Many of us only view a game’s release in passing, and view it as an “event”. Groundhog Smasher came out, it failed, and we don’t hear of it again. Additionally, many of us associate “online” games with being “live service” - expecting the developers to announce a new skin, battle pass, game mechanic, or character every other week.
But some online games are just purely enjoyable, or get enough unremarkable patches, or sometimes don’t even need a high playercount, to be enjoyed for years after the developers stopped emitting news.
This subject also gets confusing with cross-play games; even if one game has hardly anyone in its Steam playercount, sometimes between Playstation and Xbox there’s just enough left to garner a following.
Which games do you play, or know about, that most people would’ve thought to be completely closed down, or at least had totally forgotten about?
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Guild Wars 1 - last month celebrated its 20-years anniversary :) I only started it in 2018, but it’s a really solid game!
And both its developer and publisher are committed to keeping it alive as long as they can. It’s been mostly automated in 2013, so apparently it costs very little to keep the servers running.
Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl
Wait, that’s online?
Yeah, but not story. Basically deathmatch
Final Fantasy XI, the first final fantasy mmo still has a hard-core dedicated player base. It predates wow and launched on the PS2.
APB Reloaded. Just looked at ths 2 days ago and 200 people were playing. This was the GTA online before GTA online. They blew their load and spend the budget on the character creator and nothing else
I thought “that game had such a tumultuous development cycle and launch surly it’s dead now right?” Wrong
Wolfenstein Enemy Territory is my pick
Rise of Nations was relatively active up until a few years ago. Unfortunately not natively supported on my device, haven’t tested emulators.
A comprehensive list of verifiably playable games could be huge for us, patient gamers.
There’s a number of mud games still around in their text glory. Love me a text mmo. Well most aren’t massive. None are massive. Hence mud, multi user dungeon. But not massively multi user.
I currently play Starmourn which is very new by mud standards.
Last I checked, Populous the beginning still has a small community going on Popre!
Team fortress 2 still has a massive community.
It was 99% cheaters, last time I checked. Has that changed?
The bot issue is resolved, cheater players not so much, but it’s way less problematic than CS2 since reports actually can lead to bans.
Quake 3 and Unreal tournament both released before the year 2000 and still have an active community
I’m pretty sure you can still find people playing Doom deathmatch online, although these days it might be more limited to various events rather than finding random folks online any given day. The modding community is still going strong after 30 years though
Metriod Prime: Hunters.
It was the best FPS, arguably the only FPS, on the Nintendo DS. Nintendo has long since shut down their online service for the DS. However, if you go into your WiFi settings you can change your DNS to point to a server that spoofs Nintendo’s credentials.
Thanks to this exploit you can play all the original DS games online with a legitimate game, on a legitimate console. There’s even a discord for MP:H with a matchmaking channel, clans, and regular tournaments. (The same probably goes for Mario Kart DS)
hold up link me the discord, I played the absolute fuck out of this game as a kid. literally built a whole community by shooting friend codes on a wall to add people I’d match against LMAO
How many are insta kill “deathalt” cheaters…?
Titanfall 2 servers were brought back online after being down for awhile.
I still play Starcraft 2 occasionally.
Is there any community or a different set of servers to point to? Titanfall 2 was my favorite game before the DDoSes, and when I’ve periodically checked you can try matchmaking but there’s nobody left to play with anymore. Is there a Discord or another set of servers or something?
On pc there’s a thing called the Northstar client that was pretty active during the ddos times
I just found out about north star and looked into buying TF2, its $30 on steam! wtf I remember seeing it for like $3 before
It’s been on steep discount often, as recently as May 1st. Just gotta wait for the sale, it’ll go on again. https://isthereanydeal.com/game/titanfall-2-ultimate-edition/history/
You can get EA keys dirt cheap on the grey market. Alternatively just wait for a sale and it will be a few quid on steam
I’m actually not sure, its my kid who plays. He was very excited and playing on xbox. I thought it was cool and unexpected but I guess maybe it died back down again.
Ultima IV -
- Them’s Fightin’ Herds went through a very tragic downfall. Publisher fired the entire development team at the end of 2023, before the final DLC character was even finished, and then released her in a completely broken state. Much later they would eventually put out a hotfix patch with several pages of nerfs, and this character is still banned competitively. They did promise further fixes, but they promised that a long time ago and it’s been radio silence since. All other promised content updates, including Story Mode, are canceled.
Despite all that, the community’s still here. I’m about to leave for Combo Breaker 2025 this weekend, where TFH will be one of the brackets I’m entering. Only a side event, bracket’s small, but as long as there are brackets I will show up to them. - Skullgirls is somehow still here, 13 years after release. It’s had a long history of perpetual development troubles, and yet has always been kicking. Earlier this year it came out that the developers are suing the publisher over $1.2 million they haven’t been paid, so it looks like this actually is the end of development for real now. Fortunately the final patch is in a very good state, they went out on a high note and I’m happy with the finished product.
But again, the community? Still here. Also at Combo Breaker 2025, as a main stage headliner. Skullgirls will never die. - Puyo Puyo Champions is the most functional version of the game, in fact it’s the only version on modern platforms that is faithfully accurate to original Tsu rules. Sega let it fall by the wayside in order to sell buggy rehashed crossovers and mobile subscription service exclusives, but PPC is the version you should be playing, don’t buy the shovelware that is skinwalking the IP now. Unfortunately, Sega’s mismanagement has split the playerbase because of all the shovelware they’re pushing, and the west in particular is a hopeless mess because of it. For best results, queue when Japan is awake. But you can still play this version, and you should!
Good luck for Combo Breaker 2025!
- Them’s Fightin’ Herds went through a very tragic downfall. Publisher fired the entire development team at the end of 2023, before the final DLC character was even finished, and then released her in a completely broken state. Much later they would eventually put out a hotfix patch with several pages of nerfs, and this character is still banned competitively. They did promise further fixes, but they promised that a long time ago and it’s been radio silence since. All other promised content updates, including Story Mode, are canceled.
My buddy still regularly plays EverQuest Online. These days, it’s sort of expected that you multibox and run an entire party, instead of just one character. He usually has his bots pulling mobs in the background of whatever other game we happen to be playing.
