Oh well. Blue pill!

http://www.corpnews.com/node/202

This isn't meant to be a snarky comment, but I had no idea Matrix Online was still running anymore. I guess I had just assumed it had shut down years ago.

Did anyone here play it?

I've never even seen a screenshot, or read an article about it. I believe Toby Ragaini was a lead developer on the title after he left Turbine. It was something I had very little interest in. I enjoyed the first movie; It wasn't great, but I enjoyed it. After that, my interest dwindled.

Same, same. Was stunned to realize it was even running anymore.

I remember people talking about it when it was being developed, and I remember it going live, but then I forgot about it.

I'm vaguely aware of it, if not for the fact they killed Morpheus in it.

I think.

I played this in beta, and also after it was enabled for Station Pass play. During beta it was a complete mess, and in between bouts of crashing and poor performance I easily submitted 30-40 bugs that I believe the game released with.

After upgrading computers, and returning with the Station Pass, it definitely was more stable, but many of the same bugs were still present (including one with stacking DoTs that did more damage then they were supposed to, which was finally fixed 2-3 years after release when everyone had exploited it to power level).

It was trying to be a fighting game, with four "modes" of attack, "Heavy attack", "Light Attack", "Throw" and "Defense", but these only changed the type of auto attack your character did (or Auto blocking if on Defense). In between changing modes, you could spam "specials", until it somehow included that attack into the mode you were using. They never repaired how specials' effectiveness was gimped by the mode selected, so basically only the Heavy Attack one was worthwhile for all of beta and months into launch. These modes also spanned all combat types, and using a gun compared to martial arts didn't really make much difference.

The lock on to enemies was stupid and warped your character 50% of the time, and fighting multiple enemies was instant death because of it. The missions were all in identical looking rooms of buildings you rode an elevator up to, and at least half of the missions would have every enemy attack at once, swarming and warping through walls to your character.

The skills were a nice tree based system, with the unique ability to respec your entire skill tree at any time, but it was still based on a level points system so you could only ever spec to a certain power level and not above. Skills were buyable or player crafted, so increasing in skills you either needed to learn how to respec and make yourself, or spend tons of credits that were hard to come by. I actually liked the skill system, but by level 13 I'd decided that it was too grindy to get new powers, because you either needed hundred of dropped "bits" to make them or way too many credits with travel to insanely dangerous areas to buy them.

There was some kind of faction device that was supposed to represent competing sides, but I also don't think they were ever more than a different route of missions to take with different enemies to fight. I never witnessed any kind of raiding, and high levels used to gather in hubs dueling one another over and over. It might've been interesting if the story was still evolving and if there was more than just identical random missions to do.

Sony easily dropped the ball by not spending some dev time fixing things and keeping a live team to run events, not to mention the wasted potential of the billboard ads revenue that Massive put in game before the Sony buyout. The only game that billboard ads truly fit into, with three year old ads displaying, meant someone dropped the ball.

SOE is probably closing this game because of the license and costs to keep the Matix IP from WB and the Wachovski brothers. Cheaper to just drop it, especially with how much it sucked coupled with lack of active players.