Fellowship is a new game that has started in Open Beta on Steam, bringing the most popular mode from MMORPGs as a standalone game. The initial rush alone causes the servers to crash.
What kind of game is this? Fellowship describes itself as a Multiplayer Online Dungeon Adventure (short: MODA) and aims to offer dungeons and instances like in MMORPGs, without any leveling phase or quests.
The developers’ stated goal is that players can jump directly into their first dungeon after the launch and grind through increasingly challenging content from there. However, players do not have to forfeit loot and talents; both classic progression systems are present in Fellowship.
If you have always found the leveling phase to be an annoying obstacle to endgame in MMORPGs, you will feel right at home here. Just how well the dungeons play was something players wanted to know on the evening of September 18th, and they caused the servers to crash.
You can watch a trailer for Fellowship here:
Beta launch runs like an MMORPG
How did the beta launch go? When the beta launched on the evening of September 18, 2025, it didn’t take long before the first players complained about server issues. Over 16,000 players (via SteamDB) tried to access the servers of the co-op dungeon game simultaneously.
Too many, as about an hour after the launch, many players experienced disconnections. The developers initially announced a restart before finally deciding to put the game into maintenance mode.
To appease the impatient fans a bit, one of the developers went live on Twitch, where he continually provided updates to the players.
When was the problem resolved? It was only about 5 hours after the launch, just before midnight in Germany, that the developers were able to resolve the server issues. Players then had to wait in a longer queue before they could finally start playing.
In the morning, there was another update from the developers, in which they reported that they now needed some sleep and would address the further issues throughout the day.
After the server problems, it is expected that the peak player number of 16,274 on Steam will be surpassed again over the weekend.
What does this mean for the release? In a livestream on Twitch, the developer emphasized that the beta is primarily a test for the developers’ systems, so that everything runs more smoothly for the early access launch on October 16. This way, they can use the collected data to eliminate such release difficulties.
At the early access launch, the developer revealed that the hero Tariq, who is not available in the beta, will also return to the game. However, in the beta, which runs until September 23, the hero will remain absent.
It seems almost ironic that Fellowship not only has the game mode but also the problems of an MMORPG. How the game is received by testers is yet to be determined. However, MeinMMO author Cedric Holmeier has already tried it with the developers: If you love the endgame in MMORPGs, a game on Steam offers you plenty of it, but there is a catch
