LEGO Universe To Shut Down 121
CmdrStone writes "The Universe is ending in the eyes of LEGO. (Cheap pun, I know.) From the announcement: 'We are very sad to announce that LEGO Universe will be closing on January 31, 2012. This was a very difficult decision to make, but unfortunately LEGO Universe has not been able to attract the number of members needed to keep the game open.' It's too bad; I enjoyed playing this game with my kids. Open sourcing the game would be nice."
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Why not? As much as I would like to see it, I doubt it's going to happen. At the very least, they should allow you to export your models into the Lego Designer tool. Some people really made some elaborate models. My kids were devastated by this announcement.
Re:Open Source an MMO? (Score:5, Insightful)
This would never happen, LEGO are not going to open source a game that is entirely based around their central brand and IP. This isn't comparable to an MMO with an original IP being open sourced, LEGO is a worldwide and very tightly controlled brand. They aren't about to hand control of part of that brand to all and sundry to do what they want with.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Cool Lego protected it's brand so much they never released a line of sets based on a movie based on a game that was completely inappropriate for children 7-10 years old.
Re: (Score:3)
Cool Lego protected it's brand so much they never released a line of sets based on a movie based on a game that was completely inappropriate for children 7-10 years old.
Debbie Does Duplo?
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry it was "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time." After my sons got the set with ostriches they pleaded with me to watch the film. The movie and video game released at the same time were not age appropriate for them and that set made them want to watch the film very badly which I guess was the point for the deal.
Re: (Score:2)
HA! Sorry I replied to the wrong person, it was the "Prince of Persia" sets.
Re: (Score:3)
Because the code is a tiny little part of an MMO and is almost entirely worthless by itself.
The artwork and continuing work that goes into MMOs is what makes them stay alive. Once you take that out of the equation, they turn into just big bugger less impressive versions of existing games.
MMOs require constant work, once it goes OSS you'll have 18 forks, all of which have 1 and a half guys working on it in their spare time, none of which have a large user base and they odds on the server being around on any
Pun? (Score:2, Insightful)
"The Universe is ending in the eyes of LEGO. (Cheap pun, I know.)"
Er, where's the pun?
Re: (Score:2)
Well, LEGO doesn't have any eyes, whereas Universe has one. You see where I'm going with this. Pun misintended.
Re: (Score:2)
Ya gotta let go of it.
Marketing fail? (Score:1)
I for one have never heard of this game, and if I did I would gladly play it...
Re: (Score:1)
Same here. For a moment I thought the article was about a Lego theme park or something like that.
Re: (Score:3)
I remember when it was announced, and it was big news then. In fact, I actually had intended to buy it when it came out.
When it did come out, I never even heard of it, and I read a lot of game magazines. I completely had forgotten about it until now.
Minecraft? (Score:1)
I wonder if this has anything to do with Minecraft... Too bad Lego didn't think to sue...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Game rules cannot be copyrighted (though their presentation can be). Earlier Scrabble knock-offs were sued to oblivion because they copied the game board. Does "Words With Friends" use the same layout of bonus squares, or did they do something original?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
EVE is not f2p. But then again f2p eve with paid for ships would suck donkey balls and no one would play. There are other successful games that are not f2p either.
EVE could go f2p in much the same way as other games have made the transition. e.g. by offering a core experience & beginner stuff for free and la carte access to particular missions, ships, skills, materials or whatever. If you paid it would be no different to the way it is now, except of course an a la carte pay model might suit a lot of people than a subscription. e.g. someone who only has time to play a few hours a week is going to find things cheaper than they are under a sub.
The biggest issue wi
Re: (Score:2)
WoW is unlikely to need to go FTP any time soon, but evidence is mounting that you actually make more money that way than with a subscription model. Blizzard is likely doing the math.
EVE seems perfectly suited - it's the only western game I can think of where the developes might actully get away with selling PvP performance enhancing items for cash (if worked into the universe cleverly), part because they're so very careful with balance, at least by MMO standards.
Minecraft. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yup. My kid loves Legos so I got him Lego Universe last year when it came out. He played it for a total of maybe 5 to 10 hours before getting bored with it.
I bought him Minecraft a few months ago and he absolutely loves it. He gets to build structures and use his imagination in a way LU never allowed him to.
Re: (Score:1)
Not Multi-User Enough (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I was in Lego Unerverse for a while and it just wasn't legos. You could only build set things. Even the rockets you use to transport around had to be built with three prebuilt modules. I could understand hunting down pieces in the world to build your "home" but you couldn't touch the rest of the world:P
Pun (Score:2, Insightful)
"The Universe is ending in the eyes of LEGO. (Cheap pun, I know.)"
There is no pun here.
Re: (Score:2)
He's probably suggesting that since the person mentioned it was a pun, it suddenly wasn't a pun anymore. I dunno, half the crap I read from AC posts make no sense.
Re: (Score:1)
Sorry, that's not a pun. Suggesting that Lego believes "the universe is ending" (not in reference to the game) is a fucking retarded interpretation. Compare that with "seeing pigs on your farm was a real 'squeal'".
Please learn English.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Actually, in context, it does have two disjointed meanings: 'universe' as in the product that Lego is discontinuing vs. 'universe' as in the aggregate of everything that is.
Not a great pun, mind you, but a pun nevertheless.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
There are two meanings of the word "Universe" in this context that give the sentence two interpretations.
First: "[Everything that is and ever shall be] is ending in the eyes of LEGO."
Second: "[The MMO Lego Universe] is ending in the eyes of LEGO."
Two meanings of a word are being used for humorous effect. How is that *not* a pun, which is [reference.com] "the humorous use of a word or phrase so as to emphasize or suggest its different meanings or applications...."? The first interpretation is (slightly) funny, and not all
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
because saying the "universe" is ending is not pun.
But it is a pun, as I've explained: there are two meanings to the word "Universe" here, which is the definition of a pun. I find it amazing that of the half dozen or so people who have expressed the opinion that this is not a pun, not one has given a clear and coherent reason for that opinion.
Re: (Score:2)
It doesn't matter if one of the meanings is ridiculous; sometimes that's what makes a pun funny. I'm a bit amused by which insults you think will hurt me. For instance, choking (gagging, really) on a cock would likely indicate I'm deepthroating a man, which would probably be fine with me, depending on the man. The only thing I don't understand is the moderation here. Both top-level "not a pun" AC posts were modded +2 Insightful, and one other AC reply saying the same thing was modded +1 Insightful, while my
Man they screwed up! (Score:5, Interesting)
- They released it with too little content in the beginning. This meant that all the early adopters (I was a beta tester) rushed out, bought it, installed it, started playing and in less than 2 days game play had, in the limited sized world capped out and decided
- No thottbot or anything else worth using. This meant people who were too lazy to find it themselves had no place to get help with the quests. Oh well.
- Chatting was impossible... if my son an I were in different rooms, we practically couldn't talk with each other. I had to yell across the house. Yes, I know there was chat, but it worked like hell.
- Maps were AWFUL!!!
- UI was extremely hard to figure out. It's pretty bad when people were comparing it to Everquest and Everquest was easier to figure out.
- No family accounts. At the prices they were charging, no parents would spend that kind of money per month on a game... certainly not on two copies of the game so that their two kids could play together. If we could have bought one copy of the game and had two or maybe even three players from the same IP address playing at a time, we would have paid.
- Game website including billing site was slower than hell.
- No groups (at least at first), guilds would have been nice too.
- No Scandinavian language support. This is a biggy... Scandinavians would buy a lump of cow poop if it said Lego on the side of it. But, Scandinavian children don't speak English. They would have sold 10 times as many copies and accounts if they had at least supported their native language (Danish) since even though Danish isn't the same as Norwegian and it's even harder for Swedish kids, it's still easier than English for them.
- Account costs were a huge issue. Yes, World of Warcraft costs like $12.99 a month.. but that's a game being paid for primarily by people that make substantially more than $12.99 a month. My son and daughter each get a total of $30 a month in allowance and they work hard for that. $12.99 a month is just too high an amount for them to pay on their own if they ever want anything else. My son has occasionally purchased a game time card with his allowance, but certainly couldn't justify an account. $4.99 a month would have gotten them much less per account, but would have gotten them far more accounts. And the free to play version was just a joke.
- They didn't sell the damn thing. I mean, really advertising for this game was dismal at best and the few advertisements they did make didn't have a focus. It was like they didn't know who to sell to so didn't sell to anyone.
I can go on for a long time, but to be honest they screwed up on a scale which was unimaginable. It's a real shame too since this will most likely be Lego's last attempt at this and we'll all suffer because they screwed up.
Re: (Score:1)
I didnt suffer. Sorry that you did, buddy.
Re:Man they screwed up! (Score:5, Informative)
You have summed it up quite nicely here. I also was a beta tester. After the game was released I quit playing it since I was done (end of content). Next my wife picked it up and my two boys (6 and 10) loved playing it too. I didn't have a problem slapping down the 80 euros for a year subscription. It's a small amount if three people enjoy the game. Although it's very unfortunate you can't play together.
From what I heard about it they have 2 million players, of which about 100.000 are paying ones. I have NO idea what it costs to run a service like this, but you would think that 100.000 paying subscribers would go a long way.
What I really liked was the fact that you could win real Lego prizes. They had some fun contests that, if you were #1 after a week, would get you one or more real boxes of Lego in the mail. Our Lego collection has been updated with a few nice additions :)
I really liked the idea of introducing the MMO(RPG) concept to my children using Lego Universe. They see me playing LotRO so they have a good idea of how an MMO works. With Lego Universe they had a chance of doing the same on their own level. I am really sorry to see it go.
Re: (Score:2)
I had no idea about the real-world lego rewards. That sounds awesome. One of the reasons I was in the Lego Club when I was a wee nipper.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
To put a bit of perspective. My salary personally is going to take quite a bit over 10% of that income.
Re: (Score:1)
I believe you made a slight mistake. If all of the 100.000 were year subscribers, then the tally would be on $8.000.000. And that number does not take into account the more expensive monthly subs. Again, I have no idea what running stuff like that costs, but would 8M *really* be not enough?
Re: (Score:1)
I was a beta-tester, as well. I liked the questing content, but making things with the virtual bricks didn't appeal to me, at all. It was tedious! If that was supposed to draw people into the game, maybe that was its downfall? I'm not an avid Lego builder at home, but maybe the virtual building was to attract all those people who are
Re: (Score:2)
Short version: a building blocks social game where you could neither build nor socialise.
Kiddo took a look at the free version, yawned, then went back to playing Lego Star Wars, and with actual Lego.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeh they do... for kids (Score:2)
Just got my 2D glasses, so even though wearing glasses bothers me A LOT, at least both eyes are now polarized the same so I can watch the film in glorious 2D again.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'll second that about the lack of marketing. I'm a HUGE Lego fan (I have my VIP card, went to Lego Florida on opening day, bought the T-Shirt, etc.) and I only saw Lego Universe promoted once - at CES a year before it launched! And then the next time I saw it, it was a random, abandoned-looking box in a Game Stop's PC software section. No posters, no online marketing (other than it being discussed on fan sites), nothing. And if they can't sell ME a copy of Lego Universe, a lego-loving geek with disposable
That's more than Lego Land Denmark (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They should've gone with a micropayment scheme that maxes out at a certain (parent-specified) amount. That would draw in children (or really, their parents) more than a monthly fee for "unlimited" play time. The idea of having unlimited play time discourages parents from purchasing it and subscribing, because they're already unhappy their kids are playing video games all the time.
It seems like they did some market research about MMORPG players, and made their business decisions based on existing MMORPGs. Th
Re: (Score:1)
Actually you are absolutely right. How much money do you think that they hoped to make on the transformer cartoons ? None. They were made to sell toys. This has greater potential to a business than cartoons do, due to the better communication that it allows with the customers. Imagine b
Re: (Score:3)
I would be very surprised if cancelling an account deleted all progress. In every MMO I've ever played you can cancel your account and go back years later and pick up right where you left off. This is a big marketing tool for bringing players back, if you had to start from scratch every time then once players cancelled there would be pretty much no chance of getting them to resubscribe.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
I would be very surprised if cancelling an account deleted all progress. In every MMO I've ever played you can cancel your account and go back years later and pick up right where you left off. This is a big marketing tool for bringing players back, if you had to start from scratch every time then once players cancelled there would be pretty much no chance of getting them to resubscribe.
Its not much better...
"So Son thanks to MrAngryForNoReason, You can keep your toys, but there locked up in that cupboard over there. If you want to play with them you will have to pay a week and a half's pocket money to get at them and you must give the key back after a month."
Bad Design Decisions All Around (Score:5, Insightful)
All you had to do for this game is make LEGO Minecraft.
You could have been pooping in cat litter made of ground diamonds and wiping your filthy bum with Jacksons.
But no, you made a LEGO MMO where you can't build freely. ...
If you can't see how stupid that is, well, that's why your MMO is dead.
Re: (Score:2)
The MMO was finishing development at just about the time Minecraft was making a name for itself. It was too late for them to make an MC-like game.
Re: (Score:1)
The idea of making a LEGO MMO where you can build freely was obvious... there's no way they had to wait for minecraft to give them that idea.
Re: (Score:3)
True, but until Minecraft came along it wasn't quite so jaw-droppingly obvious how a game like that might work. I won't grudge them for not making the conceptual leap that the player character, rather than some omniscient Builder, should be doing the block-moving.
Re:Bad Design Decisions All Around (Score:4)
It's like having a Meccano MMO but only being able to allowed to see and chat to other users in a Meccano styled environment and not being allowed to build your own bridge just to see if it stays up.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, Meccano! My mind is rushed instantly with a flurry of memories from my childhood. The weird thing is that it's a strange mixture of metal parts with sharp edges, and of 1980s Spanish pop music.
I have a sudden urge to grab a screwdriver and my iPod.
-dZ.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Bad Design Decisions All Around (Score:4, Interesting)
http://blockland.us/Video.html [blockland.us]
I've only played the demo, but I've loved them ever since reading their IGF entry (http://www.igf.com/php-bin/entry2009.php?id=420):
Blockland is a non-competitive multiplayer online sandbox game where players can build with interconnecting plastic bricks which are similar to, but legally distinct from, legos.
Re: (Score:2)
But no, you made a LEGO MMO where you can't build freely. ...
If you can't see how stupid that is, well, that's why your MMO is dead.
the only way a Lego MMO with open building can even work in our modern, litigious world, is to have someone spying on all the users' creations at all times to see if anyone is making a gigantic penis or similar. Is that an economically viable model? I don't know, but they didn't go that way.
So many things wrong with the game. (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Lack of content
2) Creativity limited into nonexistance. I get it, they didn't want a bunch of people creating lego dicks and all that but honestly it is LEGO we're talking about here.
3) Communication in the game was virtually nonexistent. Again, this game was supposed to house young kids and they didn't want people shouting DICKS in the chat all day.
4) What you get for what you paid each month was not even close to acceptable.
I could go on. I was tantalized when I first heard about this, but when they started taking the focus into little kids which means no difficulty, no proper Lego creativity, no nothing a little kid could not accomplish, I knew the whole idea was not going to last. To be honest, I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did.
Sucks (Score:1)
Alternative (Score:3)
You get to build stuff in it!
Re: (Score:1)
It's been done better by someone else (Score:5, Insightful)
Minecraft is what Lego Universe SHOULD have been. Simple as that.
It's a perfect example of a giant megacorp throwing money at an idea and getting a feeble copy of what's already out there already.
Want to rescue this? Lego could go to Notch and buy him out, BUT LEAVE HIM IN CONTROL. Give him the dream-amounts of money he needs to implement his fantasy-level of optimal features in Minecraft (and to remodel the blocks with the obligatory lego structure...).
Re: (Score:2)
Notch probably already has that kind of money. Over four million sales, averaging what, around $20? That's $80 million, and Mojang doesn't have hundreds of staff members to pay. They don't even run the multiplayer servers - those are run by the users! They do have an authentication service in Amazon's cloud, though that probably isn't costing millions per year.
Lego could market an MMO where you were allowed to build everything you wanted, as long as they aimed it at adults. A lot of us would love to try tha
Re: (Score:1)
You mean logging into a server and seeing someone replaced my house with a 24m tall penis made of solid gold blocks?
One of the problems with running an MMO "for kids" is how much operating costs you'll need to spend on the lawsuits by American parents for "exposing children to content I don't like."
It's not just LEGO (Score:1)
LIGO, folks. (Score:1)
open source is unlikely (Score:2)
I doubt they can go open source. Remember when John Carmack (id software) released their extremely successful game as open source less than a decade after it came out? DOOM had an impressive number of followers and it still does. But the Doom source code was missing something important: the sound routines were 3rd party, so they couldn't legally open the source to that.
I suspect Lego's software is mostly 3rd party stuff, so I doubt they can release more than a small fraction of the code which they actually
Consoles (Score:1)
Another "shoulda done minecraft" post (Score:3)
But seriously, they should have, and I'm glad that economically the poorer model flopped to make room for the superior game.
I'd love a commercial sized team supporting a project like minecraft or dwarf fortress, I'd love to see what a project like that could do where innovative, genre creating design were combined with a dedicated and quality graphics and art team. Perhaps the last decade of failed MMO projects and successful ventures like the above stated minecraft/dwarf fortress will lure more publisher support for more innovation and less sequel.
Pricing Model (Score:1)
Merge with Minecraft (Score:2)
The windows/mac client killed it for me (Score:2)
The windows/mac client killed it for me
There's no reason these days that a platform dependent client should be used for a game that's this compute non-intensive. Limiting your customer base by requiring a client, and having the client closed so you don't know what the heck is getting permanently installed on your machine are bad things.
I'm pretty much done permanently installing random crap on my machine.
The alternatives are "run in the browser" vs. "open source client". HTML5 wasn't good enough when they
Never even knew it existed.... (Score:1)
As a fan of both lego and MMO's I am utterly shocked i never even knew it existed till now... wow... I wonder if that has something to do with it closing down...