Lineage Eternal – the surprise package among action MMORPGs
What people thought in 2016: They thought betas would arrive late in 2017, as Lineage Eternal is so important for NCSoft. After all, Lineage Eternal should lead NCSoft into the mobile age.
This is what really happened in 2017: Lineage Eternal failed as a PC/mobile hybrid and is now being relaunched as a “PC-only” game under the title “Project TL.” This could still take quite a while to come.
Conclusion: Lineage Eternal had, in a way, the most interesting year of 2017, at least the most surprising one. The release plan was actually already in place, but someone at NCSoft pulled the emergency brake and everything changed because the reactions to the beta were so negative. Now the game is called “Project TL” and is expected to rival Lost Ark.
What do we learn from this? Reboot! Delay!
The most interesting titles on the MMORPG market are those with high ambitions. However, they are still far from release and thrive on their fantastically sounding ideas and concepts. Release dates are more like “non-binding declarations of intent” for these games.
MMORPGs are massive endeavors with countless problems that can arise. And hardly any development proceeds as planned for these games. It becomes apparent with many MMORPGs that even after years in development, fundamental changes in direction can occur that set the project back years.
Again and again, we hear about a “reboot” – with Bless, Destiny 2, and Lineage Eternal, three titles on the list have undergone such a public restart.
Other games like Crowfall, Star Citizen, or Camelot Unchained are crowdfunding games that develop according to their own rules, where delays are likely accepted as normality. Fans forgive the developers because they can see at any time how hard they are working on their passion projects.
Therefore, developer statements about the “most promising titles of a year” are often shaky and are frequently overturned. Stay tuned for our article: “The most promising MMOs and MMORPGs of 2018! – What will be rebooted this year?”
If you want to check what we wrote in 2016 about the MMOs and MMORPGs of 2017, you can of course do that:
