It’s time to find out Whatever Happened To a couple of MMOs that have somehow managed to slip off our radars and need to slide back on again. And as a bonus, some of these are good news!
First, Spiral Knights – it’s a kid-friendly MMO that’s been around forever. And by forever I actually mean 10 years, exactly, as the game is currently celebrating its decadal birthday with gifts and events from the devs. It hasn’t gone over all that well, at least if Reddit is any guide, as players are grumpy over the thinness of the update and an apparently recent drama bomb over the DMCA takedown of a player-crafted patch that has people leaving nasty reviews on Steam and hashtags on Twitter. Worth noting is that the game is still pretty small; it hasn’t broken 1000 players on Steam since 2016.
Next up, we have Maguss, and this one is bad news, I’m sorry to report. You might remember this “wizarding world” MMOARG from our impressions piece back in 2018, when even our mobile MMO expert found it wanting. Well, apparently we weren’t the only ones as the game closed down last year. “With a GREAT regret, we have to inform you, that we are shutting Maguss down,” the team wrote on Facebook. “For a long time, business was bad, till it got to the point of no recovery. We are very thankful for every single one of you, who ever played and hopefully enjoyed Maguss!” It does sound as if the developer is considering a new game, however, as of early this year.
Finally, there’s Empyrion Online aka Empyrion Galactic Survival, and no kidding we actually did a “whatever happened to” piece on this game three years ago when we noticed it went into early access. As we wrote at the time, it was originally a multiplayer space sandbox that didn’t actually manage to fund on Kickstarter. But unlike most games that don’t fund, it pushed onward. In fact, it apparently launched properly in August of 2020, doing super well on Steam, with over 20,000 reviews as I type this and a mostly positive rating. The downside is that it’s really not a full MMORPG, but it might scratch the No Man’s Sky itch at a cheaper and more indie price.
Spy any other MMOs that have fallen through the cracks? Drop us an email so we can check up on them!
