The MMORPG Blood Rites was released in April 2019 to disastrous reviews. Just three months after the launch, the publisher announced that they would be closing it. What was going on?
What kind of game is this? Blood Rites is a fantasy MMORPG with Asian influences. The game was originally released in 2011. It then suddenly appeared in April 2019 as a new MMORPG in the “Game Network Limited” network.
Apparently, they thought it was a good idea to bring back an 8-year-old MMORPG – after all, there is a severe MMORPG drought here in the West.
The game describes itself as “challenging but beautiful” and the world is meant for “fearless and romantic” souls.
There were several starter classes, which could then split into further classes starting from level 20.
This is how the reception was: Hardly anyone even noticed the MMORPG. A YouTuber specializing in MMOs commented, “This old MMORPG just came back. And it was so bad.”
According to the YouTuber, any other MMORPG, no matter how terrible, that he has ever played would eat Blood Rites for breakfast.
It is only great at not being great. He hardly has anything good to say about the game.
This is what the publisher says: Even the homepage (via brmmo.com) is a bit absurd, because between “Welcome to Blood Rites” and “We are shutting down the servers” lie only 4 other messages and 3 months.
Apparently, they reacted somewhat panicked in May and increased the experience gain by 10 times.
Ultimately, it couldn’t save the game. In the last post, it says: “Blood Rites will be closed on August 2, 2019. No payments will be possible from July 15 onwards.”
There aren’t even words of regret in the message, just the brief response.
In the forum post regarding the announcement, there is a single angry comment in Russian, filled with some curse words and accusations against the publisher.
What’s behind it: The MMO market in the West is very strange, as there is a large mass of players looking for new MMORPGs. The demand is therefore high.
However, hardly any new MMORPGs are being developed. The supply is low.
Apparently, publishers are trying their luck here with “releases” and “re-releases” of older MMORPGs from Asia that hardly anyone knows.
The “biggest” example of this is probably Bless, which caused a lot of commotion – but there are also games like “ELOA”, which tried several times:
