TERA is Shutting Down.. in Japan.

I’m genuinely kinda shocked. TERA may not have been a perfect MMO, I mean, sure, it has its flaws. A lot of flaws. Like, too many flaws for it to ever be worth playing long-term. Short-term? Hell yeah. It’s a game you can come back to every so often and just have some fun in.
Where I’m trying to go with this though is that TERA is still a better MMO than most of the crap we have right now. It has better combat. It has better… okay, it has better combat than anything that isn’t Blade & Soul or Black Desert.

But what we’re here to talk about today is what is arguably the largest TERA-related announcement since En Masse shut down and gave publishing rights for North America over to Gameforge. And that is that TERA is shutting down.. in Japan. After being online for a grand total of 10 years.
And stop right there – I know exactly what you’re thinking. “Oh, phew, that was only the Japanese version of TERA, so I’m safe.” No, no you’re not. There were 2 regions where TERA had not only mainstream appeal, but also a large population: Korea, and Japan.
TERA was so popular in Japan that not only were they partly responsible for popularizing the Elin race amongst the community, but it was also Japan that first launched TERA’s Classic Server event, with the event running several times since its inception and inclusion.
The Japanese iteration of TERA was immensely popular – well, maybe not overall, especially when compared to other MMOs like Final Fantasy XIV. But compared to Gameforge’s version of TERA, the Japanese server was immensely popular, however, even Japan failed to keep the game alive and frequently updated.
You know what this means for other regions, right? Korea is the game’s country of origin, so it’s doubtful that version of the game is going to shut down in the immediate future, but if you’ve been playing TERA from within North America or Europe in the last couple years you’d know that it isn’t doing too well.
The game is essentially in maintenance mode, with very little in the way of content being produced for the PC version of the game. Console, maybe, but not for the PC.
Using this logic, it’s only a matter of time until Gameforge decides, much like their recent closure of SoulWorker and Kingdom Under Fire 2, that TERA just isn’t showing any type of return for them anymore and opts to shut it down as well.
Given this is the MMO that actually got me my current wife, that’s heartbreaking to think about.

In a Tweet made by the official Japanese Twitter, they went on to state: “Thank you for using TERA on a regular basis. The service will be terminated on April 20, 2022 (Wednesday) at 8:30 in the morning. We would like to express our sincere gratitude for your support.”
Yup, that was.. pretty much it. That was the most casual, cold closure announcement I’ve ever seen.
I’ve seen some people posting online that it’s okay, we have an acceptable sequel to TERA in the form of ELYON. They have the same developer, they have the same classes, they have a lot of reused assets from TERA itself, but I’ve played ELYON.
ELYON is not a good successor to the TERA intellectual property. TERA lasted a decade in the West, and is still running – somehow. ELYON, in the few months it’s been online has a lower playerbase than Gameforge’s version of TERA.
So while a few people might make the change to ELYON, I don’t think it’s worth even comparing the two games. ELYON is the “we have TERA at home meme,” and not in a way that you’d get a laugh out of. Well, not when Gameforge announce their closure of the game in the future as well, anyway.

Japan’s closure of TERA confirms a very evident future for the game. South East Asia, China, Russia, North America and Japan have all shut down their versions of the game. We have 2 regions left: Europe and Korea.
Europe’s population has been on the decline for years, even with the inclusion of the North American and Russian players, and Korea.. well Korea will hold on to and milk this game until they’ve got nothing left. Then they’ll either make a new TERA game using ELYON’s assets or they’ll make another crappy spinoff.

Regardless, this is a sad state to see the game in. This isn’t the final nail in the coffin for the franchise, but it’s definitely the dude with the hammer walking over to the coffin with the nail in his hand.
This was once the pinnacle of the genre. I’m genuinely saddened to see how far the game has fallen since then.
RIP Japanese players. I know there were still plenty of you enjoying the game, but take solace in the fact that the rest of us are soon to follow you.

2022 continues to deliver blow after blow for the MMO genre.