Swords of Legends
Genre: MMORPG | Developer: Wangyuan Shengtang | Platform: PC | Release Date: June 9, 2021 | Model: Buy2Play (later Free2Play)
What kind of game is this? Swords of Legends Online (SOLO) is an MMORPG from China that was brought to the West by Gameforge in 2021. It is a classic theme park game that offers many quests and a very linear story.
The focus of the endgame is on dungeons with multiple difficulty levels, PvP content, housing and various life skills that can set the game apart from its competitors. For example, you can dive into an underworld version of the map to hunt special enemies.
Swords of Legends relies on an action-oriented combat system, allowing you to loosely target enemies so that your abilities hit. Unlike other Asian MMORPGs, there is no randomness when upgrading equipment and no risk of items breaking. Also, the shop positively avoids pay-to-win and even pay-to-convenience.
A detailed preview of SOLO can be found here: I played 80 hours of Swords of Legends and say: ‘The MMORPG is much better than you think’.
How is SOLO doing currently? Since its release, there have been regular updates for the MMORPG. Highlights included the switch to free-to-play and the first expansion in March 2022. While this gave the game a fresh breeze, it couldn’t strengthen the player numbers on Steam in the long term.
SOLO initially launched with 18,806 concurrent players at peak but dropped to just over 200 in February 2022. After the transition to free-to-play, the numbers rose again to over 2,500 but have since dropped back to around 250 (via SteamDB).
Overall, the player counts are higher since Gameforge also distributes the MMORPG on its own client. However, the trend there will likely be similar.
That’s why I believe Swords of Legends will die in 2023: Gameforge recently closed TERA, an MMORPG that had better numbers on Steam and a much larger fan base. While the influence of the Korean developer was also to blame here, they are also working with a foreign developer on SOLO – this time from China.
The numbers are not so impressive that this contract will run indefinitely. Both parties probably hoped for more. Thus, I expect Swords of Legends to be shut down long term. After Gameforge also pulled the plug on Kingdom Under Fire 2 after just under two years, I expect something similar for SOLO.
