Jagex cancels MechScape at significant cost, restarts anew

by Kyle Horner Oct 29th 2009 at 12:00PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, New titles, News items, Mechscape

Jagex CEO Mark Gerhard has indeed confirmed the cancellation of MechScape, although you wouldn't quite know it from his comments, which seem excited to be working on a different title with a new direction. This isn't the first time an in-development MMO has been rebooted in favor of a completely new direction, although Tabula Rasa at least kept its original name.

Why the sudden decision? According to Gerhard, MechScape wasn't able to avoid the same pitfalls of RuneScape. Of course, making such a move is going to cost Jagex millions, but their current financial success will be shouldering the weight. The new game -- known as Stellar Dawn -- should be coming in 2010 and will be based on the MechScape graphics engine.

The big changes planned for Stellar Dawn are content and combat focused, although no specifics were given by Gerhard. It's a bold move, no doubt, and sometimes this industry favors such decisions -- other times it punishes them significantly. Whether you look at this as stalled (Tabula Rasa) or prolonged (everything Blizzard) development, you have to admit it creates a notable amount of interest in Jagex's 2010 game.

Tags: 2010, blizzard, breaking, cancel, cancelled, eurogamer, jagex, mark-gerhard, mechscape, runescape, stellar-dawn, tabula-rasa

Related From Massively

Massively Speaking Episode 75
95 days ago
Jagex comes in 22nd on the Sunday Times Tech Track 100 list
137 days ago
New details surface about MechScape
159 days ago

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Jack said on 12:20PM 10-29-2009

Lol this was the guy that was like MechScape will be the best of the best bla blabla.... Oops it sucks back to the drawing table! Cost tens of millions? I highly question that he kinda does make it in house I do not think he even lost one million or close to it.... maybe he count the time he lost and when he did get payed for that time.....

"excited to be working on a different title" "big plans" all that are marking crap!

Holgar said on 1:02PM 10-29-2009

Well at least they had the balls to say "this isn't good enough" vs releasing a half baked piece of crud. These guys remind me a lot of Blizzard, they have made tough decisions to crush real world trading which has turned out to be a game saver so hopefully this turns out about as well.

InfamousBrad said on 2:34PM 10-29-2009

I'm disappointed, but I'm not entirely surprised. Thanks to the legacy of Dungeons and Dragons, we all have a sort-of agreed-upon idea of what fantasy roleplaying gameplay looks like: hack and slash warriors, wizards throwing ranged spells, clerics healing and bashing things, thieves sneaking. We don't have a similarly agreed-upon concept of what science fiction roleplaying gameplay would look like, but we know this: attempts to map those same character classes onto science fiction end up looking really stupid. It's going to take real innovation and brilliant design to put out a science fiction multiplayer roleplaying game with distinct character classes and have millions of people all over the world hear the one or two word description of their character and know, instantly, how they're supposed to play it. Nobody's managed that yet. So I'm not surprised Jagex ended up concluding that their first attempt, even once they got it polished, wasn't fun. But I'm terribly disappointed.

Fortunately, STO, SWTOR, and DUST are hovering on the near-term horizon. We'll see if any of them get it right.

thud said on 9:53PM 10-29-2009

Pitfalls?

I hope they're not worried about cheaters and the likes. They spent so much time and energy into combating them in Runescape and ended up taking away from the enjoyability of gameplay. If that is the reason, or at least one of the reason for this decision, I only hope they'll come to their sense and realize cheats and farmers are just an unfortunate part of ALL mmo's.