On the forums he had this to say:
In May 2004, I embarked upon a journey. I decided to take the red pill in a big way—I became the online community lead for The Matrix Online. Later that year, many of you joined me as you jacked in for the first time. It was a brand new world—a vision of online games that didn’t involve elves, spaceships, or dragons. We became part of the Matrix storyline; living our own adventures in the world painted by the movies.
It seems not so long ago I was jumping into Mara Central and going toe-to-toe with other devs at E3 2004. I had no idea this journey would take me to a whole different company, managing a major revision of the game, and my first producing gig. “Long, strange trip” doesn’t describe the half of it.
Now we’ve seen how far the rabbit hole goes and it’s time to wake up from that dream (or go back to sleep, depending how you look at it). On July 31, 2009, we will be jacking out for the last time. It’s a bittersweet moment for everyone involved with the game; as a player or as a developer.
It has been a good run. Where many games have fizzled out before or shortly after launch, by August we will have lived on in our home at SOE for more than 4 years. To this day, I have never worked with a community as dedicated as The Matrix Online community.
I’ll be at Fan Faire this year showing The Agency and hanging out with any redpills making the trip. The past couple years have been a blast, so I hope to see some of you there again..
The team will also be whipping up an end-of-the-world event. It won’t be quite the same as having over 100 developers in the game as Agents like when we ended beta, but we have 4 years of tricks up our sleeve. It’ll be a chance to revisit all the things that make MxO the memorable experience it is. And how could we pull the plug without crushing everyone’s RSI just one more time?
I have a lot of fond memories from my years working on MxO. We’ve had a good time in the Machines’ little playground and will be sad to see it end. I hope everyone enjoys the last few months of playing The Matrix Online.
See you on the other side.
Daniel “Walrus” Myers
The Matrix Online officially launched in North America on March 22nd 2005. The game was originally developed by Monolith Productions, which six months later was bought by Sony Online Entertainment (SOE). The idea for The Matrix Online was to have in-game events where the employees would play Agents online. After Sony bought the rights to the game, they ceased all in-game events and all that remained of the MMO left was a generic bland and boring MMO.
According to one former beta tester of the game, he said:
"It felt like a half-assed Anarchy Online set in The Matrix universe. The mission system was identical for the most part, the abilities were less interesting and there wasn't much diversity in the environments. It did have a wonderful (but small) community, something I can really appreciate. I wasn't a fan of the game, but I feel kinda bad for the people who DO enjoy it."
I can't personally give any opinion about The Matrix Online as I never played it, because it was rare to read anything positive about the game. The only related Matrix game I've played was "The Path of Neo" which I thought was god awful.
It's always sad news when you hear about any online game shutting down. Another MMO that died recently was Shadowbane, which finally shut down May 1st.
[caption id="attachment_2098" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="In-game screenshot of The Matrix Online"][/caption]
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