RIP LEGO Universe

[MsRowdyRedhead]

LEGO pulled the plug on the beloved Lego Universe servers at midnight Monday night. The open world multiplayer world of bricks was never able to sustain enough subscribers to make the MMO profitable, or even get it to a break-even point, for that matter. The end came to soon for all of us. The final hour passed in seconds, with players scrambling to say their thanks to the Mythrans and their goodbyes. Many grouped together in favorite places to spend cyber eternity, others went to a property they had build to quietly say goodbye to what was more than a game to many of us. Sometimes you find inspiration where you would never think to look for it. LEGO Universe inspired me to be a carefree kid again.

Originally developed by developer NetDevil for the LEGO group, the MMO was a unique, bricktastic experience for fans of LEGO. LEGO Universe launched in October 2010 after delays that totaled over two years, and while it was unique, it failed to attract enough players into paying the MMO despite a very strong beta. Certain aspects of the game were plagued with glitches, most notably the building function. And while the developers struggled mightily to respond to these issues, some continued to crop up. LEGO attempted a number of moves to make LEGO Universe work, even including an attempt at free access to much of the Universe; but it took money to get to the really good stuff.

The game will be missed by many. For some the friendships forged will continue on forums such as this one. Some players made plans to meet up in other games. Others just stumbled away from their computers at midnight, wondering how it happened that a game so loved by those who actually played it could just ...end.


More info from LEGO here:
http://universe.lego.com/en-us/help/faq.aspx?id=359551

[MsRowdyRedhead]

POST SCRIPT:
The thing is they should have listened to the builders.. gamers, you gotta love them, but they tire of a game easily and move on to the next.  The property function of LU, quirky as it was, would have kept the builders there FOREVER. The ability to interact with one another's creations, inspect them brick by brick, and learn from builders like Flambridge,  SuperStickboy and others was an experience most of us will remember long after the last battle we fought.

[Legodac]

You know what, I think I may have been one of the fans that was most looking forward to the launch of LU, I even made a model that got recognition from the Home office, My LU Tree house.

Sadly, I never played, and now I regret that, I think I missed out on something very special indeed.

Like MsRR, I like to keep up to speed when it comes to things going on in the Lego World, and I stumbled on the final day by accident while playing MLN.

The following link is to our own pages, then click the link from the post that is entitled "Now Official"  http://www.mlno.org/index.php/topic,6844.msg306686/topicseen.html#new

The first link is my report and the LEGO link, it's posted in my TOWLER mag.

If you want to save some time, here is the video that LEGO gave to us that I stumbled across last night  http://universe.lego.com/en-us/default.aspx

Rest In Peace indeed...somehow, hope gives me doubt. 

[Walter313]

I will miss Lego Universe. I remember when I first joined the Lego Messageboards, Lego had just announced that LU was on its way. I was mainly the Lego News area, and it became my favorite thing to report on. I would be all over the web daily trying to find the latest news about it.

When Lego Universe finally went into Alpha Testing, I jumped right in. (I was part of the Kids Inner Circle, so I was part of the 2nd wave of members allowed in) I remember how in awe I was while I played the first MMOG I'd ever played. My little brother sat right beside me, all the while "ooo"ing and "Ahhh"ing at the graphics and things you could do. I beat every possible mission in Avant Gardens and Venture Explorer the first day I was in. And every time they released a new world to the testing, I was there. I probably had to recreate my character 5 times before they released it to Beta Testing.

After release, I had to wait until December to buy the game. Even though I had almost become nonexistant on all Lego Forums, I spend almost every free minute in the game. Even though there were plenty of MMOs around, Lego Universe had the biggest appeal for me. I would spend the first while in the game fighting enemies and saving up coins. Then I'd spend all the coins on bricks and models and spend hours building on one of my many properties. The building experience was amazing! I remember a month or two before they announced it was closing, 2 of my brothers and I were on the computer for several hours trying to make a complex set of behaviors to work on a Spaceship we had built in-game. One of the best memories I have of the game.

When they announced the Grand Championships back in October, my little brother went crazy coming up with ideas for his character. He wanted so much to place, and was doing everything he could to get his character to the highest level and to build the best properties. I also became pretty excited and started putting together some ideas for the building contests.

All that came to a halt when I was logging in one day and saw the announcement in the loading screen. I couldn't believe it, and thought for a while that the game had been hacked. When it was obvious that it hadn't, I told my little brother about it. At first he thought I was trying to trick him, and when I showed him the article, he was almost in tears. Neither of us felt like playing the game at all after that. We knew that any time we put into the game would be lost as soon as they closed the game.

The last day of the game, I logged in briefly. Just to pay a visit to my old properties, old favorite places. I always tried to hold on to the hope that maybe they would last minute decide not to close it. But then the next morning, it all was gone. The worlds, the properties, the buildings, the characters (both player and computer), the models, the pets. The missions, the friends. All gone.

So thank you lego for a wonderful year of memories, and fun times with my lil bro. Now that LU is gone, and I am in college and ready to finish moving on, I only hope that those younger than me, just entering the 'Lego Phase" of life, will have as many fun experiences with lego as I did.

Goodbye Lego Universe!

[Canama]

Lego Universe was an eh game and I won't miss it. But chilling with Jamesster was still pretty cool.

-Canama

[MsRowdyRedhead]

LIke I said, those that actually played the game and built on properties will miss it.. others.. meh.

[The Truth]

I did like LU very much, and would have loved to see the rest of the unreleased content they were planning (GF survival, more properties, "evergreen world", ETC.), but...well, it can't compete with SWTOR.

Still, if it came back, I'd probably subscribe again. And I will miss my Nimbus Isle.

[Magical Girl Mimi]

I'm just annoyed that I never got a chance to play at all. I always knew that LEGO would go out of their way to force me to never play it aside from that one Beta instance; and it turns out I was right. xD

I don't exactly agree with them not giving it a chance(Especially with releasing content so infrequently, compared to some other games, with the content released not being much to get you playing again); but... Really, unless they decide to bring it back themselves; there's not much that can be done. In their eyes, they probably just think of it like any other theme they've canceled over the years. It's sad, but... Well, again, there's not much that can be done, especially with it closed now.

[MsRowdyRedhead]

From my friend Zipblock's blog..   http://luprechaun.wordpress.com/

Loss
Posted by zipblock on February 2, 2012


This is hard to measure and equate into familiar levels that other people might understand, I’m having a hard time figuring it out myself. If you tell someone that your favourite game was just cancelled it would probably rank in their mind between a reality show being dropped after the first season and losing a sock. Sort of a drag?

Though imagine if they lost their facebook. Their friends list, all their photos and videos, notes and comments, all wiped out. To some of us that’s getting near the territory. For me it’s on the same levels as losing a family pet ( not saying the game was a pet, it had lots of pets in it, that’s just weird )

Beyond losing your character with all it’s achievements and loot, you lost your friends  list and properties as well.  I would check in regularly with dozens of people from all over the globe, it became part of my day that I looked forward to. In fact I turned the game on and just perched somewhere just to stay online to get messages. I would be doing something else like drawing or cooking and every so often come back to the game to reply and then go back to whatever it was.

Properties… ok, sure we can take the files and rebuild them in LDD. I can also print out a webpage. When I made something on a prop it was designed to be appreciated by a minifig, for them to run around on. Models were split to take advantage of the camera, textures were added to take advantage of movement, bricks were arranged to take advantage of the shader. All of this and no behaviours, it’s all lost. Not to mention chilling with some friends on a prop, admiring what they made and jumping around on it.

The last week and especially the last day of the game I felt like I was constantly checking in on a terminal patient, except this one was going to go Super Nova. Almost immediately afterwards I had a strange sense of relief. The waiting was finally over, the fog had lifted. But then I felt like the Hulk hit me with a truck. Obviously I am not ready to move on or I wouldn’t have started this blog hours afterwards. Until I hear otherwise I’m not wholly convinced we’ve seen the last of LU or another Lego mmog. In the meantime I’m not even interested in another mmog. I was playing this one because it was Lego and was amazed at how much more it was than just a game. I don’t want to play MineCraft, I might as well be playing Megablocks. This does give me a great opportunity to catch up on my backlog of console games at least.

There is so much Lego needs to take away from this, the least of all is how many girls played this game. They have always strived to crack the girl market and unwittingly did with this game. In my lifelong career as an afol I have run into very few girl fans, most of them at conventions and the ratio there was just ridiculously low. In the game it was much more balanced and even more so in the building community.

So many people also discovered they were builders because of this game. They don’t necessarily have a Lego collection of their own and found they could build whatever they wanted to within the game. Bricks were not that easy to come across though, you still had to unlock the store areas and have the necessary cash to purchase, or in some cases harvest. You really worked for your collection and your creations had your effort infused into them. When TLC cancels a line you still have your bricks. What are we left with here?

I don’t want to rag on the company for their decisions here, let’s keep this one to living in a post apocalego Universe. How are you doing?

[Zipblock]

Hey guys

Rowdy invited me to the forums here and happy to have found you all but it's too bad that it's under these circumstances. It looks like a great community here and I look forward to seeing what's going on around here!

I'll be posting regularly on my new LU blog about all my experiences as a LUP and player in the game. I want to celebrate how awesome this journey has been and there is so much interesting stuff that hasn't been seen in public yet and I'll do my best to get it out there.