Looks like the end of Matrix Online is here, just got this

MPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR STATION ACCESS SUBSCRIPTION PLAN – THE MATRIX ONLINE SERVICE WILL END ON JULY 31, 2009

Dear Station Access Subscriber,

We want to inform you that on June 1, 2009, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) will suspend commercial services of THE MATRIX ONLINE (MxO). However, SOE will continue to operate the game service and players will still be able to play MxO through July 31, 2009. As of June 1, 2009, SOE will no longer offer customer support or provide updates for MxO. The removal of MxO from your Station Access subscription plan will not affect your Station Access subscription fees.

Between June 1, 2009 and July 31, 2009, all active Station Access accounts in good standing will be eligible to download a trial version of the current retail version of EverQuest®, EverQuest® II, and Star Wars Galaxies™ at no additional charge*. To access the game software, just download the Station Launcher application here: http://launcher.station.sony.com. To initiate the download of the Station Launcher click on the "DOWNLOAD BETA" button. Once the download is complete the Station Launcher application will serve as your one stop shop for access to all of the identified online games. In addition, SOE has recently added full Free Realms membership to the Station Access subscription plan, so if you have not yet tried Free Realms, we encourage you to visit www.freerealms.com to create a character and jump into the game!

We value having you in our player community and hope that you will continue to play our other great games. During the last two weeks that MxO will be available, we intend to initiate a world-ending event and invite all our active Station Access subscribers with MxO accounts in good standing to participate in bringing Mega City down together. We will go out with the same level of dramatic in-game event that has kept this game exciting over the years. Get ready to jack in and become part of the final chapter of the story!

We appreciate your loyalty and commitment and look forward to seeing you in another SOE game.

Sincerely,
Sony Online Entertainment

Well i never really played since beta, it seems the time was coming .

It's still going? Wow, I thought someone would have took this round the back of the barn and shot it before now.

Not surprising. With Free Realms now available, and DC Universe and The Agency on the horizon, looks like Sony is cleaning shop. How long til EQ1 follows? Nothing lasts forever. ( Except maybe WoW, like a cockroach.)

Ran for about 4.5 years, I lasted about a week.

Originally posted by Senadina

Not surprising. With Free Realms now available, and DC Universe and The Agency on the horizon, looks like Sony is cleaning shop. How long til EQ1 follows? Nothing lasts forever. ( Except maybe WoW, like a cockroach.)

SOE will never give up on SWG, they have a special "vision" for it!

Originally posted by Mazin

SOE will never give up on SWG, they have a special "vision" for it!

Beer goggles?

Originally posted by Senadina

Not surprising. With Free Realms now available, and DC Universe and The Agency on the horizon, looks like Sony is cleaning shop. How long til EQ1 follows? Nothing lasts forever. ( Except maybe WoW, like a cockroach.)

EQ still have some players left. Matrix had few if any.

SOE will run a game as long as they have enough players to rake in money on it, if they cancel any game it will most likely be SWG, Pirates and Vanguard. EQ 1 & 2 do have a lot more players and should be safe for the next year at least if not for a few more.

I hope they keep Vanguard up, or close it down and re-releasing a new version instead under a different name, the game is not that bad but it have very few players. A re-releasing or turning it into a F2P game would hopefully help, particulary if they finally fix the remaining bugs in the re-release.

As for Wow it will eventually close down too but that is most likely 10 years in the future or so.

Originally posted by Loke666

As for Wow it will eventually close down too but that is most likely 10 years in the future or so.

Considering UO has been running for close to 12 years and EQ for over 10 I think it's safe to say WoW will be around for another 15-20 years, at least.

That is, unless Blizzard makes WoW2 and transfers all of the existing WoW characters over to it.

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by Senadina

Not surprising. With Free Realms now available, and DC Universe and The Agency on the horizon, looks like Sony is cleaning shop. How long til EQ1 follows? Nothing lasts forever. ( Except maybe WoW, like a cockroach.)

EQ still have some players left. Matrix had few if any.

SOE will run a game as long as they have enough players to rake in money on it, if they cancel any game it will most likely be SWG, Pirates and Vanguard. EQ 1 & 2 do have a lot more players and should be safe for the next year at least if not for a few more.

I hope they keep Vanguard up, or close it down and re-releasing a new version instead under a different name, the game is not that bad but it have very few players. A re-releasing or turning it into a F2P game would hopefully help, particulary if they finally fix the remaining bugs in the re-release.

As for Wow it will eventually close down too but that is most likely 10 years in the future or so.

 SWG do have more playtime on Xfire than what EQ/EQ2 has.

personally, i do not know any players in EQ2 who actually use XFire, so i would not go off of that for sub numbers...

EQ2 still has full servers also, so i do not see it going anywheres anytime soon...

as for MxO, i wonder if they will let us betas back in for free to cause some havok, i stopped playing when they killed morpheus (almost everyone i know stopped at this point)

i remember the end of Beta for this game, with the giant eyes in the sky, and the machines running around killing everyone, some people i ran across and i managed to hid from the chaos to see what exactly would happen right before they shut down the servers for release day, turns out all the did was crumple your character into a little ball, then DC you lol.

Another point tho, if they plan on taking this off the station access they should really adjust the price to reflect it, seeing as it has a higher sub monthly price then free realms...

http://forums.station.sony.com/mxo/posts/list.m?topic_id=36300028715

 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

Ure all crazy. Teh MXO is still goin strong and word is thet they are jus gonna release mxo2 so its jus temporarie. With thousinds of playas and daily events with all kinds of crazy stuff happenin why shut down? dont be stupid.

MxO is shutting down.  Visit SOE web if you doubt that.  EQ1, no worries.  It still somehow has a long list of servers and new ones opening soon.  VG though, another story.  Its uber guy got punted to EQ1 and no replacement in place... hmmm me smells the next shutdown.  SWG is kind of funded by LA so it'll stay until LA pulls the plug... say around the launch of TOR.  Just wish they would open it up like TR did so people could go have a look see before the funeral.

Well its SOE, I doubt they're gonna let inactive people play for free on the last month, they're gonna try to suck as much money out of people as they can, even though its ending already.

Got the email today as well.

I might log in for the farewell.
 

It is always sad to see an mmo die, but somethings always have to die when the new days dawn. With that said I expect sony might cut all the way back to just having EQ1, EQ2, and SWG if the economy keeps up like it is.

The first mmorpg SOE has shut down, from now on no SOE mmorpg is safe.

*fingers crossed they shut down SWG"

Originally posted by John.A.Zoid

The first mmorpg SOE has shut down, from now on no SOE mmorpg is safe.

*fingers crossed they shut down SWG"

They had to make room for SWToR, now you have to omagine LKucas is till under contract, and Bioware is not a publisher ....

Lucas would not be under contract to SOE it would be the other way around since SOE has to pay Lucasarts for the license to use the Star Wars name, and if Lucas decided they wanted SWG closed it would have to be, cause the name and universe of the name if copyright owned by Lucas, and only leased to SOE.

As for BioWare not being a publisher that is true, they are a development house, one of the best in the business, however they are owned by one of the largest publishers in the business, EA. And as such SOE doesnt need to maek room for a game they will never touch.