Monte Cristo has announced that, just over three months after the game’s launch, the online mode for Cities XL is to be shut down.
The game was marketed as an MMO from the start, with publishers saying that thousands of players could interact with others in the game’s online Planet option. Anyone opting to play online was required to pay a subscription fee. However, the online features were fairly minimal and, according to our preview, didn’t offer a lot more than the single-player experience.
A lengthy Q&A has gone up on the Cities XL site, explaining the decision and giving players information on the server closures. In short, Cities XL will be “refocussed” as a solo game. Monte Cristo will support the online mode until it ends, which is when the servers go offline at 0:00 GMT on 8 March 2010. There will be no new content or patches for the game until the next game Cities XL 2011 is released.
Cities XL 2011 will include some of the Planet features such as blueprints, and three further theme content packs, Europe, America and Asia, are also due to be released. These will contain all of the current exclusive Planet contents including buildings, maps and megastructures.
The packs as well as Cities XL 2011 will be released simultaneously on the official site as digital downloads, and the prices are said to remain very reasonable. More should be known about them in the next few weeks.
