MeinMMO editor and MMORPG expert Karsten Scholz continues the beloved tradition and ventures a look at the online role-playing games that will not experience the end of the year 2025 live.
How did this list come about? In 2022 and 2023, it was former colleague Alexander Leitsch who predicted the end of some MMO titles. Last year, our anime expert (and also MMORPG enthusiast) Jasmin Beverungen took over the glimpse into the crystal ball.
This year, it is now my turn to predict which MMOs and MMORPGs will disappear permanently by the end of 2025. I will of course mainly throw games into the metaphorical ring for the survival battle that are hardly played anymore (which can be determined, for example, through websites like steamdb.info).
Titles that were discontinued early, such as Blue Protocol or Concord, also show that games can end up on the graveyard that are currently still in alpha, beta, or early access. And there can also be recognizable factors indicating a short lifespan.
If you want to know how successful Jasmin was last year with her predictions, you can find the answer on the very last page of this article.
Corepunk
Genre: MMORPG | Developer: Artificial Core | Platform: PC | Early Access Start: November 26, 2024 | Model: Buy2Play
What kind of game is it? Corepunk is a “top-down MMORPG” with an open world and sandbox character. Visually and also in terms of controls, it resembles League of Legends. At the same time, it is also a classic online role-playing game that is supposed to remind players of vanilla WoW in terms of difficulty.
In the game, you can expect six classes with a total of 18 different specializations, dungeons, as well as raids and PvE content in the open world, equipped with a fog of war. A crafting system, open-world PvP, and arena matches complement the offer.
15 minutes of gameplay from Corepunk:
That’s why I believe Corepunk won’t make it: In the alpha, Corepunk was at times quite unwelcoming, merciless, and frustrating for newcomers. The well-known MMO YouTuber TheLazyPeon even referred to it as the “most frustrating experience for new players that I have ever experienced in an MMORPG”.
With the start of early access, it has improved noticeably. So much so, that fans praise the old-school gaming experience. Nevertheless, Corepunk remains an MMORPG for a small niche even in its current form. But that’s just one factor.
Factor number 2 is that the developers are quite inexperienced. What impact that can have was shown by a simple update in December that brought such severe problems that the servers were unavailable for a long time. The community was furious.
Adding to that the Buy2Play model and the focus on a proprietary launcher (no Steam release), which is likely to further limit the number of players, the developers could run out of steam early. I sincerely hope that I am wrong.
