The June 27th closure of ArcheAge NA/EU is only a few days away. After the service termination was announced, I rarely logged in except to just pay the taxes on my properties so that I’d have a small part of the game world forever memorialized with the stuff I paid actual money for.
Unlike Devilian where the sense of loss was greater as the closing date arrived (especially due to the encounters I had in those final months), this feeling is barely there. Part of that is due to when I first quit in 2017. The other is because of that decision over the course of the 2023 (which began in 2022) that led to stepping away from gaming as a hobby starting in 2024.
I also stopped logging in to Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail. I’ve barely kept up on anything gaming related; since April, the disengagement level has been to the point where I don’t really miss the whole thing. But I finally did log back in to my two ArcheAge accounts and began placing whatever furnishings I had in chests, wherever. I didn’t even take advantage of the free Erenor gear/items and free credits they gave out.
The only thing I want to do is record a few final videos of my properties and the decor that I had accumulated over these past few years along with my characters. And then run around the game world one final time, park all of my characters in their respective house (if they have one), and then just be on my main (on each account) when the plug is pulled. But I literally don’t feel any sadness that the game is coming to an end. In many regards, I feel this moment has been long overdue (terrible developer and terrible publishers due to terrible executive/management decisions). It also brings closure to that chapter of Korean MMO’s that ended up consuming a lot of my time and money over the past decade. It would be nice if there was a viable emulator, but I’m also kind of ok with not ever seeing one.
On June 30, 2024, I will also recognize the two-year anniversary of the closing of TERA PC and marvel at how Krafton is still chugging along with TERA Console (with patches that are not groundbreaking, and just milking it until whatever contract with it runs out).
