Community

The community in Matrix Online actually surprised me. I assumed going in I would find a world full of people wearing all black and trenchcoats and shades and named idiotic things such as TheOne or Neeo or Triinity. While there are naturally the occasional ripoff artists, for the most part people are original and play their own characters. The people in the game are friendly and helpful for the most part. When someone asks a question over one of the channels he's far more likely to get an answer than someone responding with something like "Go read the manual n00b!" like you see in a lot of other games.

Once again the different factions and the Storyline Events go a long way in building the community up in my eyes. The fact that famous entities from the movies are often out and about in the game being played by GMs and Devs is quite enjoyable. The socially orientated sections of the city encourage social gatherings and player formed events and parties and such. Overall this is definitely one of the better communities I've had the pleasure of playing with.

Performance/Lag

The game does still have some performance issues and bugs to work out, as any game early in release does. Very often I still get the mission bug where I get to a mission door and can't go through it. Or I'll get to the door and it'll be open but every time I try to go through I rubber band back to the other side. This can be very annoying, especially on the nights when it seems to happen more often, which is probably due to high server load. There are occasional bouts of lag which are bothersome, particularly while in combat. Overall though the game ran fairly smooth on my system and other than the occasional mission bug and lag bouts it wasn't too bad.

Customer Service

I can't really get too into the customer service aspect since I didn't encounter too much need to deal with them in the game. I guess overall this is a good thing. There was however one bug which I submitted and never got a response on. I'm assuming that since it wasn't a game stopping bug it wasn't high on the priority list, but it was still annoying to me and I would have liked some sort of response on the matter, even if it was a form letter saying that it was a known issue and will be addressed eventually. I would have also liked to have seen an easier way to submit bugs, though that concern was partially addressed in the most recent patch.

Summary

Overall The Matrix Online seems to fall into that "You either love it or hate it" category. As I said earlier hardcore fans of the Matrix movie trilogy are for the most part going to love the game. The storyline events are very well done and add a lot to an otherwise severely depth lacking game. The combat system initially seems new and unique it quickly falls back into the same old feel that you're used to seeing in most games, its just packaged different. It does add a little more strategy than we're used to seeing in a typical MMORPG combat system, which is a nice touch. For the most part the game is nicely done; it's just the lack of depth which ruins it for me.