Another Dead MMO

After 9 months in Early Access Wayfinder is being stripped of all MMO elements, and will now be single player. While the game is getting many improvements, this is a drastic shift in direction and quite different from the product people paid for. So what happened, and what's next?

[LyinOats]

I know mmo fans are disappointed by this news, but the ARPG looter fan in me is now interested in playing this game.

[itsmantras]

hmm so now its single player, not always online, buy to play, reworked system, functions like a looter/dungeon crawler, added content, removed microtransactions, eased the grind of getting new characters....this is literally a god-like rework. Im so excited for this game now

[DorkestKnight]

I’ve been a fan of yours for years - it’s cool seeing you talk about a game I worked on, even under these circumstances. I know the change isn’t what everyone wanted, but we busted our butts to make something we were proud of. ❤️

[bnightm]

the only reason these kinds of games are marketed as an "mmo" is so the cosmetics have a higher perceived value while the gameplay barely qualifies as being multiplayer.

[TheLamppost]

I'm...actually more interested in it now than I was before.

[Mighty-oni]

I don't think everything needs to be a mmo or live service game. I think this is a better direction for this game I only have about 20 hours but it didnt feel like the mmo aspect added anything.

[STEFiRoTH]

If you've been following the game this is an absolute win as the "shared world"/"MMO" aspects of the game caused all the major problems and almost everyone was already playing solo or pre-made groups with little to no interaction with other players outside passing by them in towns or on the road.

[sebonesiful]

good news for the game in my opinion. I am open to the new direction, rather have a functioning coop looter arpg.

[motherlodegt]

This is good news. The MMO aspects always felt tacked-on for me. The more I progressed, the more it felt like the difficulty curved almost forced me to find other players, but the dungeons layout and encounter designs really weren't that enjoyable in group settings. I'm happy for the randomized loot and the stats on the armor too, just grinding for accessories and orbs wasn't motivating for me. I abandoned the game 1 month after the beginning of early access. These changes will make me come back to try them for sure.

[sir_snarf]

As always, thank you for your quality and objectively fair coverage. This has obviously not the path we expecting to go down, I do stand by my words that Wayfinder Echoes IS a much better game now and I am so proud of the hard work by the whole team, that had to go in to make this a reality. I cant think of another live service MTX game which has converted into a pay once own forever peer to peer co-op game and I am excited to be apart of making that history. We know this isn't going to be good news for so many of our fans, but the alternative was much worse in our minds and we are excited to convert thousands of previously MTX only Items into in-game free loot. I truly hope folks give it a fair shot and share with us what they think. You have always made the best quality content and we are incredibly grateful for your time and effort in sharing our work with the world.

[Daviddododo]

Great assessment of the property, I'm a founder and I actually like this game still. Definitely gonna play this new iteration, I really liked the art and gameplay

[randalette]

I think this change is good. I looked into the game 3 months ago and everytime another player was crossing my ways, my FPS dropped down to max 5. I also had lots of crashing when running through the social hub town. So I refunded it. Wanted to wait until it is fixed, polished and ready. I really hope the game will be better with all the server issues gone. They really impacted the overall gaming experience in a really bad way. I am not a big fan of life service anyway, so I am not sad about the monetization changes.

[soulechelon]

Glad you explained more about this than what other youtubers have done. Yeah sadly Airship Syndicate's hands are tied here by DE. While DE initially helped fund the game, the problems at launch were DE's mishandling of Wayfinder's account systems. Fastforward a few months later and we find DE closing their publishing branch, taking ALL of the Wayfinders Founders packs money, and leaving AS to pick up the pieces. This change is literally their only option to keep the game alive. That said - I'm cool with it. I love co-op looter games like this, and my friends are now more interested in Wayfinders as a co-op game than a potentially grindy MMO.

Sucks that all of this transpired and I'm sure everyone in AS has a few more gray hairs than they did last year, but this is the best outcome for an absolutely terrible turn of events.

And as someone who's a huge fan of DE/Warframe and Steve in particular, I'm very, very disappointed in all of this. While DE's publishing branch already had a bad reputation, I was really hoping they'd turn it around with Wayfinders. Instead it became one of their bigger failures, and it's on DE far more than it is on AS. Never thought Steve would become so corpo he'd practically doom another up and coming MMO-lite his company helped bring to fruition, but well it's just one more reason to not put anyone on a pedestal. Eventually they'll reveal why they should not be.

[zacharybrand]

I'm not mad about this, sounds good to me. At least this will give the game a chance to survive and now I will plan on playing it because I'm so fed up with microtransactions I had written this game off. Now this is a on my radar to play.

[NoxiousWhat]

Wayfinder is a game I would've never played as an MMO but am now interested in it. MMOs die. I'm tired of games dying. The core gameplay loop is fun, so I can live without the MMO component.

[vewyscawymonsta]

Im actually more interested in it now. They should have released this in EA on all platforms.

[happycompy]

Them converting a dying online game into a single player offline game with optional co-op is actually incredible. I WISH that was the standard for online games that reach End of Life instead of them just being shut down permanently!

[Eruyt]

I will take this as a win. I bought the Founders Pack (and I am not from USA so it was expensive as fucxk) and I liked the game when the servers were working. So better this than just closing servers.

[micheljolicoeur]

Have to remember that the server issues of Wayfinder were ALL Digital Extremes, as the publisher DE was responsible for the infrastructure and maintenance of the servers. As to refunds and the Founder's Packs as you said, all money went to DE and depending on the recoup clause it is doubful Airship received any money at all from the Founder's Packs.

[Gramald]

I stoped playing, felt i could not make anny progress to get new weapons! Now it sounds like i can have fun with it and still get stuff done! Great news! I will play it now!