At the beginning of 2018, we introduced the major hopefuls in MMOs and MMORPGs for the coming year on MeinMMO. Now, at the end of 2018, we look back and ask: What has become of these games?
What are the “most promising new MMOs?” Every year at MeinMMO, we present the most promising hopefuls of a year. The MMOs and MMORPGs we expect the most from this year: Usually, this means that a beta or an alpha is supposed to start and that a new online game will become playable in some form.
The article will then be updated throughout the year and will be widely read.
Our article on the “The 8 most promising new MMOs and MMORPGs for 2018” was published on January 29. About 70,000 people have read it over the course of the year.
Today, we ask ourselves: What did people think about the games back then, and what really became of them?
Bless – Things did not go so well
This is what people thought at the beginning of 2018: We thought the fantasy MMORPG Bless could, at best, become solid genre fare that finds a niche and entertains the hungry MMORPG fans with something new.
In the worst case, Bless would not find enough fans and quickly fade away.
This is how it really went: Bless launched in early access on May 30. However, it was early overshadowed by serious technical problems.
The MMORPG generated a lot of attention and MMORPG fans flocked to Bless. However, many were disappointed.
A shitstorm raged against Bless for weeks: Developers were accused of doing too little for the Western release. Some even spoke of a sham, a last attempt to make money with a game that had failed everywhere else.
Although Bless had been around for a long time on other markets, the game felt unfinished and could not meet the high expectations of many curious MMORPG players.
The developers later said that they had miscommunicated. Bless was an early access title, but players had expected a finished MMORPG.
Eventually, the developers decided to switch Bless to a “Free2Play” model upon release. However, the transition to free couldn’t bring about a turnaround.
Currently, player numbers are weak.
From a peak in June 2018 with 27,613 active players simultaneously, only 2046 remained at the peak in recent days. And that for a Free2Play title.
While Bless has loyal fans who have found a new home here, praising, for example, the taming system and the general MMORPG features, many are not around anymore by the end of 2018.
Conclusion: Bless had a huge opportunity to shine in a dried-up MMORPG market in the West. Unfortunately, Bless could not capitalize on this opportunity.
The question arises whether the MMORPG has a future in this form. A team from Bandai Maco is working in the background on an Xbox One version “Bless Unleashed.”
Bless is the big loser among our most promising MMORPGs of 2018.
