TERA Online PC is now shuttered as an officially licensed service (as of this writing, the KR servers have a few more hours before they close). I spent most of the day (around 16 hours) in-game today on NA Velik (seeing Velika Freedom Plaza this packed again, was a reminder of what once was).
Ever since the closure announcement, the game was a literal ghost town as most of the hardcores began playing on the rogue/private servers. The final few days leading up to the closing, had more players AFKing (I didn’t think the turnout would be as much as it turned out to be).
And it was nice to see a lot of players returning to give the game a decent sendoff; a sendoff that Gameforge was absent from in-game (no GM’s at all, no closing events). In retrospect, Devilian got a far better send off even with the challenges (a lot of players not being able to even login if their system had been upgraded to the newer Windows update that rendered the client inoperable); we had at least 4 staff including the former assistant producer running some events for what amounted to less than 50 people in-game on the NA server). Gameforge not doing anything (and just a bare minimum since April, did themselves no favors; that neglect equals a loss of any goodwill (I’m definitely NOT patronizing anything they publish going forward).
But the players devised their own activities including an aerial fireworks display at the Velika Outskirts beach that lasted over an hour (I didn’t set all mine off since I wanted some for the final moments) on NA Velik. The Dragon fireworks (like below) can be taxing on the client when a lot of them are setoff simultaneously.
It fortunately wasn’t a problem in the above Outskirts area but the same could not be said for Velika itself. In the final half-hour, the client FPS lag reared its head in Velika as more fireworks were set off And as the clock wound down to under 15 minutes, client freezes and crashes were common (mine locked up twice); a lot of characters went poof in several client freezing FPS lagging events. Some folks went to other zones after (like Highwatch) while a small group of elins decided to make their final resting spot in-game at the Lake of Tears in Pora Elinu (the birthplace of elins). I decided to stay in Velika where the main ending party was.
I haven’t had time to go through and process all of the footage I recorded; the following however is a short clip of the final few minutes before the server was shutdown. My game client didn’t even display the disconnection dialog (so I used part of it for a “1 minute of silence outro).
Even though I’m running TERA in an offline fashion (and trying to determine which private server if any, I’ll be playing on), the closure of the official game service was still one that hit the sadness emotion (because part of the memories are from those you encounter along the way in that journey). Myself, I haven’t completely processed any of this yet because it seems surreal (it’s officially over on PC, but tempered by leaked server binaries).
When you care about any game, those characters become an extension of you. And when it ends, it feels like part of your own soul is lost.. I know that even though I can recreate all of my characters, it’s not the same in the sense of the actual time you put into them over the years. There is also the sobering finality/reality of no new development going forward. Rogue/private servers can only last so long without newly designed content (rebalancing existing ones has its own limits) especially when it comes to players who have always pushed the content (it’s a different story for players who were into RP or collecting fashion). For myself, the adventure continues in TERA Offline; not just for all of the things I enjoyed about the game, but also being able to tinker with the game parameters itself.
UPDATE: I stayed up to watch a couple of KR streams of their server closure (I feel bad for the girl whose game crashed in Highwatch with less than 5 minutes to shutdown, had to reboot her system, and just missed being able to connect to the server; the game was still up but was no longer letting anyone in). The KR client shuts down immediately as soon as they terminated the service; almost like a kill switch (no disconnect message; it just ends). It looked and felt so jarring and abrupt (there’s a small amount of solace when the client is just looping though the last actions before it’s communication to the server ended; a lot of folks on the Gameforge servers just left the client up for awhile as they processed through the usual emotions). I left mine (which didn’t even throw up the disconnect dialog) up in that state for around 10 minutes.
Several hours later, the same “after shutdown” empty feeling that I had when Devilian closed, exists (doesn’t matter that I have offline versions of TERA running and know there are multiple of private servers available). Because as mentioned above, it goes beyond that; the finality that development has ceased. And it sadly wasn’t the players who gave up completely. Many left because of the direction various dev teams took. A number of folks who hadn’t logged in for awhile (some in years), made it back for one last time to say goodbye. Bluehole in recent years couldn’t figure out what core aspects of TERA resonated with players. How Elyon turned out is a testament to current day Bluehole, being disconnected with what gave TERA the longevity it had even though retention became problematic over the past few years. Players still have this deep attachment to the game. And it is now over in terms of development. That loss is the emptiness that I feel now. Krafton/Bluehole also couldn’t figure out a way to keep what is a core part of its legacy, alive (even if in a downscaled maintenance mode). TERA was far from close to being anywhere near perfect, but it was part of the companies DNA and soul; the current leadership saw no problems with throwing it away like this. Console continues but it is on borrowed time with the remaining produced content from the PC version that they can rely on (and it’s a fools errand to believe they will invest in expensive production to design actual new content for console).
PUBG has been an unexpected success for them, but they are back to being a one-trick pony (having to again, rely on a single IP; albeit this one pulling in record revenues and profits that dwarfs TERA during its earlier heyday). But it will never have the soul that TERA had (and Elyon lacks any of the personality and soul that was critical for TERA being able to last a decade). This basically represents the point where I no longer have to patronize either Krafton/Bluehole and Gameforge (both have contributed to the lack of goodwill that I feel today).
