The Repopulation
Genre: Sandbox MMORPG | Developer: IF Studios | Platform: PC | Release Date: Originally 2017, now none | Model: Buy2Play
What is The Repopulation? It is a sandbox MMORPG where you forge your path on a distant world. The science fiction game somewhat resembles the MMORPG classic Star Wars: Galaxies. You determine what you want to do on this dangerous planet. If you wish to participate in building a civilization, focus on crafting and create items for other players.
But you can also venture out to explore the world, where dangerous monsters await you. PvP also plays a role, such as in defending cities.
How has the development progressed so far? At the end of 2013, the MMORPG was announced and was to be funded through a Kickstarter campaign. This campaign was successful, raising nearly $177,000. The release of the game was planned for late 2014, but delays occurred.
Even the planned release in 2015 could not be met; there were issues with the engine as its developer faced financial problems. Eventually, the servers had to be shut down. As no agreement could be made with the engine developer, the team switched to Unreal Engine 4, requiring more funding. This was to be generated by developing and selling a survival spin-off named Fragmented.
Fragmented was a flop, the player numbers remained extremely low. Therefore, at the beginning of 2017, the developer of the first engine took over the game and has been working since then to bring it to a release-ready state. Small updates are being released periodically, but a release is not in sight.
Why might the release never happen? The game has been in development for so long that interest has waned significantly. Development has been extremely slow, and there is hardly any visible progress. Although the team has not given up, it is more than questionable whether we will ever experience an official launch.
Even though we will likely never play the mentioned MMOs, there are certainly some we can look forward to. We will introduce these in the MeinMMO article “The 8 most promising new MMOs and MMORPGs for 2020 and 2021“.
