Erenshor

When I first heard about Erenshor I wasn't sure what to think of it, or if I'd like it. I love MMOs, but a lot of modern MMOs are falling into the same stale formula for developing content: time-limited content, weekly or patch-long events that don't have satisfying rewards, introduce a multitude of currencies that become useless next patch/season/update, etc. At some point it feels like MMO devs went from "How do we make players want to log in?" to "How do we make players feel like they have to log in?" in terms of creating content. A lot of MMOs just feel like new content are chores to do. When I saw Erenshor being marketed as a "Simulated MMORPG", that caught my interest. I really enjoy single-player RPGs as well, so the mix between that genre in an MMO-like format sounded pretty cool. From the first time I tried the demo I was pretty hooked. The island "boss" was challenging but very much doable, the soundtrack and ambient noises were really well done, the quests and exploration were fun, and all of that was just the "Tutorial Island". I bought the game and I've seriously been loving it ever since. Several of my friends have even messaged me asking about the game because they'd noticed how much time I've been putting into it recently. Erenshor has a lot of what I used to love in MMOs, first and foremost being a slow leveling process (which is customizable if you prefer a faster experience!) that lets you really explore the world and progress in its various dungeons. A lot of modern MMOs really push you toward leveling as fast as possible and practically hand you gear at endgame, which dampens a lot of the fun for me. Almost every piece of gear I've upgraded for both myself and the SimPlayers that I've made my regular party (shoutout Skippern, Virai, Mirana and Dagler) have really felt like they've made a difference in survivability and damage, and they've all felt like I've actually earned the gear. I've hit the level cap of 35 a few days ago, which felt like an odd number to end off at first, but you continue to earn XP that eventually earn you an Ascension Point that are instead spent in stat enhancements, so earning more XP is definitely worthwhile at endgame to help you with harder encounters to gear up. Your SimPlayers also earn these points, and even when you're offline, when you come back you'll see your SimPlayers have continued progressing! I've had quite a few players in my guild level up a bit when I take a break and come back a few hours later, and they'll even get gear upgrades and whatnot (assuming you don't have that option turned off to prep them for endgame content). Another thing Erenshor has implemented that I really enjoyed in MMOs in the past, particularly in WoW, is attunement. The endgame dungeon has a pretty fun attunement process, though admittedly some skill issues on my part made certain aspects of it a little frustrating, but the satisfaction of finally finishing the attunement outweighs the frustration for me. I've barely dipped my toes into the endgame dungeon, but what I've seen so far has been great! The ambience and sound design really fit the location. The early bits of the dungeon aren't challenging for me quite yet as the dungeon is actually meant to be started around level 30 I believe, I just waited longer before starting the attunement. Even as a fresh 35 I can tell you there's still a lot to experience for me; I've encountered quite a few world bosses and dungeon bosses that have been a bit too tough for me to kill, which really just makes me more eager to gear up my party a bit more to tackle them. The lore of the game has also been really fun to discover! Many NPCs around the world will give you little tidbits of knowledge about the world, the deities, what happened to them, and so much more, and you can get even more information during quests, books you can find, and dialogue in boss encounters to really start to piece together what has happened in the world. I still have quite a lot to learn, and it's been a long time since I've actually wanted to find out more about a game's lore. And I haven't even gotten to raids yet! There's an attunement process for them as well, but for the time being I'm really enjoying the content in the pre-raid endgame world, and it'll be a while yet before I feel confident enough to do much raiding. All in all, the "Erenshor is a single player love letter to the early MMORPGs that paved the way for the games we play today" line on the store page really rings true to me. If you enjoyed early MMOs, I think you'll have a good time on Erenshor. I genuinely can't wait to see what else Burgee has planned for us. Make sure you be nice to him when you see him in-game :)

Maybe you need to have played XYZ back in the day to enjoy this because me having played WoW is clearly not enough. The idea and world and fake players you meet are all cool, but after having died in the dungeons enough times to be high enough to move on, I dont know exactly how. Or what the game wants from me. Or why I should care. The gameplay is minimal and boring and I dont even know how to get out of the starting area so 5 hours it is for me. A pity.

Up to 4 Player coop would be great. I really want to play this game with my friends.

40 hours in and loving it so far

Game's Great. Me and my homies raiding.

If you have fond memories of early 2000s MMOs -- I am talking pre-WoW -- then you need to give Erenshor a try. Heavily and shamelessly Everquest inspired but delightfully original, and with a developer who really listens to feedback and is not solely guided by the Vision(tm) (rip Aradune), Erenshor is frankly my dream game. I don't buy many early release titles these days after being burned by games that ended up being abandonware before they were worthy of full release, but Erenshor is very worth it at the current price with the content and systems currently in place and it is absolutely in active development. This is a great time to try Erenshor and buy it if it's your cup of tea. Raids were just added and they are a ton of fun. It lacks sophisticated graphics, yes; the developer chose to use an asset pack that you have probably seen elsewhere, and no, there are no plans for a visual glow-up before 1.0. The simplayers are not LLM-based (for me this was a huge plus) and there are, again, no plans to make them so, for very valid reasons (there have been mods in the past which added some LLM capability to them but I dunno if they are actively maintained). The UI/UX needs work but the next planned major patch is (I THINK) improvements to general quality of life things, which will probably include making that better. As I write this review, the dev is planning to post his roadmap to 1.0 in the next few days. If you are not from the era of Everquest-y MMOs but Erenshor sounds interesting, absolutely give the demo a shot. Don't try to solo; invite simplayers to your group and have fun exploring the island starter zone. It's not completely the early Everquest experience... No sitting and waiting 20 for a boat to arrive at the docks to take you somewhere, no corpse runs, no sitting with a spellbook in your face to regain mana, no having to painfully level up weapon skills or the ability to have a reliable compass. The game lacks a lot of features that WoW and post-WoW MMO players will expect, and this is by design. You may be able to find mods that add stuff that you think you need, or you might find that you don't actually NEED them. If Erenshor isn't for you, that's ok. It's made to fill a specific niche, and it does that wonderfully. 11/10 enthusiastic recommend.

This game scratches an itch that's hard to define. If you miss Classic WoW, or Everquest, but you don't have the time to dedicate to those games any longer, this is exactly what you want.