The Matrix Online - Character Creation

READ ME! I'M HERE FOR A REASON!

The Matrix Online went offline for the last time at 12:01 AM (or 2:01 AM, for us Central Time Zoners), August 1, 2009. And I was there for the last bittersweet moments, nursing over a whole platter of regrets. Why couldn't I have played more MxO over the years? Why didn't I ever get a Zion Reputation of 100 so I could finally get that key that cost $i 100 billion and visit the Zion Outpost? Why didn't I ever join a Faction? Why didn't I finish all of the Chapter so-and-so legacy missions for all three Organizations? Why didn't I ever finish all of Mercury's missions just to see what goodie he gives out at the end? The list goes on, and now it looks like those regrets will never be fulfilled.

However, one of the things that I did do on that last fateful day was to create a character and record the character creation engine at work, thus giving it some degree of immortality. It seems like with all the other MMOGs I ever played, you create your character and immediately get dumped into the game world. So imagine my surprise while I was creating EmeraldSkye (Mercy Devereaux, officially)--my first MxO character and my best--back in the middle of 2005; I'd just gotten done picking out all of her details, her stats and personality (Detached Spectator...not the best choice for a martial artist, I'll admit), her body type (mesomorph), hair color (emerald green, hence the name), tattoos (the little coppertop battery on her lower back, standing in silent mockery of what she once was) and so on. And as I was trying to come up with a good name and codename for her, the Operator spoke up, the camera panned around and, lo and behold, there was my new character, walking down the street with all the other Bluepills and loitering around behind a trash barrel.

There was just something that I really liked about that...that and the accompanying music, which I think fits the concept of a dark, technocratic future very well. The descriptions for the various Search Criteria personality types were perfectly "Matrixy" too. "Friends, parents, nothing ever affected you. Now you know why. Because none of it was real."

Whoa. Pathos. :-o

I also remember that I had a wild hair in me when I created Emerald. I picked the blue pill, Niobe spat a snippy little send-off along the lines of "Have a nice life" and I (and Emerald) got booted from the game. I restarted, tried again and all was well. Lesson learned: don't pick the blue pill. It's a waste of time. :-p

So Friday (July 31st, the last day for MxO) I created Topazina (aka. Tamara Wendt) just to commit the character creation engine to video. In retrospect I probably should have cut down on the combat training in the construct and spent some time fiddling around with the male bodies as well. But at least this should give you an idea of what MxO's character creator was like...just one of the many things that I'm going to miss about The Matrix Online.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Matrix
• Online
• MxO
• character
• creator
• creation

[LazyNightz]

I regret not being able to play this game.. i really wanted to try it but man, now I can't so sad wish they would re invent it with a company that is great on video games

[BloodyBay]

@LazyNightz My biggest regret is that I recorded about 40 or 50 gigabytes of MxO videos with Fraps, then the external drive I was keeping them on died. And stupid me, I formated the thing just because my computer told me to.

If only I had known about Seagate File Recovery at the time, all those videos wouldn't have been lost to oblivion like that. :(

[kamiazee]

remember when MMO's actually TRIED?

[BloodyBay]

@kamiazee Yeah. MxO had the best combat system I've ever seen in a MMO; it really made you think on your feet, and fast. And being able to visit almost every floor in every skyscraper really showed me how much Warner Brothers cared about MxO while they were overseeing its development; they wanted to stuff as much detail into Mega City as they possibly could. Why they chose to doom MxO by selling it off to SOE, I'll never know.

[BloodyBay]

@shadoVerklock Need a time machine. Read the description already.

[BloodyBay]

@themsmproduction It doesn't say WHAT in the description? That The Matrix Online no longer exists? That it ceased to exist at the stroke of midnight after July 31st, 2009? That it's impossible to play this MMO game because it no longer exists?

[motleyhar]

This is the problem with licensed MMOs. They eventually get too expensive, like SWG. The licensing bill comes in and it's just too darn much.

[thecreepyguy]

This game looks like it's worth playing even with the graphics. Too bad it's dead and the only emulator I could find for it, Mxoemu, And It's buggy as fuck. You just clicking something wrong and everything bugs up. Jump doesn't even work.

[azeraiga]

@BloodyBay i cant believe they shut it down i didnt know about matrix online until today, i really wish they would bring it back if only i could play it just once.....

[carldavis619]

after login the game says the file cleints has not bla bla bla

[BloodyBay]

@TheCha0sC0ntr0ller Multiple players patched into the emulator can meet each other. The one I was testing didn't have the combat system implemented yet, so we just had a bunch of us standing around in Mara Central, talking and doing emotes.

I really should check back in with those guys and see if the combat system is in yet....

[Cruelflex21]

Man I wanted to play this game damn