Zone.com Shutting Down

well i guses that officially ends the zone JK comeback

Moved commentary from news post to seperate post ->

I'm gonna rip this crap to pieces:

Classic games to be retired; new Chess, Spades, and more on the way!

Because normal Chess and Spades isn't good enough for the world!

It’s hard to imagine, but MSN Games is now a decade old. Ten years is a long time in the gaming world: it’s nearly half the age of the World Wide Web and over a quarter of the entire history of home videogames!

Hard to imagine? Time goes by quickly when you sit in a cubicle all day for 10 years, huh?

But hey, who checks the clock in the middle of a party?

Apparently you guys!

As we gear up for a second decade, our objective is still the same: to be your favorite place to play the world’s most popular games, fill a bit of spare time, de-stress during lunch, catch up with friends, or “accidentally” miss a staff meeting.

That's an understatement. Maybe we should pull Forte or Wodz out of retirement to testify

In pursuit of this ever-tantalizing goal, we plan to make a few significant changes to MSN Games over the next few months.

Yeah, like removing games that people play helps make Zone.com everyone's favorite place to play games

First, some tearful farewells: as of June 19, 2006, we will be retiring our CD-ROM matchmaking service, along with the original versions of several classic card and board games: Classic Backgammon, Bridge, Classic Checkers, Chess, Cribbage, Euchre, Go, Classic Hearts, Reversi, and Spades.

Tearful? What a total understatement. These guys have removed the ENTIRE gaming history of EVERY SINGLE CD-ROM game EVER on Zone.com. This basically means the end of online gaming for most of those games.

We’ll be sad to see them go! These games are like old friends: they gave us our start, and helped us grow from an innovative little entertainment site to a truly stellar online gaming experience.

"We'll be sad to see them go! These games are like old friends. Use up their money and stab them in the back! Ha ha!"

But over the years, it’s become more and more difficult to maintain the aging hardware and software that supports them. We held out absolutely as long as we could, but it was finally time to make that decision.

More and more difficult? What has changed? Microsoft has not produced an operating system in at least 4 years. None of the lobby software has changed, nor does anything need to change. Aging hardware? I never noticed any lobby lag

bby lag. Guess what, you do have to upgrade computers at least once in the space of 10 years! Wow the folks at Zone.com are bright

And now that it’s made, we’re actually very happy about it. Why? Because now our time, energy, and resources can be turned to creating newer, better versions of your (and our) favorite games!

Less time acting as newbie sysops, and more time making your life worse!

The same teams who brought you updated, feature-filled, and gorgeous new Hearts, Dominoes, Checkers, and Texas Hold’Em games are currently hard at work on Spades, Chess, and more.

Wow, new versions of classic games? That'll go over well, just rewrite the rules for games you don't feel like supporting anymore!

Site programmers are evaluating new, more secure ways to implement tournaments, ladders, and community talk. Our writers and editors are typing away at a whole new range of game reviews, news, and feature stories. In short, MSN Games is rapidly becoming an even better place to play.

...Instead of letting everyone happily play their favorite games in peace!

Yes. MSN Games is rapidly becoming an even better place to not play the games we enjoy playing.

I cannot believe the crap written in this article. Unbelievable. I predict that what is left of the player community at Zone.com will leave in utter disgust. I know that I myself am pretty disgusted with this corporate Microsoft bullcrap.

Microsoft / Zone.com is throwing away a ton of advertising potential by getting rid of users, so I can't see why this would make sense at all.

Every person who bought a CD-ROM game supported by Zone.com, expecting a guarentee of multiplayer online gameplay, has been told by Microsoft "well, we won't refund your money, we won't offer an alternative place to play your game, HOWEVER, we recommend you purchase this more expensive, newer version of the game you once enjoyed playing." and not even that, for games that the manufacturer has decided not to produce newer related games. Lame...

I personally used to be a big zone guy myself. And you are right. Its all wrong. But i guess there is no changing it unless if someone greater then us all decides to teach ms a lesson. Hmmm... I wonder if a program can be made to support those games? Make like a zone clone. Then everyone from zone can just move to that.
Nvr the less. I plan on launching every buffer overflow, ddos/dos, ff dos, IE dos, and every other vulnerability i have ever discovered on zone sometime. Sucks for them.