Eight MMOs That Died Almost As Quickly As APB

In honor of APB's ugly demise, we present to you a hot cup of schadenfreude as we look back at eight dead games that pretty much got what they had coming to them.*

Because seriously. The Matrix Online. Ugh.

* As long as you don't dwell too much on jobs lost and dreams crushed. Nobody sets out to make a bad game, and every single one of these games had talented, creative people working on them even if the project didn't come together in the end. And so we mock the final product, but not the effort or the people behind them.**

** Except for Richard Garriott. Dude spent more time trying to be a space tourist than making a game. He can dry his tears with the stack of hundred-dollar bills he probably uses to insulate his castle. Yeah, dude lives in a castle. He'll be fine.

The Matrix Online
Warner Bros./Sega/Monolith Productions/Sony Online Entertainment
03/22/2005 - 7/31/2009 (four years, four months)

Good grief, I hate this game. It's dead, and my blood still boils thinking about what a turd it was. A stupid "interlock" system purported to bring movie-style kung fu to combat, but it really just showed off how much havoc network latency can wreak on animations. If I wanted to punch the air and swear at my monitor, I'd read Left 4 Dead 2 boycott threads. The fact that SOE could no longer even justify keeping this on life support as part of its Station Pass program should tell you all you need to know. I can honestly say that this is the worst game on this list. And that's an accomplishment.

Asheron's Call 2
Turbine Entertainment
11/22/2002 - 12/30/2005 (three years, one month)

You see that grass in the screenshot up there? Yeah, that blew me away when I first saw it in 2002 – the FPSes of the day were Battlefield 1942 and Metroid Prime. The idea that an MMO could look this good was like a dream. Unfortunately, the tradeoff for this awesome graphical sexy was a world utterly devoid of content. Not the best decision ever. Amusingly, the original Asheron's Call is running to this day.

Star Wars Galaxies
Sony Online Entertainment/LucasArts
06/23/2003 - 11/15/2005 (two years, five months)

"Wait a minute, Adam. Star Wars Galaxies is still running! Surely you're mistaken." Yes and no. It's running, but the New Game Enhancements that SOE deployed without warning on November 15, 2005 killed the original Star Wars Galaxies dead. The game that continues on under the name is a soulless level-grinding husk that bears little resemblance to the economy-driven virtual world that built a solid fanbase over two and a half years. Whether that original dream was what the world wanted out of a Star Wars MMO is another question, but the people who were still paying for that subscription sure did.

Earth & Beyond
Electronic Arts/Westwood Studios
09/24/2002 - 09/22/2004 (two years)

This one sucked so bad that it killed Westwood, the studio that created Command & Conquer. Well, not really, since EA's modus operandi at that point was to buy a talented creative studio over lunch and dissolve it and everything it stood for by dinner. Still, though, Earth & Beyond sucked. The space dogfighting combat was decent in a Freelancer sort of a way, but there was nothing to do in the vast reaches of the galaxy. You think Eve Online is boring? Imagine if it didn't have capital ships, player corporations, or free-for-all PvP 0.0 space.

Auto Assault
NCsoft/NetDevil
04/11/2006 - 08/31/2007 (one year, four months)

You know, I don't hate Auto Assault (and Tabula Rasa, coming up shortly here) like a lot of people do. Yeah, it was goofy, and the viability of MMO tropes like hunting and collection missions in a Mad Max-style post-apocalyptic car combat game is dubious at best, but I dug the combat and the awesome car customization. None of this matters, of course, because nobody played Auto Assault. Ever. But I wish someone would make something like it as a cooperative XBLA game. Like X-Men Legends, but with cars. Hmm...

Tabula Rasa
NCsoft/Destination Games
11/02/2007 - 02/28/2009 (one year, three months)

Tabula Rasa was more of a howling paean to Richard Garriott's monumental ego than an actual, functional MMO. That said, it had some neat ideas. The combat was all right if you could find a decent group for one of the few good pieces of content in the game. TR's scripted instances and dynamic monster invasions are easily the most fun I've had with any of the games on this list. There weren't nearly enough of these highlights to keep players paying, though, and the game's development redefined the concept of being late and over budget in a genre famous for it. Also, having to use hard-earned currency to buy ammo in a shooter is painfully stupid.

Fury
Gamecock/Auran
10/16/2007 - 07/08/2008 (nine months)

1. Take World of Warcraft arenas.
2. Strip out the years of methodical balancing and rebalancing, the social aspect of playing a successful MMO, and the rich depth and interplay of class abilities and gear.
3. Add microtransactions and make it a standalone game with a subscription fee.
4. Go out of business because your ideas are terrible.

APB
Realtime Worlds/Electronic Arts
06/29/2010 - 9/16/2010 (eighty freakin' days)

Eighty days. Think about that. $100 million and four-plus years to make a game that didn't last three months. How epic of a failure is that? If the widely reported $100 million development budget is in the ballpark, it's the kind of career-killing disaster that moviegoers wish on M. Night Shyamalan. Given the magnitude and frequency of the terrible design decisions, from the awful matchmaking to the stupid progression to the divide between social and action gaming, the market acted perfectly rationally in APB's case.

Well, that was depressing. Any bets on what's next?