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Welcome to a Very Special end-of-the-year edition of Make My MMO, the MassivelyOP column where – most weeks – we keep track of the crowdfunded MMOs in our genre, in addition to those that tried to crowdfund, whether it’s on Kickstarter or some other pre-launch platform. As we’ve noted over the past few years, while there are fewer Kickstarted video games than ever, we still have some crowdfunded MMORPGs from years past that need a check-in. Unfortunately, that also means finding out some of them have clowned or capsized along the way. Let’s run down the biggest news of 2024 when it comes to crowdfunded MMOs and MMORPGs.
The cozies
Cozy multiplayer sandbox My Time at Evershine scored the highest MMO-adjacent Kickstarter this year by quite a lot, hauling almost $3M for Pathea Games, which has built multiple such titles and Kickstarted several of them already. During the Kickstarter, the devs told players that if they’d meet the $2.5M milestone, they’d bypass early access and go straight into a full release, which is apparently exactly what will happen.
Evershine wasn’t alone in success this year; cozy co-op van life game Outbound funded on Kickstarter for almost $300,000. Galactic Getaway scored a successful Kickstarter, too. Cozy games are having a lot more success on the platform lately than MMORPGs, even when the content is basically the same.
Embers Adrift isn’t technically a cozy MMO, but I think of the throwback sandbox MMORPG that way owing to its playerbase and development. It’s still chugging along, through it got thrown a nasty curve ball this year when it was apparently swindled by its payment processor – a situation that stiffed the studio player funds and prompted it to put the game on Steam for free temporarily.
The launches
Fractured Online is an MMO that many gamers thought would never launch after it went through that whole Gamigo mess last year, and indeed it suffered from multiple rollbacks and exploits this year during its early access. Nevertheless, it officially launched out of early access this past summer and even earned some praise. It also went free-to-play last month.
I don’t think many people would’ve believed at the top of the year that Pantheon would actually make it to early access in 2024, but that’s exactly what happened this very month. It’s still very early and a little rough with lots of development left to go, but it’s also a nice tribute to the memory of Brad McQuaid.
Last Epoch is a Kickstarted MMOARPG that we fell in love with in spite of how much work it needed, and it did in fact formally launch back in February. We’re awaiting its next big thing in Q1 of next year.
Ashes of Creation is one of the most promising major Kickstarted MMORPGs that we’re still watching, and it indeed had a big year, rolling into alpha 2 so confidently that it stopped selling backer packs and lifting its NDAs.
And we were pretty surprised this past spring when Legends of Aria – a crypto-free version brought back to life by the boss of its original studio, mind you – was resurrected as Legends of Aria Classic. It didn’t really take off, but it did happen. The crypto version, by the way, died this year before ever fully launching, which segues so nicely into…
The sunsets
Unfortunately, several Kickstarted MMORPGs threw in the towel this year, chief among them the afrofantasy sandbox The Wagadu Chronicles, which closed down before ever making it out of early access – and without completing its Kickstarter reward obligations to backers. Making it extra sad, it clearly launched too early, so the sunset wasn’t a huge surprise.
The same was true for vampire MMO Shadow’s Kiss, which in its sunset message warned about the dangers of early access: “We learned, too late, that putting a game on early access without it being in a commercially polished state is pretty much suicide. The bad reviews pretty much killed our revenue and any chance we had of closing a deal. In talking to other Kickstarters that have done the same, we learned just how dangerous Early Access is.”
Survival sandbox Fractured Veil – the one set in Hawaii – made it to early access at the top of the year but had given up by fall, owing to the incomplete state of the game, which led to low population retention.
The spin-offs
VR MMORPG Zenith admitted very early in January that its next patch as a do-or-die moment as studio Ramen VR was operating at a loss. A few weeks later, it announced a spinoff called Zenith Infinite Realms, a last-ditch attempt to make the franchise profitable. It didn’t work; Zenith itself went into maintenance mode this past summer. It was particularly upsetting as the game’s Kickstarter originally promised a standalone non-VR PC client, though Ramen never produced it, in spite of raising at least $45M (that we know of) from investors.
Temtem’s trajectory was pretty much the same as Zenith’s: Crema Games announced another spinoff of Temtem called Temtem Swarm in February and was immediately hit with anger from Temtem backers. Temtem itself went into de facto maintenance mode as of September, followed by the not particularly successful release of Temtem Swarm in early access.
Camelot Unchained studio Unchained Games resurfaced this past spring with two things: a third early access launch for its spinoff, Final Stand Ragnarok, and a crapton of fresh investor money to get Camelot Unchained to market. We were supposed to be getting a playable slice of the MMO by the end of summer, but that’s apparently slipped off; Camelot is aiming for a late 2025 launch, thanks to its new co-lead’s ambitions. FSR, on the other hand, did indeed hit early access in March and has actually been getting updates all year, though it didn’t see much uptake with gamers.
The superheroes
Superhero MMORPG Ship of Heroes didn’t make it out of beta this year, but it did publish plenty of dev blogs on development, including a manifesto on how “the era of the big raid has returned” – but in an accessible format that serves both casuals and hardcores. We’re now expecting launch in Q2 2025, so it’s one to watch next year.
But there was bad news from City of Titans: The game’s primary city designer passed away from cancer. Nevertheless, just today, the devs released a recap of the work they’re getting done behind the scenes with more on deck for 2025.
The space MMOs
So Star Citizen is still in alpha and has raised over $750M from player backers over the last 12 years. Star Citizen is basically why we can’t have nice things. CitizenCon was fun, though, and we got a preview version of 4.0 rolled out to all backers just ahead of the holidays.
Elite Dangerous has had a rough couple of years post-Odyssey, but Frontier turned the situation around this year thanks to Ascendancy and Powerplay 2.0, which rolled out in October, and the new colonization content, which is still on the way. Refreshing!
And maybe the older space MMOs should watch their backs: Starship Simulator, which is basically an MMO without the name, pulled in half a million bucks on Kickstarter. Demand is clearly still there for a sprawling sci-fi sandbox… if it can be finished.
Finally, let’s count a rare W – two rare Ws – Dual Universe: Though it didn’t see much updating this year, it did finish dispatching its Kickstarter rewards, and the devs implemented custom player-hosted servers, effectively future-proofing the game.
A few other stories worth noting:
- Project Gorgon told players it’s safe and will see new content through at least early 2025; it got multiple large patches this year, including horse breeding.
- Shroud of the Avatar is, you might be shocked to find out, still being developed, albeit in tiny incremental bits. Catnip actually added new $18 and $27 subs this summer and added a new axe for whales to celebrate Richard Garriott’s birthday, so yeah, SOTA is still SOTA. The game’s execs even pitched a new proc-gen RPG in 2024.
- Crowfall, which flopped and was bought up by Monumental in 2022, has now been offline two years, and it seems unlikely to return; Monumental saw layoffs and a crypto pivot in 2024.
- Chronicles of Elyria went nowhere this year, but hey, the dev started testing a feedback form and swooshed around the development roadmaps for all the spinoff projects, then hid most of the game’s development behind closed doors so nobody can verify what’s going on with this Kickstarter MMORPG that took $14M from gamers.
- Several MMOs tried and failed to fund on Kickstarter this year, including Scars of Honor and the ridiculous Awake: Afterdark Apocalypse.
- Loftia, which actually funded back in 2023, announced this year that it has picked up investor funding too.
- Stormgate joined the short list of MMOs whose studios funded on Kickstarter and then tried equity crowdfunding investment too. Unfortunately, the game wasn’t really ready for any of it.
- The Day Before devs actually dared to show up on Kickstarter this year, trying to fund another game. (It went nowhere.)
Here’s our whole list of Make My MMOs from 2024!
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And of course, our recaps from years past:
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