The user-generated virtual world platform will close on New Years Day.

The company, founded in 2007 by Raph Koster, the game designer who worked on the seminal MMORPG Ultima Online as well as Star Wars Galaxies and EverQuest II, announced that it has not gained enough traction to be a viable product.

The announcement, communicated via email, read: "Today we have unfortunate news to share with the Metaplace community. We will be closing down our service on January 1, 2010 at 11:59 pm Pacific.

"Over the last several years, we here at Metaplace have been working very hard to create an open platform allowing anyone to come to a Web site and create a virtual world of their own. Unfortunately, over the last few months it has become apparent that Metaplace as a consumer (user-generated content) service is not gaining enough traction to be a viable product, requiring a strategic shift for our company."

The closure will be marked by a "goodbye celebration party" on 1 January at 12pm PST in the virtual world.

Read our interview with Koster, which we held just before Metaplace launched, here.