Today, Elyon gets its recently-announced duel-wielding melee Soulbringer class, but the new update was accompanied by the news that the game will shut down in North America and Europe in December.
This announcement follows many weeks of no new content, so it's not entirely surprising, given that the announcement of the Soulbringer class and the new update in September was one of the only movements in terms of new content in a while. This update is now the final content update for the EU/NA version of the game, which will shut down on December 7th. The announcement read:
“Kakao Games Europe, following lengthy discussions with the game developer Bluehole Studio Inc., has made the difficult decision to terminate the live service of Elyon in Europe and North America due to the unsustainability of key performance indicators. The very low retention rate from incoming new players in combination with a declining amount of active users has made most content difficult to clear, leading us to the conclusion that we are no longer able to offer you the MMORPG experience we are striving for. For this, we deeply apologize.”
When a new MMO debuts, there’s nearly-always a population decline, but sometimes it clearly hurts the trajectory more than others. With Elyon, the game never seemed to truly find its footing, with server merges early, the abandonment of Spanish support, and the removal and promised overhaul of Realm War, all happening in the 11 months since launch. While the team added in additional challenges and PvP options, let factions play together, and made other tweaks to help performance and engagement, it’s clear that things have not worked out according to the goals that Kakao was looking to meet.
For details on the new update, the coming shutdown, and policies on refunds for recent KCoin purchases, see the announcement over at Elyon.
