Dragon’s Dogma Online is Shutting Down

I know a lotta you guys never had the opportunity to play Dragon’s Dogma Online because it was never released outside of Japan.
Nevertheless, Capcom have announced that as of December 2019, the game will be shutting down permanently.
I was a huge fan of Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen back on the PS3. Wiggy and I both played it quite extensively.
I remember how good the combat was, I recall how fun it was creating my very own Pawn – a slave with which to send off to get murdered in my stead. But as fun as it was, I was always left a little.. wanting.
Wiggy and I wanted to play together but unfortunately that wasn’t an option. The most we could do was allow one another to use each other’s Pawn’s sent across time and space.
After hundreds of hours we stopped playing and all but forgot about the game.. until we started the channel, and after a year or so, learned that there was a Japanese exclusive MMO version of Dragon’s Dogma called Dragon’s Dogma Online.
You better believe that Wiggy and I were ecstatic to hear that and within moments had scoured the internet looking for any and all information pertaining to the game.
We were devastated to learn that the game was published by Capcom in Japan and they had absolutely no intention of publishing it for the rest of the world.
Not one to give up, though – knowing that there were fan translations of MMOs like Phantasy Star Online 2 and Monster Hunter Online we took to Reddit to see if that were the case here.
And it was! There was an English fan-translated patch that allowed us to play in our native language, all we needed was a VPN, which was easy.

After finally going through all the trouble of creating an account for the game in Japanese, downloading the game via Japanese VPN and setting everything up, we got in-game.
And it was everything we wanted.
Well, I mean the translation was pretty basic and there was a lot left untranslated but nevertheless we had a grasp of what did what and could kinda.. just wing it from there.
We got to explore a fun world with a lot of classes, some pretty awesome character creation and the Pawn system that we had both loved. But this time we got to experience it together.
It was at that time I realized Wiggy actually kinda sucked at the game but that’s a story for another video.
The combat in this game was better than most MMOs released in the West. You could interact with your environments – scaling walls and leaping atop monsters, scaling and impaling them.
If you never experienced the combat in this game then you’ve missed out.
The character creator was pretty damn good, the world was fairly open and there was plenty to explore, there were a lot of people playing when we played and.. honestly, I had no idea it was going to shut down.

It’s a shame that it’s shutting down. Truly. I had a lot of good experiences both in Dark Arisen and the MMO.
It sucks whenever MMOs shut down, and when you’re given a reason like Capcom’s: “it has become too difficult to continue offering a satisfactory service,” you have to wonder why they didn’t give it to someone more competent.
Like, seriously.
Instead of taking the time to think through their issues, to take the time to solve whatever problems they were supposedly having, they chose to give the middle finger to the community that had been supporting the game for the last four years.
What was most likely the case is that the game was no longer as profitable as it once was and keeping the game online was probably yielding too little of a profit, or maybe no profit at all to really warrant the time and effort into keeping the game online and still semi-actively worked on.
I know that developers and publishers need to make a profit to keep a game online, that’s not my issue.
My issue stems from the fact that instead of making the necessary changes to potentially support growth they just opt to axe the game all together.
That’s not the way to inspire confidence from your players nor is it the way to keep their support for future releases.

According to the director for the game, the team were already in the middle of production for Season 4 of the story when he was informed about it.
Yup – the director himself had absolutely no idea this was even happening and was equally as caught off guard as we are. The fault here lies with Capcom, not the team that was working on the game.
I feel sorry for them since they were working on it as if it were going to be alive the next day but nope, the rug got swept right out from under them.
Regardless, it’s time to say goodbye to the game.
It lived for 4 years and never got released in the West. It should have, honestly, as games like this, MMOs like this do pretty well over here.
Dark Arisen did well from what I recall, or at least well enough to warrant the MMO being localized.
Unfortunately, that’ll never happen.
So, thank you guys for allowing Wiggy and I to enjoy your game for a couple months. It was a pleasure playing through it even though there was quite a bit we never understood.
It’s a shame you lost the game you’ve been working on for 4 years and it’s a shame most of us never got to experience it but I hope your next project ends up either in better hands, or at least handled better.