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Anthem turned one year old this weekend but, despite the milestone, developer BioWare held no in-game celebration, nor recognised the date on the BioWare or Anthem Twitter feeds. While the developer may have decided to not celebrate the game’s birthday, Anthem fans took to Reddit to cheer it on.
Anthem turned one year old on February 22. As perhaps a sign as to the game’s current state, Christmas decorations from the Icetide event still litter the Fort Tarsis social hub, and snow still falls gently from the sky. These were not replaced with birthday or anniversary elements to mark Anthem’s 12 months of being live, unlike what many other MMOs or shared-world games typically do.
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While there seemed to be no movement in-game to recognise the anniversary, the Anthem Reddit hub had several posts celebrating the day. “Thank you guys for this amazing experience and I hope nothing but the best for the game’s future,” said user Velocity_Prime in a celebratory post. “You guys made a game that has an amazing and highly supportive community so know that you’ll always have at least a few gamers on your side!”
Others posted significant gameplay moments and montages showing off the game at its best, with Javelins flipping and flying among Anthem’s beautiful world. One fan shared their favourite character build, while a few others discussed their memories and experiences, which naturally opened up both positive and negative comments.
Bioware’s lack of attention to this anniversary may be due to the developer putting all its attention towards a major Anthem rework. The studio recently announced that it is focusing on “a longer-term redesign of the experience, specifically working to reinvent the core gameplay loop”. This will hopefully turn around the game’s fate and help it find new players.
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When it launched, our Anthem review found the game barebones and repetitive, meaning it failed to offer any compelling reason to become invested. While it’s nice to see a small community of players have stuck with Anthem, hopefully BioWare’s plans for the future will make the co-op RPG an easier sell and make that community much larger.
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Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer. You can follow him on Twitter.