Why TERA Shut Down (PC EU & NA) 😥😔😔 A Veterans Confession

What Happened? After 10 years, BlueHole Studios the developers of TERA have decided to shut down their prized Action Combat MMORPG.

As a long-time player of the game, I walk you through the prime factors that contributed to the failure and imminent death of TERA in the West on PC

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To those who want to still give TERA a try, refer to the TERA subreddit group for Private servers

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CHAPTERS:

00:00 Intro
00:32 What is TERA and What Happened?
02:03 Shaky Foundations (The Nature of TERA)
03:10 The Woes of Unreal Engine 3
04:23 The Elin Race Controversy
05:19 GENDERLOCKING
06:31 Foreshadowing the Fall
07:13 Reputation Lost (PROXY DRAMA)
08:09 Memeslash
09:09 Poor Communication Gone South
11:47 The Fall of ENMASSE
13:03 TERA is Dead, Now What?

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Thanks once more for following along, I hope to see you in the next one!

#DEATHOFAGAME #TERASHUTSDOWN

[boredpandacafe]

I'm a Tera veteran, having been part of the game since Closed Beta 1 and every beta thereafter. Over the years, I’ve built a roster of 24 alts, starting out as a sorcerer but eventually finding my main in the Priest. Today, after a three-year break, I logged back in, and as soon as I heard the familiar music and saw those beautiful landscapes, I couldn’t help but get emotional. This game has always held a special place in my heart. It’s not just the gameplay; it’s the friendships I made, the connections that have lasted and grown over time. The memories I’ve made here are priceless, and I couldn’t even begin to count the hours I’ve spent in Tera. Your video really captured that feeling, and I want to thank you for putting it together. It’s a reminder of how much this game has meant to so many of us. I extend my best wishes to everyone in their future gaming endeavors.

[cb]

I remember getting into Tera in early 2012 as my first mmorpg ever, and had a blast right from the start, absolutely clueless about everything, but having fun with my friend on the EU server Veritas. We quit playing before even getting to level 60, but when I decided to return on my own I was determined to learn and get good at the game. And not just skill wise as a player, but to actually get that PhD in mmo lingo and understanding the ins and outs of the game, everything from UI to basic concepts that mmo veterans often take for granted, learning new systems very quickly between different games because they have the basic knowledge under their belt.

I ditched the archer I started with and even moved to NA (Tempest Reach) because EME was leagues better than GF, and rolled a priest in hopes to make friends easier and to give myself more responsibility, forcing me to get good fast lest others die on me. Was picked up by a newly formed guild and mained that priest for a couple of years before that guild disbanded. I wanted nothing to do with the toxicity on what then was the hardcore pve server to the hardcore pvp server of Mount Tyrannas, and I needed a break from that as I started developing some elitist mentality myself that I didn't want to stick, so I moved to Celestial Hills and rolled a sorcerer. And there, amongst the carebear casuals, I found a permanent home. Made tons of friends and good memories, and the core members of my final guild are still together talking everyday on discord, and I ended up amongst them because they were new and in an effort to undo my own elitism I went out of my way to help them and teach them everything I knew, got them into endgame, with a much healthier attitude and had way more fun. And I can proudly say I was a good player, so baby me at the start of my journey got her wish of getting good fulfilled. Not top player, but better than average and not at the cost of my kindness and patience with others.

Tera absolutely obliterated other mmo's for me. I'm currently desperately trying to get into FFXIV just to have something to do whilst waiting for Blue Protocol, but the tab targeting is really difficult to get into after Tera. Even other action combat mmo's just.... don't hit like Tera. I am hoping BP suffices as a replacement, or at least a close alternative until something like Tera comes along.

Also, FWIW, I predominantly played elins myself, because I thought they were cute and appealed to me more than other female characters. And in my experience, most elins I interacted with were either a) girls who also preferred cute over sexy b) harmless weebs c) players, especially pvp players, who cared about casting animation, and finally d) the meme supremes and edgelords that played into the elin honey and fbi jokes on purpose to wreak havoc and make gullible players even more appalled by the race. Were some costumes bad? Yes. But idk, my main practically lived in the oversized snowsuit hoodie, which was far more relatable to me than any metal bikini on a castanic ever could.

This is way too long but as a final note, EME's decline nosedived the moment the original members of the team left, such as our beloved Tonka, Minea, and Harmonia. The whole proxy war was just tragic, and might have played out differently had it happened a lot sooner whilst EME was still genuinely a good publisher.

Here's to hoping us Tera orphans find another Tera to call home again soon.

[elmercy]

I quit playing TERA because they removed Kumasylum. I started playing again lately on the private servers and have to say, Tera can still compete with the other popular MMORPGs nowadays. It's strange that TERA got shut down while stuff like EVERQUEST ist still running.

[divxtera]

To see the old Starting area brought back so many
It hurts so hard its going down played aktiv from the beginning

[ThePurpleKnightmare]

The thing that killed this game was EQ Skyring, followed by the constant removal of content which occasionally got "replaced" The 3/5/7 dungeons being reduced to just Channelworks, alliance conflict being removed, and the constantly removed and replaced hard dungeons. New gear comes in, but it's basically just the same as the stuff before it but bigger attack/defense. This game needed to be sold to a better developer.

[misakianimated]

Ultimately TERA was still very much "milkable" globally with KTERA, JTERA plus Gamforge (NA, EU) TERA. The ultimate decision to shut down came from BlueHole its creator, Asumingly saw no further value and gain in continuing the development of TERA as it had basically completely stopped bringing in new players. As all the problems I mentioned drained the game of its players, it still had a dedicated hardecore playerbase. Krafton the main Studio owning Bluehole ultimately pulled the plug. It's sad but it is what it is, With Elyon flopping, one can only wonder about the future of BlueHole Studios.

[itsukarine]

I don't think the elin's looks bothered people as much as they let on, you can kinda see time and time again people largely only care enough to leave over it when they're extremely radical about loli stuff, but I can agree that the heavy elin focus on cosmetics probably was frustrating, even as someone who likes them. Other races still should've gotten needed attention for cosmetics and stuff so people have more incentive to stick around, but regardless I think elins did more for the game than took away, and Elyon's state should make that pretty clear that it was an important part of the formula.

One of the things that actually killed my interest years ago was the grind before they simplified much of it. Playing through the story in 2013 just before and after f2p was kind of miserable, those grinds aren't ever fun, so I never had a chance to get to enjoy that endgame content that kept most people involved in the game for up to a decade. I completely agree with optimization though, my PC at the time was running an AMD 7870 and it was pathetic that it struggled and made a lot of it unfun. There's so much squandered opportunity in TERA and I hope if they go for TERA2, they get things right this time.

[JasparJam]

50 subs more like should have 50k+, anyway -
Thank you for making a documentation of my favourite MMO, that people can look back on when it is soon gone. You seem to have covered most of the main issues the game had.

Rest in Peace TERA

[SirSaberDelux]

Let me tell you something about the "Lag" in TERA. I started playing on Day 1 and there was no Lag to be seen. Could play in high settings and everything was nice. Lack of content and or Updates + Gameforge's disgusting lootbox system for in game costumes made me abandon TERA. Years later I decided to try the game again, only to see that it's been completely changed Lore wise (starter island gone etc etc), that there were tons of stuff in the ingame store and the game lagged a ton ! So the devs must have done something to the game that started the whole lagging in the first place. A shame, I loved that game when it first came out. The Races, the world, a shame that Korean Companies don't know how to handle an mmo for western markets.

[narkfestmojo]

I wish they had of embraced tera proxy and made it part of the game. It would have cost them nothing to do so and cost them everything not to, a decision that made no sense and confounds me to this day. It's just confusing, why they didn't do this? shouldn't they be a company motivated by a desire to make money? If there is an issue with their game and someone else solves it for free, and offers to give it to them for free, why wouldn't they accept it in an effort to offer the best possible game experience, encouraging adoption of their game and maximising profits.

Speaking as someone who plays from Australia, I was absolutely shocked when I tried out tera proxy, my DPS from slayer more then doubled and that was just with the free SP system. A friend of mine who also plays slayer and has a very low ping showed me his skill execution speed was only slightly higher then mine. It was lovely no longer having to have American players carry me and being able to compete on a level playing field.

It annoys me that a purely rational decision making process driven exclusively by a desire to maximise profits would have saved this game.

Even now, why force shutdown? Seriously, why force shutdown? I get they might not want to develop tera any more, but why actually tell the publishers they can no longer publish the game?
They could say, "we're done and there will be no more updates ever", they would still be able to make a small amount of money from licensing and it would reduce the impact to the companies reputation from this heartless decision.


I will have to watch my 10 year old characters cease to exist and there is nothing I can do to save them; all because of an irrational (non revenue maximising) decision that makes no sense.

[aogiri]

I miss Tera man. Loved the game back in the day

[TheARESxGOD]

Awesome video and yeah TERA was a fun time and also makes me said all of the problems that it had and could've kept the game going but it is what it is.
Logged in today to save a few pictures of my characters just for nostalgia though.
So thank you TERA.

[gurgashrift]

First Wildstar, now don't think I can handle anymore breakups.. Ex's come and go..But MMO's will live on forever :(

[StellaShadowmoon]

I remember waiting for it to come out.. counting the days I played so hard for so many year spending lots of money .. helping new players and soloing dungeons.. I miss that game so much 😢

[CAfakmykak]

Simply put, the developers completely screwed the game. I played from 2012 to 2016 when the game began to die and occasionally came back just to check out the state of the game.

[nailenflammvor]

It's really sad to see what became of this game. I can still remember how excited I was back in 2011 when I seen the first game trailer and the happiness when I first logged in. It's one of my very favorite mmo's.
And to be honest I had no idea that proxy drama affected online that much. I certainly noticed that something IS going on that times but didn't connect that facts. I didn't knew that proxy was essential for so much people.
From my side as a person who played with ping 140-160 since 2014 and managed to have a good dps and evades on warr/gunner/priest I always wondered why people say TERA isn't playable with ping higher than 40 but now after my husband hosted a local server and I experienced 16 ms I start to understand.
Also I want to mention that pvp died long ago and a lot of people quit the game because of that. Plus game had a long story with rights issues since TERA is a stolen code. From what I know devs had a lot of problems because of that. And to be honest I don't think that BlueHole/Krafton are good developers either. More than that: I totally hate them now. Feels like they are too lazy to care about any of their games or they don't have any experience in game development (but again let's remember good examples like FFXIV. Devs shut the game down and then reworked it to the state when game became one of the best in mmo market). But to give the credit when credit is due they had enough courage to acknowledge that they screwed up and shut the game down. Of course I'm grateful that they developed TERA (especially when I know that if they wouldn't took the code from NC the game would have stuck in development hell) and I know that game development is a really hard work, but I will never understand why they decide to waste it's potential...
Thank you for video and sorry for a long comment

[Tempest_Murder]

Very well produced video, you deserve more views! I've never played Tera, but I think a LOT of MMO dev's can learn from Tera's mistakes.

[guyverhw]

This is my personal opinion(not a popular one) and I disagree with a lot of the reason stated in the video.

What I believe killed the game is:
- they removed old content. They should have kept and rebalanced them.
-The power gap between gears became larger.
-the game became too focus on gear upgrade instead of player' mastery to clear content. Example, we could literaly clear mchm without having any armor upgraded back in the days. Gear became mandatory to clear content. Hence +15 enhancement instead of +12.
-No more armor account share. This was a bit one for me cause I used to play every classes.
-The game got totally broken with brawler. Literally not a tank but a front faceroll DPS. This is people' fault with their complains.
-Speaking of the community, the dev did listen to them. Tire of chasing BAM?? ok we gona make all BAM standstill against tanks. DG too hard??? ok we gona nerf them(I bet most people doesn't even know which DG got nerf). Now we got a faceroll dps meter elitist game and not a action combat game.(main reason why I quit the game).
I believe all of the above happened because of monetization, unknowledgeable players, and mobile game industry.

The game only survived this long not because of the gameplay(which has long been dead) but because of the people simping for the elin race. This is just my opinion but I do believe it is correct.

[SkullyX]

I like the Elin. They're shortstack fairy creatures. That's just how the lore is for them. They don't get old. Stop comparing stuff to real life.🤣

[peacockterumi]

I don't really mind the Elin race as a whole truth be told, and someone who played as them, even I agreed that there should be no reason a race thay pretty much already have the ability to play any class they so choose, having one let along two exclusive class to themselves. It the same problem I have when with xenoverse 2 with the sayains race always getting new transformation while the other is stuck at a limited amount.