The sci-fi MMO Anthem was released on February 22, 2019, exactly 12 months ago. There are no big parades in the game for its birthday. Only a few fans remember the good times they had with Anthem. The birthday event will probably start next week.
This is how players celebrate: In the subreddit for Anthem, the user Faidren posted a short clip showing some scenes from Anthem that are among the highlights and most exciting features:
- action-packed battles
- impressive abilities that clearly distinguish Anthem from loot shooters
- tricky flying stunts
- the 4 different Javelins that players can control
The celebration is just slowly getting started. The post has accumulated 381 upvotes so far, and 808 players are still active in the subreddit (out of over 171,000 registered, as of February 22 at 5:20 PM).
The problems of Anthem
How is Anthem doing at the moment? At the moment, Anthem is not in a good place. The player numbers have significantly decreased, the added content has not come quickly enough and was not as extensive as hoped.
Anthem is plagued by bugs, and even the publisher EA is currently ignoring the game in their quarterly reports. Many people are wondering if Anthem is worth it again since the first update in 2020, but that is hard to answer.
There was also mockery on social media. Because even now, on February 22, the Christmas decorations from the winter event are still up. The event won’t end until next week.
How Anthem started: Anthem was actually one of the most promising MMOs in 2019. Developer BioWare is known for grand projects like Mass Effect and Dragon Age. Accordingly, the expectations of fans for Anthem were high.
The promises before and around the release sounded good:
- A great story was promised
- Dungeons and raids were supposed to deliver PvE content
- The gameplay and the ability to freely fly through the world excited fans
- The zones of Anthem were supposed to be larger than those of the competitor Destiny 2
The team was very excited about its work during the development and that’s how it turned out. However, it all didn’t quite work out.
How did the crash happen? Already the beta (or rather: the demo) and the release of Anthem went catastrophically. Players were stuck on loading screens or couldn’t unlock their Javelins. Many technical problems plagued the game.
After the release, the developers remained silent for over a month. No new information, no plans, nothing that reflected the work on the game. For many players, a sign of lacking service.
This was indicative of the further course of Anthem. There wasn’t enough supply and what came was too slow. Even the promising Cataclysm update, which was supposed to change everything, was rather met with mixed reactions.
Players felt neglected and left. We already explained how things got so bad for Anthem.
The remaining players celebrate the good
What was still good about the game: Despite all the negative points and criticism, the players who still play Anthem are not discouraged. Instead of getting hung up on criticism or allowing themselves to be affected by negative mood, they celebrate the positive aspects.
Faidren on reddit, for example, provides a whole list of things that make Anthem a good game. For him, it is a game that has managed to captivate him again for the first time in a long time. He particularly liked:
- The world-building: Anthem has a breathtaking environment with great attention to detail. Many quirky creatures inhabit the world and some even have no function except to bring it to life.
- Artwork and art: Even apart from the vibrant world, what players can discover is beautifully designed. The graphics of Anthem are especially unique for the genre, given that players can reach almost every corner by flying. Visual details, like the flying difficulties of the huge Colossus, round off the picture.
- The mechanics: Despite technical errors, the gameplay of Anthem is something that has repeatedly received positive mentions. Anthem allows players control over flying suits, a gameplay element that had already generated hype beforehand.
What’s next? Birthday event coming
Here are the plans: Currently, the last week of the “Ice Storm Event” is taking place. After that, Anthem plans to celebrate a “birthday event,” which will probably start next week.
Subsequently, events that already took place in 2019 will be repeated, while BioWare is working on a major overhaul of Anthem, an Anthem 2.0 or Anthem Next.
What this will look like is unclear, but BioWare has named 6 points that will be important for the overhaul of Anthem.
Whether the game itself will receive a complete rework or whether Anthem will be completely rebooted is still open. However, it is clear that the Anthem brand is apparently too important for EA to give up:
