Last night, Twitter exploded with the news that Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss – along with Lana Wachowski – will return for another go at the Matrix movie franchise, with production on The Matrix 4, or whatever they wind up calling it, beginning next year. Normally we’d not cover a movie announcement at all here on MOP, but of course, the MMO genre has a particular fascination with this franchise thanks to the SOE MMORPG The Matrix Online.
As MOP’s Game Archaeologist previously chronicled, the game missed the Matrix hype window, was a bit of a bugfest (we said it was an SOE game), required heavy GM interaction, and suffered from a tiny playerbase, until it was eventually sunsetted in 2009, almost exactly 10 years ago, in fact. But in spite of all that, the folks who played it loved it to bits, and it maintains a cult-favorite status among old-school MMORPG players.
All of this is to say that it’s no wonder that the internet is calling for the revival of the game now.
put the matrix online servers back up
— XEECEE (@XEECEEVEVO) August 20, 2019
Yes, please.
Of course, it probably won’t happen. In the meantime, Matrix fans wanting to support Matrix Online might be best off lending a hand to one of the game’s player-run rogue server dev crews instead: There’s the MXOemu and the Hardline Dreams server too, though apparently they’re not fully playable. There’s also a community Discord that’s been hopping this week over the movie news!
