Sony Online Entertainment pulling the plug on PlayStation 2 edition of MMORPG later this month; three more online games going dark as well.
EverQuest Online Adventures for the PlayStation 2 marked its ninth anniversary last month, but it won't survive to celebrate another. Sony Online Entertainment this week announced "the imminent sunsetting" of four of its games, including its first console massively multiplayer online role-playing game.
EverQuest Online Adventures and a trio of PC online games--Infantry, Star Chamber: The Harbinger Saga, and Cosmic Rift--will be taken offline permanently on March 29. SOE has said it expects to have some sort of celebration for EverQuest Online Adventure players to mark the game's passing, though details aren't yet available.
"Each of these games shares a special place in both ours and our players' hearts," SOE said in a statement. "This is not an easy decision, but there comes a time when it's best for our developers to move on to the next adventure, and that day has come."
Current EverQuest Online Adventures players are being permitted to play out the game's final month without paying the monthly subscription charge and are being offered three-month gold memberships for EverQuest and EverQuest II on the PC.
Brendan Sinclair has been a games journalist since 1999. His tastes are eclectic, though he has a definite affinity for games with arcade roots. He's Canadian, but has also been at home in Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, and San Francisco.
My Characters were Creejr, Creeguy, Brennan and my moms characters were Kordana and Nekor we played on the Mars Fist server I believe I was 12 when me mother and I first played lol... If anyone remembers us be sure to add me up on FB Brennan Govender ! ONE OF THE GREATEST GAMES I EVER PLAYED AS A KID :D
I sympathize with the players. When the original Xbox Live service went offline I couldn't play Rainbow 6 games on it anymore and they were a lot of fun and there were still many people playing them. But they are a buisness and if they aren't turning a profit, it's time to shut the servers down. They aren't a charity.
sad...I remember I was working for my rat buff with my Necromancer when I had stopped playing.
I really hate that about MMOs. I have a beautiful collector's edition copy of Star Wars Galaxies that I will never be able to play again. At least my copy of Super Mario Bros. still works.
At least the PC version will continue. It's getting to where PC is a far safer bet when it comes to bc (patches), fan created content and continued online support. I'm not a PC gaming elitist in the slightest: I mostly play older PC games with low hardware requirements. But PC is becoming a much more stable platform with all the planned obsolescence console makers use to perpetually milk you. *And this is coming from someone who was once an avid console gamer himself.*
@Spacerac Ratchet WILL go multi-plat, along with Insomniac. Stop crying. Yes. I'm a HUGE Xbox fanboy, oh boy. Considering I just competed on a tournament hosted by this very website on a PS3, your comments are about as hard hitting as your sub prime ranked games and their franchises that are sinking faster than a Killzone 3 score. Yes, tag WolfGrey. At least his acting dumb has an agenda while yours is natural. Also, I could have sworn I didn't have a King avatar. You know, from Tekken, a predominantly Playstation franchise. I haven't touched the new ones that went to Xbox. I disagree with your post and "it's" labels. Genius.
Blackace sounds a bit childish in his writing, but I had the exact same experience as him, beta tested it, played eq2 instead, then wow.. heh. Just thought it was really weird
@blackace But the lack of maps & compass was what made exploring the environment so much fun & dangerous. I learned every nook and cranny. It also made interesting chat when directing other players to locations. "follow the path north until you see the mountain on your left. 90 degree turn til you hit the guard etc.. the introduction of maps to everquest (atleast the pc version) really destroyed a part of the immersion for me. Discovery was among it's greatest assets.
@WolfGrey I stopped a long time ago when it was obvious that after saying Ratchet and Clank was going multiplat, that @Gigas_Yuu is an Xbox fanboy that doesn't know what he's talking about. Also I agree with your post and it's "labels."
@Gigas_Yuu Honestly it was just a bias remark at you guys arguing over games consoles on here.Then i attempted to add to fuel to the flame as i just enjoy watching it burn. But i have almost 7 years of membership to this site, its not like i dont know whats going on. Its just my way of making fun of people who go nuts on console dicussions. Though as for general labels, its more of what the system is remembered for.Thats all.
EQOA was epic if you had buddies on the server. The glitches and small easter eggs in it were always a fun time too. But alas, a handful of subscriptions and quad boxers can't keep the valuable serverspace afloat. Bring in PlanetSide 2 Beta and make room for EQ3.
I thought this game was taken offline years ago. I can still remember beta-testing this game for Sony many, many years ago. It was horrible. There was no maps or compass and within an hour I was completely lost. There was really no direction provided at all. It was beta however, but the game was going to be released in a couple months. I ended up not playing it and went with EQ 2 instead. played that game for about a year before sticking with WoW for about 3 years. Anyway, this game and FF XI should have been canned a long time ago. I'm surprised people are still wasting their time with those games. EQ2 is very good however. If I could have played that a bit longer, I would have. I'll just have to wait for Planetside 2 and Guild Wars 2 now.
@blackace YOU ARE A MORON! Most of us actually like a challenge! This game was ten times the game EQ2 is! This game was the TRUE EQ2 because it was the second EQ, released. It was a prequel that improved upon EQ 1 in every way! WoW and anything like it DESTROYED what these games were meant to be! Not having a map forced people to actually explore the game without having their noses buried in a map! Besides why would you even read this article if you only did beta and most likely NEVER played a hardcore game in your life?
This is sad news. This was my first MMO that hooked me for life and ruined single player games forever. Thanks for the memories EQOA. PS: Castle Lightwolf best server.
1 Like @wolfgrey, that is your opinion guy. Xbox lacked new ips that had that "franchise quality". One thing sony did better was introduce franchises that people care about. I went from gamecub and xbox to ps2, sony had all the games at the time.
@WolfGrey even last gen the PS2 had more experimental ips ... FAR more. *looks at Mr. Mosquito and PaRappa the Rappa as an example.*
@WolfGrey: The 360 has a fair number of RPG exclusives available to it. Personally, I'm not a big fan of either console, both have good games available to them, but the PC reigns supreme!
Ug gamespot kids arguing again... PS3 is the system for rpgs,platformers, and at this time more new ips. Xbox360 is the system for them junkie shooters, and....sorry i can't really think of anything else. However last gen... PS2 was the home of a great number of IPs and was a RPG hotspot for sure. Great deal of action/adventure type games. Xbox was the home of some good shooters,experimental IPs,Bloodwake(god that game rocked), and (at the time) a great online way to play. Anyway come on boys and girls.No need to push and shove. Gotta admit, Xbox last gen was great.Xbox this gen sucks to me.
@Spacerac You mentioned CoD, "broski". I went there. If you want to bring multiplat casual shooters to try to bring the Xbox down, I'll kindly point out that the Xbox had Psychonauts before the Casualstation 2. Another reason why your point is lost - R&C is going multiplat. Not that anyone wants that sinking ship anymore. Nice paragraph, bro. Oh and without mentioning the things I did about Game Informer, everyone knows you have zero credibility as soon as you try to bring THEM up. Seriously. GI is hilarious. Yeah, right. I'm sure Ratchet really raised the standards over at Game Informer. That ceiling just went way, way up.
1 Like Wow props for the amazing fact it was still running.Like EQ 1, one hell of a run. And people wonder why i have no respect for WoW....
@Gigas_Yuu seriously? You can't name a critically acclaimed mascot platformer for the Xbox, that originated and remained exclusively on Xbox, so you resort to throwing out a multiplatform title which I happily own for both PS2 and PC thank you very much. So the PS2 had the worst version. What's your point? Point is, Xbox is still a bro shooter console. @mjc0961 named Crackdown, which is not a platformer which proved my point even further. I also lol at the fact that you go out of your way to blatantly display hate for ratchet when you know full well it is a consecutively excellent series of games, almost irrationally based on the platform ist is on, where i never said I didn't like the games on the Xbox including Halo. I even my comment was a fanboy comment and you just had to say something that made no sense. Well, several things. The heck does skyrim had to do with anything? Seriously, what? The two games have a 7 year gap in between them and a WHOLE GENERATION. Yes, Skyrim should be compared to a seven year old game. /sarcasm Please, just move along. I poke fun at the Xbox sometimes but you just took things to a ridiculous level.
1 Like Oh man, EQOA was probably my favorite MMO ever. I'm going to miss the hell out of it. Miroku Monk on Castle Lightwolf.
1 Like Jeez.I'm shocked to see people still play this!I remember getting it the day it came out and played for a very very long time. Still marked as one of my favorite MMOs,sad to see it go but hoping for a new PS3 Everquest, 70 Dark Elf Mage "Shaokahn"...may you rest in peace
@Spacerac Game Informer is irrelevant, welcome to Gamespot. Nice plug for GI, let's see what they did. Oh, they gave a 10 to R&C and a 9.5 to Skyrim. Hm. That's quality right there. I could always quote ez mode publications myself. Xbox 360 service gets hacked, sure. So does the PC - except their networking team is competent enough to, you know, keep everything online. Yeah, I'm sure Xbox users don't know anything about platform games. Psychonauts still beats little Ratchy. Was the inferior port on PS2, if I recall. (Now that you mention Call of Doodie) That's okay. I'm the guy who evens things out.
@Gigas_Yuu @Spacerac actually there are plenty arcade platform games man. 360 has tons of shooters ya... but so does sony! Shooters make up a huge percentage of games cranked out each year! The rest oddly enough are madden games O_O
I am absolutely stunned this is still kicking. Anyone here still playing the PS2 version?
@DiscGuru101 still kicking? ps2 version? no.... this article is about the death of the game dude. Also PS2 version was the only version....so no again.
@WolfMoon1331 It was alive when I made my comment. 6-months ago. I'll put it this way... I thought the PS2 version of EverQuest died years ago.
1 Like I thought it had been shut down years ago. Surprised people were still playing it - and paying to do so.
@Gigas_Yuu Ahem. R&C Up Your Arsenal scored a 10 in Game Informer and in other publications, thank you very much. And let's not get into that Xbox Live also gets hacked. You just don't hear about it because Microsoft doesn't tell you like Sony did. And another thing, the latest R&C installment might not have been up to par but A Crack in Time is still an amazing action/platformer/TPS-something an Xbox user wouldn't know about playing on a Halo: Call of Gears console. Also, way to take things so seriously. Every once in a while on a Nintendo/Sony article I make some sort of anti-Microsoft fanboy comment semi-jokingly. It's not a big deal.
"... it's best for our developers to move on to the next ADVENTURE..." I see what they did there.
EQOA was an awesome game for its time. It had a better LFG tool than WoW and had better world events than pretty much every mmo in the last 10 years. Some of these new games could actually learn a few things from this old game. RIP EQOA.
@oflow Actually WoW dev team was comprised of many people who worked on EQOA, WoW wanted to have the same open (no loading zones) feel with the same faster paced combat. Only they took the EQOA formula and made it ten times easier and noob friendly. Which is fine for most people,but those of us used to grinding and more hardcore rulesets. There is no substitute.
@Spacerac Meanwhile, Halo 2 players have moved on to sequels. Meanwhile, Halo 2 destroyed EQA in revenue. Somewhere in there, SoE servers were breached. Kids couldn't play their games. Enjoy Ratchet And Clank.. . Waaait a sec. 8.7 > 9.0? LOLOL R&C. That's gold. How's that latest installment, by the way? Heard it could possibly get Game of the Year, broski. Silly goon.
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