The concept was awesome, and the initial hook is pretty great... But after that it sort of falls over. the fact that many bugs have not been addressed has also thinned out the hardcore support base.

It will be interesting to see what the next couple of months bring for the game, but if big things don't happen fast, it could go the way of EA's forgotten attempt at a space game.

IMO it didn't seem like that good of a game to begin with. They pretty much tried dressing up WoW with sci-fi effects. The only unique thing was the character cloning system which I heard was really badly designed. Some people might like the idea of a sci-fi MMO but I'd rather stay with WoW where I'm already at the endgame instead of thinning down my tauren and giving him a gun in a new game.

The reason why it failed isn't because they charged a monthly fee, the monthly fee is what allows them to keep up servers and maintnence to prevent it from underselling and becoming a financial disaster in the first place. Monthly fees aren't a bad deal at all, and as you can see from WoW 10 million people don't mind.

The biggest problem is the competition. It's just not a good time for MMO's to be coming out right now with WoW dominating and other MMO's having tightknit groups who don't want to leave there games for reasons (GW and subscriptions for example.) Besides, it just didn't seem to get the media attention games like WoW and GW did.

To be honest i think the only reason why it failed is because they made it a pay monthly game. Most people feel that once you have spent money to buy a game that should be all you have to spend on it. Exception is WoW (where i think they put heroine in a powder form on the box so as soon as you touch it POOF)

That's unfortunate. It seemed like a pretty neat concept.

Well, that's sad. But not surprising. Horseshoes, hand grenades.

Anyone playing the game right now can see that the 18 large poured into this game is not being recouped. Of the four servers, they rarely hit medium population and have yet to hit high. Quite simply put, the game was mismanaged and their marketing is non-existent. The only thing keeping the game afloat is Richard Garriott's name.