Bossa Studios have announced plans to cancel Worlds Adrift, the sandbox MMO where players can build their own airship and own aerial island, and shut it down in July. It hasn’t even left early access. The servers will close and the game will become unplayable. Their reasoning is fairly straightforward: the game is kinda eh so it’s not selling enough for the company to continue development. Folks who bought the game within the past month will be offered a refund, while older players will not. The end of the sky is nigh.

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The past week’s flurry of accusations, counter-claims, big-money deals and license revocations between Unity and Improbable seems to have come to an end. Developers using Improbable’s SpatialOS cloud server tech can breathe easy, and resume development as normal without fear of the floor dropping out under them. In a Unity blog post here, the company say they’ve reinstated Improbable’s Unity licenses, and have altered the terms of service so that they are no longer in breach. Developers are now free to use any third-party services they wish, although not all will be officially supported.

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The future of several MMOs using SpatialOS cloud server tech is in question over a dispute between Unity Technologies and SpatialOS studio Improbable. The dispute is over a change in Unity’s terms of services in December. Improbable released a statement saying that Unity have now revoked their Unity development license. So far, Spilt Milk’s early access space shooter MMO Lazarus briefly went offline, but is tentatively up and running for the time being. Bossa’s steampunk ship-builder Worlds Adrift will continue as normal for the moment.

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Premature Evaluation is the weekly column in which we explore the wilds of early access. This week, Fraser s learning to be a shipwright in airborne MMO, Worlds Adrift. Brendy looked at the ‘pre-early access’ version last year and had a good time with its always-there grappling hook and quick ship design, but fell foul of a few rough edges. As Bossa’s DIY skyboats affair has now graduated to early access proper, it’s time to find out how much things have improved.>

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It’s hard not to have a game like Worlds Adrift set the imagination alight. Bossa Studios’ foray into the world of massively multiplayer gaming stands out from the crowd with its user-built world of floating islands, delightfully swooshy grappling-hook physics and its entirely player-crafted sky-ships. Previously in closed beta, the game has moved to Steam’s early access section and opened its doors to everyone with twenty quid, give or take. Just be warned that unless you Bring Your Own Buddies, you might be facing rougher conditions than just storms and fog.

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After a year of swinging around in paid beta, Worlds Adrift will enter its next phase of development and officially launch on Steam Early Access on May 17th, developers Bossa Studios announced today. Our boy Brendy ventured into the sandbox explore-o-crafting MMO’s world of floating islands last year, swinging around with his grappling hook, building an airship, and getting into a fight over a parking space. You can’t take him anywhere. Officially going to Early Access will usher Worlds Adrift into the next phase of development as it seeks a wider audience. (more…)

Every week we launch Brendan into the early access stratosphere to see if he can find gems among the clouds. This time, the floating islands and airship building of sandbox MMO Worlds Adrift [official site]

I fell off my sky boat. I m now falling through the clouds wondering if this world has a bottom a large lava pit or possibly a vast, endless ocean and also: how long will it take to arrive there? I say fell . In fact, I was forcefully ejected from my ship the Flabbergaster by some kind of violent spasm of the game s inner workings. This isn t the first time I ve died to a janky accident of the overzealous physics engine, nor is it the most embarrassing. That honour is reserved for the time I crafted a plank of wood and it landed awkwardly on my own head. It might be difficult to describe the merits of this crafting-heavy multiplayer world while the wind rushes so mercilessly around me but I ll try, because it has many, despite the jank. … [visit site to read more]

Massively multiplayer games are in a poor state. While there s still plenty of money to be made, the current crop are having a rough time. WildStar [official site] is barely scraping an income, Black Desert Online [official site] saw a strong start but petered out not long after launch and Guild Wars 2 continues to see a decline in revenues. Even the resilient World of Warcraft [official site], despite buoyant Legion sales, still isn t willing to divulge subscription numbers; a sign that things aren’t eternally rosey.

With a lengthy list of massively multiplayer casualties over the last few years, including Warhammer Online, City of Heroes, World of Darkness and EverQuest Next, it s fair to say the genre is in need of an intervention.

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On one screen, a developer is demonstrating Worlds Adrift [official site], and explaining that players have hand-crafted everything I can see. The game world is made up of floating islands and the one he’s scrambling around right now, using a grappling hook to traverse rapidly, has a ruined building at its centre. It’s not very large, the island. You could hop, skip, grapple and jump across it in a matter of seconds, and it’s hanging in empty space. Well, almost.

As the developer plays, an airship putters into view. He decides to board the ship, even though it’s a good distance away from the island, and then there’s a strange moment when I notice the next screen along in the row of demo pods. A passerby has picked up the controller there and is steering a large airship past an island. Our island. I watch, one eye on each screen, as the two worlds come close to colliding.

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Worlds Adrift [official site] is an upcoming crafting- and exploration-centric MMO from Surgeon Simulator folk Bossa Studios, set in a vast world split into countless floating islands that are navigated by grappling hooks and player-built skyships. I went to see and play it earlier this week.>

I’m repeating a line given as part of a game demonstration here, but I do so because it resonated. Most MMOs now are, and long have been, defined by numbers more than by experiences, by the pursuit of minor or major statistical improvements rather than the discovery of new places and new challenges. Worlds Adrift hopes to take us back to the land that time and numbers forgot. … [visit site to read more]