CitiesXL Closing Down As MMOG - Maintaining Single Player Game
When Monte Cristo launched CitiesXL in 2009 it looked like a multiplayer Sim City knock-off, but didn't have that much else going for it. While you could build up a city on your persistent "planet" and enlist the help of other players for resources, even using an avatar to visit their cities yourself, in practice-- in my opinion-- the game really failed to capture the magic of the Maxis franchise or capitalize upon its multiplayer integration in anything more than a hacky way. The game reviewed with average reception, and I personally wasn't all that interested in it.
The game came in two parts, a solo offline mode with limited functionality and an online persistent version that gave you full access to the game. Much of the game's extensibility was available only to subscription players, but on its face CitiesXL was a bit generic for a city simulator-- albeit a very pretty one.
On Tuesday, Monte Cristo announced that due to the fact that subscription adoptions were lower than hoped for, they would be suspending the online portion of the game and instead incorporating some, but not all, of the online features into the solo edition. Coming just three months after launch this conclusion is a bit surprising. After February 1st players will not be able to purchase new subscriptions, with online play ending March 8th.
What doesn't get included in the solo edition will be saved for the next iteration of the game, CitiesXL 2011. This will require a paid upgrade and presumably will also incorporate multiplayer again. However, no further content or patches will be released for either version of CitiesXL until CitiesXL 2011 is released. Hopefully the next version of the game will have something more compelling to add to the multiplayer experience so this issue doesn't crop up again.
mixvio
Posted to MMOs on 28 January 2010
· Comments (2)
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My impression from the CitiesXL faq and posts on Simtropolis is that there will be no multiplayer at all in CitiesXL 2011.
I participated in the CitiesXL online beta and this does not surprise me at all. The online experience, other than the additional content, was nothing more than a glorified chat room. Player interaction was little more than chatting or playing. I think a city builder game can be successful as a multiplayer game, but the implementation they used fell way, way short of what was needed.
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