.  Welcome to MxO, and I'm happy you're having a good time.

But some of us have been here since the very beginning and have experienced the full four years this game has been live.  We have seen the game switch ownership.  We have seen the Live Events Team taken from us.  We experienced six months of absolutely no content...  no live events, no critical missions, no patches, no updates when SOE first took reign...  which caused the game's population to drop tremendously.  We've lost "Through the Looking Glass".  We watched as our new Live Events scaled down dramatically.  We lost one of our two content developers, HCFrog.  We've now lost the other content developer, Rarebit.  That leaves 9mmfu and Dracomet, who I haven't seen for months...  so, we may have even lost them.

The only thing we have been told is "the future is hazy".

Look man, I want to think positively and think everything will be hunkydoory, but all that's ever happened to us in this game is to have one thing after another taken from us.  Nothing is ever replaced.  SOE has never advertised this game, not even ONCE in the entire time they've had it.  The game was given to them as part of the deal to get the DC Universe game.  The only face time we've ever gotten with SOE are small segments on the SOE podcast that Virrago has managed to net for us.

SOE has never EVER given two squats about MxO.  We have been here, we have seen as much.  I really doubt that now, when we're in the middle of an economic crisis, they'd really want to put any kind of focus on a game they've all but shunned.

Fen wrote: SampleNow agrees with:

Alright...  I don't know how to make this sound anything but elitist, so I'll just go:

I have no idea how long you've been here, Alethios.  You said you were in beta, but never got the game until it went live...  your forum handle says you've been a member since today.  With this, I can only assume that you were in beta, didn't buy the game when it came out, and only just now started to really play the game.

That's great.  Welcome to MxO, and I'm happy you're having a good time.

But some of us have been here since the very beginning and have experienced the full four years this game has been live.  We have seen the game switch ownership.  We have seen the Live Events Team taken from us.  We experienced six months of absolutely no content...  no live events, no critical missions, no patches, no updates when SOE first took reign...  which caused the game's population to drop tremendously.  We've lost "Through the Looking Glass".  We watched as our new Live Events scaled down dramatically.  We lost one of our two content developers, HCFrog.  We've now lost the other content developer, Rarebit.  That leaves 9mmfu and Dracomet, who I haven't seen for months...  so, we may have even lost them.

The only thing we have been told is "the future is hazy".

Look man, I want to think positively and think everything will be hunkydoory, but all that's ever happened to us in this game is to have one thing after another taken from us.  Nothing is ever replaced.  SOE has never advertised this game, not even ONCE in the entire time they've had it.  The game was given to them as part of the deal to get the DC Universe game.  The only face time we've ever gotten with SOE are small segments on the SOE podcast that Virrago has managed to net for us.

SOE has never EVER given two squats about MxO.  We have been here, we have seen as much.  I really doubt that now, when we're in the middle of an economic crisis, they'd really want to put any kind of focus on a game they've all but shunned.

The only thing that SOE has given us is the fact they have never shut down a game.

I said this on another thread but it applies here.

At some point soon after the transition to SOE in late 2005, SOE chose for whatever reason not to commit any additional resources to this game, and only use the existing team and resources we have, period, end of story, no exceptions.   As old holdouts like Rare go, no one replaces them.  SOE hasn't spent one extra red cent on MxO and I really doubt they're gonna start now.

Its basically death by attrition, let the game bleed the to death.  No replacements for lost staff.  No replacements for lost players (in the form of marketing, advertising, etc.).  GF.

Jeez. Naysayers. We're represented quite well in the SOE family of games. In fact, when I went to FanFaire, they had us on their sign, front and center. Check it out!

Everquest... Everquest II... Free Realms... POTBS... SWG... Agency... GoH... New Products... Hm. The blurrinesss from my camera must have hidden MXO. But it's there. I swear!

With all due respect to the OP (I really do appreciate your optimism), do you know when the last time was that this MMO went through a "restructuring" of any kind?

CR2.0.

If such a thing were to happen, would it not be a prominent decision to make the player base aware of the impending changes?  

And if, just if, the last big item left in the game (AIM, then Server Merge, then CR1.0, then Live Events, then Sentinel, then Cinematics, then LESIG Liaisons, then Live Events/Cinematics, then Hovercraft Battles, then the Sentinel again) was taken away without so much as a peep from the Powers That Be for over two weeks, wouldn't you be speculating the end as well?

With all due respect, this isn't WoW.  And if you're coming to MxO from WoW to escape boredom, well...   that's a giant step backwards, in my opinion.  I think MxO could have plenty left...   *looks around for the Producer's Letter*  ...but then again...

Bayamos wrote:

Jeez. Naysayers. We're represented quite well in the SOE family of games. In fact, when I went to FanFaire, they had us on their sign, front and center. Check it out!

Everquest... Everquest II... Free Realms... POTBS... SWG... Agency... GoH... New Products... Hm. The blurrinesss from my camera must have hidden MXO. But it's there. I swear!

Bayamos Extreme Falling Kick did 65,000 damage to SOE.SOE was killed by Bayamos!

Bayamos wrote:

Jeez. Naysayers. We're represented quite well in the SOE family of games. In fact, when I went to FanFaire, they had us on their sign, front and center. Check it out!

Everquest... Everquest II... Free Realms... POTBS... SWG... Agency... GoH... New Products... Hm. The blurrinesss from my camera must have hidden MXO. But it's there. I swear!

Zing.

Phrack wrote:

And if, just if, the last big item left in the game (AIM, then Server Merge, then CR1.0, then Live Events, then Sentinel, then Cinematics, then LESIG Liaisons, then Live Events/Cinematics, then Hovercraft Battles, then the Sentinel again...

Ouch! Did I miss something?

I too would love to hold out hope of us being saved...

Personally I think this game has so much potential. Who knows maybeh some other company might buy it.... *Looks around at empty bidding room* Maybeh?

@Fen,

AS I stated before I was in the beta but didn't plunk down the cash to buy MxO when it launched due to concerns I had during beta.  How much more clear can I be on that one.  I just now plunked the cash down as wow is getting awful boring and well I'm tired of raiding..

-Alethios

alethios wrote:

SOE/WB or the wachowski bros do not have any obligations to disclose any future plans regarding anything until the time is right.

So right now MxO's future seem very hazy and that might be due to alot of things I pointed out in my original posts.  The MMO business model works in very mysterious ways and my optimisms stay true.

it's not like SOE/WB is pulling a SEGA by dropping support or leaving you all hanging altogether.  I suspect SOE/WB are in the evaluation stages on how to proceed further with MxO. 

MxO has a lot of potential and it's underused right now.

So just keep an open mind until some kind of announcement occurs as to the future of MxO.

If I was in charge of MxO I would do a cold hard reboot of MxO and pay for it out my own pocket and rollout a series of large updates over the next 16 months to bring the engine and renderers up to date.   Thats just me. 

-Alethios

I can admire such optimism.  You'll be proven wrong, but I admire it.

You can look at it like that.  Or be a pesimist (like myself and many others) so you won't be disappointed.

WB don't care about MxO.  What little money they get from MxO is loose change compared to their other ventures, or what the Matrix films brought in.  They won't complain about the extra cash, but certainly don't see the need to invest in it. 

SOE don't care about MxO.  The game is somewhat a niche to them.  There are so few players, compared to almost all their other MMOs that again we're just loose change.  They've seen their changes cause a mass exodus of players before, why risk doing it again?  So many of us are willing to hang on till the end anyway.

And the Wachowskis certainly don't care about MxO.  The films brought them plenty of cash, they don't worry about the future canonical storyline.  Heck, they ok'd the Path of Neo.  If ever anything gave the franchise a kick in the teeth, that game did.  But they didn't object to the extra money.  And, if they cared about MxO and the ongoing storyline, they would have wrote it themselves and ensured it go adhered to.

Phrack wrote:

ShiXinFeng wrote:

The really sad thing is, most of the people in this thread calling you down for your defiant optimism were, just a year or so ago, some of this game's staunchest supporters. I daresay anyone of them would do anything in their power to keep this game alive, if given the choice.

But it's tough to forget the sound of the whip cracking.

Shi's not wrong.

A year ago, I was one of the strongest voices of optimism on these forums.

Want to take a guess as to what happened?

Please, tell us what happened.

alethios wrote:

The MMO business model works in very mysterious ways

No it doesn't.

I find the idea of a sudden revival - spearheaded by Warner Bros. no less - to be laughable.