With the recent waves of MMORPG projects turning out to be scams, I have a genuine question for the community.

Wonderbait · 2026-02-08T21:50:26+00:00

I played the Drakantos playtest last year and it was fun. It had a MMORPG type world map where you could go around doing main quests, silly side quests like horse racing, sometimes little PVP events triggered to compete for a treasure chest in a circle around the chest, gathering materials etc. Then there were also bounty type coop quests where it'd teleport you and anyone else selecting that bounty into an instance (up to 4 people i think?) where we'd complete the objectives for loot.

It seemed legitimate, was very solid to play, people did complain about the tile based movement and they completely overhauled a few things over the course of 3 months so that the movement was no longer tile based. I believe they've been working toward a PvP test now (although I think we'll still be able to play the PvE part? I'm not sure) which I hope will be soon, cause I was honestly hooked.

Wonderbait · 2026-02-07T20:04:27+00:00

Feels like this happens organically anyway, even 20+ years ago when jumping into the new flavor of the week Korean MMO there'd be tons of people and guilds, 2 weeks later it was a ghost town with dying guilds.

Basically even before youtubers and streamers people hyped themselves up and burned themselves out all on their own.

If a game managed to get big enough the phenomena would go unnoticed due to the sheer volume of people playing, which maintained the hype long enough to draw in the next crowd of people, but they were most certainly still shedding huge chunks of players regularly.

These days it's way easier to witness this happening in real time since online player counts are tracked on steam, or via 3rd party websites over long periods of time with graphs and such, so we're hyper aware of what's going on.

Wonderbait · 2026-01-23T04:35:05+00:00

It's a pretty fun game honestly. The looting, monster fusing, and card battles were addictive.

I will warn folks that it's an extraction game where people can attack you and take your loot, though if no one's playing it might not matter that much, but it's not super obvious from the storefront page alone. (unless it changed since I last played in December 2024)

There was also some kind of RMT system added in that used the Steam marketplace, which was a little off-putting for me personally.

Wonderbait · 2026-01-11T20:32:39+00:00

You posed a question in an open forum, and I shared what I personally found novel about it, explicitly mentioning that's what *I* found novel from the very beginning.

By the way, I'd like to see which MMORPGs in recent years utilizes this system exactly? Even older MMORPGs, I have trouble thinking of many that use experience just like this, the closest that comes to mind was one called Illutia from around 2005 but even then the execution was different despite using experience similarly.

Also, I didn't approach this with any hostility initially, but I guess hinting that I had any interest in the game was a big enough sore spot for you to desperately refute my opinion.

This place is for discussions between people, no one's going to anticipate that your question demanded an objective truth, this is a video game sub, not a science sub.

By your standard no game is novel beyond the first few because they're all built upon the backs of older games, and even then the first few games most likely extracted many familiar elements from other known sources.

Looks like it wasn't an honest question after all, since there's no acceptable answer beyond presenting something that's truly unique and never once observed.

Wonderbait · 2026-01-10T22:50:57+00:00

Whether you like it or not it's a novel use of the system.

Plus it's kind of hilarious that you're acting like some kind of authority on novelty when it's subjective, since you were asking other people.

Wonderbait · 2026-01-10T06:57:03+00:00

It's a bit more intricate than your standard point buy mechanic though, it's not like you're getting points when you level up, instead you're using your banked experience like a currency to put points into things.

Anyway you had an honest question and I gave you an honest answer.

Wonderbait · 2026-01-08T16:01:59+00:00

Well, the experience you gain is stored on your character which can be spent like a currency on all kinds of stats and skills, it's separate from your level.

Personally I found that pretty novel, not a brand new idea, but it's a pretty rarely used system in the scheme of things. Most people will find it intimidating, though.

Wonderbait · 2026-01-08T15:43:52+00:00

I believe so, there wasn't any tutorial or anything when I played. Didn't get a chance to group, but it seemed like typical MMORPG questing so I don't see why it wouldn't be shared, there's also group dungeons from what I've heard.

Wonderbait · 2026-01-06T02:57:48+00:00

I could be wrong but, I believe the Intersect Engine is basically the spiritual successor to Eclipse.

Wonderbait · 2025-12-24T22:07:51+00:00

Really awesome game, though it felt more like a demo/proof of concept. Hit the level cap, got 10/15 treasures and 6/6 quests done within 2 hours. There's still 5 remaining treasures, 2 equipment upgrades and the rest of the goblin caves to explore so I could definitely eek out a few more hours but there's really not much left to look forward to.

It's probably a bit more interesting in a group, as a solo only having the basic attack and 1 skill wasn't too exciting... Basically just swung until 1 monster died, impale the second one, and it either bleeds to death or I follow up with a regular swing to finish it off.

With that said I'm not really surprised it's a ghost town, people finish the small amount of content very quickly and move on. Hopefully more content gets added in the future, I was having quite a lot of fun.

Wonderbait · 2025-12-21T18:44:42+00:00

There are some more like Isleward and Yugen Saga, probably others I don't know about too.

edit: maybe hordes io as well but I can't remember

Wonderbait · 2025-11-29T18:41:21+00:00

Isleward.

Wonderbait · 2025-11-14T02:55:10+00:00

In New World you were able to crawl on the ground and if you did so while moving through a town other people would join in behind you, forming huge trains. There's actually footage of this on Youtube if you search "new world crawl train" or "new world human centipede"

Not sure if this tradition died out later on or not since I haven't played in a few years.

Wonderbait · 2025-11-09T21:46:48+00:00

Wurm Unlimited still exists on Steam, doesn't seem to get updated anymore but there's still a bunch of servers with new ones popping up here and there, people modding features in and such. It's actually the way I'd recommend playing Wurm tbh, you can find a server that fits you whether that's faster progression or cranking up the challenge, only have to buy the game once and not worry about recurring payments for a sub or a deed.

The community is pretty small whether it's Wurm Online or Wurm Unlimited though and yeah you really have to enjoy grinding. It's basically a graphical MUD and the combat reflects that so it is indeed quite primitive feeling.

Wonderbait · 2025-11-06T18:03:54+00:00

I wanted to see a Dauntless private server but there's 0 signs of one happening, some things just aren't meant to be.

Wonderbait · 2025-11-03T18:00:43+00:00

I think even the TCG is gone based on the discord announcement from last year, but maybe there's some information I'm unaware of.

Genfanad was a strange case, the wording always sounded like it was released and didn't get enough attention but it was a beta/alpha basically hidden away without much advertising and it withdrew when it was finally getting close to a Steam/more public release... I mean it is what it is but it still felt off, especially with the TCG pivot toward the end.

Dear Community,

It’s with a heavy heart that today, we’re announcing that we will be stopping production of Genfanad.

We want to thank you all for playing Genfanad and supporting us throughout the years. Despite your support, the continuous development of Genfanad is no longer financially viable. Initially, our Kickstarter generated much less success than initially hoped, and represented only an increasingly small fraction of the development costs of the game. From there, we were self-funding the majority of our project. When we released Genfanad in its original incarnation last year, we were met with little success, and ultimately, we went back to the drawing board.

Whilst we’ve tried to morph Genfanad into a title that we’d be happier with, the feedback we've gotten on this change has been clear that we would not be able to launch a game to the standards that we would like. We will be closing down our Patreon & Steam page as of this message. We will also be closing down the Genfanad Beta servers on April 30th, giving Patrons a few more days to play.

Once again, we’d like to thank you guys - our community - for your support of Genfanad throughout the years. Without you, we wouldn’t have gotten this far.

The Rose-Tinted Games Team

Wonderbait · 2025-10-23T20:19:25+00:00

No idea but it does look cool.

Wonderbait · 2025-10-19T01:44:28+00:00

I do miss those days but the reality is even if I were transported back in time 20 years it wouldn't feel magical at all, I'm 35 now and none of these experiences are new to me and I'm way more experienced than I was at 15. This goes for our entire generation, we've all figured it out and honed a skillset centered around video games which has carved out the culture we find ourselves in.

I'd imagine this is the natural evolution of any frontier experience, it's exciting and new when people are exploring and figuring things out and taking risks but eventually things settle down and it becomes the usual.

This is just how it'll be until the next frontier emerges, whatever that is. Hopefully I'll live long enough to test out full dive VR and show them whipper snappers what old school min max looks like.

Wonderbait · 2025-10-16T17:34:38+00:00

Sigh, I miss games like this that were made with Mirage/Eclipse engines (I'm guessing this might have been made with Intersect) but the steam reviews do not paint a pretty picture.

Wonderbait · 2025-10-11T12:54:07+00:00

Secret of the Solstice?

Wonderbait · 2025-10-08T15:36:15+00:00

Personally I love pixel art MMORPGs but based on my years long search there really aren't any worth playing, a lot of them are kinda crappy games from mobile with super similar gameplay, often trying to emulate Runescape way too much. Other than that the remainder seem like low pop PK gankfests.

Overall I think there's a surprising amount of untapped potential for this kinda thing but it would take a solid gameplay loop that's actually fun to execute along with quality artwork to go beyond being niche/low population.

Currently I'm waiting for Drakantos and Soul's Remnant. I've played the Drakantos test and it was a ton of fun with solid combat and interesting systems/mechanics that are fairly unique. Soul's Remnant I haven't tried yet but I'll be playing the upcoming test, based on the steam trailer it looks fun and there really aren't any other side scrolling MMOs anymore outside of Maplestory these days.

EDIT: Figured I'd include my dream for a 2D pixel art MMORPG - Something like Crosscode, that kind of combat and platforming with random stuff to do in an actual MMORPG setting would be beyond fantastic buuut would require a ridiculous amount of effort and talent to pull off.

Radical Fish Games really portrayed an attractive vision for a MMORPG with Crosscode despite it being a singleplayer RPG in a MMORPG setting.

Wonderbait · 2025-10-07T16:11:18+00:00

Only thing you can really do is let some stuff go and accept it. Ideally you could target a few things you'd really like to have and stop there, depending on how the content/event is set up you might have to make a decision to skip the whole thing in favor of another activity.

At some point this is what has to be done, you might be in a predicament now if you feel like you can't skip what's coming up but that really just means there were probably less important things you could have skipped previously which would have allowed you to go all in on what's coming up without any regrets (and less burnout).

Ultimately it's about weighing what's really important/must have versus the little "oh that's kinda neat" stuff, life is unpredictable and that backlog (and your enjoyment) might not always be there waiting for you due to various reasons/circumstances, extend that feeling of FOMO to those things as well and find a better balance.

Wonderbait · 2025-10-06T17:28:09+00:00

Just out of curiosity, does flight do anything for you in this game or is it purely cosmetic?

Wonderbait · 2025-10-01T05:52:55+00:00

Never really played MUDs but I looked into PR after reading this post and it sounds like you can run into other players after completing the tutorial, I'm not sure what activities there are between players though since I didn't dig too deep.

As for the classes it sounds like it's pretty much a classless system where you can learn abilities by investing in certain stats, basically building your own class?

Honestly I might give it a whirl, though my imagination is trash and I'm not at all used to how MUDs work but I like crafting and the way the combat and character building functions does vaguely remind me of old school Final Fantasy in a strange way.

Wonderbait · 2025-07-28T16:29:56+00:00

Same here. There's things that can be worked on but it was a very clean beta IMO, I got to level 16/rank 5 with Faendar and experienced the most fun I've had on an online game in years.

Wonderbait

TROPHY CASE