Gameforge announced that TERA Battle Arena will be closing down sometime early 2021 when patch 102 is deployed.
That didn’t last long, especially for NA players who had been in upgrade limbo as Enmasse Entertainment went through a multi-month shutdown process, where the game was stuck on patch 98 until the migration to Gameforge became official earlier this month.
TERA Battle Arena (TBA) was announced this past summer as a new game mode where you would play as one of the games heroes (established ones from the MMO as well as new ones specific to the mode). Effectively a TERA based MOBA, it failed to gain traction in any region since it really was a separate game that was lumped into the game client; you selected either the MMO or TBA. The heroes utilized a small subset pre-established skills from the main classes in the MMO.
Part of TBA was its “alternative” universe narrative where you performed a few PvE quests that brought back heroes that had died in the original MMO. I played through those short quests and found that these short story lines would’ve been better to have been included in the main game as instances similar to Castle Aranea solo dungeon instance. It was “nice” to be able to bring both Paesyn and Zolyn back to life again in an alternative ending as an example. However, it would’ve been nicer to do these with your MMO characters and have it part of the main game.
The overall production level was average quality though; it felt like a bare minimal effort to rework existing assets into a MOBA style format (which no one was clamoring for). There was that period of time several years ago when it was all the rage but with even Heroes of the Storm falling on hard times, I have no idea why Krafton felt it was even a good idea to waste resources on a game mode no one was screaming for. Almost every single one of their TERA franchise mobile efforts have flopped (TERA Origin in Japan being the latest casualty).
The point is that the PC and Console MMO’s are where they really should focus on; not only retaining players that have stuck with it for years but making it so that it can continually bring in new players. The latest content with Exodor (PC version) is just mediocre. And console development is embarking on its own path since the lead development is being handled by a small Japanese team (much more familiar with console players) where they are working on a completely new class exclusive to console TERA. Crossplay was also finally realized between Xbox and Playstation players though I’m not sure if that is a positive given how both populations were decimated (both platforms were down to a single server).
TBA on the PC was just a questionable use of resources for an already small team where the focus should be squarely on the main MMO. I know that Krafton is trying to find the next big thing and trying to milk what they can out of the TERA IP. Being side tracked into a TERA based MOBA is exactly how you do not want to waste engineering and production resources.
