Motor City Online Closing

The new F-zero movie looks sweeeeeeeeeeeeet. Anyone know if it will have online support? That would truly kick my grandma's old but.

EA makes allsome sports games...I just fired up NCAA 2003 last night...man that stuff is crack.

pay to play is evil. im not spending 50 bucks on a game only to have to pay a monthly subcription to even get to play it/play it online.

you bunch of ducks dont HAVE to host the freaking servers, and places like fileshack can host patches.

stick pay to play right up your donkey, because i certainly dont want it.

So, it appears from reading the quote from their statement, it wasn't their fault the game didn't succeed. It was those damn customers screwing everything up.

No wonder the game didn't make it with an attitude toward their customers like that.

So there you have it, a public admission from a game publisher about making sure unskilled players can succeed in a game.

No wonder CS' is so popular, with it's highly random spray pattern, and why every FPS game released since QW has been progressively dumbed down, to keep it palatable to the largest possible audience and keep the sales thriving.

Maybe I read it wrong, but it really did seem like they were saying the skilled players succeeded in spite of the lesser skilled players. I find it disturbing that they feel that's a bad thing. How hollow does a victory feel if it's the result of a virtual random dice roll?

It almost makes me want to stop playing computer games and start to play real sports where they've actually got the balls to let you live with your natural advantages and deficiencies.

Did anyone here actually play this game? I tried it when it was near the final stage of beta, and it sucked beyond belief.

It's not surprising that they yanked this game.

Motor City should have worked. Maybe for online consoles.....But I just did not see enough promotoin of this title in other realms then video game enthusist sites. They should have hit the Hot Rod/Motortrend magazines and gone after the 40+ hot rod male car enthusists. Of course the game had many flaws, but im sure a game like this would sell....they just have to think out of the realm of your average videogame player.

Announcements like these are why I am skeptical to buy on online game run on a closed server run by a gaming company. Eventually, these servers are going to close. What happens in 5 or 10 years when you want to go back and play those games? There's a good chance that unless the game is a smash hit, it will probably "no longer be profitable" for the parent company, and you're shit outta luck. I'm the kind of person that likes going back and playing old games. The business models of these companies is ruining this ability. Unless they provide server software for the community to support the games when they eventually shutdown their own servers, these games are going to become impossible to play down the road.

A good example is what happened / is happening to Dreamcast online games. If a company is forced for one reason or another to "change business strategies" then it is going to affect a huge number of people who will have to toss these games in the garbage, or at the least not be able to make full use of the game's features.

It would be nice if the good folks at EA made the game a standalone racer in the final patch.

Granted, it probably won't happen, but it would be quite the cool gesture of appreciation to apologize for Hot pursuit 2 for all of the loyal race fans out there.

"MCO was (and still is) very different from a lot of subscription-based games because of its competitive nature. It was evident that the game was quickly dominated by skilled players. Anyone who can modify cars and race well succeeded while the less-skilled players failed. New players were faced with more defeats than helping hands."

Welcome to just about every online multiplayer game. Good players win, bad players lose. Hell, that sums up just about every competition known to the human race.

Kinda funny how people take jabs at EA for closing down studios/games. There is a small chance perhaps that they know more about the business and profit there games & studios are making then some shacknews posters. Just a thought.

-The SAMe

p.s. yes westwood closd down but if memory served most the employees are still there just on another projects.

It's great to see Verant and Blizzard have success while EA keeps bombing online. When console online gaming begins to take off in the next few years, we can all say goodbye to EA.

speaking in closing!!! www.isonews.com <-- 0wned!

Please note that the Motor City Online service announcement emailed to you earlier today was intended only for active subscribers to Motor City Online as of 2/26/03. If you have a cancelled or suspended account, you are not eligible for the free game offer. We appreciate your past patronage and apologize for any confusion.

Anybody else get screwed out of a free copy of The Sims Online?

I played the beta for a while and it was pretty fun, but it didn't have anything to hold your attention long enough to make you want to pay for it - let alone do so monthly.

From: EA
To: All Users

dear loyal customers: fuck you, you can't play your game anymore.

This is a little bit sad.... further proof that MMO isn't THAT viable yet, IMO.

It would be really, really cool if they somehow brought about the end of the world in these online universes when the game shut down. Switch the sky bitmaps to apocalyptic hellfire, or heck, just put a big asteroid up there in the sky for the last week. Also, repeal a few key gameplay rules to allow for absolute anarchy (i.e. all items are free and in unlimited supply). Just for fun.

The screenshots posted around the web alone would make for huge publicity for EA.

I wish they'd release a patch that'd let you play offline on a LAN or something. Some of tracks were pretty god damn awesome and the game was a hell of a lot of fun when the economy wasn't nerfed beyond repair.

In other news, it would appear that EA's master plan for success in the gaming industry is to buy out every competitor and shut it down.

Brilliant.

i remember playing the beta. when it was free...
it was a fun game. i didnt mind it. i pimped the fuck out of a 58 belair.. :)

paying to race cars, um......no.

ShadowBane I'd pay to play tho.....

Sooooo long!

Hope the employee's find work though, its hard as hell right now :/

Beta was fun, but the economy was hosed.

Any pay for play game should be free, or cost the same as 1 month and come with 1 month free.

I'd have tried this thing for a month for 8$, then continued or not depending on how I liked it. Same with these other mmorpg's.

Forgot the most important part.
Ultima Online / The Sims Online
If you are currently an active Motor City subscriber, you will receive an email offer detailing how to obtain a free copy of Ultima Online (UO) or The Sims Online (TSO) if you are over the age of 13. Similar to MCO, these games take place in online persistent state worlds with thriving communities. Though you would not see a loaded hot rod speeding through either of these worlds, you will have the opportunity to fight dragons in UO or run the best disco club in TSO. Being an active UO player myself, I enjoy it as much as MCO. If I had a clone, I'm sure he would be playing TSO when he wasn't doing my laundry. Both games come with 30-day free trial period. I recommend you to accept this offer and give your new game a test drive. But keep in mind this offer expires on 7/16/03, and your MCO account will be closed when you redeem your copy of the free game.

The economy in MCO was fucked beyond repair anyhow, tires going for tens of thousands of dollars, etc.

When will they learn to forget about the "pay per play" "pay per month" crap. If they had even just made it just updating win-lose statistics to a server, with no pay per play, and allow client-side customization (like the PC version of 4x4 Evo2), people might actually be playing it. MCO deserves to be shut down in my opinion. The whole system/model was so wrong and bloated for this genre.

i remember the beta

it was a steaming pile of shit =|

If it was like Bnet it would most likely lasted.

Maybe EA will get the point and figure out they can't milk the money out of people like the used to.

AKA sims online

Big surprise here.. I beta tested this thing and said "cute, but it won't last"..