SOE Orphans 4 More MMO Communities (And Still Looks Better Than NC Soft)

More bad news for citizens of the MMO-verse:

Sony Online Entertainment has announced that it will shut down four MMOs before the end of the year. Free Realms and Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures will end by March 31, while Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and Wizardry Online will end by July 31.

I know little about these games and have no idea if they were losing money or, like CoH, were profitable just not profitable *enough*.  Regardless, I empathize with their communities.  I figure any game that's been around a while will have built up a core community that feels just as strongly about it as we felt about CoH, and I wouldn't wish the pain of a closure on anyone.

That said, SOE is distancing themselves from the brutal, clumsy way NC Soft handled the CoH 'sunset', providing additional content for each game before destroying their worlds (click the first link for details) and exposing their president to direct feedback from the affected communities:

SOE President John Smedley is also conducting an AMA on Reddit that began at 3:00 p.m. Pacific today, and he'll answer questions until 5:00 p.m. Pacific.

Absent a virtual Bill of Rights protecting the interests of MMO gamers, I'm finished with big corporate worlds.  Once is too many times to suffer the tragedy of playing and becoming attached to a game, helping build its community, then having that world eliminated by faceless cube dwelling bean counters.

I will never again tolerate the traditional structure of Corporation > Developer > Player, with the player as essentially powerless livestock to be milked for profit until the point where they are deemed inefficient and sold off to the glue factory.

Paragon did a fantastic job of listening to us and, as much as possible, tailoring their game design to our wishes.  But that close relationship meant nothing when the NC paymasters decided to blow it all to hell.

I'm hopeful that eliminating the Big Corporation via the new paradigm of Crowd Sourced Funding > Developers > Players will give us 'little guys' at the bottom of the MMO food chain more input and security.