Hell has frozen over it seems. After 8 years of stealth development, Rob Pardo’s Bonfire Studios has finally released the name of its upcoming video game for the PC. It will be called Arkheron. Naturally, “journalist” Rob Takahashi was given an exclusive interview with Rob about this announcement with some tidbits about the proposed game.
One thing that perplexes me is that it will not be an MMO or MMORPG. It seems Rob Pardo is no longer fascinated by the MMO genre that made Blizzard Entertainment billions of dollars with World of Warcraft. Instead, Arkheron will be a cooperative PVP game that you can play with your friends. If you don’t have any friends that play online video games, your shit out of luck.
Bonfire has a beta tester application link on its site.
Here’s one of the questions in the survey:
Question: What do you notice about this particular question?
Answer: there is no option to select MMO/MMORPG.
It seems Rob is no longer interested in the genre that made him famous. According to him, MMOs don’t even deserve a mention.
To be honest, at this point, if he’s not interested in making an MMO-type game then I could care less about what Pardo and his darlings are up to. At this rate of production, I doubt this game will be released before 2030. Who knows? Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised.
–Wolfshead
Will it release before or after Camelot Unchained? Will anyone care?
The cool games of the future are likely to be made by someone else, I am afraid.
Every dog has his day. Jeff Pardo is old news I’m afraid. You’re washed up if you take 8 years to make a video game. Zero community involvement as well. At Least
Greg Street is building a community as he builds the game.
This article was painful because it’s hard to write something compelling about a nothingburger.
Chances are Bonfire’s game will be woke as hell too.
It’s tragic how the old WoW team just faded away and are all living on the royalty checks they banked along the way. I was hoping Afrasiabi would have surfaced by now. Trump’s back in, DEI is dead, so this would be the perfect time to resurrect his career.
If it’s online-only live service, I’m not interested. I am now only interested in games that have offline single player mode and bots if the game is a shooter, racing or a strategy.
I used to be a really big fan and player of MMORPGs, between 2006 and 2024 having tried over 200+ MMORPGs out of sheer curiosity and infatuation with the subgenre. I used to read many MMORPG news websites and keep tabs on multiple MMORPGs or other online games, such as Online FPS, even reading their websites, blogs and later Discord servers, but since a couple of years, I just stopped caring. I wasn’t disappointed or anything, I just naturally started outgrowing games and MMORPGs suddenly stopped being interesting to. Where I used to read with excitement and joy about a new MMORPG, now I just take a few glances, see if it’s going to B2P or F2P and if it’s the latter, I might try it for 30 minutes and uninstall it. Some I don’t even bother with, despite being F2P. Maybe I’m burnt out from an MMORPG fatigue or just have been a witness to more than a few favorite live service games being ruined by horrible updates and then shut down to never be available again or available in a state that is not enjoyable as the game has completely changed, I just don’t want to cause myself the same feeling again if I can help it.
So, in a way, I’m glad they aren’t making another MMORPG, but I’m still unsure if I should ever care about their game or not. These days, I barely play any games. What used to be 3-5 (or more) hours a day, was brought down to about 1-2 hours a week and that’s only if I’m feeling it at all, sometimes I even go on weeks without playing even though I have the time and ability, I just choose to do something else, like socialize IRL, go to the gym or read something.
I wish there were more games like the old school ones from the 1990-2010 period, I think that was the best period for games. I wish for something like Heroes of Might and Magic 3, Age of Empires 2, The Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind, Star Wars Battlefront 1, Need for Speed Underground 1 to be released – that focuses on a more stylized graphical look, more simplistic and old school where you don’t need top-of-the-line hardware to run it and yet it still looks pleasant and it also incorporate gameplay philosophies and mechanics from the old school days where the two main standpoints are:
1. Near-infinite Replay Value where you can play the same game for years on end and still find enjoyment in it… I still get the urge to play Vanilla WoW or Diablo 2 so many years later
2. Focus on offline single player mode with online multiplayer (in some form) is/could be an option too, such as official servers and dedicated ones
Sadly, new games don’t seem to have that “mojo” anymore. They focus on graphics and voice acting, but they feel so limited, even more than old ones and once you play through them once (if you can even stomach that), there is no reason to play them ever again. Which I think was the main reason I fell out of gaming as a hobby – the games feel like they aren’t even designed with people like me in mind and I’m not even frustrated or annoyed or disappointed, I’m completely OK with it.
@Wolfshead,
Was Afrasiabi the guy who had an NPC named after him in WoW’s Stormwind City, which was later removed/renamed because of some misconduct scandal at the company?
Also, I’ve seen that all the original developers of those old classics just aren’t into it anymore. I think some ex-Vanilla WoW developers went on to create their board game company instead.
Some have completely disappeared. I see the guy who made, or was instrumental in the making of SWG is making a new MMORPG, I think it’s called Playable Words, I can’t remember the guy’s name right now, but from the screenshots I saw, it looks rather childish, like it took inspiration from the Fortnite art direction too much and it just looks dull and cheesy rather than intriguing. Even if they don’t have to copy Star Wars, they can still create species and armors that look cool, but what I’ve seen looks like a budget version of something else, just too lame.
So I’m not holding a candle that some old developer of an iconic game will come out of the woodwork and release some epic masterpiece. I think that’s naive and unrealistic. What’s done is done, it can’t really be replicated again, which as I said in my other post, I appreciate games that have offline single player mode so they can be played 20-40 years after release, so we can at least have those. But if they are MMORPGs, then there is a huge chance that the servers will be shut down eventually and emulating them is not always easy. Sometimes, like with WoW, you can host your own localhost server, even add bots that you can control to emulate other players, but for other MMORPGs, it’s not easy or possible at all.
So a game being online-only, is in my opinion a massive liability and getting involved with it, will eventually mean coming to terms that no matter how much you enjoy it, you won’t be able to play it again.
I really enjoyed LOTRO, but after that debacle in Spring 2023 when they added female beards and went on a censorship spree to ban anyone who criticizes it, I can no longer play that game again. I don’t want to take part in that insanity. If they revert the changes, I will come back and even spend more money, but that will probably never happen.
” Trump’s back in, DEI is dead”
I fear that there are many DEI commissars lurking in the shadows waiting for Trump’s term to end.