RIP Jumpgate Classic

Truly is a shame to see the longest running space mmo close down. But Gazillion screwed up both Jumpgate and Jumpgate II, it's a shame really because some people lost there jobs and a game that was promised never came to be (or least I don't think it will see the light of day). With the game being as old as it is they should just release the source to the world and let them do what they want with it as long as people don't profit off of it.

I don't have the URL handy, but they actually addressed the source code thing, and said that there wouldn't be any release of the JG IP.

At least there wasn't any stupid online petition thing to get to that point, like was tried by some WC fans for WC1 a few years back, to which naturally EA said "thank you for your concern, but [fornicate] off." It was kinda embarassing to be a WC fan with that petition thing going... 😛

I've not played for a few years myself, but I had a great time playing JG and made some nice friends. One of the best online games I've played and a great community, such a shame, if they had looked after it and kept it updated most of us would have kept playing it for many years to come. 🙁

I think part of the problem with Netdevil was that they bit off more than they could chew between JGC, JG Evolution, Auto Assault, and the Lego thing. They really should've focused on just one thing and tried finding a big financial partner to help back them, so they could hire a full staff instead of just some buddies getting together and pooling their money. Gazillion's non-support didn't help matters any. Granted, at the time JG was an untested idea, and in 2001 investors were still a bit gun shy about putting money into small-time internet companies after the "Dot Com" crash.

Also, as much as I dislike saying it, ND never really moved beyond the "some friends working on a garage project" mentality. A little more corporate-style discipline could well have avoided things like the Codemasters lawsuit over JGE.

That said, I'll miss JGC. Even if I hadn't played it much over the past few years, it still holds a place in my heart.

And I think you're completely wrong.

Having investors dictate developers what kind of games they should create, essentially becoming their slaves, is never a good thing for us, long-time gamers

....unless you want some piece of garbage, dumbed down for "wider, casual audience", developed primarily for consoles and only receive a rushed port of it for PC, plus have annual releases and offensive cash grabbings at every occasion.

Speaking of which: http://gamerant.com/ea-named-worst-comp ... ce-141956/

Where did I say anything about investors dictating to developers?

For almost a year before now, the billing system for JG was broken and Gazillion did nothing to help the ND crew figure out how to fix it, requiring manual intervention from JG tech support to start or cancel an account, and from what I've read and heard from ND people (one of whom I was semi-regularly in communication with, as part of the test pilot program) getting anything from Gazillion was at times about as easy as pulling your own teeth. Not forcing developers to work on particular stuff is one thing, but not providing for basic support issues is another thing entirely.

As for the EA bashing? Meh.

RIP Jumpgate - the best game that one played.

Gazillion were supposed to be the big investors that pushed JGE to release, but I sense they were more interested in the big licenses like Lego and Marvel. After JG Evol was pulled back from going beta in Spring 2009 (it wouldn't have fared well with the sandbox gamers) and things started changing bigtime with the MMO market, it was hard to see the game ever coming out.

As for JG Classic, it was the first MMO to catch my attention and fed directly into my love of EVE. It's a shame to see it go so quietly.

It was indeed a very sad day when the JGC server was shut down.

JGC was the only game that managed to keep my attention for more than a few years, it seems most of the games I had affection for have either been superceeded by less playable games or just wiped off the face of the net.

There is a glimer of hope for JGC fans in the form of Squad Wars. I haven't seen any posts for this around so I thought I'd link it here. Squad Wars is being developed by END Games the company created by Scott Brown former CEO of NedDevil.

Goodbye JGC and thanks for all the good times.

I mentioned Squad Wars in a blog post but there hasn't been an official thread about it, but I will make one shortly. Only thing that irritates me about companies shutting down communities is that data/posts/files are lost. I would have gladly taken any posting data that would have been nice to archive. With JGC being over 10yrs old they should have just released the source to the community with the restrictions that they are not allowed to profit from it.

Edit: There is a forum post here: http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/viewto ... =76&t=2889