Whatever happened to Global Agenda, The Realm Online, and Mabinogi?

    
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Ever pause during your day and find yourself wondering, “Whatever happened to that game?” With hundreds upon hundreds of online titles these days, it’s surprisingly easy for MMOs to fall through the cracks and become buried as more aggressive or active games take the spotlight.

Well, every so often we here at Massively Overpowered find ourselves curious what has transpired with certain MMOs that we haven’t heard from in quite a while. Have we missed the action and notices? Has the game gone into stealth maintenance mode? What’s the deal? What has it been up to lately?

That’s when we put on our detective hats and go sleuthing. Today we look at what has been going on with Global Agenda, The Realm Online, and Mabinogi.

Global Agenda

Hi-Rez Studio’s first project, a sci-fi shooter MMO called Global Agenda, launched in 2010 and sparked a short-lived flurry of interest among the online set. It struggled to draw in and maintain a healthy playerbase, even after its transition to free-to-play in 2011 with the Free Agent update.

Since then, Global Agenda has all but faded into obscurity as Hi-Rez moved on to other titles like Tribes: Ascend, SMITE, and Paladins. There was a smattering of talk from the studio about a possible Global Agenda 2, but as we have not heard anything about this for quite some time, it’s logical to assume that the project has been shelved or at least delayed. As recent as January 2017, Hi-Rez was still teasing the sequel without any specifics.

As for the original Global Agenda itself, the game wasn’t so much canceled as it was ignored out of existence. Hi-Rez took it off Steam but left the servers up and running, marooning a dwindling population of die-hard players to the game of their choice. We had hopes that it would be relisted back in March, but it didn’t end up happening.

If you want to play Global Agenda these days, your best bet is to follow these instructions and create a stand-alone installer.

The Realm Online

With some MMOs, if they have been around long enough, their continued existence seems assured. Case in point, The Realm Online. This 21-year-old 2-D title is among the oldest graphical MMOs in history and has outlived many games that came after it. Sure, there’s probably very, very few people still playing, but at least it hasn’t been closed.

The last official update on the website came from an end-of-summer party in 2014, but players confirm that the game is still operating (but most of the action is focused on two private servers). Players attempting to set up a new account and get into the game are advised to hook up with the Discord community.

Curious what it’s like to play the game today? One writer at Atlas Obscura managed to log in a year ago and posted his experiences of navigating The Realm in 2016.

Last year, The Realm developer Stephen Nichols announced that he was attempting to remake the 20-year-old title as The Realm: Reawakened. “If you’re like me, you miss seeing the game thrive and grow as you know it can. I think it’s time for a remake of this Internet classic with a fresh coat of paint and updated technology,” Nichols posted.

While there is still chatter on the forums, we still have yet to see any real movement on this front including the promised Kickstarter campaign or updates in the last 18 months on his GoFundMe page.

Mabinogi

This game has become a weird posterchild for forgettable yet highly developed MMO sandboxes. Seriously, any time someone is whining about wanting feature X in their game, the right response tends to be, “Oh yeah, what about Mabinogi? That has it!” And then everyone coughs politely and changes the subject.

I don’t get why Mabinogi doesn’t get more love or respect for what it offers. It’s a gorgeously stylized MMO that offers many more activities than merely combat, something that we’re often pining for in games. I see people who do praise it all the time, but it continually slips out of the collective consciousness of MMO gamers. Anyway, what’s it been up to these days?

The answer is that the game has stayed fairly busy and active. There are frequent events, such as a tie-in to a recent anime show, and monthly patches. Back in June, the team rolled out a new “surreal” Memento storyline that centered on a strange young girl named Yvona. The content update also included a dungeon that randomly selects from one of three different versions of itself to keep players on their toes.

Want to get into this game? Check out the new and returning player FAQ from the community and then dig into the extremely helpful wiki!

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