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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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
Ultima IV -
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)
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.
- 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.
Back 4 Blood was the game that served as the idea for this post.
I recently felt like picking up some cheap copies of it to play with a few friends, and decided to launch it once ahead of time just to test it out and see how it ran. I picked “Online” mode out of habit, feeling it would likely search for a bit before handing me 3 bots to play singleplayer. Instead, I actually got a decent group of people together several days in a row.
In B4B’s case, while the developers visibly “abandoned” the game in news headlines, the form it exists in is very playable and generally bug-free, even if its ultra-highest-difficulty “endgame” allegedly lacks some refinement. It got a lot of outlash for not matching the playstyle of Left 4 Dead; having players use a deep system of roguelike-style upgrades. Since the enemies escalate in difficulty, those upgrades are often necessary and can connect with team strategy. It’s now on PS+, and since it’s crossplay, Steam players will get a lot of queue buddies. It’s also playable with just 2 people since the other 2 characters will just be bots.
I gave up on B4B pretty quickly because after your team dies a couple times you’re sent back to the beginning of the campaign, instead of the beginning of the level, like in L4D. Then everyone just drops out of frustration. Made trying the harder difficulties pointless. Was a really bad design decision.
I haven’t played for years now but NeoTokyo still has an active community.
Post Scriptum (now known as Squad 44) is still alive. A very under-appreciated game and they are trying to revive it with a new dev team who have been doing wonders but the active player count is still well below 1k.
