After seeing Murasame's post yesterday in which a letter from EA was presented stating the cancellation of Ultima X, I knew a comic like today's had to be done.

Finding out that Warhammer Online had gone under the axe was bad enough, but now Ultima X? It leaves me wondering, yet again, what MMOGs are next up on the steps to the chopping block.

The list of cancelled titles is growing. It's getting ugly out there in an absolutely saturated market. Yet almost every day we see announcements about the "next big MMOG" going into beta.

And with so many other existing games on shakey footing, I honestly feel like we're sitting on the MMOG bubble waiting for it to burst. Remember the net advertisement bubble from a few years ago, and it all imploded taking tons of internet startup companies with it? **nods** My brain is conjuring up that kind of industry shakeup.

What will happen though is that the ones that survive the bubble will grow. And new games will learn from the experience of those that burned.

There are very few titles of that I'm absolutely certain of at this point. And, I'll leave you to ponder on what titles those are rather than shoot myself in the foot. **grins**

My certainties list is limited to EQ2 and WoW.

Well, I'm including certain games that have already been released.

Less popular games are always the better games, I'm afraid. Especially MMOs. The one reason I don't and will never play everquest is because of the awful community. Don't get me wrong, I'm positive there are some awesome folks, my favorite guild member in DA came there from EQ.

The same problem arises with FFXI, the sheer numbers of people make you run into a lot of terrible members. The few problems I've seen DA were the Dark Wolves on the Merlin server and they'd go around offering 'free procs' and just take people's stuff and kill the DF merchants whenever they'd spawn.

More recently I've seen a lot of artifact stealing and the occasional hacked account.

Uh, anyway, I'm surprised Horizons made it past beta. that game was so boh-ring. I had such high hopes, too. I'm glad DA is updating their character models and such, the new ones look so much better, and everything I've seen from EQ looks like they made everything for the game when they first released it and were just holding stuff 'til they needed it. woo -- I'm rambling.

Matrix Online I’ll wager... and I bet no one will be sad to see it go. >.<

bah, i was actually looking forward to Ultima X, grumble

I want to check out Matrix Online, just to see how the battle system is handled...I'll miss it.

Its always nice to see more concepts and battle systems to be released in a game to stir up more competition and to keep existing MMO's on their toes.

I really wanted to play UX.

EA has made turning good games into crap an artform.

Some examples,
Ultima
Wing Commander
Crusader
Strike Commander

yeah, i dont think matrix online has what it takes either. after the travesty of the matrix movies i dont think the real intrest is there on that kind of scale.

Being one of the biggest Ultima fans out there, all I have to see is one word - Woot!. I never liked Ultima X, it was a front of all which I stood for. The series ended perfectly at Ultima IX just as Lord British had intended it and I never want to see it try to be revived again. I shuddered at the sound of Ultima X. I even knew that this would fall under, afterall, Ultima Online 2 got the axe a few years back. I couldnt see them trying to bring this one out either, I'm sure somewhere in his castle Lord British is smiling.