Mathalos wrote:
The way I see it is, if SOE had not bought the Matrix Online, we would of closed down in August of 2005. They took the initiative to buy a game that had already lost 20 million. I don't blame them for not putting a lot of money into the game. No business in their right mind would put money into a product that is not going to give them any profit back. That's like saying Microsoft should continue to update Windows 98 just because a few people still use it. Microsoft moves onto products that make them money like any other business does. SOE chose to keep Rarebit hired to continue development on the game for the past few years. I want to thank SOE for the last four years and I want to thank them for not giving up on us sooner, because I know they very well could have. A first impression lasts forever, and the Matrix Online did not get a good one. We can not blame SOE for what happened to this game, the fate of this game was decided before it was even launched.
This is true as well. There are many people to blame for what happened with MxO. It can't all be left at the feet of SOE.
Just check the commentary on the news article at Kotaku for proof. Disregarding the total idiots, half of the remaining comments are focused on the fact that these people didn't know the game was even still running.. which, as Math pointed out, probably wouldn't be the case without SOE (on both counts, the not knowing and the not still running). The other half of the comments, however, are generally negative observations about having played or heard about the game back in Beta or shortly thereafter. These people were disappointed enough by what they experienced or heard about that they never gave the game a chance. While you can blame SOE for several things, they weren't the ones who created a disappointing game with impossible to live up to bullet points on it's box.
But Monolith isn't entirely to blame either. Was it their fault that Reloaded was considered a lesser movie than The Matrix and that Revolutions was more or less a total dud in the eyes of the non-Matrix fanatic public? If the trilogy as a whole had captured the public like the first Matrix film had, MxO may not have been a better product at launch, but it would have had a much bigger audience and more money and support would have been guaranteed.
-- Edited for some sloppy language usage
"And the biggest, baddest decision of _this_ year: Rarebit letting some twerp abuse the administrative console, costing him his job, costing MxO its single developer, and costing us our world. And a big shout out to the addled moron behind “nerfocelot”."
Uhh, what? What are you talking about? No player ever had access to the admin console. Rarebit left voluntarily due to personal issues and wasn't fired. And he already made his leaving announcement BEFORE nerfocelot was running around. Prior to nerfocelot, SOE had no idea of any sort of admin permissions issue.
"And anyone who’s tried to read 9mmfu’s Delphic posts will agree that communications has never been one of the qualities associated with the MxO team."
So if only 9mmfu had opened a spellchecker, MXO would have been saved? Rarebit spent years and literally hundreds of pages with ask the devs explaining nearly every question players had. What was there left for devs to tell us? If after five years you don't know what the buffs on your clothes do, that's not their fault. It's yours.
And the “CSR”s who run amok like Brewko, did little to encourage us. His captious, fractious, and flat-out wrong bannings were so irrational, so misguided, and so whimsical that I was frequently aghast.
When I went to FanFaire, the CSRs there said Brewko doesn't have the authority to actually ban people. Bannings are made through a chain of command and not by any one CSR. I'll take a few bad decisions anyday when you consider the ticket volume they get -- sometimes in the thousands per day.
“The community” was one of the reasons people endlessly trotted about when challenged as to why they stayed in the game. Now, looking back, I wonder what they were smoking. Where’s the community?
Members of your faction had a thriving culture based off of LESIG leaks, so it's baseless to try to take any high ground and spout rhetoric about the degredation of the community. If there's blame to go around for the death of MXO, everyone gets some.
Shinryu wrote:
Mathalos wrote:The way I see it is, if SOE had not bought the Matrix Online, we would of closed down in August of 2005. They took the initiative to buy a game that had already lost 20 million. I don't blame them for not putting a lot of money into the game. No business in their right mind would put money into a product that is not going to give them any profit back. That's like saying Microsoft should continue to update Windows 98 just because a few people still use it. Microsoft moves onto products that make them money like any other business does. SOE chose to keep Rarebit hired to continue development on the game for the past few years. I want to thank SOE for the last four years and I want to thank them for not giving up on us sooner, because I know they very well could have. A first impression lasts forever, and the Matrix Online did not get a good one. We can not blame SOE for what happened to this game, the fate of this game was decided before it was even launched.This is true as well. There are many people to blame for what happened with MxO. It can't all be left at the feet of SOE.Just check the commentary on the news article at Kotaku for proof. Disregarding the total idiots, half of the remaining comments are focused on the fact that these people didn't know the game was even still running.. which, as Math pointed at, probably wouldn't be the case without SOE (on both counts, the not knowing and the not still running). The other half of the comments, however, are generally negative observations about having played or heard about the game back in Beta or shortly thereafter. These people were disappointed enough by what they experienced or heard about that they never gave the game a chance. While you can blame SOE for several things, they weren't the ones who created a disappointing game with impossible to live up to bullet points on it's box.But Monolith isn't entirely to blame either. Was it their fault that Reloaded was considered a lesser movie than The Matrix and that Revolutions was more or less a total dud in the eyes of the non-Matrix fanatic public? If the trilogy as a whole had captured the public like the first Matrix film had, MxO may not have been a better product at launch, it would have had a much bigger audience and more money and support would have been guaranteed.
Just check the commentary on the news article at Kotaku for proof. Disregarding the total idiots, half of the remaining comments are focused on the fact that these people didn't know the game was even still running.. which, as Math pointed at, probably wouldn't be the case without SOE (on both counts, the not knowing and the not still running). The other half of the comments, however, are generally negative observations about having played or heard about the game back in Beta or shortly thereafter. These people were disappointed enough by what they experienced or heard about that they never gave the game a chance. While you can blame SOE for several things, they weren't the ones who created a disappointing game with impossible to live up to bullet points on it's box.
But Monolith isn't entirely to blame either. Was it their fault that Reloaded was considered a lesser movie than The Matrix and that Revolutions was more or less a total dud in the eyes of the non-Matrix fanatic public? If the trilogy as a whole had captured the public like the first Matrix film had, MxO may not have been a better product at launch, it would have had a much bigger audience and more money and support would have been guaranteed.
Agreed. A lot of peoples' hesitation to play this are due to the common opinion of Reloaded and Revolutions, as well as the Matrix's notorious failures at games (Enter the Matrix, Path of Neo). I think someone said before, "Who cares about a game that's based on a movie series no one cares about anymore?". I think had the W Brothers pushed the franchise more (ie, more comics, more animated shorts, etc), we would've had a more successful game. But the franchise essentially died with Revolutions.
I do hold some blame to SOE, however, at their lack of service and lack of professionalism towards the community. Also, the lack of marketing. But, I am thankful that MxO continued on, as I met some of the most important people in my life currently during SOE's reign.
Bayamos wrote:
"And the biggest, baddest decision of _this_ year: Rarebit letting some twerp abuse the administrative console, costing him his job, costing MxO its single developer, and costing us our world. And a big shout out to the addled moron behind “nerfocelot”."Uhh, what? What are you talking about? No player ever had access to the admin console. Rarebit left voluntarily due to personal issues and wasn't fired. And he already made his leaving announcement BEFORE nerfocelot was running around. Prior to nerfocelot, SOE had no idea of any sort of admin permissions issue."And anyone who’s tried to read 9mmfu’s Delphic posts will agree that communications has never been one of the qualities associated with the MxO team."So if only 9mmfu had opened a spellchecker, MXO would have been saved? Rarebit spent years and literally hundreds of pages with ask the devs explaining nearly every question players had. What was there left for devs to tell us? If after five years you don't know what the buffs on your clothes do, that's not their fault. It's yours. And the “CSR”s who run amok like Brewko, did little to encourage us. His captious, fractious, and flat-out wrong bannings were so irrational, so misguided, and so whimsical that I was frequently aghast.When I went to FanFaire, the CSRs there said Brewko doesn't have the authority to actually ban people. Bannings are made through a chain of command and not by any one CSR. I'll take a few bad decisions anyday when you consider the ticket volume they get -- sometimes in the thousands per day.“The community” was one of the reasons people endlessly trotted about when challenged as to why they stayed in the game. Now, looking back, I wonder what they were smoking. Where’s the community?Members of your faction had a thriving culture based off of LESIG leaks, so it's baseless to try to take any high ground and spout rhetoric about the degredation of the community. If there's blame to go around for the death of MXO, everyone gets some.
Bayamos, my respect for you, never small, has only grown with the awesome tools you’ve been recently sharing. Let me respectfully, then, respond to some of your points.
On to happier subjects. Any chance of adding falling snow to the outstanding visual effects you’ve been making available? It’s always been my happiest time of year in the game.
Fen wrote:
I do hold some blame to SOE, however, at their lack of service and lack of professionalism towards the community. Also, the lack of marketing.
Oh, absolutely. In a world where the war for the fantasy MMO market is oversaturated and, quite frankly, not really a war at al as the winner has long since been decided, the real market is to be found in non-Fantasy MMOs. Look around, even free MMOs aren't clamouring to compete against WoW anymore. SOE should have used their existing properties to leverage their strength in this reality. With PS, MxO, SWG, The Agency and DCU, plus their ability to offer package access to all of their games for a single bargain price, they could have been the anti-WoW all to themselves. Even if this meant recreating MxO and PS from the ground up, it would have been possible. Instead.. well, we all saw what happened and I don't doubt it will continue to happen to the other "poorly performing" games they have in their stable.
As soon as I read that you think that Sony owns the Matrix gaming IP I stoped reading.
You obviously do not know what you are talking about so to write a whole opinion on something you do not know about is in my opinion, pointless.
Go grab your MXO box, turn to the back, look at the bottom...
THE MATRIX ONLINE, characters, names and all related indicia are trademarks of and © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
Yikes.I don't know her but I assume she made an honest mistake/typo.Known to happen around these parts...and doesn't always necessarily invalidates someone's opinion. =)
Nintene wrote:
I guess she could have made a honest mistake but when you make 6 other mistakes (just skimming over and picked out the obvious ones) then yea your opinion starts to look a little hazey.
stateing apinion/asumption as fact is a long standing tradition for this forum, come the end it shall not change.
Tseng. wrote:
Bah humbug!
well is true! so much thats posted is either speculation or the wrong end of the stick round here. all it ever takes is a little digging for the real truth ,we have/had a tiny player base so if you want it enough youl get the real picture.
Every large company works on PVT (Purchase vs Turnover), it might be named differently for other companies but it all relates to the same thing.
For the past few weeks the servers have been empty,miniscule pvp at peak times, just looking at server boards 50% of them are made up of farewell threads.
There werent enough subscriptions providing enough turnover after the cost of personnel,Server hosting and other factors, we werent accumalating enough to keep both Rarebit and Virrago, why we ended up with Virrago over a Developer i'll never know, of course not meaning any disrepect to Virrago but i feel a Developer is more important then a Community relations manager.
But after you all unsubbed at Rarebits last changes Familar faces kept vanishing from Mara C on a regular basis, which left the servers next to empty these past few weeks, i would be suprised if there were more then 20 active subscriptions.
I feel the final nail in the coffin was hammered in by us the Players who didnt give Rarebit the chance to see what he had planned.
Oh, this thread.
MXO's been missing people bitching about the same issues, again. Two months left, let's bring it all up again. Just because we're good at it.
Continue.
Things never change...
odj wrote:
As soon as I read that you think that Sony owns the Matrix gaming IP I stoped reading.You obviously do not know what you are talking about so to write a whole opinion on something you do not know about is in my opinion, pointless.Go grab your MXO box, turn to the back, look at the bottom...THE MATRIX ONLINE, characters, names and all related indicia are trademarks of and © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
odj, what a pleasure, and how I shall miss your insights. To quote Raijinn:
What happens to all the code/data for The Matrix Online?Sony Online Entertainment and Warner Brothers will retain all of the code and data from The Matrix Online.Can someone open an emulated server for The Matrix Online?Sony Online Entertainment and Warner Brothers hold the copyrights for The Matrix Online stories and data so creating a fan owned and operated emulated MxO server would be against those copyrights.
SOE and WB own the code and the copyrights and the data for the story. That's the IP (intellectual property). For you, I'll append WB next time as well. However, the above renders irrelevant your citation of the old, old box. WB is almost never mentioned in these discussions, and is largely a passive (I would suggest passive-aggressive) co-owner.
Thanks for writing!
