The Shrine

The principle character responsible for triggering the chain of events chronicled across The Matrix trilogy, Morpheus, has been eliminated during a Live Event in the series massively multiplayer online game, The Matrix Online.

Following the carefully balanced peace between man and machines, Morpheus became obsessed with recovering Neo's body from its AI-controlled captors. The machines, however, showed no signs of respond to the request, pushing Morpheus to set off a number of virus-encoded bombs throughout The Matrix MegaCity, triggering the machines to send The Assassin after him.

Bending the rules of The Matrix to its will, The Assassin eventually cornered Morpheus and ended his short-lived rebellion.

In the game world, players are now faced with the task of uncovering what "really" went on and caused the machines to take out this beloved character.

Peace, and the things people do to wreck it.

Neo is dead. A truce exists between the people of Zion and the Machines. Morpheus should be happy, but he is not. His life's mission was to find The One. He succeeded, but now his life is without purpose -- or is it? Earlier in The Matrix Online, Morpheus told the Oracle that Neo's physical remains belonged in Zion - in a holy place. He proclaimed that the Machines must return Neo's remains to humanity, and swore that until that happened, he would not rest.

The Hunt for Morpheus event in The Matrix Online began with the disgruntled Morpheus resorting to drastic measures to coerce the Machines into giving up Neo's remains. Empowered with a new mission, Morpheus set off bombs around The Matrix MegaCity. These code bombs threatened the fabric of the Matrix, releasing a virus that would show humans' "reality" and potentially crash the whole system.

Predictably, there quickly followed a ferocious effort to stop him. The Assassin appeared in the Matrix, sent by... someone... to kill Morpheus. The Assassin finally caught up with Morpheus in a waste water treatment plant - which is significant.

Morpheus had finished planting his latest code bomb when he sensed an unusual presence. A buzzing fly betrayed the porcelain-masked Assassin, who took his first shots at Morpheus. Morpheus dodged by jumping over a walkway rail and escaping down a dark alley. As Morpheus fled, the Assassin fantastically flowed through a small vent directly in front of Morpheus. Somehow, the Assassin could bend the rules of the Matrix.

Morpheus was caught off guard and had nowhere to flee. The Assassin opened fire, catching Morpheus in a hail of bullets that even he could not dodge.

It seems impossible to believe - Morpheus is dead.

Good for them. It's good to see them live up to the promise that they'd actually continue the Matrix storyline beyond the movies.

From what I've heard they'll be running this event for a while, with lots of flashbacks as to what happened and more about Morpheus and his motivations, so there'll be plenty more Fishburne voiceovers for a while.

Yeah, that would be another MMO I'd consider to play. It's good that they are actually putting the story part of the game in an MMORPG.