As development idea...

Make the matrix online into a single player offline game. Keep the graphics, keep the engine, make the archived missions into a single player long game. Make a toon levable to 50 in 2 a 4 weeks (increase XP), and increase info drops. Make the constructs accessible at any level.

Most of the stuff is already there. The "only" thing that would need to be done is to convert the server part into a local server. I don't think the server is doing that much... keeping track off inventory and the non-fixed things in your region.

SOE can hand it to a small company at fixed price and they can already guess their profit-margins... take the active people of the last 2 months and multiply that by the price of a game (make a it high priced game for all I care), subtract the price for the conversion and you've got your profit margin. SOE doesn't need big advertisements for it, just send e-mails to the old subscribers. They get money now, and if successful they could make money with extensions, new windows versions... and possibly reopen their Matrix online version

Server isn't doing much? It does almost everything. The local client just has the content and processes the interactions. Anything to do with choosing and serving content and dealing with the consequences of interactions is handled by the server.

Maybe if they just gave us a limited clone of the server and partnered it with the client. They'd just point the client and server to each other directly rather than across the Net. And they'd have to strip out anything relating to SOE's network (e.g. the player database and chat system). More than SOE can manage right now.

So it may be a bit harder . What I do know is:

- If the server gets disconnected and the client doesn't realize this you get to walk around in the environment, but you can't interact with anything

Most of the development time of a game is spent in the game mechanics and graphics... both of which already exists for MXO, so it's just a conversion project from client-server to "client-client". Rip out the network stuff from the server, make into a single player thing.

Let's do the math... Suppose SOE doesn't want to outsource it and do it inhouse.... let 1 of the last MXO developers work on a conversion for a year full-time (making some small extra stuff: more rapid leveling, more info, clothes shop, ...)... don't advertise the game, just make a pre-order button on amazon and send all old-subscribers an e-mail when the game is ready (no Steam, no copy protection, send the DVD in a plain white box). Suppose 10.000 people would buy the game as lower limit, I would expect all people in the game the last 2 months to buy a copy. Treat it as a high end-game... 40euro a piece... 400K euro income as lower limit.

That's a no-brainer... pretty easy ROI... and instead of 10.000 customers use the number of active people in the last 2 months of MXO. Ongoing franchise without a lot of cost, more positive people on SOE...

Procurator wrote:

Server isn't doing much? It does almost everything. The local client just has the content and processes the interactions. Anything to do with choosing and serving content and dealing with the consequences of interactions is handled by the server.

Maybe if they just gave us a limited clone of the server and partnered it with the client. They'd just point the client and server to each other directly rather than across the Net. And they'd have to strip out anything relating to SOE's network (e.g. the player database and chat system). More than SOE can manage right now.

And if it's only limited to "running around the world" (a sucky alternative, of course) - how much does the server determine then?

Not a bad idea at all. Though, i'm no game developer (just a software tester )  I could list off a number of people (some of which did not make the cutoff) who would dish out the $ for that. I know for a fact I would. As corny as it sounds, MxO has a piece of me and always will. It would be nice to go back to it now and then and run a few missions, even if it's without the interactions of all of my buddies.

What would it take to run the game in an 'offline' mode?

If anything like this is going to happen it will have to be fan made and what I would have to assume would be illegal. But at this point I'm afraid even willing to bring up the magic emulator word...

You're probably right...  but it doesn't hurt to dream.

Ogham wrote:

So it may be a bit harder . What I do know is:

- If the server gets disconnected and the client doesn't realize this you get to walk around in the environment, but you can't interact with anything

Most of the development time of a game is spent in the game mechanics and graphics... both of which already exists for MXO, so it's just a conversion project from client-server to "client-client". Rip out the network stuff from the server, make into a single player thing.

Let's do the math... Suppose SOE doesn't want to outsource it and do it inhouse.... let 1 of the last MXO developers work on a conversion for a year full-time (making some small extra stuff: more rapid leveling, more info, clothes shop, ...)... don't advertise the game, just make a pre-order button on amazon and send all old-subscribers an e-mail when the game is ready (no Steam, no copy protection, send the DVD in a plain white box). Suppose 10.000 people would buy the game as lower limit, I would expect all people in the game the last 2 months to buy a copy. Treat it as a high end-game... 40euro a piece... 400K euro income as lower limit.

That's a no-brainer... pretty easy ROI... and instead of 10.000 customers use the number of active people in the last 2 months of MXO. Ongoing franchise without a lot of cost, more positive people on SOE...

Well, I would definitely buy such a thing - even just for the sake of having it. 

*dreaming*  no lagggggggg .....

now, THAT would be nice to experience!  

Its a good idea because we would still get our characters we worked on. However half the reason I played this game was because of the other players. If I played this game as single player I think I would just get depressed thinking abot all the people I used to talk to...

Game would be boring as hell without people to play with.

Low population is why the population got lower to begin with. This idea would not be a smart investment in time in SOE's part. Or anyone's for that matter.

Well, if SOE makes more money out of selling it then they have to spend developing it (and get some goodwill from the mxo community)... Somewhere at the top of the thread is a ROI thingie. Basically it could be running around, do some missions, ... contrary to all the whining the last years of the community, it's something people will come to miss.... sunset while hyperjumping e.g.

Doesn't need to be the latest high-tech engine, no big commercials... just reuse what's available now in MXO and put some cello-tape on it to be to able to run it stand-alone. There was even an open source project to make something like it (replacing the server by a stand-alone server), but they got stuck on the encryption MXO uses.

And what the hell, SOE wants to make the investment to make something like "kungfu hustle"... jeeesus . SOE could even hold a "community poll" or a pre-order item on amazon... "we get this many requests, we'll invest a resource to make it stand-alone, else not".

You can already play the matrix offline, you just need to know how and thats on a need to know how basis :_)

Spill the beans