Lego Universe shutting down in January

It was ok..... (at first)

This a example of a MMO that would have done better on the console (Wii, XBOX 360 and PS3).

Truly terrible - my son has been trying to sign up for paid content for months - but in Australia and New Zealand - not available (although free to play is). Now they are closing for lack of money.

I played this briefly before my PC fried itself. It was REALLY fun.

I already knew that this game existed but why bother trying a lego mmo with a monthly subscription fee when there are games like the upcoming Guild Wars 2 that are multiple times better without subscription fees?

They probably should have invested in better marketing or some marketing; as with lots of others here I've never heard about this till now.

It would have helped if anyone knew the game existed.

Guild Wars 2 nuff said

2 surprises here for me : 1. there is/was a MMOG for Lego???? 2. see #1

One word can describe this all........... Derp

Big surprise...

LOL, I also had no idea Lego had a MMO. I think MMO's are going threw a weird time right now. Gamers as a whole are really sick of the current MMO game style. Every MMO seems to be a rehash of the same thing just diffrent skins. The MMO that changes the formula will be the MMO that flurishes. Until then, I will not be hitting a sub button for any MMO.

Oh No! what am I going to do? Life of a MMO. 3. Pay to Play 2. Free to Play 1. Shut Down. There are a few exception, DDO.

I had no idea this game even existed.

lol...well what did you expect...you can only take lego so far. infact they milked this franchise til there was nothing but skin and bone left...

WOW never knew lego had its own MMO game....

Another MMO, another failure. The pile continues to grow.

minecraft happened

It's too bad, there were some nice ideas here. Perhaps if there had been more licensed LEGO content and just a little more content to immerse free players into the game. There could have been a much bigger emphasis on creativity as well. The trailers showed diverse vehicles roaming a city. This was not in any way indicative of the final product.

@ DragonRift, The same thing happened with music games(most recent), happened with platformers in previous generations and is starting to happen with FPS games.

@ DragonRift, The same thing happened with music games(most recent), happened with platformers in previous generations and is starting to happen with FPS games.

Well then you restrict new people from even TALKING to each other without paying money, you kinda get a messed up game. You can't even talk to each other in a group.There is a HUGE amount of restriction on a free player. More than any other game out there. Might as well be playing it solo. The game is crap.

I remember how the Lego.com site blew up about this MMO. They seemed so hyped up about this MMO, I mean they had user created content for the game, your own creatures put into it, own characters, the whole nine yards...and then this happens. It's kind of funny in a way, really. :lol:

@Death_Blade_182 It infuriates me how so few people see that. There are way too many MMOs trying to fight for subscribers, and with most of them requiring monthly subscription fees, most gamers prefer to stick with just one at a time. Look at all the MMOs in the past that went free-to-play because of this. Look at the ones that shut down completely because of either lack of interest, or consumers not wanting to risk a few months of fees for a sub-par MMO. This was to be expected. There's nothing wrong with MMOs themselves, but when you over-saturate the market with them, situations like this are inevitable. I can't say I feel bad. :|

There's little to no room left in the market for MMOs, this was to be expected right from the start.

"Specifically, getting gamers to make the leap from the title's free-play zone and into content reserved for paying subscribers proved difficult. " Really? In this economy? Huh, strange.

I personally don't think it is the subscription rate..hundreds of other mmo's with less financial backing do this with considerable success...it is just that these are a contradiction in terms...so far every lego title we have seen has been a casual-type experience and Lego couldn't convince older gamers (with a bigger wallet) that they could be a serious mmo also.

Kind of funny a game that is more or less building things with legos (minecraft) is immensely popular. And then a game about actual legos falls flat on it's face.

Which game? I've never even heard of it...

I didn't even know this game existed..nd it looks pretty cool

is anyone truely surprised that this happened? I mean come on wake up and smell the coffee beans your main base was lil kids that don't make an income and parents that are struggling to provide for those kids... If the game was made for the fan base as teenagers and up sure it might have a chance but lil kids pfff whatever...

@ Megavideogamer Is Lego City Stories even an MMO game? It's a parody of Grand Theft Auto, which until GTA4 has been primarily offline single player. And upon checking Wikipedia for Lego City Stories, it says Open World, but says absolutely nothing about it being an MMO. Dragon Quest X will be the Wii U's (and Wii's) experiment into MMO games, not Lego City Stories.

Nintendo should take note, Since lego City stories is a launch title for the Wii U. So a Lego MMO has failed. Nintendo should consider what to do or the Lego city story will be stort lived.

That's too bad! I tried it out for a while and it had great promise. I loved the idea of having unlimited bricks to build with. Hopefully they try again someday in a kind of Minecraft world. ....now that I think of it, that would be AWESOME! :O

A mmo failing, who could have thought?

@DrKill09 The game was free to play...

MMO's suck. Here, buy the game and pay to play, and then BAM, we shut it down. The only one I ever had interest in was APB... til I played the beta. God damn it was awful.

That's kind of sad.I have fond memories of spending DAYS building creations on the My Factory software and submitting them to potentially be a part of the game. However,I could not be made to subscribe to a game via monthly payments,even if I helped in some small way to make it. (Plus the game ended up being geared toward little tikes,and I'm old enough that I could have a little tike of my own.)A game is a thing you should buy and own.Monthly payments shouldn't be involved,which is one of the reasons I don't like the idea of a phone for a game device. Rest in Peace Lego Universe. Better luck next time.

mjc0961 and grokh, same thing. Didn't you guys read the article?

@SolidTy It was f2p, that was their problem

Uh yeah. You know why you couldn't get people to pay? 90% of them were probably 8.

They should forget about FREE and charge for everything, then reduce maintainance costs and close any future developments. It should save a long term franchise in the long term.

i dont get why they dont go free to play... most games who do end up making even more money than when they were subscription based.

Good.

Hate to see any mmo shut down but Really charging for a lego game when I can just play the other for a one time fee?and these are the people making the Marvel game.....oh god -_-.

2 million?!?! I consider myself a hardcore gamer, and follow IGN and Gamespot just about everyday, at least once. I have never heard of this game...

You mean people don't want to pay for a Lego MMO when can they can play something better like WoW,Guild Wars,Rift, etc. Who would've thought!?

Crap now what is my son gonna play?

One easy way to fix this problem: JUST MAKE IT FREE

I played the beta of this, and conceptually it had a lot of potential, but the subscription model they started with destroyed it. By the time it came out no "kid friendly" MMO had a required subscription, much less a $10 a month one and a $40 buy-in. If it had been designed from the ground up as f2p it could have been much better, but trying to retrofit the f2p (which was really just an unlimited trial with very limited access) didn't work. I was honestly surprised it got as good of reviews as it did, the MMO mechanics were pretty poor even for a kid friendly game, you had to permanently choose a class early on but it was very vague about what they were. The entire progression of stats was based solely on gear sets (and some achievements), which meant in a game about creativity everyone ended up looking exactly alike and ignoring the cool looking alternate outfits. Plus, the building aspect was much too difficult to use and didn't always work right (and had no real connection to the game itself). The sad thing is, done right this could have tapped into the Minecraft feeling for adults, while still appealing to kids, but it was just poorly designed.