At the time of writing, ’s servers are down for maintenance. When they come back up on June 28, players will dive into the new adventures awaiting in . This means that the age of is over.
On the precipice of a new beginning for the MMO that has been running for over a decade, I wanted to look back on the game’s uneven, tedious, but ultimately emotionally resonant finale. I completed — —roughly twelve hours ago. I did not finish the most recent expansion until just before , rather than in the weeks and months following its 2021 release, even though I started the expansion with everyone else.
And that has to do with one of ’s major flaws: pacing. The stakes of were incredibly high. It was positioned as the end of the Hydaelan/Zodiark saga that began in .
While it wouldn’t be the end of the MMO, it did signal the end of an era. That means a lot of story threads had to be tied up in , and not all of them are done so cleanly. Jumping from Old Sharlayan to Thavnair to Garlemald to the Moon to the past back to Old Sharlayanand then to the end of the universe is a lot of mileage in one expansion.
Each of these locations includes its own characters and stories that depict how the world is preparing for the end times, but none of them get the room to breathe they so desperately need. While moments in Elpis with Venat and the other ancients stand out as a high point in the expansion, my time in the other locations is mostly a forgettable blur. The slog is what held me back f.