Pax Dei is doing badly, but it’s still coming out

For over a year now, the staff of Mainframe Industries — headed by the former creator of EVE Online — have been trying to draw an audience to their social MMO set in a fairy-tale Middle Ages. But the ambitious team has never achieved loud success; instead, the project gathers less-than-enthusiastic reviews, and the servers are still sparsely populated. Nevertheless, Pax Dei is being taken out of early access and released as version 1.0 — the full launch is scheduled for 16 October. Here’s what is known about the event so far.

The project’s twist is that it has no NPCs, only AI-controlled enemies — in effect, the entire virtual world is run by gamers. Because of this, any change can strongly affect the user experience. It’s no accident that the developers are sharing their autumn plans in advance. Until 14 October the whole community will celebrate the end of early access — anyone who visits the official social pages or the Discord group can receive a gift. At the same time, from the 6th the game servers will be shut down — meaning a fairly long break for all fans of Mainframe Industries’ work. Then an early start will take place, and literally a couple of days later the promised 1.0 version will arrive.

The first to reach the refreshed servers will be gamers with Founder status (owners of packs bearing that name); newcomers will be let in afterwards. All content will be wiped, including character data, items, resources and progression results. No similar wipes are expected in the future. The game’s authors also announce that from the 1st of next month the proprietary launcher will cease to work — all further launches will be handled by the platform where you bought Pax Dei (e.g. Steam or Epic Games Store). Prices for everything, including the Founder’s Pack, will remain at their current level.