I am the sort of person who derives no small amount of ongoing satisfaction from the idea that I have had an influence upon yearly traditions. This is true for this particular column, certainly, because years ago in the middle of the year I did a column about uncertain futures for certain games that were just big question marks at the time. Now I do it every single year. And also every single year, someone thinks this means “11 games that are going to so definitely shut down” despite that not being the title and despite my specifically refuting it in this introduction.
These games aren’t doomed to sunset soon, and if they were, they wouldn’t be here in the list at all because the whole point is uncertain futures. Lots of things could happen. It could even include good things! But we don’t know yet, and unfortunately there’s no way to know other than to keep going through the year and hoping it turns out well. So who gets on the list this year?
1. The Elder Scrolls Online
Are you tired of hearing about how this game muddied its content cadence and scared the playerbase half to death? Alas, it’s still true whether we like it or not. While this game has been a safe member of the Big Five MMOs for a long time, a key reason for that was dependable content rollouts and therefore revenues, which means that stopping campaigns/expansions is not a good sign and might even be a nail in the coffin. No, it doesn’t mean the game is likely shutting down or even going into full maintenance mode, but… like… you can’t feel good about it, especially when there’s nothing announced (yet) to replace it on the team’s docket. (Yes, I know there’s something being worked on, but we know nothing about it beyond a vague genre umbrella, and we’re not getting details until at least April.)
2. Star Trek Online
I love Star Trek. Regular readers know that. And I would honestly not be thrilled putting Star Trek Online here even if it were a result of the various design choices made over the years coming home to roost. But it’s worse because instead, the demolition of Cryptic and the subsequent brain drain has resulted in an uncertain future to a long-running mid-tier game that by all accounts was doing fine, and it was all done just to mop up Embracer’s corporate trainwreck. Gosh I wish that weren’t a recurring theme.
3. New World
Everything is weird around this title. It has a roadmap, but after recent years, it’s easy to not believe that the roadmap is real. It has this energy from fans that it’s this tiny indie title doing its best despite, y’know, having Amazon’s money to throw around. And it seems as if the console port that ate its entire last year did not really change its fortunes overall. So what happens now? Does Amazon keep feeding it the same amount of money? Does it scale down? Does it scale up? Who knows!
4. Neverwinter
So I think Neverwinter is almost indisputably the best thing to come out of Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition, which sounds as if I’m being mean to the game but isn’t really meant that way. But this gets a separate entry from STO because all things considered, there is a possible future world where the turmoil with Cryptic actually finally breaks up the long-standing relationship between the ashes of that studio and Wizards of the Coast. Sure, Cryptic said that wouldn’t happen, but where is Cryptic right now? Exactly. We’re just holding on tight to promises that the game will get development under DECA this year, but I don’t know what happens next, and I’m definitely nervous about it.
5. Throne and Liberty
Yeah, there’s very little risk of Throne and Liberty hitting any kind of sunset threshold, but remember how the intro said that isn’t the point here? There’s a very real chance that the game winds up occupying the same space as Lost Ark, with enough players to justify its continued existence but not many more because of various issues with… you know, the usual nonsense. Or maybe it just grows in players and starts establishing itself as a big player. It’ll do something!
6. Corepunk
Not every game is going to reach the gold ring, but some games seem as if they are perpetually failing at even getting an attempt going. There are a lot of reasons to cheer for this development team, and I say that as someone who is cheering for them, but holy crap I do not like how things look for this game. This is a small team that needs to get its act together, and I just see it not happening. It makes me nervous.
7. Stars Reach
I have a lot of thoughts on the most recent news to come out of Koster’s project and the plans to do a Kickstarter for Stars Reach, and those thoughts are not negative but nuanced. This is not some inherent betrayal or a refutation of a promise (especially since, y’know, it wasn’t a promise anyway). But it does mean that this title’s future this year is even more uncertain. And it means that a game we were all going to be watching closely is… well… now even more so.
8. City of Heroes: Homecoming
Nobody, least of all me, cares that City of Heroes spent 2024 mostly celebrating that it’s back and official. That is both valid and understandable. But I think it’s an open question what the game’s 2025 is going to look like – especially now that it’s clear the game is getting only two major updates over the year. The people who were going to be over the moon about this game returning (me, for example) have now had our moment and gotten to breathe a lot easier. But what happens next, now that a lot of those people have moved on?
9. Pantheon
On the one hand, I am glad that when this game’s animating personality passed away unexpectedly, the game did not fully collapse into irrelevance; it looked like it was going to briefly, but it is now in early access. But I also trust the writers on our staff who have dipped in and said that the game is, sadly, not ready for prime time. Yet now it is prime time. Is it going to find its footing? Is it going to stumble? Am I going to reuse that doofy wyvern-thing picture again? The answer to the last one is yes. Over and over and over.
10. PlanetSide 2
This one has just been a wild and ridiculous ride, and not a good one. At first it seemed like it was weird that the game even got moved away from Daybreak, then it seemed surprising that the new studio was putting in more genuine work to improve the game, now the new studio appears to be toast and the game’s future is up in the air. Uncertain in a bad way here.
11. Destiny 2
When Destiny 2 launched, the original game was three years old. This game is now seven years old. This is not part of a great trend. But the far more upsetting and/or worrisome fact is that we still seem to be waiting on an animating impetus for the game, and when you combine all of the chaos swirling around Bungie recently… I don’t know. I don’t know what the future looks like for this title. Or any of the games on this list, really. That’s the premise.
Everyone likes a good list, and we are no different! Perfect Ten usually takes an MMO topic and divides it up into 10 delicious, entertaining, and often informative segments for your snacking pleasure. And per tradition, we’re cranking this column up to eleven with our annual special features in the End-of-Year Eleven!
