The Matrix Online

The Matrix Online
File:Matrixonlinebox.jpg
Developer(s)	Monolith Productions
Publisher(s)	Warner Brothers/Sega
Engine	Lithtech: Discovery
Platform(s)	PC
Release	December , 2004 December, 2004
Genre(s)	MMORPG
Mode(s)	Multiplayer

The Matrix Online (MxO) is an MMORPG developed by Monolith Productions. It is set in the fictional universe of The Matrix and continues the story told in the Matrix series. The game began closed beta testing in June 2004, and saw a special closed beta test for pre-orders beginning in November 2004. Warner Bros. and SEGA officially released MxO on March 22, 2005 in the United States. It was released in Europe on April 15, 2005.

Ubisoft originally planned to co-publish the game with Warner Bros., but backed out of the deal in February 2004 [1]. Many gamers believe that this was done in response to the mixed audience reaction to The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, but it was also part of a wider trend for Ubisoft to drop its support of MMOGs. This opened the door for SEGA to become the new co-publisher.

On June 17, 2005, Warner Bros. and Sony Online Entertainment, owners of several other online multiplayer game worlds, including EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies, announced that SOE had picked up the rights from Monolith to operate The Matrix Online. The transition to SOE was completed on 15 August 2005.

Gameplay

All players in the game play the role of a redpill, a human who was formerly trapped inside the Matrix. When a new character is made, the player is given the choice of taking a blue pill that will return them to their former life (quit the game) or a red pill, which will free their minds from the Matrix. Characters who are unaware of the fact that they are in the simulation are often referred to as "bluepills" because they have either taken the blue pill or have not been given the choice yet. People who are aware of the simulation (players) are referred to as "redpills" because they have taken the red pill (or, in very rare cases, when a character has self-substantiated out of the Matrix on their own). Following the choice between the two pills, the player is then taken through a basic tutorial of the game's mechanics, including mission interaction and the combat system. After the tutorial, they are then free to roam the Mega City (the city that the entire Matrix story is set in).

Combat

The Matrix Online is different from most MMOs because of its combat system. Combat is divided into two separate parts: Free-fire and Interlock. Free-fire mode allows for large gun battles to take place, while Interlock is often broken down into bullet-time-affected martial arts moves and close-quarters gunfire.

There are three main classes in the Matrix Online: Coder, Hacker, and Operative. Coders create special "simulacrum" that fight for them. Hackers manipulate the code of the Matrix to affect friends and enemies from a distance, either damaging them, downgrading their combat abilities, or healing them and uprgrading their powers. Operatives are the common soldiers seen from the movies - Martial Artists, Gunmen, and the new Spy class, which revolves around stealth fighting and knife throwing.

In Free-Fire Mode, operatives exchange damage with each other. Gunmen and Hackers are well-equipped for this, with their ranged attacks and abilities. Martial Artists must get close to their targets to be effective, and although a Spy's most dangerous abilities are initiated out of Interlock, they also pull their opponents into Interlock. Each attack or ability is used at timed intervals, based on the system of Damage Per Second (D.P.S.). For example, the strongest rifle in the Matrix does 15 Damage points Per Second, and has a fire rate of 3.5 seconds, which, in Free-Fire, causes the rifle to have a base damage of 52.5, to be altered by the player's own stats. Opposed to such, a Hacker's stronger attack ability such as Logic Barrage 4.0 does 63 D.P.S., but with a short casting timer, does a base damage of only 120-180 damage.

In Interlock, or Close Combat, two players exchange damage in Rounds. Each round lasts exactly four seconds. For each round, the two players' Accuracies are pitted against each others' Defenses, which are slightly affected by a random "luck" roll. There are three different outcomes to a round: Hit-Hit, Hit-Miss, or Miss-Miss. In Hit-Miss, one of the players will hit the other while dodging or blocking their attack. In Miss-Miss, both players will parry each other without doing damage. In Hit-Hit, one player will damage the other, only to be damaged themselves in a counter attack. When special abilities are used, however, there can be no Hit-Hit round, although the Miss-Miss round can still apply.

When taking or dealing damage, one player's Damage influences are pitted against another player's Resistance influences of the same damage type (i.e. a gunman's Ballistic Damage versus an opponent's Ballistic Resistance). Higher Resistance versus lower Damage means that the defending player will not take as much damage.

When attacking or defending against attacks, one player's Accuracy influences are pitted against another's Defense influences of the same attack type.

There is no turn-based combat in the Matrix Online. All combat takes place in "real time", and large scale battles are often decided by the sheer numbers of forces of one side versus others. Amassing a large number of players to control the battlefield is affectionately dubbed "Zerging", an allusion to Blizzard's Starcraft and the Zerg race, which uses the "Power in Numbers" strategy to win battles.

Currently, there is no way to effectively use Player Versus Player Combat scores as content, although content designed for PvP has been recently added, such as items that drop in the game world and can be picked up that grant powers to the player that lugs them around, hence they are called "luggables".

Classes

The Matrix Online has a unique class system. Players can load abilities they have either purchased or produced (by the Coder class, known ingame as coding) at Hardlines, provided they have enough memory and the abilities that precede the loading one. These abilities can then be switched out at a Hardline at a moment's notice. This leads to a very flexible class system, without players being stuck in one class.

The 3 main archetypes are Hacker, Coder, and Operative. They are similar to the classes Mage, Crafter, and Fighter in other MMORPGs. These classes then each branch out into sub-classes, with Coder, for example being divided into Programmer (Out of battle item and ability maker) and Code Shaper (creates sims to fight with, similarities to a necromancer/summoner in other MMOs).

To elaborate, the game currently has a total of 21 end-game classes with an additional 2 stubs. These are:

Coder

1. Programmer - Crafter

2. Proxy Master - "Tank" Class Simulacra

3. Utility Master - Support Class Simulacra

Hacker

4. Trauma Surgeon - Area Healer

5. Force Multiplier - Area Upgrader

6. Physician - Single Target Healer

7. Upgrade Master - Single Target Upgrader

8. Network Attacker - Single Target Downgrader

9. Ravenger - Damage over Time / Downgrader

10. Ballista - Single Target Damage

11. Howitzer - Area Damage

12. Destroyer - Area Downgrader

Operative

13. Master Shadow - Stealth, avoids combat

14. Master Knife Thrower - Ranged Combat Stealth

15. Assassin - Close Combat Stealth

16. Kung Fu Grandmaster - Accuracy Based Close Combat

17. Karate Grandmaster - Damage Based Close Combat

18. Aikido Grandmaster - Defense Based Close Combat

19. SMG Specialist - Damage Based Ranged/Close Combat

20. Expert Rifleman - Accuracy Based Ranged Combat

21. Duelist - Defense Based Close Combat

Stubs

Stub 1. Sniper - Stealth / Long Range High Damage Attacks

Stub 2. Data Miner - Non-Combat Currency Generator / "Luggable" Detector

Missions and Organizations

After an initial set of introductory missions, players can join one of three organizations working in the Matrix: Zion, the Machines, and the Merovingian. Zion refers to the last remaining human city on Earth, hidden deep underground to protect its citizens from the formerly hostile Machines. The Zionites comprise a very diverse mix of people, some of whom simply want to maintain the truce with the Machines and others who want to see the Matrix completely shut down. Players who choose to side with the Machines usually consider maintaining the stability of the Matrix system to be their highest priority, while at the same time maintaining the truce with Zion. Those who work for the Merovingian serve his needs and demands and help protect his vast number of Exiles.

Players contact the controller for each organizations to run missions for them (either Critical, which relate to the current storyline or "Standard", randomly generated ones) and gain Reputation Points with the Organization they're missioning for, while losing Reputation for the others. Through this, players are labeled as a member of that Organization once their reputation reaches a certain point.

Each organization has different goals and values. Within Zion and the Machines there are also two splinter organizations, E Pluribus Neo (EPN) and the Cypherites respectively. They hold equally different beliefs from the other orgs and are generally seen as radicals or extremists.

Members of EPN are devoted to what they deem "Neo's legacy" to give all human beings the choice of the red or blue pill regardless of if they are the 1% of humanity destined to question the simulated reality of The Matrix. They are very much against the Cypherites and even the Machines. EPN are led by The Kid with his old friend Shimada acting as their mission controller.

The Cypherites on the other hand follow in the footsteps of Cypher, wanting to be reinserted into the Matrix as bluepills, ignorant of the truth. They are currently led by Zion traitor, Veil. Previously the organizations mission controller she has taken command as the direct result of their former leader, Cryptos, being revealed as a Machine Program inhabiting a redpill's body.

The Continuing Story

Another of The Matrix Online's defining and differentiating aspects is its inclusion and emphasis on what is called "The Continuing Story". This is to say the game itself is the official continuation of the universe, story and characters established in the Matrix Series of fictional works.

This continuation is written collaboratively between the award winning comic book writer Paul Chadwick and MxO lead game designer, Ben "Rarebit" Chamberlain. It has also seen verification and input from matrix creators, The Wachowski Brothers, through until the end of the upcoming Chapter 9.

Release Schedule

The story progresses in real time, with a planned schedule in effect that includes the following:

- One new Graphic Novel Style Cinematic released at the start of each new subchapter (currently every six weeks)

- Three new Critical Missions (one for each of the game's three main organizations) each week.

- Daily Live Events (excluding weekends) which include three planned Critical Events and two 'Random' Events each week.

- Forum Featured Live Event Recaps of said events for those unable to attend. Generally posted the day following their occurrence they include an in-character blurb and numerous in-game images covering the previous day's happenings.

The Chapter Numbering System

The Matrix Online uses a numbering system akin to that of software versioning to keep track of it's chronological progression.

For example: Chapter 1, Sub-chapter 2, Week 3 would be represented as "Chapter 1.2.3"

It has been stated by MxO developer, and overseer of The Continuing Story, Rarebit that this numbering system is meant purely for chronological measuring and game design (for the various rewards associated with completing past Critical Missions in a system called The Mission Archive). The chapters and subchapters are not intended as self-contained and simply contribute to the larger whole.

LESIG Program

LESIG stands for Live Event Special Interest Group. Originally planned during Monolith's operation of the game it was originally intended to function as nothing more than a feedback group, giving the developers a clearer understanding of how players were reacting to the large scale live events the team were producing.[2]

When The Matrix Online transitioned to SOE the program under went a radical change of direction not much unlike the Live Events themselves. In this new SOE operated LESIG members, who consisted of players who had applied previously under the Monolith design theory, were given the new task of directly interacting with the community in-game with minor 'Live Event Team' roles. These early tasked included supporting certain live events as support characters [3] or playing more permanent characters to enhance current storylines [4].

Over time this first group (now monikored LESIG 1.0) declined in activity and usefulness, the main reasons likely being a number of information leaks within the group and the subsequent community uproar as well as the fact it's members had never intended to take on roles that would be so time consuming and emotionally stressful on their everyday lives in the first place.

Whatever the reason it soon became apparent a revision of the group had to take place if it were to ever continue assisting the story telling of the game...

Server List

Pre-merge

• Linenoise
• Proxy
• Output
• Regression
• Heuristic-Hostile
• Input-Hostile
• Enumerator-Hostile
• Iterator
• Method

Post-merge

• Vector; is a Hostile server. Unlike the other servers where PVP is optional, players are permanently flagged for inter-player fighting once they reach level 16. Vector is composed of players from the Enumerator, Heuristic, and Input servers
• Syntax; is a non hostile server. Syntax is composed of players based from the Linenoise, Proxy, and Output servers.
• Recursion; is a non hostile server. Recursion is composed of players based from the Method, Regression, and Iterator servers.

Storyline

The Race For The One

The first major event to occur in The Matrix Online was a "race" between the three organizations to gather Neo's RSI fragments. The organization that collected the most in a week received a defense bonus. Different organizations won on different servers.

Shapers were found that could manipulate the RSI fragments into the shape of Neo's mental projection. Unfortunately some shapers were captured by a fourth party (believed to be the General). Those shapers were forced to create super-Agents which the organizations worked together to defeat. Morpheus has also complained that the physical remains of Neo were never returned to Zion from the Machine City (Zero One), yet cryptically, the Machines have said that they did not recycle Neo's remains either.

Red-eyed Agents

The second major event a week later was the appearance of Agents with glowing red eyes. These Agents appeared mysteriously and began attacking all humans, including those allied with the Machines. None of the three factions claimed to be controlling the red eyed Agents, and some believe they serve a new fourth organization. They attacked anyone with an RSI code fragment ("contraband fragments") or anyone attempting to defend them.

Later, a message from the Oracle indicated that "intruders" angered by the Truce are behind this, and that somehow Neo split himself up into fragments within the Matrix knowing that it was needed for the future. However, the only way to put Neo's code back together is with the help of programs known as Shapers. Fighting then broke out between the factions for control of Shapers, leading to the Red Eyed Agents capturing a Shaper in the confusion, which allowed them to create a new breed of red eyed agents: "N30 Ag3nts". Soon Niobe sent a message to players to fight the menace along with a new wave of agents which bore a strong resemblance to Neo.

Nightfall

The third major event, Nightfall, began with the kidnapping of two important leaders from vampire-like and werewolf-like Exiles gangs (the Blood-drinkers and the Lupines, respectively). It was soon revealed that Malphas and his Lupine counterpart Ookami had not been kidnapped at all, but were hiding from the Merovingian. Upon returning, they led a revolt of both gangs against the Merovingian's domination of all Exiles, attempting to rally many humans to their cause. However, while Malphas was absent his subordinate, Invalesco, attempted an underhanded power grab against him, promising to turn humans that joined him into immortal 'vampires' with his source code. He was unsuccessful: upon Malphas's return, Invalesco was hunted down and killed. Amidst this infighting, the Merovingian was able to defeat the uprising and capture Malphas and Ookami. Subjected to torture in the Frenchman's Chateau, they were (for now at least) bent back to his service out of fear, and the attacks ended.

The Hunt for Morpheus

Morpheus stepped up his quest to convince the Machines to return Neo's body. By planting specially coded bombs near places where redpill players were likely to gather (usually hardlines, but later on or near monuments), the bombs would detonate and, while they did no physical damage to the Matrix, spread a virus to any redpills caught in the blast. This virus was designed to reveal the underlying code, showing the bluepills the true nature of the Matrix, causing them to reject it as real, and possibly crashing the system. All organizations were out to kill him. Agents patrolled the streets, as did the Lupines and Blood Drinkers. Another mysterious group emerged during this time, called Cypherites by many players, consisting of masked humans. Not only did they sabotage hardlines to trap people in the Matrix, but they also rabidly hunted Morpheus. Players rushed to defuse Morpheus' bombs in order to protect the truce, while others fought to protect the bombs.

On the sixth day of the ten-day event, tragedy struck. Morpheus met a mysterious assassin as he set one of his final bombs in a waste water treatment plant. He fled the initial attack, only to be caught off guard when the Assassin caught up to him, apparently able to bend the rules of the Matrix as he slipped through a narrow vent in front of him. He was unable to dodge the onslaught of gunshots. Morpheus was dead.

Niobe met with leaders from the machines, who denied involvement. She later formed a faction of her own to track down who had sent the Assassin. The hunt for Morpheus' Assassin was on. Soon, exiles called Corrupted began to appear throughout the Matrix, attacking players at random. It was later discovered that these programs were created by the Assassin in his own image using a "corrupted virus", meaning that the programs' bodies were composed of flies, just like his. During the chaos that ensued with the attacks, Agent Skinner, liaison to the Machinist redpills, was permanently deleted by the Assassin. Soon, players found documents on the Corrupted that were attacking them, and piecing the information together from it they learned that killing Morpheus had not been the Assassin's ultimate goal. The Corrupted were designed to destabilize the Matrix upon death, and by releasing them en masse, the Assassin hoped that players killing them would completely destroy the Matrix.

The event culminated with much larger versions of the Corrupted, called Complete Corrupted, who could only be destroyed by special pesticide items. All players of all organizations put aside their differences and worked together to defeat these massive programs and restore order to the Matrix. However, with the event over and order restored, one thing remains: the Assassin is still at large.

Following the permanent deletion of Agent Skinner, the Machines activated a new Agent as his replacement, Agent Pace. Agent Pace is a 'new style' of Agent, most notably in two ways. First, it is more emotionally expressive. Second, "it" is a "she"; Agent Pace is the first 'female' Agent. Pace's behavior is markedly different from previous models of Agents because she was designed to be "more human". Pace actually smiles on occasion, and behaves almost benevolently toward human redpills under her authority. A hidden message from Agent Pace can be found on the official site, in the "Sentinel" fake newspaper page, by finding the hidden link associated with "the Machines"; a picture of her is also there. She seems to have the odd (for an Agent) habit of falling into using Italian words frequently when she is speaking. It's notable that "pace" is Latin for "with peace", commonly taken to mean that no offence is intended by the speaker.

Choice and Consequence

The crew of the hovercraft Novalis II must try to save the life of their crewmate, Neurophyte. This scenario had alternate endings which played out differently on the separate game servers. However, with the later merger of the 9 servers into 3, plot continuity errors occurred. Walrus, an administrator for The Matrix Online, has stated that the storyline will be dropped instead of fixing the plot conflict. [5]

Double Cross

The Cypherites, masked redpills that want to be put back into the Matrix like Cypher once did, begin a string of attacks led by Gemaskeerd and Enmascarado. In the end Enmascarado is killed by the Assassin, releasing a flame virus attached to his body, and Novalis II crewmember Toorima is revealed as a Cypherite leader called Veil, but not before she is able to kill her crewmate Vashuo.

Death of the Destroyer

Eventually, the Redpill forces create a weapon that can kill the bug-based Assassin - Insecticide. Realizing his imminent doom is quickly approaching, the Assassin split himself into multiple, weakened copies, which all spread out across the Megacity to do as much damage as possible, in the hopes of destroying the Matrix before he was deleted. As battle raged across the city, the Redpills managed to destroy all but one copy of the Assassin, of whom Niobe and an unnamed operative chased down and destroyed. In the aftermath, Niobe creates her own splinter faction dedicated to the deletion of the Merovingian, who had allegedly hired the Assassin originally.

The Enigma of Cryptos

The Sentinel newspaper says that soon, boxes will appear around the Megacity as part of an "amazement" by a bluepill street magician, Cryptos. A Zion hidden message is in the same Sentinel, and says that Cryptos was the name of a Zion operative who disappeared not long ago. Shortly afterward, boxes appear around the MegaCity as the newspaper said, which opened every two hours with Cryptos inside, who then gives a speech that sounds like it could be Cypherite propaganda, though he never mentions things very specifically. Operatives are sent on missions, and find some clues connecting the Cypherites with Cryptos.

Veil of Cryptos

Veil is broken out of the Zion prison, and as it turns out, she is the Cypherite mission controller. It is also discovered that Cryptos is the Cypherites' leader. The Merovingian makes something of a truce with the Cypherites, but worked against them as it suited his purposes. The Cypherites eventually discovered this, and their truce was broken. Meanwhile, Zion's main agenda is taking down the Merovingian, and the General's men create more powerful versions of the holy water, silver bullet, and wooden stake killcode items for killing exiles.

Meanwhile, The Kid founds a splinter group of Zionites, "E Pluribus Neo" (with his controller, Shimada). This organization is deeply loyal to Neo's vision of freeing humanity and violently opposed to the Cypherites.

A Piece of Blue Sky

Major Event taking place during May 09 through May 16 2006.

Operatives are directed to report any unusual occurrences to their commanding officer (liaison) immediately. There has been much activity in the Matrix leading up to the Anniversary Event, and anticipation is growing amongst redpills across the world. It is rumored that there are disruptions in the Code; Veil and Shimida have been known to discuss the issue to Redpills on the Recursion and Syntax Instance of the Matrix.

Also, it has been introduced that there are splinter organizations within the Cypherites and E Pluribus Neo who are willing to go to even further extremes to achieve their goals. While much is going on among all organizations, Niobe and The General are formulating an attack on the Merovingian.

With the appearance of the extremist Cypherites known as "Sleepwalkers" attacking unsuspecting redpills in every alley, the activity within the Matrix increases, with many believing the newly sprung concert sites are linked to the Sleepwalkers somehow.

On the final day of the event, the concert began, and many redpills do indeed have their worst fears realized. A message blasts out from the speakers, threatening all redpills around and telling them to prepare for reinsertion. Moments later the Sleepwalkers appear en masse to attack the redpills gathered in the parks, or rather to distract them, as the huge concert lights blast out an eerie blue light, destabilizing the Matrix around them. Security officers of a redpill nature appear to fight off the redpills at the lights and re-activate them at every opportunity they get.

However, no matter how dire the situation became, the redpills managed to defeat the Sleepwalkers and re-route the power of the lights back into the Sleepwalker forces, re-inserting their bodies but leaving the rest of the redpills unharmed.

With the enemies defeated, organizational leaders appeared to congratulate their operatives, and the parties began.

Grabbing the General's Stolen Items

Now that a firm alliance between Zion and the Commandos was placed between them, the General offered Zion two items that he stole from the Machines (with Zion being unaware of it at the time) under the guise of "cheat codes." Anome, a Zion operative working under Niobe's command, swats out a key as the General throws it to Niobe. In critical missions, the Zion operatives work on recovering the key, while the Machines try to recover it, and Merv operatives attempt to gain it for themselves. On the Vector instance, Zion manages to grab the package from the messenger. Shortly after recovering the key, the Zion operatives give the key to Niobe. The Machine operatives commence a "First Strike" operation against the General by capturing the heliport in Morrell.

Saving Captain Niobe

Niobe tested out the chemical vials in the package while inside the Bishop Imports building, only to be betrayed by Anome. Every Zion operative that attended this particular meeting was killed in the resulting gunfight. Niobe was trapped in a special construct created by the vial she dropped. With Ghost playing the role of negotiator, Zion is forced to create a temporary alliance with the Merovingian in order to trace Niobe. The Machines assessed the effects of the chemicals ingested by Anome's operatives. On the Recursion instance, the efforts given from the critical missions helped Ghost lead a successful rescue operation of Niobe. Meanwhile, the General abruptly exited the Matrix, hinting at a future return.

Anome's Unlimit

After Anome's betrayal of Niobe, he and a large group of followers began altering the code in the cheat codes to become super-powerful beings with similar powers to the Assassin. At first, they begin terrorizing the bluepill population, but later attempted to gain vast control of the commercial empire. As resistance increased, Anome realized that he would have to wipe out the entire redpill population. However, an officer in his command betrayed him by spreading information about his childhood experiences with his mother, prompting the Agents to concoct a trap, by disguising one of their own as Anome's mother and distracting him so they could delete his RSI with a kill-code.

One of the side-effects of ingesting the cheat codes being that one couldn't jack out, Anome was killed by the trap, and the cheat codes secured. After the rest of Anome's lieutenants were defeated, the Unlimit that didn't drink cheat codes began dying out on their own. The Merovingian, however, succeeded in capturing one of the lieutenants, Beirn, by using his crush on Persephone to enlist him into the Merovingian's ranks, where he was subjected to tests and eventually used to resurrect the Twins.

Morpheus' Return?

Soon after Morpheus' death, an operative reporting having received a transmission from him. However, many denied the assertion, and it was soon forgotten. After Unlimit's defeat, however, more transmissions began appearing around the Megacity, and E Pluribus Neo decided to investigate. Using modified Code Bombs, they managed to acquire the origins of the transmissions, where all the Matrix's operatives were stunned to see Morpheus himself appearing briefly to give warnings about the Machines and Neo's true fate.

The General's Attack

As the aftermath of the Unlimit incident waned and allowed the Machine/Zion tensions to re-arise, the General suddenly kidnapped Sati. Seraph attempted to rescue Sati, only to be knocked over the lethal height down into the Aqueduct that separates Richland and Westview. Afterwards, the General's Commandos began attacking all three Organizations freely.

Meanwhile, the Agents had finally accounted for as many cheat code vials as they could find (see Rumours), and disposed of them by simply dumping them into the Aqueduct to allow them to dispense harmlessly - conveniently very near the same location where Seraph plunged into the waters.

The Return of Seraph

Seraph returns abruptly, his form altered greatly by the cheat code-polluted Aqueduct he fell into. With the new abilities of seeing and understanding much of the code of the Matrix, Seraph began targeting and apparently assaulting random redpills and bluepills. Each victim is found to not have any memories of a specific amount of time, but after Seraph attacks Cryptos, his cause becomes clear, when Cryptos begins to "malfunction" and shout error warnings.

The Machines had, since the Truce, been using Agent Smith's over-write ability in a controlled fashion to place programs in certain beings to exert more control over the Matrix. Their plans are nulled after Seraph's return when Zion begins scanning all of their redpills for such programs, with an alarming percentage indeed infected. The Cypherites, betrayed, turned to the sadistic Controller, Veil, whose new-found authority and rage stirred violence amongst their ranks.

Retaliation against the General

Seraph, using his new powers, discovered he can detect the General's new Elite Commandos, normally "cloaked" against normal scans within the Matrix, and began assisting Zion to find and rescue Sati.

The Machines found the General's base in The Real, code-named "Stalingrad", and launched an assault against it with their own army of Sentinels, only to encounter very strong resistance. To counter the delay, Agents began tracking down and eliminating the General's systems of communication within the Matrix and disrupted his movements. Frustrated, the General was pleasantly surprised by the Merovingian's offer of alliance, under the condition that he help manufacture a kill code for the Oracle.

The Fall of the General/The Oracle's Assassination

The Machines finally defeated the General's Sentinel guard in Stalingrad, while at the same time, cutting off all of his modes of communication and transportation. With no steady source of reinforcements, the General was forced to deviate from his offensive actions.

Seraph and Zion tracked down and rescued Sati, and Seraph returned to move the Oracle to a safer location.

The Merovingian completed the construction of the kill code, using Agent Pace as a practice target to ensure its lethal capabilities. Agent Pace was severely wounded in the attack, but repaired quickly and returned to active duty with a much colder and calculating personality. The Merovingian, however, was quickly side-tracked by the General's position as he lost base after base. Contacting the Trainman used earlier for transportation of the kill codes, the Merovingian began shuttling the Commandos into constructs.

Finally, the General's final base of operations is found and eliminated, with the General barely escaping. Surprisingly, he rejected being transported to the Merovingian's construct, stating that he had "unfinished business."

Meanwhile, the Morpheus transmissions are discovered to actually be originating from somewhere inside the Matrix, rather than Morpheus' hovercraft in The Real as believed. With many higher-ranking officials in Zion now convinced the Morpheus signal is fake, the signal becomes stronger, and took on a physical form that quickly evaded operatives attempting to question him.

On June 11, it was revealed that the General was behind the false Morpheus broadcasts by constructing a simulation of Morpheus. When confronted by Zion operatives, it was very hesitant and spoke with a lack of confidence. The General appeared to terminate what he deemed his failure, but the simulacrum fought back and defeated the General, who furiously left it to deal with its existence.

With the General's temporary disappearance, the Merovingian focused his efforts on assassinating the Oracle by planting a redpill mole within Zion's security detail, as well as recovering the Keymaker's chain from the Landlord at the Mahath Tower wreckage site in Lamar. Unfortunately for the Merovingian, the attempt to assassinate the Oracle had been leaked to Zion due to a communications error. Zion operatives focused on investigating the leak and eventually captured the mole, although they did not recover the kill code. The Merovingian then went to the General for aid in the form of Elite Commandos, using the key and the kill-code. The Effectuator converted some Merovingian redpill operatives into Elite Commandos as a means of confusing the Zion security detail between the real Commandos and the fake ones. Before the actual assassination came into play, the Machines used a special surveillance system which rendered the disguises useless.

The Commando dispatched to assassinate the Oracle moved quickly and closed on the Oracle before she could detect his presence. Again, however, the Merovingian's plans were foiled by the presence of Michael "Kid" Popper, who leaped into the bullet to save the Oracle, to no permanent injury on his part. Frustrated, the Merovingian activated override routines in the General and his Sentinels secretly implanted during transfers, effectively taking control of both.

The End of the Truce

With help from the Cypherites, the Machines discovered that Zion had been moving heavy pieces of machinery to a large cavern. A Cypherite hovercraft dispatched to investigate find that the cave is filled with stationary EMP devices, and at the bottom of the cavern, a shaft descends down through an EMP field. Above the cavern is impenetrable layers of the earth's natural strata. At the bottom of the shaft is the location of a new city built for the humans - New Zion.

Construction of New Zion had begun when Captain Niobe was held in Anome's construct, and Zion has been constantly adding to its defenses since. The Machines cited this as a breach of the Truce, and the two factions once again went to war. Zionites that wander outside of the Richland district are now attacked commonly by patrolling Agents, and all operatives that have not hacked the Access Node to a district are open to the usual Agent attacks, regardless of their strengths that protected them before the War Renewed.

Story Rumors

• Neo's ultimate fate has been openly called into question as Morpheus has pointed out that his remains were never returned from 01 (the Machine City) back to Zion, but at the same time the Machines have commented that they did not recycle (liquefy for re-use) his body. On an interesting note, there is a newspaper clipping found during a Zion critical mission about a 27-year-old woman named Sarah Edmontons (an anagram for "Thomas Anderson") waking up from a coma and leaving the hospital on her own. In the text, there was a note written on it asking, "Is this him?" Furthermore, on the Machines' recent set of critical missions, it turned out that Edmontons does not exist in any known database, therefore supporting the speculation that Edmontons is Neo. Although no outright comments have been made, developers have hinted that Edmontons will play a role in the future.
  • Further rumors of Neo's return have sprouted recently, since the Machines have placed Neo's supposedly partially reconstructed RSI in a fight club in Gracy Heights in Westview. This has fueled the idea that Neo is still alive; however, many redpills believe that the RSI is simply a distraction from Neo's ultimate fate.
  • In early 2007, images of what seemed to be Morpheus appeared within the simulation, claiming that Neo was still alive and being held captive by the Machines. Since then, though, 'Morpheus' was revealed to be a false simulacrum created by the General.
• Excerpts of a "journal" written by the Assassin claims that it was a program in charge of recycling [of human corpses in the power plants] before it went rogue to become an Exile program. They claimed that while the Assassin was still in charge of recycling, it received a command expressly forbidding it to recycle Trinity's body.
• Recently, in a Machine critical mission, operatives were informed of the origins of the General. It was revealed that when leading the final attack on Zion, he wanted to continue the attack, even after the truce had been brokered, disobeying orders. Forcibly removed from command, he was put into another post but instead chose to become an exile in the Matrix, utilizing a terminal on the surface to gain access; with no foreseen need for an administrative override function, bringing his commandos with him.
• It is commonly suggested that Agent Smith still exists within the Matrix. Most of these have come about from the various hints that are communicated through the Live Events. For example, on the Syntax instance, former liaison officer DifferenceEngine had to be arrested following his apparent infection (notable from his vocabulary). Further fuel was added to the fire through various hints that Agent Gray, the Machine mission controller, is infected, notable from one of the critical missions in the Hunt for the Assassin event where he possessed the tell-tale vocabulary and acted with un-program-like anger. In addition, Shane Black on the Recursion instance was seemingly taken over by the Smith program, as suggested by his vocabulary, though this was only a resurgence of memories from his previous Smith infection, brought on by observing Unlimits fighting in the Aqueduct. He was later killed.
• The Smith Virus returned briefly during the Second Anniversary Event, and quickly overran the entire Matrix. As redpills began fighting back using specialized code constructed by the Oracle, he suddenly disappeared, insisting that he had taken on a new and much more dangerous form.
• Another Liaison officer, TaeCross from the EPN's Recursion instance, was rumored to be working with Morpheus a full year after his last known sighting. After poor dealings with the Machines and repeated setbacks, TaeCross acted out in a Morpheus-like attack of code bombs on the city. It is strongly rumored that since the code bomb technology hasn't been seen since Morpheus' disappearance, TaeCross got this technology directly from Morpheus himself. TaeCross unleashed a final set of 8 code bombs simultaneously at the steps of the First Union Church in Camon Central. His final where-abouts were left unknown. It is also of note that TaeCross is an anagram of Socrates.
• In a mission soon after the end of the Unlimit saga, the Merovingian's operatives idly question Mercury about a distinct loss of profits in the Richland area, when one of his employees mistakenly asked the operative if he had "seen (his) cheat code vial". The employee quickly re-adjusted himself and denied the incident, and no further investigation was conducted.

Criticisms

SOE

While the developers continue to work on and improve The Matrix Online, there are still strong areas of criticism created when the game transitioned to SOE.

Firstly, Live Events hugely changed focus, from being the main story-telling device of the 'Monolith days' to a much smaller 'supporting' content medium. This is due to the Live Events Team and 2/3s of the game's development team being laid off in the game's transition from Monolith to SOE in August 2005 - with the rumored amount of developers being 3-4. Of course, this change in the game's story telling model, and its subsequent results on the game as a whole, is entirely open for debate and is somewhat of a 'hot topic' amongst players, although server population since the SOE takeover has been steadily decreasing.

Another result of the team downsizing is that each individual Live Event has been made a 'one time only' affair, with each contributing to a single greater storyline continuum. Thus the events are now server-exclusive as opposed to being accessible on all servers when the game was under Monolith Productions.

Also, due to a lack of a dedicated Live Events Team, the events are normally held during regular office hours in the United States (9:00 A.M.-7:00 P.M. PST). Players in Europe and Asia continue to criticize the fact attendance is rather difficult due to the timezone difference[6].

In 2006-2007 it was discovered that "Public Relations" Raijinn had created a secret forum known as the champagne room (His excuse for the name being that he wanted to keep things interesting) with the original purpose of gaining feed back from key players. However it was leaked that these key players were being given preferential treatment and allowed to ask for the admittance of others into this hidden room. The leaked information was publicly revealed on the general forums and those responsible were given the choice of either informing the admin's of who the leak was or be banned. Choosing not to reveal their leak, the individuals who revealed the existence of the sub forum were banned, though this was later reversed due to public out cry. In now removed threads, Raijinn was seen publiclly flaming players in regards to this whole situation. This incident has become known in the MXO community as "The Champagne room". [7] [8] [9]

CSR-Brewko, Senior Game Master in charge of the handling of petitions, and well known in most SOE controlled games as being "Ban stick happy" has recently begun hosting "Matrix Trivia Contests" and using his GM abilities to change the visual appearance of players. Many have questioned the reason for as to why Senior GM Brewko has been allowed to begin interacting with the general player base during office hours. [10] [11]

LESIG

The most apparent problem has been a hazy definition of what the LESIG is in a legal context, which has caused issues in the removal of inactive members to be replaced by those on a waiting list to get into the program. [12], [13], [14], This problem has resulted in a general inconsistent roll-out of events. For example, one organization may get, over the course of two months, several events, where as another may not even receive any.[15]

More recently, the LESIG 2.0 program has come under extra scrutiny in regards to, what some regard as, slow reactions to 'activity problems'. That is to say when a member of the volunteer program is rarely seen to take an active part of their role as an organizational liaison (Recursion Machine liaisons Eventual and Torman were anecdotal problems for the span of four months). If sustained this issue has usually lead to the eventual criticism over said volunteer’s eligibility to remain as part of the group.

This has also had the knock-on effect of somewhat inconsistent live event coverage during times of liaison inactivity for certain organization and server combinations. This is due to the way the live events are assigned during the planning stages for the upcoming subchapter. It has been confirmed by LESIG overseer, Ben "Rarebit" Chamberlain, that the server (and sometimes due to the 'shared' nature of certain circumstances involving Zion/EPN and Machine/Cyph, organisation focus) of events are in fact picked by the members of LESIG themselves.

External links

• Data Node One The game's official website with news, puchasing information, screenshots and official forums.
• Data Node One Forums The official MxO forums.
• Data Node One Links Page A list of recognised fansites.
• The Matrix Online at IMDb