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 whatever happened to Black Gold, Order and Chaos Online, and Eden Eternal.
Black Gold
Years ago back on Massively-that-was, I was forever mixing up this game with Black Desert because that’s all it takes to get me confused. It subsequently became less of an issue, as Black Desert came roaring onto the western MMORPG scene and Black Gold vanished into nothingness. I might well be the last person to even think of this game, who knows. It’s why I can remember only three out of four of my children’s names.
But what happened here? It wasn’t a terrible-looking game by any stretch, and plenty of these glitzy Asian imports gradually make their way across the world. Black Gold seemed promising when it brought its steampunk stylings into open beta on June 20th, 2014.
It pumped out its first major content update, Campaign of Ashes, in September, followed quickly by its first server merge. Probably not a great sign. There was another content update in 2014, a new class (the Brawler), and a series of holiday events. Standard issue stuff, really.
But things abruptly dropped off as Black Gold went into 2015. Scant communication was given in these early months of the year, and the last we heard was a “Woman’s Day special” promotion in March 2015. From then on… silence.
From poking around on Reddit, I’ve realized it sounds like the game was just about dead a year or so ago and is no longer able to be downloaded. Players reported hellacious free-to-play mechanics and paywalls, which might have contributed to its quick demise.
Order and Chaos Online
Once upon a time, this was the go-to mobile MMORPG for anyone looking for a decent and popular title. Sure, it was a blatant World of Warcraft knock-off, but was that really bad? Its influx of players and eventual sequel said “no.”
But the O.C., as pretty much nobody calls it, seemed to fade over the past two years. Maybe it was the release of Order and Chaos 2 in 2015 that supplanted the king, or the many Asian mobile imports that flooded the market, or even an embarrassing SNAFU last year in which a player distributed GM powers all willy-nilly.
However, after a little poking around, I found that Order and Chaos is actually still trucking along pretty strong. It’s been updated within the last month, bringing a new dungeon, world boss, and overhauled chat system. There even was a summer event that wrapped up and Halloween is coming as well. The Facebook page and YouTube channel are hopping as well, and it looks like there is some winter-themed content on the way. Make obvious Game of Thrones joke here.
So how is Order and Chaos Online doing? Surprisingly well, is the answer. Just not the game that everyone is talking about in this economy.
Eden Eternal
One of the (fun) challenges of a news site like Massively OP is that our territory of games to cover is absolutely immense. Some are more popular, more noticeable, and more newsworthy than others, while others can become completely overlooked due to being too bland and irrelevant to our readers. I’m thinking that the latter is most likely what happened with coverage of Eden Eternal here.
It’s a cute-looking game with a not-horrible reputation, but by all accounts, that’s pretty much where praise for this MMO begins and ends. It just got folded into Aeria’s huge library of online RPGs and didn’t distinguish itself much in the west after rolling out here in 2011.
Aeria doesn’t seem super-excited to promote it; most Twitter and Facebook notices are for events or silly holidays, like National Puppy Day and National Bobblehead Day. I mean, these things are important, but that’s some social media manager skating by on a bare minimum of effort, there.
Last year, the game did merge its French and English servers together. Aside from a possible Secret World Legends crossover, Eden Eternal is puttering along with nothing more exciting than rehashed events, rewards, and store sales. I can feel you quivering with excitement all the way over here.
It’s still running, which is something, but to me it looks a lot like maintenance mode to keep the revenue streams flowing.
