After Tabula Rasa’s death back in February I’ve been quite interested in the death of MMO’s. It was the first I’ve seen and wondered how other MMO’s would handle their death. Would they just shut down? Or, like Tabula Rasa, do some kind of final story mission that results in the death of all characters?


Last Friday it was time for The Matrix Online to take it’s last breath of MMO air.
The game has had a fair amount of problems since it launched. Mainly, World Of Warcraft. Like Tabula Rasa, Sci-Fi MMO’s don’t seem to cause as much interest as fantasy games. The game, in the few hours I played it, seemed quite interesting. Quests were the standard MMO “kill x amount of y and bring item z to location y” fare, graphics were “okay” and the soundtrack was good. The lack in character races was compensated through many, many different clothes, such as shirts, leather coats and – of course – sunglasses.



But I was there for the end of it. Every character has been raised to Level 99 (the previous level cap was 50) and....that was basically it. Players were invited to “Party ‘till the Plug is pulled!” at Mara Centra, so I went there.



Yep. A bunch of players standing around dancing and dueling, chatting about the good old time they used to have. Or how shitty it was, depending on their liking.
No other special story event or final mission.



But as it came down to the last minute, something more interesting happened. Just watch this:



A box with the text “Wake Up!” appeared and everyone...well...imploded? I guess that’s the end of the Matrix then, isn’t it? Everyone is awake now. No more Matrix. The Matrix Online was considered the official continuation of the universe and some of the story elements were even written by the Wachowski brothers. Does that mean the Matrix is dead now?

Oh and by the way: I just got my Beta invite to Hello Kitty Online. Look forward to impressions on that one!