MMORPGs: A Look Back at 2009, Part 1

The recession has hit many industries hard, and the MMO gaming industry was no exception. Across the year, layoffs happened at Sony Online Entertainment, Mythic, Electronic Arts, NCSoft, Turbine, and Funcom. Budgets were cut. Some game ideas that were never even announced to the public were scrapped, and at the end of the year, rumors are still flying that many other games are set for closure in the following year.

On the same note, there were surprises from a few industry upstarts this year; Cryptic paved a quick and sudden way forward with new MMOs, Sony and Turbine both turned to a free-to-play model, and companies like Runic Games, Quest Online, Monte Cristo, and Vogster sprung up into the industry with releases of their own.

Here's a look back at the year's major releases - and a few shut downs.

Free Realms launched in April, and was Sony Online Entertainment's first venture into two areas - free to play MMOs, and children's MMOs. Free to play with an optional subscription and micro-transactions, Free Realms was a huge success, getting a million members less than a month after launch, with millions more to follow in the coming months. Throughout the months, Free Realms has introduced regular updates to the game; the latest update before the end of the year added player housing and fishing.

Free Realms also set a Guinness World Record for the first simultaneous real-world and virtual-world concert, which occurred at E3 on June 2, 2009.

Although Age of Conan did not release any expansions in 2009, a major "relaunch" in June gathered a great deal of media attention. Patched to Update 5, the game not only introduced new content, but completely redesigned many of the RPG systems including itemization, combat, classes, gems, cities, PvP, and more. Funcom then launched a massive campaign to reinvite and reintroduce Age of Conan to the public and press, meeting with a good reception to the changes.

A few months later, Funcom announced the Rise of the Godslayer expansion for Age of Conan.

An MMORPG by Aventurine SA, Darkfall Online was initially a European open-PvP game released in February. A skill-based game featuring three factions, Darkfall Online is a "full loot PvP" game, meaning that players will surrender all their loot upon death to anyone interested in taking their items. Due to its popularity across seas, Darkfall Online was released later in July for North America, although character transfers from European servers to North American servers were not immediately available.

Darkfall Online has had a mixed reception. A great deal of controversy happened when Eurogamer rated the game a 2/10, and developers claimed the reviewer only played the game for 3 hours; a subsequent review from Eurogamer bumped the rating to 4/10. Other reviews have placed Darkfall on a mixed scale from poor to great.