TERA was an MMORPG enjoyed by millions of players all around the world. It redefined what it meant to be an MMO, providing players some of the most stunning, expansive, fast-paced experiences at the time.
But it was inhibited largely by its business model: It required players purchase and pay a monthly subscription fee to play it. This lead to the eventual transition of business model to a free to play title, and that triggered its decline.
Sure, I think at their peak they claimed there were 20, 30 million players. But with that transition, saw a sharp decrease in terms of quality, and equally as sharp an increase in pay to win and pay to advance.
Eventually, TERA was forced to shut down on PC. The active playerbase numbered in the low-thousands, and there hadn’t been real content pushed out in years. The game was in maintenance mode and players knew it.
The game honestly deserved better. And TERA Classic aims to deliver that experience to players. But can they manage to accomplish what seemed impossible for the better part of a decade?

TERA Classic could reinvigorate what was once the pinnacle of the action MMO genre. By taking the game back to its roots – a time when the game was difficult. Required team-work. Had a steady content release schedule.
“Could,” being the keyword here. Navigating on over to the TERA Classic website, I immediately notice several things:

1: Pre-registration is currently open. Meeting each individual goal will reward players with some in-game rewards, like bag slot expansion scrolls, pet scrolls, a title scroll.
2: They’re holding some weird.. event? I think? Titled “Triple Wars,” with Streamers, Cosplayers and VTubers all competing for… I dunno. A laptop? A tablet? A phone?
3: They’re incentivizing pre-registrations by giving out additional rewards for “friends” you invite to the game. And I used air-quotes there – which I’m aware you’re unable to see. This will substantially alter the validity of the total number of pre-registered players.
4: They have altered how classes and races function. If you’re interested in playing as a Lancer or a Priest, you’ll be forced to play as an Elin. Gladiator’s are now exclusive to the Castanic.
Archer’s are exclusive to High Elves, and Slayer’s to Humans. Instead of allowing High Elves to be Archers, Sorcerer’s, Warrior’s, Priests, Mystic’s.. they’ve chosen to severely limit not only the total number of available classes, but also which races can play as them. Giving Elin 2 races, and removing several of the others.
You gotta appeal to those pedo-Elin lovers, right? They’re where you’ll make all your money after all.
5: And finally, the game is going to be cross-platform compatible. TERA was a PC MMORPG, that later released a console-compatible client, allowing players to play both versions of the game. Both were honestly largely successful, and the game played even better on console than it did on PC.
Unfortunately, the cross-platform compatibility is not between PC and console this time ’round, rather, it’s between PC and mobile. And even then, if you take a look at their website, it lists the only way you’ll be able to play this on PC is if you use an emulator – NoxPlayer, BlueStacks or LDPlayer.

Within minutes, they have killed any potential this game might have had. After the loss of TERA, many players were left wandering to private servers. I myself was even tempted at one point but opted to steer clear for the time being.
I loved TERA, it was truly an incredible MMO for its time. But I didn’t want to play a private server of it when there are better alternatives out there.

Scrolling down to the bottom of the website they have a list of game features:
Fight big bosses and get epic costumes – Are they referring to BAMs? Big Ass Monsters? I don’t recall them dropping costumes. Relic pieces, yeah. Providing a mass of XP, definitely. Costumes? Not that I remember.
Adaptable and Seamless Skill Combo – looking at the UI of the game – sure, it’ll be adaptable, but the complexity of combat is going to be limited by mobile compatibility, as at the end of the day, this is a mobile game.
Customize costumes and appearance – what does that even mean? Customize what aspects of a costume? Its color?
Stunning atmosphere and environment – alright, scrolling back up to the classes you’ll notice that the character models themselves actually look pretty bad quality. When we have mobile MMOs like Tower of Fantasy and Noah’s Heart that look exponentially better than this – what about what we’re seeing is worth bragging over?
The worst part of all of this is that to pre-register for this piece of garbage, you’re going to be required to enter not only your email, but a functional phone number to verify your account. That’s a hard pass for me.

TERA Classic looks like absolute trash. They had the potential to achieve what WoW Classic did. What Aion Classic attempted to achieve. Yet we get a cheap-ass PC-ported mobile piece of garbage that’s only resemblance to TERA are the models they ripped.
This is not TERA, and most definitely not TERA Classic. This is an abomination that is trying to prey on players that miss TERA. And judging by the 350,000 pre-registered players.. it’s working.

Did you know that TERA was shutting down? Yes, completely. No, this isn’t a joke. As of June 2022, the game will no longer be playable. Which is such a surreal revelation to attempt to grasp.

With this somber announcement, however, came a lot of hate. A lot of finger-pointing. A lot of projection towards the wrong parties responsible for this. Which we’re going to clear up, while also discussing the game’s closure.

So, Gameforge, the only publisher for TERA left after En Masse closed their North American offices recently, made a blog post on their website titled “The Adventure Ends.”

“Hello TERA players, Unfortunately, we come bearing bad news: TERA’s developers, Bluehole, have decided to cease work on TERA. After much consideration, the team in South Korea have come to the conclusion that they are no longer able to offer you the exciting and satisfying content you deserve.”

Right there, in their very first sentence, Gameforge openly admitted who was at fault here. Bluehole studios, the South Korean developers of TERA and more recently, Elyon, have decided that it is not in their best interests to continue active development of the game.
Players, however, see Gameforge’s announcement and immediately jump to the conclusion that “Gameforge is a bad publisher, it’s all their fault.”
And that just isn’t true. I’ve had my fair share of poor interactions with publishers, but Gameforge has always been respectful and professional in our dealings. And despite their mishandling of some of their games in the past, this closure is not at all their fault.

“As the last remaining publisher of TERA, it is with a heavy heart that we must respect Bluehole’s decision, and will also have to shut down the game.
The TERA servers will be switched off at 10 AM CEST (4 AM EDT) on 30th June 2022. Until then, we’ll be running some permanent events, in the hope that you’ll at least be able to enjoy these final months in Arborea.”

The events in question include a 300% increase in loot dropped in every dungeon, triple the loot and gold from Vanguard quests, a reduced entry cost for dungeons, and increased enchantment chances when upgrading gear.
Which – and I’m gonna be real here – probably should have been in the game already.
Maybe if Bluehole had taken the time to make adequate adjustments to areas of the game that needed significant improvement, they wouldn’t have to close the game. There are games much older with much healthier populations out there. Yet TERA is a better title than pretty much all of them. Especially Elyon, which is a dumpster fire.

“After nearly 10 long years, the TERA legend must sadly come to an end. Together we’ve braved so many of Arborea’s perils, fought valiantly against the argons, made many new friends and gone on countless adventures. We would like to thank you for your loyalty, for accompanying us on this long journey, and for being such an amazing community! For more details regarding TERA’s shutdown, please read our FAQs. Our days in Arborea may be numbered, but the next adventure is just over the horizon. We hope to see you again soon in one of our other games. Until then!
The TERA Team”

Again, this is kind of surreal. I’ve been playing TERA since it launched. I still have my Founder’s title. I’ve went back to this game every single year. If it wasn’t for this game, Mrs Stix never would have happened across the video that introduced us to one another.
TERA had a lot of issues. There’s no denying that. But every game has them. Sometimes developers know how to fix them, other times they don’t. Unfortunately this was the latter in the case of Bluehole, as they’ve proven they’re not only incompetent when it comes to TERA, but also Elyon.
Elyon was the spiritual successor to TERA, and within 30 days had declined in active players to a point lower than TERA had in the span of a decade. Which goes to show that the Bluehole of the 2010s is not the Bluehole of the 2020s. Any competent talent they had is now gone.

It’s always sad to see an MMO shut down. Especially when the MMO is as good as TERA is at its core.
I guess, what we’re all thinking now, is what is Bluehole going to develop to replace TERA, and what does Gameforge have left after the loss of it? Aion? With a lower playerbase than TERA? Swords of Legends? Which also shares a low playerbase?
Who knows. But so many MMOs have shut down in the span of the last 24 months that I’m a little concerned what’s going to come next.

I’ll admit, I struggled a little with this one. I wanted this to be a fun, entertaining yet informative video. Highlighting the things TERA did right, and the things it currently does wrong.
But out of all the MMOs I’ve played, TERA is perhaps the least recognizable to me in its current form. It has changed so drastically that it feels like an entirely different game. The leveling experience, the constant removal of content, the empty world.
This game is a shell of its former self, but does that mean we shouldn’t play it?

Today, we’re taking a look at TERA. This was one of Mrs Stix’s first MMOs – an introduction to the genre for her. It was also my first action MMO, having come from games like Perfect World, Tales of Pirates and WoW.

So. Is TERA as bad as people claim it is in 2022?

It’s been a year since we last played. We made it to endgame. Max level. We hit a point where all that was left was to farm Vanguard quests in the open-world, and queue for dungeons. Or, at least that’s what it seemed like. On the contrary, we had access to a single dungeon.
Macellarius Catacombs. This dungeon had an item level requirement of 512. Which you’re immediately gifted, as when you log in they throw a full set of gear at you that gives you absolutely asinine amounts of stats. Yet somehow doesn’t get you to item level 513. Thus you’re stuck farming one single dungeon. Which people continue to die in.

If they had given us that single digit increase in item level, the point between coming back, and endgame content would be achievable so much easier.

But, that’s essentially how you play catch-up. One might find running a single dungeon to be too much of a repetitious, arduous grind – but it gets worse.
To mix things up, you’re given the option of doing daily Vanguard quests as well. “Go to this max level zone and farm 10 monsters.” To which you think to yourself, “Oh, that doesn’t sound too bad.” Until you get there and realize that even though the quests say “SOLO,” if you opt to tackle them solo.. they take 10 minutes per kill.
Which is the largest waste of time I’ve ever seen. Even for someone with substantially better gear than me, together, monsters took 4 to 6 minutes. Whoever thought giving BAM’s – Big Ass Monsters – exponentially more HP than we have damage shouldn’t be allowed to design video games. Because that is, for lack of a better word, stupid.
It wouldn’t be bad if the monsters required skill to combat. Hit hard. Had mechanics that you were required to learn. But you literally stand still mashing abilities, and rolling out of an AoE every now and then. Not that the damage was high enough to warrant moving for the vast majority of it.

Disregarding what is arguably a horrible point to come back to the game, TERA is-was a gorgeous MMO. Once upon a time. It has continued to grow significantly more dated – visually. Zones seem flat. There isn’t really anything to them. Nothing to explore – no real reason to, even.
The introduction of flying made it much worse, as the game-world wasn’t built for flight as a form of exploration. The world from up high is ugly, jagged and pixelated. Character animations feel less polished than they did a few years ago.
Don’t get me wrong, it still pulls off the “Korean attempt at a medieval fantasy” aesthetic well. To date, there are only a handful of MMOs that look better and fit the same style, the same theme. But given games we see these days – this would be a bad introductory title for a new MMO player.

Thankfully, while the game might look dated by today’s standards, it definitely doesn’t feel dated. On the contrary, TERA has some of the best action combat of any MMO in 2022.
Sure, some people might argue that Blade & Soul or Black Desert have better combat. Maybe even PSO2 New Genesis. But TERA took a traditional combat system – where you’re able to keybind abilities to your numbers, your letters. And cycle through them in whatever rotation you feel comfortable with.
As opposed to BDO or Blade & Soul which give you much smaller selection of abilities, and often have button combinations like shift+strafe+A+D after performing a successful parry against 2 or more monsters.
Yup, that’s too complex for me. I rather have something like “Hit #2, #3, spacebar to reload, #2, #4.” Maybe it’s because I’m old, but I prefer more simplistic approaches that don’t require I memorize hundreds of different button combinations that vary depending on which situations are or are not met.
Special effects aren’t overly flashy. They also don’t really feel too impactful, but every class does, for the most part, look and feel relatively unique.

As I noted, the world is kind of.. empty. You’ll find hordes of monsters spread through somewhat larger areas. You’ll have Vanguard quests to take to eliminate x number of them, which gains you XP and a selection of items. Potions. Currency.
A lot has been removed from the game, so the world functions as a means with which to push you from story NPC to story NPC, but given the speed with which you level, questing seems almost like a redundant feature. As does the world.
You either opt to level by entering dungeons by yourself – as most dungeons until max level are doable solo, or you queue for a dungeon and hope someone else is to make things faster.
Regardless, you obtain so many level ups via running dungeons that it eliminates any need for any other content. While the world was at one point filled with side-quests, filled with story quests, filled with players running groups to fight BAMs… now it’s an empty, barren wasteland.
I wish there was a reason – an incentive to go back out into the world. But there just.. isn’t. At least, not from what I experienced. And unless you can make it past that asinine introductory grind to reach endgame, you likely won’t find a reason to either.

I did note that the world used to be a little more filled with content. Some of that content took the form of story: TERA wasn’t always so disconnected, so difficult to understand as it is now.
Once upon a time – there… wait, okay. So there was once… huh. You know what? While the game has always had somewhat of a story, it – and I know this might come off as somewhat of a contentious opinion, but its narrative was always pretty bad.
There were certain recurring characters you’d find over the course of the game. But unlike Final Fantasy XIV, which is about half narrative, half gameplay, TERA was 2% narrative, 98% gameplay. It had one.. you just don’t really remember what it was. A guy named Elleon? Some big booba Elf lady in that city surrounded by water?
The old traitor guy? Uh.. Yeah. And if the story before was kind of mediocre, imagine what it is now after they spend years slowly truncating the experience.
Theen again, it is a Korean MMO, and outside of Blade & Soul and Lost Ark, I haven’t ever really encountered a worthwhile story in a Korean MMO.

Now I know I made it sound like there really isn’t anything to do in the game. On the contrary, there’s a lot to do in the game. There just isn’t any purpose to really do it. Nor anyone actively participating in the content to actually consume.
As an example, there are Battlegrounds. I haven’t been in a Battleground in what seems like years because whenever I queue for it, it tells me the number of player queueing are “low,” and even doing a 4 hour stream over on Twitch, never end up having a single queue successfully pop.
While there’s a PvP system in place.. nobody really participates in it anymore. Back when I started with TERA, I played on an open-world PvP server. And while I recall being camped outside of Lumbertown by higher level players, it made for a sense of accomplishment whenever you’d manage to escape a group of griefers.
But it also left it open for open-world engagements with other players your own level. It required you to pay attention to your surroundings, as you’d never know who you could trust, or when things would go south.
I mean, sure, there’s the Kumas Royale… or there was. When logging in the most recent time – actually just 2 days ago, I couldn’t locate it. Did it get removed? Or is it set on rotation or something and I was just blind?
Then we have dungeons. I recall dungeons used to be catered to larger groups. 5-player? Or was it 6-player dungeons? They’ve since been altered to allow for 3 players to cooperatively tackle. Which makes sense, given the population issues the game has.
Dungeons are honestly one of the better aspects of the game: They look pretty good, some of them are actually enormous inside. They feel unique. Bosses can range from being a cake-walk to actually requiring attention. Although the game – including dungeons suffers from HP-bloat.
The devs decided “Oh, dungeons are too easy. Instead of making them more challenging, let’s just increase their HP.” And I feel that’s a sentiment echoed throughout the entirety of the game.
Instead of improving areas that need to be improved, instead, they respond with “Just add more HP.” Then we have Vanguard quests. BAMs. Professions like Alchemy, Smelting, Processing, Etching and Cooking.

At the end of the day, TERA has the potential to be a fantastic MMO. The game still looks good a decade later. The combat is arguably better than the vast majority of titles present in 2022. Heck, it still provides a better action combat system than MMOs released in 2021 like Bless Unleashed. Astellia. Elyon.
And even with Elyon supposedly being the spiritual successor to TERA, this game just feels.. better. It runs better. It plays better. The world is more dull, and it feels like there’s less to do but given Elyon’s population issues, I fear TERA averages more active players after a decade than Elyon does after 6 months.
If this game had a competent group of developers that instead gave players what they want as opposed to catering to the every-declining whales, this would still be one of the top MMOs presently.
Kind of how RuneScape, decades later, still averages hundreds of thousands of active players every month.

Is this the greatest MMO? To some people, maybe. To me? No.

Combat – 10/10 Honestly, this still has one of the best combat systems out of any MMO in my opinion.
Graphics – 5/10 Graphically, it looks and feels much more dated than I remember, and this continues to get worse every year.
Narrative – 1/10 The narrative – what remains of it… is incredibly underwhelming.
World – 6/10 The world is large and open, but there’s nobody inhabiting it, and nothing to really warrant.. well, doing anything within it. Which is why everyone is AFK in 2 town hubs.
Content – 6/10 There is, admittedly, plenty of things to do in the game. There’s just nobody doing any of it.
Overall – 28/50 Honestly, I ended up rating this higher than I thought I would.

In its current form, TERA is a passable MMORPG. It is a very hollow shell of what it once was, and will likely continue to decline into obscurity, until Gameforge, the only Western publisher for the game now, shuts it down.
And given the kind of population numbers we’re seeing.. that could be sooner than we think.

I’m genuinely kinda shocked. TERA may not have been a perfect MMO, I mean, sure, it has its flaws. A lot of flaws. Like, too many flaws for it to ever be worth playing long-term. Short-term? Hell yeah. It’s a game you can come back to every so often and just have some fun in.
Where I’m trying to go with this though is that TERA is still a better MMO than most of the crap we have right now. It has better combat. It has better… okay, it has better combat than anything that isn’t Blade & Soul or Black Desert.

But what we’re here to talk about today is what is arguably the largest TERA-related announcement since En Masse shut down and gave publishing rights for North America over to Gameforge. And that is that TERA is shutting down.. in Japan. After being online for a grand total of 10 years.
And stop right there – I know exactly what you’re thinking. “Oh, phew, that was only the Japanese version of TERA, so I’m safe.” No, no you’re not. There were 2 regions where TERA had not only mainstream appeal, but also a large population: Korea, and Japan.
TERA was so popular in Japan that not only were they partly responsible for popularizing the Elin race amongst the community, but it was also Japan that first launched TERA’s Classic Server event, with the event running several times since its inception and inclusion.
The Japanese iteration of TERA was immensely popular – well, maybe not overall, especially when compared to other MMOs like Final Fantasy XIV. But compared to Gameforge’s version of TERA, the Japanese server was immensely popular, however, even Japan failed to keep the game alive and frequently updated.
You know what this means for other regions, right? Korea is the game’s country of origin, so it’s doubtful that version of the game is going to shut down in the immediate future, but if you’ve been playing TERA from within North America or Europe in the last couple years you’d know that it isn’t doing too well.
The game is essentially in maintenance mode, with very little in the way of content being produced for the PC version of the game. Console, maybe, but not for the PC.
Using this logic, it’s only a matter of time until Gameforge decides, much like their recent closure of SoulWorker and Kingdom Under Fire 2, that TERA just isn’t showing any type of return for them anymore and opts to shut it down as well.
Given this is the MMO that actually got me my current wife, that’s heartbreaking to think about.

In a Tweet made by the official Japanese Twitter, they went on to state: “Thank you for using TERA on a regular basis. The service will be terminated on April 20, 2022 (Wednesday) at 8:30 in the morning. We would like to express our sincere gratitude for your support.”
Yup, that was.. pretty much it. That was the most casual, cold closure announcement I’ve ever seen.
I’ve seen some people posting online that it’s okay, we have an acceptable sequel to TERA in the form of ELYON. They have the same developer, they have the same classes, they have a lot of reused assets from TERA itself, but I’ve played ELYON.
ELYON is not a good successor to the TERA intellectual property. TERA lasted a decade in the West, and is still running – somehow. ELYON, in the few months it’s been online has a lower playerbase than Gameforge’s version of TERA.
So while a few people might make the change to ELYON, I don’t think it’s worth even comparing the two games. ELYON is the “we have TERA at home meme,” and not in a way that you’d get a laugh out of. Well, not when Gameforge announce their closure of the game in the future as well, anyway.

Japan’s closure of TERA confirms a very evident future for the game. South East Asia, China, Russia, North America and Japan have all shut down their versions of the game. We have 2 regions left: Europe and Korea.
Europe’s population has been on the decline for years, even with the inclusion of the North American and Russian players, and Korea.. well Korea will hold on to and milk this game until they’ve got nothing left. Then they’ll either make a new TERA game using ELYON’s assets or they’ll make another crappy spinoff.

Regardless, this is a sad state to see the game in. This isn’t the final nail in the coffin for the franchise, but it’s definitely the dude with the hammer walking over to the coffin with the nail in his hand.
This was once the pinnacle of the genre. I’m genuinely saddened to see how far the game has fallen since then.
RIP Japanese players. I know there were still plenty of you enjoying the game, but take solace in the fact that the rest of us are soon to follow you.

2022 continues to deliver blow after blow for the MMO genre.

TERA is an MMORPG that will always hold a special place in my heart. This is the MMORPG that brought Mrs Stix and I together, and as such – regardless of how bad it gets, I’ll always come back if only to relive the experience that allowed for me to meet the person that made my life, and this channel as a whole, complete.

When En Masse, the North American publisher (at the time) announced they were shutting down, I was concerned for the game as its future was uncertain. Thankfully, Gameforge acquired rights to publish the North American incarnation of TERA; an addition to their publishing rights for the European version.

There are some minor differences between the North American and European versions of the game, one of which is the VIP membership – something that I went ahead and purchased as I feel as though the only real way to play TERA is via the purchase of a premium membership. The benefits (boosted XP, gold, village atlas etc.,) are well worth the money you’ll spend on it but I can see how the monthly recurring price would be an issue for many players that are unable to afford it.

Another difference is the ping. Living in North America, I never had ping issues in TERA. It is one of the few MMOs that are genuinely easy to play. However after Gameforge acquired rights to publish it within North America, I now have a delay between my action and the registering of my action. Meaning it’s slightly more difficult to time my dodges out of AoEs and making it through obstacles that should otherwise be easy are now much more difficult.

Thankfully that is what VPN’s are for, right? I’m an avid promoter of ExitLag personally, as it’s a VPN that I’ve been using for almost 2 years now without issue. They’ve allowed me to successfully make it into MMOs like Justice Online, Moonlight Blade, Blue Protocol, Elyon and Lost Ark (due to them masking my IP) and have even lowered my ping in MMOs like Blade & Soul (by roughly 30%.)

Outside of ping and the noticeable difference in the VIP membership (you only get a single XP potion per day via Gameforge as opposed to 12 from En Masse,) TERA is very much the same as it’s always been. This is a true-action MMORPG that has always, and likely will retain for much of the foreseeable future, some of the best action combat in the MMO-scene. Not only is this a fantastic example of fluid combat, but the abilities look high quality, they feel impactful and the classes have depth. You’re capable of altering what glyphs you have active for each skill, offering advantages like increased damage percentage, or reduced ability cooldowns. Thankfully each class looks and feels pretty unique, with there being quite the selection to choose from. Albeit there are some classes that are specific to individual races as opposed to complete unrestricted access to everything, but that’s something that is mostly overlooked by the general playerbase as the Elin, which has more available classes than any other races, happens to be the most played, most customizable race in-game.

The leveling experience in TERA is done in one of two ways. On the one hand, you can level via the main story. This will allow you to explore much of what the world has to offer and include the majority of dungeons found throughout the game. The dungeons, when run through the story will all be approachable solo, meaning you won’t be required to play with other players. However, on the other hand we have the faster, possibly easier method: dungeon grinding. Running dungeons that are of your approximate level-range (which often take maybe 15-20 minutes to complete,) via the Vanguard Requests function. This is by far the most popular method and the method with which the majority of the playerbase utilizes to acquire their levels. However again, you won’t get to witness or experience much of the game, so this is more or less targeted at players that have played the game once before.

TERA is an MMORPG unlike any other. Yes, there are other action MMOs out there. Yes, there are better looking MMOs out there. Yes, there are MMOs with better narratives (TERA’s is honestly very hard to follow as it’s an incoherent mess.) There are generally better MMOs out there that could satiate every need you have from one. But TERA offers their own unique spin on the genre that no other game does, and its combination of engaging gameplay, its unique graphical style, its world and every facet of the game make for an experience you won’t get to have anywhere else. Yes, it definitely has its flaws. Yes, there are aspects of the game that are probably considered pay to win. But this is an MMO that is still definitely worth trying in 2021 if you haven’t already.

It’s been a little bit now since Gameforge took direct control over publishing TERA in North America from En Masse, and things have been going over pretty smoothly from what I’ve heard.

Granted, I haven’t personally jumped in-game to verify that information, though. Regardless, Gameforge revealed the first in many updates coming to the game: The new Catalepticon dungeon with brand new gear to acquire, new bosses to engage and more.
According to the developers, they actually have plans on doing monthly updates going into the future, something that En Masse (when it still actively published the game within North America) could never maintain. It’s unconfirmed what specifically they plan on introducing into the game – new classes, regions.
I believe they’ll remain specific to the console incarnation of the game, but it’s definitely good news to see the PC version continuing to be developed.

Okay, first and foremost, Saru, why you gotta call me out like this brother? C’mon. You know I love everything related to TERA, right? I did a video on the TERA-ble MOBA game coming out, and.. okay, you know what, I can’t actually continue this with any type of seriousness.
Now this is actually a god damn shame to see – I know TERA is having their fair share of issues right now. With En Masse shutting down and the future of TERA up in the air, it’s surprising to see the announcement that the brand new TERA game, TERA: Endless War is launching in November 2020.

Before we go any further though, I see that there’s actually a trailer for the game included in the Tweet, so let’s go ahead and take a look at that. And let’s go in with an open mind!

I know, guys, I know. This is a mobile game. But that’s exactly why I feel like we need to talk about this: TERA has announced so many additions to the IP recently, but the state of the TERA MMORPG itself has continued to decline, continued to fall into a state of almost disrepair.
Players continue to leave the game every single day, and En Masse – well, I was going to say En Masse have done nothing to remedy this but in reality, now that En Masse will no longer have any control over the TERA MMO, a brand new publisher might be able to salvage what remains.

Now, while I do not in any way support TERA: Endless War as this game is your typical mobile copy > paste strategy trash with TERA models, I figure for those of you that are genuinely interested, I’d give you a small summary of what the game actually is.
TERA: Endless War is a mobile strategy game. You build up your city, your military forces, and send them into battle. That’s.. pretty much it. I’ve never been a fan of these types of games, and throwing in some Elin’s isn’t going to change that.
I mean checking the Google Play Store, it only has 200 total ratings, going a ways to show how popular the title has been thus far. And it stands to reason as to why.

Regardless, I’m not here to just mindlessly trash the game.
The game is going to be a hot mess either way; I’m surprised that they’re putting so much focus, so much effort, so many resources into pushing out other TERA games, other TERA game modes when the game itself – a game that has been successful for years, that provided the devs the ability to milk the IP to this degree is being completely ignored.
This isn’t as bad as Bless Online, Bless Unleashed and Bless Mobile WHICH ARE STILL COMING BY THE WAY.. but still.. TERA’s name is being tarnished over and over and it’s a sad state to see it in.

This has been an interesting couple weeks. We’ve had some new MMOs announced, we’ve had some entire publisher studios shut down, and gotten some announcements we’ve been actively waiting on for.. years now.
So you guys should be excited! We’ve got quite a bit to talk about in this week’s Weekly Byte of MMORPG News video.

miHoYo, the developers behind the upcoming Genshin Impact game have announced that they’re going to be launching on September 28th – globally, on the PC, PS4 and mobile devices.
Yes, the PS4 release was expected to be delayed due to the beta test period being extended well beyond the PC and mobile test periods, but apparently they pushed through and will now have a simultaneous release across all platforms.
I’ve talked about Genshin Impact quite extensively over the course of the last year, and I’m happy to say that it’s finally almost time for everyone to get in-game and play.
Together, with other players if you want to – Mrs Stix and I – or at least Mrs Stix is definitely going to be playing as I think the multiplayer experience is utter garbage, but disregarding the multiplayer aspect the game is truly an incredible game.. well that and the Gacha system is terrible.
PS4 pre-registration is also available right now for players that want to register for the PS4 launch – or at least it was when I wrote this up.

I was directed to an article on MMOCulture this morning where I learned that Nexon are in the process of developing a brand new PC MMORPG that they’re calling a “AAA-class masterpiece game that can satisfy users in all aspects such as content and visuals.”
I know, guys, Nexon has disappointed us with every single release in the history of their studio, but maybe they can change. Maybe they- okay, I can’t continue that sentence with a straight face.
While the project has a currently unnamed title, they did go on to announce what they’re creating: A medieval fantasy MMORPG based on a completely new IP with a seamless, open world that features no loading screens, has guild content, will be cross-platform between PC and mobile devices like Genshin Impact or Tower of Fantasy and – if I read correctly.. might be an isometric MMO like Diablo or Path of Exile?
They’re also developing another project, “Project HP” but little is known about that thus far other than it’ll be another medieval game with magic.

For those of you waiting on any news pertaining to Project TL.. here you go, finally! NCSoft confirmed that the game is going to be undergoing a test phase from the 31st of August through the 4th of September, with an upcoming Closed Beta scheduled for later this year.
I had reported on this earlier this year, where I mentioned that both Project TL and Project BBQ were both going into some form of testing this year, but this confirms things – at least for Project TL.
NCSoft also just registered the “TL” and “TL: Origin” trademarks as well, which leads us to believe it’s close to releasing – with them promising it’ll launch by 2021!
They went on to elaborate that they have every intention of launching globally, with “Project TL being developed for the global audience with technologies and visuals they are familiar with,” further going on to state that this is supposed to be the “start of a new universe.”

En Masse Entertainment, the publisher behind both TERA and Closers announced last week that they were actually shutting down.
Meaning all of their staff members – people that have worked on their games for almost a decade now, or over a decade, actually, since I believe they started 11 years ago, are now jobless – a terrible situation for any person.
While it’s always sad to see a publisher shut down, or MMOs go offline, it’s worth noting that Naddic Games, the developers behind Closers have several updates for the game planned, including continuing to publish the game in the regions it’s currently available in.
We’ve heard nothing pertaining to TERA’s fate currently though, but it’s a safe bet to assume Gameforge will likely publish it since they recently attained South East Asian publishing rights for the game on top of their European publishing rights.

Amazon Game Studios, you know, the very same people behind Crucible and New World, have announced that they entered into a publishing agreement with Smilegate RPG, the developers of Lost Ark.
This sparked a wave of interest, as they went on to confirm that “Amazon Games is committed to bringing our customers the most engaging game experiences, both through our own internal development teams and from the very best external development studios around the world.”
This is confirmation that they are open to working with other developers around the world to bring foreign MMOs to the global market. MMOs that would have otherwise been completely ignored, self-published, or published by companies like Gameforge or MY.GAMES – something none of us want.
They went on to note that Smilegate has a “strong track record of creating big games that players love, built to offer years of enjoyment.”
Currently, Smilgate has developed and publishes 3 PC games within South Korea: Soul Worker, Tales Runner and Lost Ark. Since Soul Worker is published by Gameforge, and Tales Runner is in no way a AAA budget PC title, it’s all but confirmed we’ll be getting Lost Ark.
Next year, actually, since they confirmed the game will be launching “some time during 2021,” with specific details being revealed at “a later date.”

ArenaNet made 2 large announcements concerning Guild Wars 2 earlier this week: The first is that the game is going to receive a much needed boost in population when it launches on to Steam in November 2020 – yup, players will finally be able to connect the game to their steam accounts.
This is something that players have wanted for a long time. But one issue with that reveal is that you’re going to be required to make a brand new account as unlike Star Wars The Old Republic and PSO2, ArenaNet will not be supporting account migration options.
What this means is that if you have an account on ArenaNet, you’re stuck there. You can’t connect your account to Steam, instead, you’re required to make a brand new account via the Steam client – something I know has caused a lot of upset in the community as it just seems ridiculous.
Second, they announced that their next expansion, which is taking us back to Cantha, is actually titled “End of Dragons,” although not much was really shown or detailed during the reveal, including an expected release date.

So New World is having a Preview event held until September 4th, allowing players to log in if they’re pre-ordered the game at some point in the past and test the game completely.
I actually just did a video on this yesterday, where I went over my experience within the game and while I was definitely disappointed – I feel like Amazon have plenty of time to fix issues both Mrs Stix and I had with the game.
This definitely has a target audience that will enjoy the game, as it’s not in any way a bad game, but that audience is definitely not the MMORPG niche as it felt like a survival crafter more than anything else.
If you’re interested, I urge you to head on over and watch my New World video to decide for yourself.

Last week Intrepid Studios, the team behind the upcoming Ashes of Creation MMORPG announced that they were breaking off their partnership with MY.GAMES, who was in charge of publishing the game within Europe.
Intrepid instead have opted to open their own publishing studio within Europe to handle publishing within the region, which while I’m glad to see – as MY.GAMES are terrible, look at Revelation Online and Skyforge, I don’t know how well this will turn out considering this is a smaller indie dev studio we’re talking about here.
Ashes of Creation is still a very, very long way off releasing, as is the way of the indie MMO scene.

This is coming earlier than I’d anticipated. People were assuming “end of December” for the Shadowlands release, but apparently Blizzard just announced yesterday – or, a couple days ago as of this going live, that Shadowlands would be going live on October 27th, 2020.
This means that the pre-patch is going to be hitting the live servers very soon, like it always does ahead of a new expansion.
It’s been a while since we’ve gotten new content, so it’s nice to see that it’s only a short wait between now and then, and both Mrs Stix and I are incredibly excited, so much so that not only will we be starting brand new characters once the pre-patch hits, but we’ll also be leveling those characters on stream. And you guys are more than welcome to join us in-stream and in our new guild as well! We play on Stormrage, FYI.

By now you’re all well aware that Bless Unleashed is also releasing on PS4 under Bandai Namco – which if it’s anything like the Xbox release handled by Bamco won’t really be bad, but also that Neowiz is self-publishing the PC version of the game on Steam.
And that version probably will be, as Bamco actually distanced themselves from the PC release claiming they have “nothing to do with it.” But I digress.
The PC iteration of Bless Unleashed is going into Closed Beta testing next month, and there’s a pre-registration form for players that are interested in testing the game out on PC.
The PC Beta will run for 12 hours on September 26th, and there won’t be any restrictions preventing players from across the glove from participating. Yup – this and likely the full release of the game will feature a full global release.

I did a video covering this a couple days ago, but apparently Jandisoft, the developer behind the upcoming Grim-dark MMORPG Mad World have stated that after being mostly silent throughout the year, they still have an expected release date of 2020.
The game was initially expected to release back in 2018 but suffered quite a few setbacks that ultimately resulted in the game being delayed as long as it has been. There have been a few small updates made over the course of the year, but otherwise I find it interesting that they still expect to release in the next couple months.

Who would’ve thought that Grand Fantasia would continue to receive updates? Because I got some good news for players still active within the game – Gamigo has rolled out a large update that allows players to tackle a brand new dungeon with new bosses, new items and more.
I wasn’t aware that the game was still – well, can we say “actively updated?” Because let’s be honest, yes this is an update, but it’s in no way being “actively updated,” right?

Yes, you read that correctly, En Masse Entertainment, after 11 years in the industry, is completely shutting down, much to the dismay of the general player population that play their games, leaving them wondering what exactly will happen to their favorite MMOs. En Masse took to the Facebook pages for both TERA and Closers, reposting the same message on both.

However, on the official Closers forums, a staff member, SingleBear decided to make a forum post titled “Closers Service Will Continue With Naddic,” Naddic Games being the developers behind the MMO. Apparently, Closers will feature 2 additional updates scheduled for August 31st and September 28th, after which the game will change hands over to Naddic themselves who will be self-publishing the game henceforth. This is unexpected and surprising, but I’m curious to see where it ultimately ends up going. TERA fans were not as lucky though as.. we weren’t given anything definitive. Will KRAFTON, the developers of TERA and the upcoming Elyon MMORPG take over self-publishing of the game? That’s a possibility, but considering their new partnership with Kakao Games that allows Kakao to publish Elyon within North America I highly doubt it. What seems most likely is the fact that Gameforge, who acquired the SEA publishing rights earlier this year will finally obtain full global rights to the game, publishing within SEA, Europe and North America. Regardless of where TERA ends up, you know we’ll be here to cover it!

En Masse announced recently that they’re going to be doing something huge for TERA, updating the game to be 64-bit compatible. This is one of the largest updates to the game in recent memory, as players have been having issues with crashing, performance issues, issues that would prevent them from even getting into the game – all stemming from the fact that the devs wanted to stay 32-bit compatible. No more, though! As of August 11th, 2020, TERA will be fully 64-bit compatible, and players are going to take advantage of that as much as they possibly can! The game sorely needed this, but it might be too little too late at this point.

While the 64-bit update, and the increased system requirements are no doubt going to be a cause for quite a bit of discussion over the coming days, it’s worth noting that the update includes more than that – it introduces the new weekend-only 20-player raid “Commander’s Residence,” where you go up against the First Corps Commander, Maknakh, and the two dungeons, Rift’s Edge and Rampaging RK-9 Kennel will be making a return to the game for the time being. These dungeons are aimed at level 70 players with optimized gear.