The other day the Ryzom team sent us a tweet that basically told us that the game was still alive and there was stuff happening with it. I gave a little chuckle at that because Ryzom is exactly the kind of MMO that’s oh-so-easy to forget.
And plenty of times here on the site we’ve posted about older or smaller games only to see our community go, “Oh yeahhhhh… I remember this game! I didn’t know it was still around!” We even had an obscure and forgotten games category to deal with titles like these and help keep them on your radar.
So what about you? What MMO did you forget was still alive and kicking in the year 2019? And for a bonus question, have you made any pilgrimages back to these titles once your memory was jogged?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
Oh, that is easy. Lineage and Lineage II.
I always forget about them until NcSoft financials roll around and I see they are still not only relevant but carrying a good load of the profits.
I mean we have to be reminded that it’s still alive and kicking somehow, so this is a hard question to answer. In our mind we’re just thinking a game is dead and gone and don’t know that it’s actually still alive.
I do forget about games and then am surprised that they’re still around, even though I haven’t expected them to close or anything.
This game you’re talking about here I forgot existed at one point. Not just now, because you actually did mention them multiple times this year, but I had forgot about them before that.
I’m still surprised that Hero Online, one of the earlier free to play games in the West is still around. Not only that but it’s still with the original publisher after all this time. This was a game around only a few years after the original WoW launched and one of the original fully F2P graphical MMORPG games.
There were other quasi-free to play types from crazy way back. Dark Ages (not DAoC) and Nexus TK, but games like Hero Online were fully free. (And yes Free to Play text games existed before that, even pay to win ones, but we’re talking the graphical age of MMORPGs). Speaking of which, Dark Ages and Nexus TK still exist. They were the original Nexon MMORPGs in the West. They are under “Kru Interactive” now, the name that the original US Nexon publishers turned into when Nexon decided to set up their own house or something. But that means they’re published by the same people who have always published them as well.
It’s interesting and fun to be able to go and try out these early games, and as far as history goes and learning I’d suggest anybody who is interested to test those games like that that still exist out and get a peek of where we’re coming from. One day they may no longer be there to be able to look at. Hopefully there will be nice MMORPG museums one day that people can connect to from home, but a lot of the stuff is still out there now not needing that type of thing.
I do forget about games but it’s rare that I think they’re dead unless I hear of them dying / closing. I simply forget that they exist.
I used to do lots of research into the earlier MMORPGs when I had more time and did some research papers on them as projects as well. I have a few great personal sources in real that were there too which always helped me to get more information than people just searching the Net can find. Plus like me (being family :P) they were interested in a very wide selection of games so weren’t the people who were there only knowing about a couple of the MMORPGs that existed.
There were so very many that the vast majority of people don’t know about. Places like MMOsite.com used to have crazy long lists of old MMORPGs that places like Wikipedia didn’t have in their lists. I can’t get that site to load anymore and know it fell out of favor years ago, and I’m not sure if their lists are the same now, but they had so many games listed there that nobody else had or has (not even other sites that claim to have the same kind of lists). Another old site that used to have great lists I’m trying is being blocked by Bitdefender now so I’d rather not list what it was or see if they’re still around.
Runes of Magic. I’m pretty sure it’s still alive somewhere.
Wasn’t that the one that made you RENT storage space? If so, I’ll just go right back to forgetting it exists. ;)
Kingdom of Drakkar
Ryzom is the one where you can design your own spells right like increase range at the expense of power that sort of thing.
Kind of an indirect answer, but I get vibes of this from DC Universe Online. I so rarely hear about it other than articles on here and never hear anyone talk about (and the comments of it on the articles are usually a ghost town), but I’m glad it’s still trucking because of the console release. Very impressive it’s lasted this long especially being under DBG.
Neocron.
A game I’ve always been meaning to play, I think I booted it up once. It’s free so I have no excuse. I mean it’s unique, it’s cool and still doing its thing.
That one definitely died, twice I think, it’s back again?
None except obscure ones I never cared about in the first place and even then I wouldn’t have remembered they existed in the first place.
the vendetta online article this week reminded me that… VO is still going. who says space sims ever died? not vendetta online!
Same, and even more shockingly it’s still sub based (though there are F2P accounts) and not P2W :O I had a quick browse of the forums, they have capital ships now and the devs said they’ll do a marketing push once they feel the game lives up to the vision they had when they started it…15 years ago…with the same 4 devs they have now…now that’s hardcore!
when i checked it out i got the impression the devs do well to keep within the means of their customer base while catering to their loyal customers. seemed pretty solid if niche. (didn’t actualyl end up playing it at all due to schedules not lining up but looked into it ahead of anticipating playing it some years ago)
It was pretty basic when I played it many many years ago but not unenjoyable, I only stopped playing because I was poor back then and had a 1 sub game at a time policy going on.
Usually, Horizons/Istaria. Which is a shame as I liked their crafting system quite a bit. As for going back, eh, the game is just too dated. While it had some great features similar to say FFXI/FFXIV with the class change system, I just can’t get over the bad looks and mediocre gameplay.