Rann:  On the 31st of July, the servers of The Matrix Online will close down for the last time. What was a bold concept… directly continuing the story from a series of movies in an online environment, allowing players to shape the growing storyline, rather than just being plopped into some “will disappear into history” era of the continuity… could not overcome a poor interface, an inability to properly distinguish itself in the burgeoning market, and the fact that you may as well admit to having tiny shrunken testicles as admit to liking the second two movies in the trilogy.

In a way, The Matrix Online passing is very sad. We’re unlikely to see a property step out on the line like that and give the players a chance to affect the canon of the story that people actually care about again. On the other hand, it was mostly inevitable.

I do have to snort at something from the forum post I linked:

Are The Matrix Online subscribers going to be compensated for their loyalty to the game?
On July 31, 2009 at 11:59PM PST the ability to play The Matrix Online will cease. We encourage players to transition their active service to one of the other SOE games available for trial during the transition period of June 1 through August 1, 2009.

You know, if you’re going to have the ball-balls to actually address that inevitable (and probably already-asked) question, you could at least upgrade to the +1 kind and admit that the answer is “No”.

Actually, the only reason I really felt like posting this was because when the game first started, I wasn’t really playing MMOs, and made the argument to someone that without something like an individual, computer-side version of the game, if the servers ever went down you’d be SOL and that game disk would become a forty dollar several gram piece of plastic. He replied “Dude! It’s SOE! Those servers will be up forever!”

Via GU Comics, with graphical representation.