Welcome back to Whatever Happened To, our intermittent check-in on MMOs that may have fallen off your – and our – radar!
Odd Giants
Odd Giants is one of several player reboots of the old closed-down Tiny Speck browser sandbox MMO Glitch, and it’s been almost a year since we peered in on it, so MOP reader Sam’s reminder came at a great time. Odd Giants is a bit further along than Eleven and Children of Ur, and indeed several of us on the MOP staff gave it a spin last summer; MOP’s Chris tackled it on-stream, while I spoke about my experience on the podcast, finding it a lovely (but very much incomplete) walk down memory lane. But Odd Giants has continued to receive plenty of updates in the last year, with the addition of new animals, herbs and potions, quests, furniture, currency, achievements, holiday content, bags, growing patches, map perks character customization, and tons more crafting tweaks… it’s actually enough to make me want to take another look.
Eco
Back in 2021, MOP’s Ben Griggs penned a lengthy piece on Eco, a Kickstarted sandbox MMO that’s lingered in Steam early access for many years – but not malingered, as the elaborate player-driven game continues to receive updates (and is rewarded with stellar reviews for its efforts). Over the course of 2023, studio Strange Loop Games has been hard at work on Eco’s 10th update, the public playtest for which began earlier this spring; it features new avatars, boats, photography, rendering improvements, and settlements. A performance update landed in April and May as well, and the Discord is packed with events and server updates.
Istaria
Finally, we come to Istaria: Chronicles of the Gifted aka Horizons, one of MOP’s Andrew’s favorite old MMOs. The game is still around and still managed by Virtrium, and just skipping around the official site, you might think it’s dead. But nope: As MOP tipster Bradley noted, the devs are actually working on a huge combat update. Back in April, the devs posted detailed notes on the combat changes to dodge, parry, block, evasion checks, mitigation, glancing and critical hits, and damage types. The spell system will also receive an update to bring it in line with the skills and attribute damage. As of April, the patch is on the test server, but hey, something to look forward to.
Spot any more MMOs we haven’t covered in a long time? Drop us a note!
