Mechwarrior Dark Age got off to a rough start in some ways. The 'Mage Knight with Robots' feel of the game turned off many long time Classic Battletech fans. Despite this, the idea of a fast playing robot battle game clicked with a large number of people and a successful tournament scene was born. As things went on, the situation for the game only seem to degrade. The purpose of new expansions only seemed to fix problems with the previous ones and the expansion initially came flooding out. Power creep was obvious and exceptionally power pieces often dominated successful tournament armies. The most devastating blow came with the implementation of set retirement. Wizkids banned a number of the early sets in a failed hope to fix the game, but all it caused was a mass exodus from the game. A year later, a new design team revoked the idea of set retirement, but it was already too late. Mechwarrior was never officially canceled, but it went down with the Wizkids ship. The last major release for the game was Solaris VII, but even that expansion didn't compare with the fan created one Wizkids tried to supress.
Founded in 2000 by Jordan Weisman, Wizkids focused on creating games that were simple and fast playing. One of their most notable achievements was the Clix dial. Instead of complex tables and charts, Clix dials provided all of a unit's stats on the figure's base. As figures took damage, these stats values would change by rotating the base. Mage Knight, HeroClix, Mechwarrior, and Crimson Skies were some of the games to use the patented Clix Dials. Later in its life, Wizkids focused heavily on licensed games based on Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Halo, and Pirates of the Caribbean. Wizkids was purchased by Topps in 2003 and as sales dropped, it was closed in November 2008. Eventually, the Wizkids name and some of its properties were sold to the NECA in late 2009.