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Netmarble announces the shutdown of Arcane Saga
It can only be hoped that during your brief time with Arcane Saga you have not gotten too attached to it. The game relaunched in the US just over a month ago, and now the game has announced an impending shutdown later this year. Somewhat unusually, the actual shutdown date is September 16th, meaning that the game will be waiting for the final shutdown longer than it was running normally. Netmarble has already closed up the cash shop; players are able to spend any remaining cash shop currency on the company's other titles. According to the announcement, the game simply wasn't taking in enough money to remain profitable. Arcane Saga was a relaunch of Prius Online, which had already been shut down once before. Our condolences go out to any gamers who had hoped for a long and fruitful future with the game.
City of Heroes fans will hold a protest rally at Atlas Park [Updated with video]
Odds are good that most City of Heroes fans can't picket NCsoft's corporate headquarters over the game's sudden closing announcement. But fans can picket in the game itself, and that's the plan behind the in-game rally on Saturday at 5 p.m. EDT. The event planners are asking players to congregate en masse on the stairs in Atlas Park on the Virtue server in the hopes of spawning an awe-inspiring number of zone instances. The rally is followed by a costume contest at 6 p.m. EDT with a similar theme: Players will be making costumes based on Paragon Studios employees -- not the pseudonyms of the employees but the employees themselves. Players are encouraged to put a personal twist on the costumes, but the rules emphasize that mean-spirited costumes are disallowed. If you want to show your solidarity with the game and the studio, head over to the Virtue server this Saturday and get ready to strut your stuff in truly epic fashion. [Update: Massively streamed the event live on our Twitch channel complete with commentary from Beau and Bree. We've embedded the show behind the cut -- sorry for the audio burps; 45234528435 people all waving torches in protest can do that to a stream. Titan Network has more info, including the speech by the rally's chief organizer and the groundwork for a campaign to mail superhero capes and masks to the NCsoft studios. Save CoH!]
Bounty Bay Online shutting down
After five years of operation, it's time for the good ship of Bounty Bay Online to pull into port and never set sail again. The game has announced that it will be shutting down in the near future, with the servers currently scheduled to go dark on September 20th. No specific reasons have been given for the shutdown, although the announcement does make note that the years of operation (and several management changes) took their toll on the game. Client downloads are already disabled; the community team is planning events for players sticking with the game during its last weeks of operation. Players who purchased items from the game's cash shop recently will also be compensated accordingly, although exact details have not yet been announced. It's a sad day for anyone in love with the game or simply fond of a broad MMO landscape, and we can only hope that the development team moves on to bigger and brighter projects.
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.
