Through it all, I'm still very uncomfortable with the idea of there being any *legal* responsibility for MMO operators to have exit plans that preserve the communities in them, but increasingly I'm of the belief that there's a moral or ethical one. As operating costs to keep an MMO functioning (when done right) continue to fall towards zero, the excuse that the financial burdens of running a massively multiplayer game environment are relevant are increasingly hollow. I could literally run City of Heroes in my basement today.
MMOs are just games in the same sense your home is just carpentry. How a community of people interacts is less important than that the community functions as a community. What rights communities should have separate from the individuals that comprise that community is a question without simple answers.
I don't hold them to any obligation moral or otherwise. It is a business after all, and they are going to do what is the best for them monetarily. However, in the case of Asheron's Call, they had a community still willing to pay 12$ a month for a 17 year old game(probably had at max 5000 subs, most were alt accounts, actual unique accounts was probably 2k). Then out of nowhere they turned off the subscription, charged a flat 15$ for the game, and free use. Then they said they couldn't add cash shops to the game cause the client was too old, so instead they were just going to get a emulation server set up package for the fans, charge a license fee, and let people make their own private servers because they couldn't afford the game anymore.
They gave two or three updates on it over the year. For the last 4 months they ghosted the community, then they announced a split between WB/ Turbine(now Standing Stone games). After that they announced the game was closing on a Wednesday, at 11am est. No one answered any question, no one communicated with the community. They deleted posts off the forums that asked questions, or criticized, and then they shut down the website.
On those ground I hold them as ethically and morally bankrupt.It was just a dirtbag way to treat loyal customers. Even if they were unable to do what they promised, a simple "I'm sorry, it's too complicated, or too expensive" would have been decent.
I don't know, I'm sure there is some kind of NDA involved in this too. But in this case, I could probably run this 17 year old game on an Atari, how much could it possibly have cost them?