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The Game Archaeologist jacks into The Matrix Online: Your memories
What can you trust when your memories are merely the by-product of intelligent machines tinkering with your brain? When you come right down to it, who's to say that our alleged recollections of The Matrix Online weren't just computer viruses uploaded into our cerebral cortexes -- and that the game never existed at all? Real or not, The Matrix Online is in no danger of being forgotten. Whether it's because of the meta setting, the too-hip-to-stay-on-cows fashion, or the interactive stories, MxO never fails to evoke passionate testimonies. After speaking with developer Ben Chamberlain last week, today we're going to turn the tables on the players themselves to see what they have to say. Was The Matrix Online really all that and a bag of computer chips? Was it merely a good-looking graphical chat room or something more? And how will it be remembered many years from now when we sit our grandchildren on our laps and tell them about how we took the blue pill? Or was it red... I can never remember!
The Game Archaeologist jacks into The Matrix Online: Jamming with Ben 'Rarebit' Chamberlain
When we started into The Matrix Online month last week on The Game Archaeologist, one of the comments caught my eye. Massively reader stealthrider wrote: Please, please do a tribute to Rarebit. MxO was his baby, and no one took its death worse than he. He did everything for that game, much of it single-handedly. Everything from playing the canon characters and co-writing the story to fixing hundreds of bugs and even creating a new zone from scratch. Not to mention developing and implementing the story missions, new items, the RP item vendors, and pretty much everything else in MxO's final couple of years. He even implemented and moderated a player-created minigame as part of the official story. He retired from game development in the months before MxO's shutdown. He was that dedicated to this game that he couldn't work on anything else afterward. He's a god among developers, and he is as sorely missed as the game itself. I think this sums up how many Matrix Online vets feel about Ben "Rarebit" Chamberlain. So instead of a mere tribute, we drove the MassivelyMobile over to Chamberlain's house (read: send a polite email request), and he graciously said he'd be glad to reminisce with us. So hit that jump to find out the last word on MxO from the dev who held it together!
The Game Archaeologist jacks into The Matrix Online: The highlights
It's not every year that a movie comes along that captures the pop culture zeitgeist so powerfully and so quickly as The Matrix did. I recall lugging a few college friends along to see this in 1999 -- having heard only a few sparse details about it beforehand -- and coming out of the theater feeling as if we we'd been electrified. The bold mix of science fiction, martial arts, philosophy, action, and leather ensembles became the smash hit of the year, and a franchise was born. And while we had great hopes that this would be this generation's Star Wars, The Matrix ultimately proved to be a lightning-in-a-bottle phenomenon, impossible to recapture once unleashed. Sequels, animated shorts, video games, comic books -- none rose to the height of the original film, and eventually the franchise petered out. During this period, an odd duck of an MMO was born: The Matrix Online. When you think about it, an online virtual world where people log in and fight against programs was a really short hop from the movie series. MxO, as it was abbreviated, was an audacious game with unique features, story-centric gameplay and a sci-fi bent in a field of fantasy competitors, and while it only lasted four years, it was enough to make a huge impression for its community. So by popular demand, this month we're going to revisit the 1s and 0s of The Matrix Online to see just how deep the rabbit hole (and well-worn cliche) goes -- and what made this game stand out!
SOE is jacking out of The Matrix Online
Hang on. Wait a minute. Has anyone else seen a sign of the apocalypse today, or is the news that Sony Online Entertainment is actually shutting down an MMO the only one out there currently? We had to ask because when we saw the news this morning, we really couldn't believe our eyes. SOE, long heralded for keeping MMOs open even with very small communities, has finally decided to close down The Matrix Online, leaving the remaining Redpills to jack out for the last time on July 31st, 2009. From what we've seen, remaining members of The Matrix Online community will have some community team interaction, as Daniel "Walrus" Myers is threatening to "[crush] everyone's RSI just one more time." Additionally, any MxO players making the jaunt to Las Vegas this year for SOE's Fan Faire will also be able to meet up with Walrus there, as he will be there for The Agency. Still, it's a sad day - and a memorable one - in seeing SOE shut down an MMO. We only wonder what this will mean for their other smaller-subscriber-number MMOs. Will we see any of them shuttered as well? Only time will tell. [Via Tipa from West Karana]
The Matrix Online: Bug fixes and the Winter Event
Recently, Daniel "Walrus" Myers popped his head out of The Matrix (or into, depending on which side you think this is) to give all the Redpills out there some great information on what's been planned for The Matrix Online in the upcoming month. Most of it, for those of us who play MxO, know that it involves evolving the storyline as we move from Chapter 8 (which just ended on November 15th -- hooray chapter and arc rewards!) to Chapter 9. Also included in the next batch of updates is the fix for Bullet Time animations and finishing moves. Also returning to The Matrix Online is the third annual Winter Holiday Event. More hats and snowballs (and new clothing pieces) please! We've been extra-good Redpills this year, we promise.
WoW Future-Vision: Express train to the level cap
The year is 2012. WoW fans are excitedly awaiting the game's 5th expansion, Revenge of the Gnomes, which brings two new races to the game (Sporeggar and Goblins, at last!), as well as a new class (the Tinker), and a slew of other features. As everyone knows, this is the expansion where the gnomes finally take back Gnomeregan from the troggs, pushing them back all the way into the "Undergloom," a vast and ancient network of caverns beneath Azeroth. Of course, the gnomes also accidentally stumble upon the long-buried prison of the Old Gods and unleash unbridled havoc on the World of Warcraft, but that's where the fun is, right?I could go on and on about the new features included in Revenge of the Gnomes, but I'm sure you've heard about most of them already (like the subterranean hovercraft group-mounts and blue-pill, red-pill potions for alchemy). Suffice it to say that the feature everyone is most excited about is that the level cap is once again being raised another 10 levels, to a grand total of 110. Like everyone else, you're probably wondering how in the world (of Warcraft) are you going to level your new Goblin Tinker character all the way through those tedious levels of 1 to 100? Everyone wants to try out the new content, but no one wants to slave away through Stranglethorn Vale for the 48th time. To complicate things further, Blizzard still doesn't want to add any more 1-60 quests in the lower-level zones (not to mention any of the Outland, Northrend, Emerald Dream, or Great Sea Expansion zones)! Fortunately, though, Blizzard's got what you need! Are you prepared for the "/level" command?
