There is bad news for MMO fans on the PlayStation 4. In 2014, the legendary developer Michel Ancel presented a new, unusual survival MMO. WiLD was supposed to offer a huge open world where players could roam in a world roughly the size of Europe. However, with Michel Ancel’s departure from game development, the project is apparently dead.
This is WiLD: At the Gamescom 2014, the new MMO WiLD was presented, which was to be developed exclusively for the PlayStation 4. Behind the project was the legendary developer Michel Ancel, known for the Rayman games and Beyond Good & Evil. He had also started his own new studio alongside his job at Ubisoft: Wild Sheep Studio.
The ideas of WiLD sounded fantastic:
- WiLD was to provide a massive game world – roughly the size of Europe.
- The world was to be mythical and full of legends. The world was to take place 10,000 years before our time, in a pre-civilizational world shaped by shamanism and Celtic mythology.
- There was to be dynamic weather and seasons.
- The game was meant to offer players something that they would want to play again and again even after months.
- Players should be able to play as “every creature” in the world, such as a wolf, horse, sheep, or trout.
There was a trailer with fantastic graphics that has gathered 740,000 views to this day.
This is what was heard about the development: Almost nothing. There has been hardly any sign of life regarding the game for 7 years. Only on Instagram did Michel Ancel hint that he was working on the game. Additionally, it could be seen on LinkedIn that the studio Wild Sheep Studio now has 46 developers (via linkedin). On the studio’s homepage, WiLD is still the only project of the studio.
In 2020, Michel Ancel completely withdrew from game development. A dispute with employees had come to light. A lot of dirty laundry was aired here. Ancel said at the time that his two projects, Beyond Good & Evil 2 and WiLD, were in good hands. Strong teams were working on them.
“WiLD is dead”
This is now the news: According to journalist Jeff Grubb in a video on Giant Bomb that is behind a paywall, the work on WiLD has been stopped:
“I can confirm that the game is at an end. There is no Wild anymore… Wild is dead.”
Grubb says Ancel has given up on the project, he is no longer working on it. The project has been shelved. The team that was working on it is trying to stay together and work on other projects.
According to Grubb, he does not know how Wild was shelved, but the developers told him they were no longer working on it.
Anyone looking for an alternative to Wild:
The 7 best MMORPGs on PS4, PS5 & Xbox that you can play in 2021
