its absolutely ridiculous.

[QuiDormit]

Also, and I've said this somewhere else, you have to look at the legal aspect involved. WBIE controls the rights to the game (MxO isn't SOE's to sell, it was only theirs to run, and run poorly). WBIE would have to get lawyers to get SOE to give them back the game so they could sell it.

Essentially, the way it went down SOE effectively buried the game under mounds of legal dirt and it's gone.

Now, I'm not a lawyer; I'm not trying to insinuate that you're wrong because it sounds really reasonable.
But, is this a personal theory or do you have some proof to verify your claims?
Again, I'm not trying to insult you just curious. Because if that's true, it's bullshit that SOE would do that. Not with MxO specifically, it's just shitty business all around.

Admittedly, my legal expertise comes from working as an assistant to my Aunt writing/re-writing legal documents in her firm through my college years and just plain corporate experience from my professional life. (AKA I have no "expertise," just personal experiences. Not a lawyer.)

I can tell you that any time two companies hand materials back and forth, lawyers are involved. Contracts, NDA's, the works. Any time one company creates something and sells it to another, the legal documents are whipped out. I've never seen a company sell off a product without some kind of stipulations. We're not talking about a full-scale buyout where the buying company can do WTF-ever it wants, this was the purchase of a product that still carried WB's name, likeness, trademarks, etc etc all over it. So I believe they would have definitely told SOE "you can run it, but you can't sell it."

In fact, I've often wondered if WB sold it saying, "You can run this game for X amount of years, and then you have to close it down," but that, like everything else I've said, is speculation.

In any event, any time a product is handed over like that, if the selling company wants to have any say or any influence over the product that's sold, you bet your ass the lawyers are coming out.

I dunno, I could be totally full of shit, and I usually am. I just don't think WB would have given SOE carte blanch to just sell it off to someone else. That's why I think SOE closed it instead of entertained offers to sell it, and since it would be such a pain in the dick for WB to get the physical game back, it's effectively dead.

Or this was WB's plan all around.

Or, like I said, I am full of shit.

You decide.