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Auto Assault Scrapped
see317
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So, looks like the numbers finally hit home to NCsoft, and they're shutting down the servers.
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setview/features/loadFeature/1314/gameID/149
Sucks to see a passable non sword&sorcery game get put down, as it diminishes the likely hood of a good one coming out someday. But I don't think anyone will be suprised by this.
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setview/features/loadFeature/1314/gameID/149
As MMORPG.com readers may or may not know, NCsoft and NetDevil announced today that they will be closing the doors to Auto Assault on August 31st of this year. This afternoon, I had a brief conversation with David Swofford at NCsoft about the decision and what brought this announcement about.
In the end, and this probably doesn't come as a surprise to anyone, it really all came down to low and ebbing numbers. The number of players on the server was small, and it finally reached a point where it didn't make sense to continue.
I think David summed it up best when he said, "What we were putting in, we weren't getting back".
In the end, while they may be games to us, MMORPGs like Auto Assault are a business and a business that loses money just doesn't make any sense.
"It's unfortunate for the players," said David, "any time you have to close something down, but sometimes you have to make these decisions as a company".
The decision, I am told was made mutually between NetDevil, the makers of the game, and NCsoft, the publisher, and while the announcement may have seemed sudden to some, it was a decision made over time.
According to David, their decision was "certainly not sudden. We were looking at the numbers over time and saw that it was the right time."
Auto Assault launched in April of 2006 and will be one year and four months old at the time of its closing.
MMORPG.com will continue to follow this story as it progresses.
For those who may have missed it, here is the original statement as it appeared ont he Auto Assault Website:
NOTICE: Today NCsoft is announcing that it will be closing down service for Auto Assault at the end of the summer. The service will close at midnight on August 31, 2007. As of today, any player currently in the service with an active billed account will not be billed again. If players have previously purchased time via multi-month billing or time cards that extends their service past July 31, NCsoft will reconcile these accounts appropriately. There will be more announcements coming soon regarding the shut down of Auto Assault and its impact on current accounts. Please check back at www.autoassault.com for more information.
Sucks to see a passable non sword&sorcery game get put down, as it diminishes the likely hood of a good one coming out someday. But I don't think anyone will be suprised by this.
see317 on
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I think we're working with different definitions of that word here.
During the (admittedly short) time I played it, I didn't come across anything that made me want to say "screw this" and uninstall.
Conversly, I hit that point at about 30 minutes for SWG.
Shutting down of any MMO by a major company is big news. But that AA survived as long as it did with the low numbers it had is testament to how much it takes before an MMO gets canned. This is, what, the 5th "major" MMO ever to be shut down after launch? Jumpgate, Motor City, Earth and Beyond, and AC2 are the other ones that come to mind. Considering how many MMOs there are, that's a surprisingly small number.
> turn on light
Good start to the day. Pity it's going to be the worst one of your life. The light is now on.
Hooraydiation wrote: And I don't care how distraught you are. It's just impolite to shoot yourself when someone has their dick inside you.
It's not really that small when you consider how many never even get launched.
Now that AA is being shut down, NetDevil has the great honor of being the first MMO dev team that I can think of that's had two of their games shut down.
Then again, Jumpgate's coming back anyway, so I'm not sure what I can say about it.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
It's a shame, but if it means they're putting resources to something else, then good. AA had so much wasted potential.
EA canned Motor City and E&B. But my understanding there is that the games weren't doing badly at all, EA had just got them in their company acquisitions and didn't feel like running any MMOs, so they shut them down.
Which has about the same effect of killing their reputation in MMOs.
Anyways, I totally blame the devs on this one. I heard a pre-launch interview with them on w00t radio, and it was all like "loot loot loot loot, goddamn do we love us some loot". And I was thinking, goddammit, this is a car combat game, where you drive fast, blow shit up, and get powerups by driving over them. You do not want to add grinds to this genre.
If this squashes future attempts at trying bring in tired, unneccesary MMO "features" to new genres, then it's for the best.
So when Auto Assault was announced, I was cautiously optimistic.
What a disappointment.
One of the great things about Jumpgate was its physics system; it wasn't arcadey in the slightest. It really separated the good pilots from the people with good reflexes. Being able to think ahead, compensate for your ship's mass and cargo, use the drift to your advantage and the like were all marks of a skilled player. By comparison, Auto Assault's physics are over-the-top arcade drek. Cars turn on a dime, cling to the ground like they're glued to it, and just don't really feel like cars.
The game was never particularly optimized, either; it didn't look very good, but ran like a dog. Worst were the city zones. Oh, the city zones. In jumpgate, when you pulled into a space station, you were assumed to be out of your ship, but you did everything from the console at the station; there was no running-around-as-a-pilot-on-foot bit. For some reason I'll never understand, they added that to Auto Assault. And the character designs and animations were every bit as ugly and poorly done as Earth & Beyond's.
Then there was the quest system. And the loot. And the very linear weapon upgrades. And the hideously expensive customization options. And the lack of a player base. And classes. Yes, the cars had classes.
I'm not saying that AA was a bad game, it's just that all it really did was take a standard swords and sorcery MMO system and slap some (bad) post-apocalyptic graphics on it. Yeah, there were some cool and interesting powers, but it was the same shit we've all played time and time again, only at the free-Korean-MMO level of quality.
And the loot... do people really enjoy collecting loads of near-identical items, comparing for minor stats differences, and tossing the remainder? And having to do it every few minutes? Maybe CoH has spoiled me, but I'm just not a "loot guy." Even Guild Wars' simplified loot system is more my style, so AA's system was overwhelming.
I have to say, though, I thought the quests and the factions were pretty well-done, and the physics engine was pretty decent. Literally plowing through walls and other junk was fun. The weapon systems were nice too, and I thought the controls for guns and driving were good. The physics tuning was still off when I played it last, but it was getting better each revision.
I wonder whether AA will be considered a failure for being too cliched or whether the industry thinks it was actually something different. I mean, I hope games execs are smart enough not to say "oh it had cars, so it wasn't like other MMOs".... but the cynic in me suspects otherwise.
> turn on light
Good start to the day. Pity it's going to be the worst one of your life. The light is now on.
I remember playing the beta and thinking "What idoit thought it would be a good idea to make a CAR COMBAT GAME play like WoW?" The goo drops you had to "park" to eat to regain health was just, oh god, such a terrible idea. I bet the game would have done well if it had actually played up to the car combat strengths.
That was at once both the good and the bad thing about Jumpgate. Unless you had an extensive flight/space sim background and a pretty beefy joystick, you may as well not even apply.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Earth and Beyond was SO MUCH FUN in beta, then right before launch (IIRC) they nerfed how fast you leveled, and bam, snore city.