There’s a reason why I’ve left this out when bringing up the MMO-ARPG niche. It’s a game that didn’t have a long life in its country of origin (Runewaker Entertainment is a Taiwanese based company) where it was known as Embergarde (closed beta in March 2015). The game engine used is the proprietary in-house one (called RENA) they created for their other game, Dragon’s Prophet.
The live server was online for around an year before it was purposely taken offline once Guardians of Ember (GoE) launched on Steam Early Access (December 2016); Runewaker depreciated Embergarde in order to make Guardians of Ember the official version (the publisher is InselGames). The business model changed from “free to play” to “buy to play” due to changes made to the game for a western release (not just localization but also additional content). There is also an additional monetization layer where they sell loot orbs (which can also be purchased using the in-game currency that can be earned from doing dailies) that have mostly cosmetic items and utility functionality like inventory expansion.
Some players experienced issues with the games combat where there was a delay between skill activation and the attack animation/action actually occurring. Not everyone experienced this issue but those kind of things are a death knell for any action oriented combat system.
GoE was originally slated to launch on Steam EA in September 2016 but ended up being delayed several times until December. In September 2017, it finally left early access.
After directly observing the effects of a game (Devilian) not having service in its home country, I didn’t have a good feeling about how this game would end up turning out (especially with making it buy 2 play in the MMO space, let alone a niche one when it comes to a 2.5D isometric camera view and ARPG style combat).
While many sites did cover this game just prior to and as it went into early access, the larger marketing hype for it never materialized. Not even the usual “Diablo and Path of Exile-like” comparisons created a sizable interest with the ARPG demographic. Unsurprisingly, the games population has remained low where its peak concurrency was a mere 1150 at early access launch. They ran a sales campaign coming out of early access that hasn’t resulted in a population increase.
Looking at these CCU’s, I really couldn’t in good faith bring up this game while it remained in early access (it’s why I stay away from early access or Kickstarter style campaigns because often times, it is over promise and under deliver). It’s why I made a conscious decision not to really discuss Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem (formerly known as Umbra) even though it has far more promise and potential based on what the developers have been able to achieve.
