Oops. A mere day after my Operation Cheapseats mini-review of Auto Assault's 14 day free trial, this news, found via Tobold's comments (Yes, yes, I was ego-surfing; no-one is perfect!)
Auto Assault: News
Which all goes to answer the mildly curious question I had a couple of posts back, 'How can they afford to keep Auto Assault going?', the answer to which seems to be 'They can't.' All a bit of a shame, as noted previous; it's not a bad game, by any stretch - just a rather quiet one.
Interesting seeing the various comments on this blog and others, from those that did adopt early, and who have played it far more extensively than I have, and the general post-mortem consensus seems to be a bad or buggy launch with a number of missing or broken features (pretty much all of which seem to be okay now), coupled with a simple lack of related PR and advertising, leading to the game spending much of it's later life just bobbing along in obscurity, despite apparently successful efforts to fix and improve it's user experience.
I remember seeing a bit of a fuss about it at the time it launched, but didn't bother going to see what it was about - something I'm starting to regret a bit now, and the game now has about two months left to run down, with billing ceasing after the 31st July for game cards, etc, and the servers shutting down at the end of August.
This puts yet another nail in the coffin of Sci Fi MMO Gaming, and puts a lot of pressure on the soon-to-be-released Tabula Rasa, as Tobold mentions. Is WoW all we'll ever want? I hope not, but I guess there isn't a lot of point exhorting people to play an MMO because they 'ought to', rather than 'want to'. The market decides. Auto Assault will now join the surprisingly small list of MMO games which have actually been turned off; Earth and Beyond, and Asheron's Call 2. (And Motor City Online - forgot about that!)
All a bit of a shame really - I'm sort of committed to the next couple of Operation Cheapseats titles now, for at least at another month, beyond which, you won't be able to buy months of Auto Assault at all. I was actually going to go back, but now this no longer seems possible. An opportunity missed.
For me, it really is goodbye, but if you, dear reader, have yet to give Auto Assault a go, now would be an ideal time, and possibly a last chance to see this now-doomed experiment at a Different Kind of MMO. I've no idea how long the free trial links I have in the previous review will still work for, but don't delay if you do want a look.
I'm sure this is all coincidence and all, but if you currently play and enjoy City of Heroes, now might be a good time to get your affairs in order... just in case...