Purged: SOE Shuts Down Four MMO's

By Michael Dunaway, News Editor January 24, 2014

Within the next couple of months, Sony Online Entertainment will be doing its spring cleaning early, starting the job by shutting down Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures and Free Realms on March 31st; then finishing it with Vanguard and Wizardry Online on July 31st.

SOE's explanation for their sudden change of heart mirrors that of an employer laying someone off nicely, stating that, “-we are always evaluating our portfolio to ensure we're providing players with the best gameplay experiences. At times, as part of this commitment, we have to make the difficult decision to sunset a game so we can refocus our resources on other areas in the best interest of our company and player community.”

You can find questions and feedback on Reddit with CEO John Smedley, who is answering the questions personally.

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About the Author

Michael Dunaway, News Editor
Michael Dunaway has been part of the MMOBomb team for years and has covered practically every major Free-to-Play title since 2009.

Anon 8 years ago

Wizardry was a pretty unique MMO, you really wont find any others like it and you'd be a moron to try argue otherwise. The closest i'd say is DDO and it still didn't feel anywhere near as arcadey as DDO does.

Sad to see it go, it still has a decent population. Really a senseless killing.

GMAlonzo 8 years ago

I'm not surprised, also i have been telling them to bring back The Agency: Covert Ops. But they don't seem to listen. I Gave up trying to deal with them , also bullet run sucks lol

dirtyzerg 8 years ago

DCUO will be next cuz there broken ass model driving peeps away on PC

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Dreadlox 8 years ago

Bring back Bullet Run!

RIP Wizardry 8 years ago

not surprised to see wizardry shut down....Im surprised it took this long to shut it down.
RIP Wizardry. A great unique game no one loved

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Anonymous 8 years ago

I had a look at the Wizardry website as i haven't touched the game since beta, just curious to see how far it got.

I noticed in the news section there was a SoE employee promising new content on the 17th which was a week before they announced their shutting it down lol. Typical carrot on a stick routine I guess.

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ironman0870 8 years ago

Good that SOE have decided to purge some of their games in early 2014; this is because both Free Realms and Clone Wars Adventures are a one-way street, in the way that you register, play the game and then, after a while, the game requires quite expensive membership.
Therefore, even though the cover says free-to-play, it may not be so, and you may end up paying quite a lot of money further along down the line.

Allwynd 8 years ago

i tried vanguard once, it looked like a cheap version of everquest

ArcticUrsa 8 years ago

Looks like that list of all the future lcasses in Wizardry is never happening, LOL. maybe if they didn't make people who pay cash actually stronger than people who don't it wouldn't have failed. Shame though, i was hoping some day they'd patch it up.

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Merkadis 8 years ago

" in the best interest of our company" rest is BS. ^^)