Defiance 2050 – Was It a Mistake?

Trion Worlds is developer behind one of the current top MMOs in the world: Rift. Rift has seen plenty of success since it was first launched in 2011, and have made waves this year after they released their old subscription payment model back into the game in the form of Rift Prime.

But Rift hasn’t been their only project in recent years, and the developer recently released their long-awaited Defiance 2050. It’s a reboot of an MMO that released five years ago, and was quickly found to be lacking in content, and while many felt it had plenty of potential, the devs decided to pull it down.

Fast-forward to today, and Trion Worlds released a reworked version of the original, and while it has seen a few improvements here and there, it’s essentially the same game, suffering from the same problems it suffered from in 2013.

About The Game
Defiance 2050 is a shooter MMO where you take up the role of an Ark Hunter, and tasked with hunting down mutated baddies, aliens, and upgrading better gear. The game is set in a California wasteland, where you control your from a fairly standard third-person perspective. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, but what makes Defiance stand out is the immersive and seamless MMO world where your character is set.

On paper, it’s got some truly interesting ideas, and if they’d tweaked the game enough back in 2013, it most likely would have made a solid MMO. Nothing genre-changing, but good enough to make big waves in a gaming world that predated the Hero Shooter; it had all the potential in the world.

The Latest Version
Reviews for Trion World’s latest attempt have been scathing, to say the least. The biggest problem seems to lie in the fact that very little was actually done in the rework. The “new” version retains all the controls, story plots, characters, and art style as the original, minus a few texture upgrades here and there. Players have even found the same, irritating bugs that were in the first game.


Players Are Disappointed
It’s been underwhelming, and Trion Worlds fan are not happy. It’s a game only worth checking out if you’ve become bored of CSI or you’re waiting to engage in a bit of horse racing betting or whatever gamers do with their spare time these days. The biggest criticism lies in the fact that there is no progression from the previous iteration – if you got far in the 2013 version, there’s no way for you to port that over to the new one and carry on where you left off. In any single player game, this wouldn’t be too much of a problem, but in an MMO where you have to dedicate hundreds of hours into finding and upgrading gear, it can become a serious problem.

All in all, they made decide to fix up the game, but for now it’s best left untouched.