The Matrix Online

The Matrix Online was a MMORPG that was made by Warner Bros. Entertainment and Monolith and was later bought out by SOE. It began beta testing in June 2004 and went live in March 2005 for North American users, and April 2005 for European users. It was eventually shut down in July of 2009, due to low sales.

The Matrix was unique in the MMO market for two major reasons: First, was the leveling and skill system. Unlike standard MMO's, where you pick a class and then delve into specializations within that class, The Matrix had a modular system that gave every player access to all of the skills, but only allowed them to pick a certain number of skills in a certain progression at a time. This allowed characters to make unique classes by mixing and matching abilities and weapons and was fairly intuitive despite sounding incredibly complex.

Second, was the Live Events. Unlike other MMO events, this one had a specific team designed to act out the roles of the minor characters and contacts during a event.

The story of MxO was as such: After the death of Neo, the Machines and Zion have stopped engaging in open warfare and now fight a cold war in the Matrix proper. The Exiles, led by the Merovingian, also joined in the fray, recruiting redpills (PC's) to do their dirty work. The major arcs in the story included the death of Morpheus, illegal codes that turned some redpills into Super Soldiers, a conspiracy to kill everyone by holding a free concert, and finally giving everyone GM level powers.

As stated above, the game is now defunct. A sideshow is available at the community website, Data Node One.

This game series provides examples of:

 * Aborted Arc: The story of Neurophyte, a Zion operative who inherited mysterious powers after a run-in with a "killcode." The arc took a few branching paths and set the stage for a new Neo-like character... until Sony took over, laid off the event team, merged servers, and never mentioned the story again.
 * Red Eyes Take Warning: The General at one point employed an army of Black Helicopter pilots who resemble the Agents, but with glowing red eyes, probably so that everyone knew they were bad.
 * Useless Useful Non Combat Abilities: Crytography — and by extension, the Crypto Tool item — were never used once and eventually silently vanished.
 * What Could Have Been: Early pre-release material hinted at expansions to other parts of the city, swords, explorable hovercrafts, and cars. None of those even remotely happened.
 * Once Sony pulled the plug on the game, the de facto writer released a rough outline for what would've happened if the game had an operating budget above that of a high schooler's allowance.