Anthem’s Final Flight: Two Days Until EA Kills the Servers for Good
In forty-eight hours, the lights go out on Anthem, and BioWare’s most expensive mistake will officially become a digital ghost.
I’ve spent a lot of time trashing Anthem over the years. It’s easy to do. Between the bricked consoles at launch, the loot that didn't work, and the "BioWare Magic" that turned out to be just garden-variety mismanagement, there was plenty of ammunition. But as the clock ticks down to the permanent server shutdown, I find myself feeling a weird, cynical kind of grief. We’re losing a game that featured some of the best-feeling movement in the history of the medium, even if the rest of it was a hollowed-out husk.
It’s the classic EA story. A project with massive potential gets choked by its own ambition and a lack of clear direction, only to be taken behind the shed once the "Games as a Service" dream turns into a recurring nightmare. In two days, those Javelins are hitting the dirt for the last time.
The Mechanics We’ll Actually Miss
If there is one thing I’ll give Anthem credit for, it’s the flight. Most games treat flying like you’re a floating camera or a clunky jet, but BioWare actually nailed the weight and momentum.
That Iron Man Fantasy
Dropping off a cliff, hearing the thrusters kick in, and skimming across a waterfall to cool your engines was genuinely exhilarating. It’s the closest any game has ever come to making me feel like I was actually in an Iron Man suit. I remember the first few hours of the beta, thinking that if the rest of the game could just match the quality of the traversal, we’d be looking at a Destiny-killer. Instead, we got a game where the most interesting thing you could do was fly toward a mission that was inevitably going to be "stand in this circle and shoot three waves of generic enemies."
Why the "Anthem NEXT" Cancellation Still Stings
We all remember the promised 2.0 overhaul. For a year, a small skeleton crew at BioWare Austin was actually trying to fix the loot, the scaling, and the endgame. They were posting concept art and blog updates that actually showed promise.
The Corporate Guillotine
Then, in typical fashion, the executive board looked at the numbers and decided it wasn't worth the investment. They pulled the plug on the rework in 2021, leaving the game in a permanent state of maintenance mode. It was a mercy killing that felt like a betrayal to the few thousand players who were still holding out hope. Keeping the servers running this long was honestly surprising, but the inevitable has finally arrived.
A Warning for the Future
Anthem will go down as the ultimate cautionary tale of the "fix it later" era of gaming. You can have the most satisfying core loop in the world, but if there’s no substance to back it up, players will vanish faster than a legendary drop in a bugged mission.
It’s a shame because the world of Bastion was beautiful. The lore had some decent hooks. But because it was an always-online title, once those servers go dark on Monday, all of that art and engineering is just gone. No private servers, no offline mode, no way to just fly around for old time's sake. It’s a stark reminder that in the modern era, you don’t actually own the games you buy. You’re just renting them until the publisher decides the electricity bill is too high.
Rest in peace, you beautiful, broken mess. I’ll miss the flying. I won't miss anything else.
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