Today, it was announced that Auto Assault would be closing its doors permanently on August 31st, 2007. MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood caught up with NCsoft's David Swofford for a short interview.

As MMORPG.com readers may or may not know, NCsoft and NetDevil announced today that they will be closing the doors to Auto Assault on August 31st of this year. This afternoon, I had a brief conversation with David Swofford at NCsoft about the decision and what brought this announcement about.

In the end, and this probably doesn't come as a surprise to anyone, it really all came down to low and ebbing numbers. The number of players on the server was small, and it finally reached a point where it didn't make sense to continue.

I think David summed it up best when he said, "What we were putting in, we weren't getting back".

Read the whole short article here.

No surprise here.  An excellent concept with less than stellar execution.  At least the players will have Fallen Earth to go to for their apocalyptic fix.

To make a quick correction, Arena.net isn't the makers of the game, Net Dveil is. A.net makes Guild Wars.

bummer, played that game in beta and it wasnt all that bad but i could never get past the fact that there was no projectiles ala twisted metal.

No surprise here!

I closed my account about 4 months ago.

Well all I can say is they tried.

Well thats sad news.  I was actually becoming more interested in the game, enough to resub after I heard of the updates they were putting into the game.  I was going to try out the new race tracks.  I suppose I could, but at this point there is nothing to gain in the long term.

Rest well Auto Assualt.

Thats a real shame, i played the beta, and even with all the bugs it had then i loved the game! i was thinking of comming back, but looks like that wont be happening now! <3 good bye AA...

It is sad to see the game go.  I'm suprised though they didn't try a free to play model first.

result of changing gameplay every two months and forcing players to relearn the game instead of focusing on new content ala swg.

Originally posted by suske

result of changing gameplay every two months and forcing players to relearn the game instead of focusing on new content ala swg.

Congratz, this is the 3rd thread you have posted this in.   going for the fourth later tonight?

Originally posted by jrgambit

 

Originally posted by suske

result of changing gameplay every two months and forcing players to relearn the game instead of focusing on new content ala swg.

 

Congratz, this is the 3rd thread you have posted this in.   going for the fourth later tonight?

Maybe he's a bot!

Good concept for a game.  Too bad it didn't work out.  I wish them all well though.

Yep, Not surprising given it's non-existent subscription numbers.

But I'd have to say the real victim here is the Diversity in the MMO industry... whats on the top anticipated list here again for the coming year? ...yep, just a bunch more of the same old fantasy MMO's with slightly updated graphic engines.   Makes ya wonder if gamers and designers will ever be capable of moving beyond Swords & Wizards.

And yet dungeon runners remains free and playable :/

Auto Assault wasn't bad....to me after beta ended, it just wasn't worth paying monthly for. I would certainly play it had it been free, but not p2p.

It's too bad someone can't come along and buy it up and keep it running and make it free, just put ingame advertising to use on billboards, buildings, etc....

Shame it couldn't go on.

Actually I'm pretty sure they were looking at ingame advertising at one point, though I don't know if it ever made into the game.

Kinda hard to implement ads for something that's supposed to have gone out of business 100+ years ago, and basically everything in the game was destructible, so you'd have a giant Coke billboard that people could just knock down, and the ad wouldn't get as much view time.

What's the point of posting 2 times the same news on the main page ???

Latest News :

ON JULY 1 2007 ,   I BROUGHT THE GAME FOR $1.

I HAD PLAYED IN THE BETA.  

 THE GAME WAS COOL.

NOW I AM MAD. 

I JUSTED WASTED $1.   

Originally posted by Aguitha

What's the point of posting 2 times the same news on the main page ???

Latest News :

 

Auto Assault : Closing Doors

Auto Assault : The End of Auto Assault

 

The other half knows you didn't...

Well I was still playing it on and off,going to re-subscribe,to say goodbye to old friends. 

I think the fact that a few people in this thread have already said they were thinking about resubscribing pretty much says it all.
The idea was good, but the game just didn't pull it off well enough.

I played in the beta and wasn't overly impressed. While the concept was sound, it just doesn't work as a subscription-based RPG. The combat calculation wasn't fast enough, and I think the open driving model was too ambitious. There's no point being able to go anywhere if you can't live long enough to get through it.

Let's hope NetDevil doesn't just give up, but instead uses what they learned to make their next game a success.