Not all online games thrive and prosper. Many MMOs have stagnated for months and years, with fewer and fewer players justifying their existence. Read here in “Is anyone still playing this?” which 7 online games are currently threatened with extinction. Who might face the end soon?
Online games are designed as “Games as a Service” and can theoretically run forever. Immensely successful MMOs like World of Warcraft or Lineage demonstrate this. These games have been active for over a decade and continue to bring in significant revenue for developers and publishers.
Other games, however, are less successful and have floundered for years in the wake of the big top MMOs. For some of these games, there are legitimate concerns that they might soon completely disappear.
7 Online Games That Are Not Doing Well
The following online games have long surpassed their peak and have either already been replaced by successors or have lost most of their player base to the competition. It is unlikely that these games will recover. Rather, there are fears that they will soon shut down.
WildStar – NCSoft’s Big Concern
A game that has long been on the red list of threatened MMOs is the colorful MMORPG WildStar. The online role-playing game once had good chances and was eagerly anticipated by many players.
After all, a wave of former Blizzard developers was on the dev team at Carbine, and they promised an outstanding MMORPG in the style of WoW Classic. Including hardcore content for hardcore players, like 40-man raids and extremely tough bosses.
Unfortunately, Carbine forgot that there was a reason why 40-man raids and other hardcore stuff had been passé in WoW for years, and many players were overwhelmed by WildStar’s endgame.
To make matters worse, there was the rather quirky, colorful graphic style and a lack of content updates after the release.
WildStar – Unsuccessful Despite Free2Play and Steam Launch
Player numbers shrank, and fewer and fewer gamers wandered onto Nexus. The rather unsuccessful Free2Play relaunch and the Steam launch also failed to mobilize significantly new player numbers in the long run. And even though larger updates for WildStar continue to come, no one expects the game to succeed anymore.
Especially since the current update “The Power of Uressence” introduced a fun new progression method, but it is a painful grind that some players wanted to shortcut through exploits. The result was massive bans, which now leaves even fewer players playing WildStar.
The lack of success for WildStar is now apparent even to the publisher NCSoft. WildStar is not even listed anymore in NCSoft’s quarterly reports as a separate item, and Carbine seems to have a new project in the works. It is quite possible that the plug will soon be pulled on WildStar.
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