NCsoft shutting down Lineage in North America

Before Aion, before Guild Wars, before anything else for NCsoft, there was Lineage. Not the sequel (which actually takes place significantly before the first title) but the original game, released not too long after Ultima Online came on to the scene. While the game is old, it's long maintained a viable community within North America... but apparently not quite viable enough. Today, NCsoft announced that as of June 29th, the game's servers will be shutting down for good in North America.

Players who had registered previously have had their accounts reactivated in good standing, and all recurring billing has been cancelled from this date onward. The community team for the game is also promising some live events to help memorialize the game and let it go out with a bang rather than a whimper. We can also expect to see a few new live server rule pushes. Still, it's a sad day for Lineage fans, who are well advised to look at the official announcement and the refund policy to see how the plans for the remaining time will affect them.