While we lost several painful MMOs in 2016 and 2015, 2017 was noticeable chiefly because we lost a large number of small MMOs, perhaps signalling a shift in the market.
In 2018, it was been another mixed bag, with the biggest MMORPG to call it quits being WildStar, which I think most of us would agree got a much longer life than we thought it would, given its performance, though it still wasn’t as long as we’d have hoped. We also saw our last of Gigantic, RuneScape Classic, Swordsman, Jade Dynasty, Paragon, and Devilian.
But we also saw reason for hope, and I don’t just mean the DMCA exemptions granted to museums hoping to preserve online games: Both Perpetuum and Pirates of the Burning Sea were rescued by their playerbases in 2018, as the developers willingly turned over the keys to keep the games online. Seriously, Avatar Creations and Portalus deserve so much love for that.
As for the rest? Farewell, old friends.
Working As Intended: The MMOs we lost in 2017
PWE is sunsetting both Battle of the Immortals and War of the Immortals next week
Radiant Worlds is rescued but SkySaga’s fate remains uncertain
Perpetuum to shut down official servers next week
Hell freezes over: Devilian to sunset in March
Fragmented is ‘more or less in maintenance mode’ due to lack of revenue
Hyperspace Beacon: No, Star Wars The Old Republic isn’t on the verge of sunset
Epic shutters Paragon over playerbase size woes, declaring it ‘unsustainable’
Western gamers start petition to save Paragon while Chinese players await info
Linkrealms is sunsetting today
PWE will sunset MOBA Gigantic in July because it couldn’t ‘break through in a crowded market’
The Stream Team: Farewell, Master X Master
The Daily Grind: Has the MOBA bubble burst?
Video game preservationists attempt to raise $450K to rez Marvel Heroes [Updated]
Minecraft developer announces the shutdown of card game Scrolls
MMO devs discuss the painful process of shutting down online games
The Daily Grind: Which MMO sunset had the biggest impact on you?
EVE Online is shuttering EVE Voice in March
Perpetuum Online developer: MMO felt like a ‘no-win scenario’
Cabal 2 calls it quits in the west
Demon’s Souls servers turn off tomorrow
Devilian has officially sunsetted
Amazon Game Studio’s Breakaway is officially dead
Paragon artist shows off concept art from the doomed MOBA
Ragnarok Online shuts down in Europe due to new regulations [Update: US servers blocking EU access]
Echo of Soul closes its Classic servers on May 23
Elite: Dangerous is discontinuing support for the Mac [Updated]
Perfect World is sunsetting Swordsman Online and Jade Dynasty as teams move on to ‘bigger and better things’
The Daily Grind: How much does fear of an MMO shutdown affect your playtime?
Jagex shutters Chronicles: RuneScape Legends, Ace of Spades, and its FunOrb portal
Boss Key shutters after Radical Heights, LawBreakers fizzle
Echo of Soul classic servers end their western run Wednesday, but you can still play the game
RuneScape Classic is sunsetting this August thanks to instability, bots, and bugs
Hi-Rez is basically maintenance-moding Hand of the Gods
The Crew 2 is getting an open beta while the original The Crew goes into maintenance
LawBreakers is free-to-play for now, then gone in September
The Flower of Knighthood Kickstarter has been cancelled
Scrolls is reborn as a free title, Caller’s Bane
Citadel of Sorcery shuts down after 14 years of development
Titanfall Online is over before it had even begun
Warlords Awakening just sunset in Korea, and now it’s coming to Steam early access here
God Eater Online is shutting down in September
Gigantic’s last matches are now playing out ahead of tomorrow’s sunset
The Stream Team: A Gigantic goodbye
RuneScape Classic has gone dark, but you can relive its final moments
Perpetuum is back from the dead thank to the Open Perpetuum Project, all with the original developer’s blessing
The Daily Grind: Which MMO shutdown surprised you the least?
The Daily Grind: Are free-to-play MMO conversions saviors or signs of doom in your eyes?
Pirates of the Burning Sea is closing down, but the community might be able to save it
WildStar and Carbine are shutting down
A eulogy for WildStar – a marvelous MMORPG and avoidable tragedy
The Daily Grind: Do you still log in to play MMOs that are scheduled to sunset?
Bless Online’s last remaining Korean servers are shutting down
WildStar is probably not sunsetting until at least the end of the year
Players are apparently trying to save Pirates of the Burning Sea, so Portalus delayed its sunset
NCsoft’s picked a date for WildStar’s sunset: November 28
The last remnants of Club Penguin are sunsetting, again, as Disney lays off Club Penguin Island staff
MMOs you’ve never heard of: Conquest Resurgence Within, Rohan Mobile, Drawn to Death, El Somni Quas
The Korean edition of Hyper Universe is shutting down on November 15
Federation 2, a text-based intergalactic trading game from the 1980s, has sunsetted
Just Survive will in fact survive beyond its planned October sunset
Nexon is sunsetting Hyper Universe’s western PC version now too, but the XBox One version will continue
Daybreak confirms that ex-H1Z1 sandbox Just Survive is still sunsetting tomorrow
The Stream Team: When Just Survive doesn’t
Golf MMO Winning Putt is closing down for good in December
Square-Enix pulls three mobile titles from Belgium over lockbox rules
Wargaming’s Total War: Arena set to close next February
The Daily Grind: Are you doing anything for WildStar’s sign-off?
The Stream Team: Farewell, WildStar
The Daily Grind: What was the most painful MMO sunset of 2018?
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