A small glimpse at a better yesterday.

Also: Alternate alternate realities.

The Matrix Online has finally joined Morpheus in the great beyond, joining the very short but always expanding list of commercially-released MMOs that have closed up shop.

Check out Giant Bomb’s 1-hour long video of the end of the world above, and if you find yourself with an extra five hours of your life to waste, you could do worse than skimming through the other videos of Giant Bomb’s time spent with the game. It all starts out very silly and funny and ends up being genuinely sincere and depressing before the end.

The Matrix Online: Not Like This – Part 01
The Matrix Online: Not Like This – Part 02
The Matrix Online: Not Like This – Part 03
The Matrix Online: Not Like This – Part 04

I won’t be around this weekend to Star Trek RP in Diablo 2 or /special in Warhammer Online. Instead, I’ll be hocking my wares at the Penny Arcade Expo. My life is nothing but a series of increasingly elaborate exercises in self-torture.

On the rare chance you’re also spending your weekend at the biggest video game conference run by a pair of web comic creators and want to spend some time with someone who only hates Penny Arcade fans more than he hates himself, look for the sleep-deprived idiot in a “Free Piyo!” T-shirt.

I am a weak, pathetic waste of man-meat. This isn’t news.

I pre-ordered Warhammer Online through Direct 2 Drive in order to get access to the “open” beta. I am nothing if not predictable.

It was the awesome cinematic trailer and this series of informative videos that finally eroded my paper-thin self-control, forcing EA Mythic’s opus into my (now slightly more) pathetic life.

More than just a blatant World of Warcraft ripoff, Warhammer Online promises to do away with WoW’s poop-socking endgame by integrating features usually reserved for the end of a lengthy leveling treadmill – epic pvp encounters, tiered armor sets, “raid” content – into the leveling experience itself. And then adding an additonal pvp-centric means of progression in the form of 80 renown levels on top of it. Realm vs. realm gameplay, guilds capturing and holding keeps, and the adorable squig herder are just icing on a very delicious cake. Plus there’s that damn Tome of Knowledge—an obsessive-compulsive’s wet dream.

So now you know how I’m going to be spending my weekend, minus the trip to Best Buy so my ancient PC can do this game justice. Pity me, and don’t expect to see this space updated for at least another month.

You probably noticed, but I’ve been neglecting this place. Consider it yet another oscillation as I alternate between completely ignoring this site and treating it as the center of my universe. I’m not entirely sure what, if anything, I’ll do with this space “going forward,” but were I betting man, and were there options to bet on, I’d go with “sit idly by and watch the latest news post become increasingly out of date.”

At this point, I’ve been “working” in the “games industry” for six weeks, “I guess.” Basically, my day-to-day responsibilities involve a lot of forum posting, a lot of e-mailing, and a whole lot of copy-pasting the same damn thing repeatedly.

One of my primary duties, though it’s mentioned nowhere in my job description, is to act as a sort of PR liaison between the mysterious unnamed company where I work and the websites we so desperately need to cover our products. This mostly involves letting them know when new stuff gets added to our games, and explaining exactly what all this new stuff is. Because I’m not about to write a press release, instead I relay this information in e-mails that closely resemble dorkclub.com-style blog posts, often pooling information from various forum posts that aren’t quite fit for public consumption.

At no point did I expect every single site that receives these updates to just blatantly copy-paste my information word for word and post it under someone else’s name. Literally every single site that I’m in contact with, with the exception of one exceptional site that has linked to this very space in the past (HINT), simply re-posts my email and pretends they wrote it themselves, seemingly unaware that half a dozen other sites are doing the exact same thing. I wonder which one will blame one of the others of plagiarism first.

Now, we all know the “journalism” in games “journalism” is in quotation marks for a reason, idiotic publisher-press post-Gerstmanngate conspiracies aside, but I never realized so many sites are so blatant about their complete lack of ethics.

This is, unfortunately, an industry where GamesRadar, pandering mess of shame and retardation that it is, actually has relatively high standards.

It’s the end of an era: After twenty-seven years, Ziff Davis’ Games for Windows Magazine is throwing in the towel. PC gaming is dead, etc.

GFW’s editor in chief Jeff Green shares his heartfelt sentiments on his blog, writing:

For me personally, the closing of Games for Windows: The Official Magazine is not just a business decision (though, obviously it’s exactly that in reality), but feels more akin, in fact, to the passing of a loved one. Drama much? Well, you can scoff if you want, but the fact of the matter is that I have poured my heart and soul into this magazine, month after month after month, for over 10 years now. Every four weeks for 10 years I have done my best to get a quality magazine out the door, and the fact that I don’t have that deadline now is not in any way, despite the temptation to go for gallows humor, a source of relief. It feels like a giant gaping hole in my life.

He goes on to explain that though Games for Windows the magazine will no longer exist in print, all of its content will be folded into the 1UP site. As such, GFW’s editors will now be able to deliver the same sort of content the magazine has always featured, but in a much more timely (and free!) manner. Green hopes the shift in format will also allow them to focus on topics that have previously been out of reach for a monthly magazine such as mods and patches.

All in all, the magazine’s end seems to have more marks in the positive column than the negative. Here’s hoping all of GFW’s talented writers and artists find a permanent home at 1UP.

CGW/GFW 1981-2008 [Jeff Green's 1UP Blog via Voodoo Extreme]

Sony has announced plans to bring down the online servers for many PS2 and PSP games by June 30 of this year. Most of the games losing their online components are PS2 titles, including Jak X (pictured), Syphon Filter Omega Strain, and Twisted Metal: Black Online.

Capcom also shut down their own servers for PS2 games Monster Hunter and Resident Evil: Outbreak at the end of last year.

You see, kids, sometimes games just grow old and die. We must learn to cherish and make the most of the time we have together. Don’t feel sad for the games themselves, though; they’re in a better place with all the dedicated servers they could ever want.

Sony Shutting Down Online Servers for Many PS2, PSP Games [dBTechno via N4G]

Hit the jump for a full list of the PS2 and PSP games affected by Sony’s decision.

(more…)

Not since The GIA shut down on April 1, 2002, has there been a more unfortunately timed announcement in gaming. Yesterday a representative from Stormfront Studios confirmed the developer will be closing shop after a prolific twenty-year run.

Best known for the Gold Box series of Dungeons & Dragons games and co-developing the original AOL Neverwinter Nights, more recently Stormfront Studios produced last generation’s Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Bloodwake, and Demon Stone. They also developed the original PC version of Madden NFL.

The anonymous Stormfront rep told Next Gen the reason for the developer’s closure. “Frankly, we didn’t get pitched, and the project [we were working on] made no revenue. The economy is such that the projects that we weren’t winning, ended.”

Stormfront Studios to Shut Down After Twenty Years in Gaming [Gaming Today]

After a few hours spent scavenging through The Matrix Online’s sound files, which weave a diverse and varied aural tapestry ranging from electrical humming and buzzing to electrical clicking and beeping, MxO’s ding sound effect is now online. Spending time with fifty or so different MMOs in the last couple of weeks has completely eroded whatever goodwill for the genre World of Warcraft earned. By the time I work through the next fifty, simply hearing the abbreviation “MMO” will undoubtedly send me into a frenzied rage. Still, I push on with no regard for my mental health.

Besides personal misery and lifelong trauma, my exhaustive foray into the world of virtual worlds hasn’t been a complete wash. In fact, it’s lead to at least one positive discovery. Or more accurately: A rediscovery. It turns out Guild Wars is certifiably awesome. Who knew? Well, aside from everyone, that is.

I originally bought the game when it first came out in 2004. I was between World of Warcraft addictions at the time, and only wanted a WoW stand-in to stave off my cravings. As such, I found Guild Wars rather unappealing. The instanced world felt relatively empty, the extremely focused character customization relatively limiting. What can I say? I was an idiot.

Guild Wars offers the best aspects of the MMO experience with none its major downsides. There’s no monthly fee, the levelcap is low and easy to reach, and it’s almost always just as easy to overcome difficult challenges alone as with a group. Because every area is instanced, you never need to worry about monsters respawning or having to deal with griefers, as the only players you’ll see outside of town are the ones you’ve agreed to play with. In these instanced combat zones, the game plays like a more traditional multiplayer or even single player title, but closely resembles other highly populated persistent worlds in cities and outposts. Because of this, ArenaNet pushes the possibilities of its instanced areas in ways World of Warcraft never quite manages, allowing for destructible environments and more varied mission objectives, but never sacrificing that oh-so-important sense of community.

One of the game’s strongest and most interesting aspects is its incredible depth of customization. Each character in the game has a primary and secondary profession, and can use any of the huge number of skills available to either one. You end up with access to hundreds of different abilities, but you can only equip eight a time, forcing you to narrowly specialize and define your character’s role. However, unlike in many MMOs where customization decisions are permanent or difficult to reverse, any time you’re in town you can reassign attribute points at minimal cost or swap out skills at will. Experimenting with new builds and playstyles is incredibly fun. As the game progresses and you unlock more varied abilities, your character doesn’t necessarily become more powerful, but instead gains access to more diverse options.

And while I have been enjoying my time rediscovering Guild Wars, truthfully I almost gave up on the game again early on. The game’s initial areas are disappointingly bland and boring, with very little content spread out over large, monster-infested areas. Thankfully I stuck with it, as about the time you reach level 20, the game’s level cap, Guild Wars suddenly becomes simultaneously more focused and less linear, placing an ultimate objective far outside of your grasp and opening up the world for your exploration. Sadly, there’s no World of Ruin-esque event to correspond with the sudden shift in gameplay.

For the time being at least, I plan to stick with Guild Wars a while longer. There’s still a great many missions (and three expansion) ahead of me, and I’ve barely even touched the game’s PvP content, which is supposedly its real focus. I guess all the time spent hyping myself up for Flagship Studios and Hellgate: London would have been better served appreciating ArenaNet and Guild Wars, as the best game from the best Blizzard offshoot developer was right under my nose all along. Still, a game that stands out against the backdrop of intolerable crap that is the MMO genre is hardly noteworthy in and of itself, but Guild Wars is a real rarity: It’s not just a good MMO; it’s a good game. Period.

Greatings from Tokyo! That damned ding feature has consumed my entire existence at this point. I’m currently posting this through a Japanese proxy and have set all of Windows’ language and regional settings such that my PC believes it’s currently operating in beautiful downtown Tokyo, all in an attempt to log on to Monster Rancher Online. Of course, this plan continues to fail in new and interesting ways. To add hopeless pointlessness to continued failure, if the rest of the Monster Rancher series is any indication, Monster Rancher Online doesn’t even have a ding sound effect, let alone leveling.

Still, we soldier on. But given the scattered assortment of terrible games remaining to have their ding sound effects forcibly ripped from them and uploaded here, I’ve given up on trying to be cute and clever with the “content patches,” as it becomes increasingly difficult to find connective tissue between the remaining MMOs. You’ll find ding sound effects from CABAL Online and Project Entropia Universe today. Edit: And Tabula Rasa. Take that, Richard Garriott.

This isn’t the first time I’ve played Entropia Universe. A few years ago, Mike Brust and I spent a few agonizing hours with the game back when it was still a Project rather than a Universe. The game’s relaunch and title change initially lead me to be somewhat hopeful that Entropia Universe was no longer the soul-crushing exercise in masochism it once was, but aside from some very slightly improved graphics (player characters no longer look like deformed Oompa-Loompas, for example) the game is just as terrible as always. Players still spend their first hours with the game collecting sweat and literal shit from alien wildlife—alien wildlife that can kill your character in three or four hits should they randomly decide to aggro you. At least the developers have the common decency to strip away all pretense and get to work embarrassing and degrading their players from the onset. MMORPGs really are the worst genre in any medium ever.

Tomorrow: I register MMOhate.com and abandon this site entirely.