sunset

MMOs, unfortunately, do not last forever. When they sunset and close down for good, the whole genre mourns.

Demon’s Souls ends online services after nine years of operation

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Has it already been nine years since Demon’s Souls first appeared on the scene, bringing its now-famous brand of ultra-hardcore action combat and progression? Apparently is has, and the studio behind the original game of the series has decided that nine years is long enough to keep the servers up and running.

While gamers can still enjoy Demon’s Souls as a single-player title, after February 28th, 2018, nobody will be able to access the multiplayer components that connected the community. The team announced this week that it is shutting down the online servers early next year, which will effectively kill coop play and multiplayer features such as leaving notes for others and seeing death markings of other players to help avoid your own demise.

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RIP Marvel Heroes

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It’s gone, gang, and I’m so sorry.

Following the disastrous silences and accusations that unfolded over October and November, Marvel announced that it had terminated its relationship with gaming studio Gazillion and canceled MMOARPG Marvel Heroes, which was then scheduled to sunset at the end of the year.

However, on Wednesday, Gazillion employees began reporting that they’d been sent a letter by company CEO Dave Dohrmann announcing the end of Gazillion, the loss of their jobs (and some of their benefits), and a rushed end to Marvel Heroes as the bank called in its debts. The letter said the game would be shut down on Friday following an announcement, causing panic among MMO players who thought they had a bit more time. But no announcement came, and the game stayed up through the weekend.

Now, players on PC, Xbox One, and PS4 report that the game has indeed gone fully offline as of this afternoon.

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The Daily Grind: Is an MMO’s shutdown announcement better or worse than shutdown suspicions?

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This is a post about Marvel Heroes. It’s also a post about Firefall. In fact, it’s a post about all of the games where there’s a period between “shutdown announcement” and “things are still humming along.” There’s a certain point where communication stops, where updates don’t happen, where sometimes the servers just go down without explanation and then come back up without explanation. And you play the game knowing, at that point, that things are not going to be all right, because there’s no possible world where things turn out fine after that.

Which is awful, yes, but part of me wonders if that’s worse or better than cases where you’re suddenly smacked in the face with a shutdown notice. As far as City of Heroes players knew, everything was fine before the shutdown; by contrast, Marvel Heroes players knew full well that something was up well before the announcement came down. So what do you think, dear readers? Is an MMO’s shutdown announcement better or worse than shutdown suspicions? Is it better to just know, however surprising it may be, or would you rather it starts slow?

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The Stream Team: A Cosmic Trial final farewell to Marvel Heroes

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Massively OP’s MJ feels like she is pressing her luck, but the Marvel Heroes servers are still up (for who knows how long today!) so she’s rushing in for a final play session. Of all the plans and goals she had in game, there is one she just has to try to accomplish: the Cosmic Trial. Previous attempts failed, but MJ has a better Storm build prepared and a good — although not properly leveled-up — team up. It’s her last chance to try and beat it, so join us live at 2:00 p.m. to cheer her on and give the game a final farewell.

What: Marvel Heroes
Who: MJ Guthrie
When: 2:00 p.m. EST on Friday, November 24th, 2017

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The Stream Team: The last Marvel Heroes hurrah?

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Well then. That happened. Although Massively OP’s MJ actually had other Thanksgiving day plans, the very real threat that this could be her last time ever to log into Marvel Heroes made her drop them. Instead, she is throwing herself into being Rogue, Storm, and all of her favorite heroes before the doors close for good sometime tomorrow. Tune in live at 8:00 p.m. for quite possibly the last hurrah for this superhero game.

What: Marvel Heroes
Who: MJ Guthrie
When: 8:00 p.m. EST on Thursday, November 23rd, 2017

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Gazillion is dead and Marvel Heroes is shutting down Friday, NOT at the end of the year

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Massively OP has received a credible tip from a former Gazillion employee who told us under condition of anonymity that Marvel Heroes will be over significantly sooner than Disney and Marvel previously declared.

The ex-employee says he was terminated as of today, that Gazillion is being shut down entirely, and that Marvel Heroes will sunset this coming Friday, not at the end of the year as originally announced.

The termination letter written by CEO Dave Dohrmann was shared with Massively OP and claims that banking creditors have effectively pulled the plug on the company, leading to the termination of almost every employee at the studio and the apparent renege of benefits including accrued PTO.

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Phantasy Star Online 2 website quietly shutters

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Players hoping for Phantasy Star Online 2 in the west have been holding onto a thin sliver of hope for five years now. Back in 2012, it seemed like a sure thing, but subsequently fans have basically been taunted and teased by the prospect of the game which has never, ever seemed to get any closer to releasing here. Heck, it’s never even been explicitly stated why it isn’t being released over here. But now, perhaps, the final indignity has been suffered, as the game’s official website has silently shut down.

Is there any hope remaining for the game? We’re going to go ahead and say “no,” because there hasn’t been much hope for a very long time now. The good news, such as it is, is that the game still has no region locks in place, but the reality is that it just seems to have been announced and then quietly forgotten. So long, PSO2’s website.

Source: Reddit

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NCsoft is already sunsetting MOBA Master X Master

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NCsoft announced this evening that it will sunset its relatively new MOBA Master X Master, explaining that the game just “wasn’t enough to take on the established juggernauts.”

“There is no easy way to say this, but regretfully, we will be discontinuing our service for MXM, with the final day of the game’s life to be January 31. Deciding to close the game is not a decision we come to lightly, but ultimately it came down to a matter of business—we explored several options, but none of them were sustainable. We truly believe that MXM is special, and offered a lot of new ideas to change up the MOBA genre, but in trying to carve out a niche for itself, we failed to connect with players.”

The company will compensate players with a stack of cash-shop currency, refund all purchases made from August 30th to today, and turn on all game modes for the remainder of the game’s life, which will come to an end on January 31st.

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Disney has canceled Marvel Heroes, Marvel has ended its relationship with Gazillion

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We can now confirm this as real, following a statement made by a Marvel representative to Massively OP. We’re updating below.

According to Kotaku, Disney has canceled Marvel Heroes – on all platforms – and nuked its business partnership with Gazillion. Here’s the message Kotaku says it received:

“We regret to inform our Marvel Heroes fans that we have ended our relationship with Gazillion Entertainment, and that the Marvel Heroes games will be shut down. We would like to sincerely thank the players who joined the Marvel Heroes community, and will provide any further updates as they become available.”

The news will not come as a shock to MMORPG players, as we’ve been chronicling the mess over at Gazillion for weeks now. We’d gone an entire month since the last formal update from the team, social media accounts have lain dormant, Halloween was bungled, negative Steam reviews were flooding in, the PC playerbase shrunk to its smallest size in four and a half years, the Thor Ragnarok promotion never happened, two community reps for the studio departed, and accusations flew from former studio employees in regard to “inappropriate conduct” toward female employees on the part of current CEO Dave Dohrmann, whose removal from the studio became the goal of some activist players.

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Masangsoft casts rez on RaiderZ

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Can’t kill the Z! RaiderZ, that is. Masangsoft is apparently trying to resuscitate the title, which sunsetted under PWE’s banner in 2015.

“Masangsoft have been looking at the MMORPG RaiderZ for a long time that we’ve taken over from MAIET Entertainment, Inc.,” the company wrote on Facebook yesterday.

“We’ve been carefully exploring the potential of the game, considering the finances and human resources we have in our company. And the most important thing is that it was the users’ passion that brought RaiderZ back. We were impressed by the fact that this game provided a great deal of experience for many people. It’s true that RaiderZ is an old game that isn’t sophisticated enough to satisfy the gaming industry’s trends, technology and users’ point of view. However, the interest and affection of users is invaluable and important motivation for developing the game. We know that many people are curious about this game. We really want to release the RaiderZ right now, but there are many things we haven’t looked yet, and there are many things that we need to fix.”

See, guys, they’re rezzing it with the power of love.

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Asta Online prepares to shut its doors… again

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Alas-ta, poor Asta Online. We were pretty surprised when the game got its third lease on life earlier this year, but it appears to have been sadly abortive, as it will be shutting down once again on December 8th of this year. Cash shop items have already been made unavailable for purchase, with no words on any sort of farewell celebration before the shutdown. (We would not hold our breath on that one.)

Players who have purchased cash shop items are directed to contact Steam support regarding any sort of refunds, which seems a little unexpected under the circumstances. Installation of the game is already disabled as well, but if you’ve already got it installed, you can continue to play until the servers go off. Our condolences to players affected by the closure, although we can’t help but wonder if it’s not going to come back yet again.

Source: Steam page; thanks to Gaz for the tip!

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Kritika Online is sunsetting in Southeast Asia

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We’ve updated below with En Masse’s statement confirming that this sunset will have no impact on Kritika in the west.

Kritika Online will sunset in the Southeast Asia region, Asiasoft announced this morning. It had been live for just a year, and you’re not getting much notice here.

“With much sadness, Kritika Online SEA will discontinue servicing by 12th of December. We understand your frustration and feedback from all players at this point but we’d like to seek your kind understanding throughout this closure as we have prepared a couple of Thank You events all the way to the closure date.”

KritikaSEA staff say the game will operate normally through the end date, with the added bonus of 3000 cash shop currency added to your account per day. Payment will be shut down on November 10th.

We have no specific reason to believe this move will have any bearing on Kritika Online as launched by En Masse in the west; however, we have inquired with the studio’s PR and will report back once we’ve got the official statement.

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DC Universe Online is shutting down PlayStation 3 support in 2018

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The official announcement is titled “Changes coming to DC Universe Online for PlayStation 3,” but it’s really just one change for DC Universe Online. Specifically, that one change will be that the game is no longer available for the PlayStation 3. If you’ve been getting by on nothing more than the aging console for your platform of choice, you will have to either upgrade to a newer console or wave farewell as of January 31st, 2018, as Daybreak says it’s planning to “focus [its] resources on further optimizing the game for PlayStation 4.”

On the bright side, migrating to PlayStation 4 means keeping all of your achievements, subscriptions, unlocks, and so forth as long as you use the same PSN account on both platforms. So you won’t actually lose any progress by upgrading. Still, you’re going to need to upgrade if you’ve been sticking with the console this time; hopefully the upgrade will mean a better experience for players on all platforms and chances for the developers to push for better content.

Source: Official Site; thanks to Greaterdivinity, Jose, ChaosConstant, and Eric for the tip!

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