Free Realms, Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, and Wizardry Online to end

Online games eventually come to an end. For a number of Sony Online Entertainment's games, that time is sooner than later. Four games will be "sunset," so that the company can "refocus our resources on other areas in the best interest of our company and player community."

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Online games eventually come to an end. For a number of Sony Online Entertainment's games, that time is sooner than later. Four games will be "sunset," so that the company can "refocus our resources on other areas in the best interest of our company and player community."

The four games to be retired are: Free Realms, Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, and Wizardry Online.

The two kid-oriented MMOs of the bunch, Free Realms and Clone Wars Adventures, will both end on March 31. Described as a "true labor of love" by SOE senior director of global communications Michele Cagle, Free Realms is ending because it has "reached a point in its life cycle where players are moving on to other games." Clone Wars Adventures has an audience where "players are growing up and moving on." More info on the end of Free Realms can be found here, while Clone Wars info can be found here. SOE promises an "exciting" end to the game, one that hopefully matches the end of SOE's previous Star Wars MMO, Galaxies.

The two remaining MMOs will end on July 31. Vanguard is one of the company's longest-running games, "but given the decreasing player population we cannot justify the resources required to support and update this game in a way our players deserve," Cagle told us. More info on that game's end can be found here. Wizardry Online, on the other hand, is rather short-lived, having launched only a year ago. Subscribers will have their memberships converted into SOE All Access for the remainder of their subscription. More info can be found here.

"We want to thank the players for their commitment and the wonderful memories we made together over the years in these worlds," Cagle finished. SOE still has a number of active MMOs, including DC Universe Online and Planetside 2.

Andrew Yoon was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    January 24, 2014 2:30 PM

    Andrew Yoon posted a new article, Free Realms, Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, and Wizardry Online to end.

    Online games eventually come to an end. For a number of Sony Online Entertainment's games, that time is sooner than later. Four games will be "sunset," so that the company can "refocus our resources on other areas in the best interest of our company and player community."

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      January 24, 2014 2:38 PM

      They actually announced this while I was logged in playing Vanguard. It's a shame they left that game to die while working on everything else over the years. It had a certain charm and difficulty that's hard to find in recent MMORPGs. I wonder if this will help the Kickstarter for Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen by some of the designers of Everquest and Vanguard meet its goal.

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      January 24, 2014 2:42 PM

      Vanguard, man there are things about that game I just love. Sad to see this day come, but come it must. I really hope Pantheon gets funded, it really looks like Brad's attempt to do this the right one, one last time.

      RIP Vanguard.

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      January 24, 2014 2:58 PM

      They were actually devoting resources to Vanguard? Was it some guy that checked in every couple days to make sure the server was still on?

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        January 24, 2014 3:00 PM

        It still had frequent updates and still has a pretty big community.

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          January 24, 2014 3:29 PM

          The truth is that it's a F2P game and it probably wasn't making any money. Vanguard is very difficult (at least by modern MMO standards) and grindy by nature. The type of player who plays that game is going to earn stuff in the game rather than be nickel and dimed by micro trans. Business model wasn't ever gonna work on that type of customer.

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            January 24, 2014 4:01 PM

            Oh yea I know that. The sad thing is there will be no such thing as 'difficult' MMOs anymore, a la Vanguard or EQ or AC or whatever. There is no money to be made from that if they want to cater to all the gamers who like their little breadcrumb trails and theme parks.

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      January 24, 2014 2:59 PM

      Noooo not Vanguard.. I still play occasionally. Love the difficulty in the end game dungeons / raids. Shit is insane. Dungeons take hours and hours to get to the bottom of. Sigh.. I've been working on that character on and off since the release!

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      January 24, 2014 3:36 PM

      Free Realms! I wont miss you, but the pirate boat game I made was awesome, should have been standalone.

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      January 24, 2014 3:49 PM

      Kinda bummed I never got to play Wizardy, BUT.... sounds like they'll be dumping more resources into the EQ Series and PlanetSide 2, so I cant complain.

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        January 24, 2014 4:03 PM

        So Smed (SOE President) is doing an AMA on Reddit right now. The most noteworthy thing? Someone asked him which previously shut down title he could relaunch - response:

        "SWG. I would do everything differently.

        SWG PLAYERS - OUR NEXT GAME (not announced yet) IS DEDICATED TO YOU. Once we launch it... you can come home now."

        Interesting.

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        January 24, 2014 4:03 PM

        Or, glory of glories, if they devoted resources to a new Wizardry game offline. I'd be very happy with that.

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          January 25, 2014 10:29 PM

          Amen! I'd play the crap out of that game! Wizardry 8 was awesome! And now with Legends of Grimrock and Might and Magic X paving the way... bring it on!

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      January 24, 2014 4:21 PM

      *pours one out for Vanguard*

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      January 24, 2014 5:41 PM

      So sad for Vanguard, I had many, many hours of goodtimes in that game.

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      January 25, 2014 11:15 PM

      My favorite Vanguard memory was doing the intro diplomacy questline for the evil cat race, and finding out that they're really all evil - pan-dimensional invaders trying to wipe everyone out. Unfortunately, I never found any content referring to any of those ideas once that questline finished.

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