Today, Anthem received the worst news it possibly could have: Anthem 2.0/NEXT’s development has ceased. While the current version remains live, it’s unlikely to see any updates. There’s been no statements as of yet detailing when or if the servers will shutdown. So we’re going to take this time and look back to the past once again, and talk about Anthem’s short history, starting all the way back in 2019.
February 2019: Anthem’s Launch
Anthem launched back in February 2019, to a huge mix of scorn and praise. Anthem was a success in some ways, but regarded as failure in others. Some praised the game for the gameplay design and other gameplay aspects. While others immediately jumped on it for the lack of content, loot and optimization.
The flight and combat haven’t changed since launch and are still praised as the best parts of the game to this day, alongside visual detail. Sadly these aspects alone weren’t enough to keep most players happy, a lot of which came down to being able to get a build going in Anthem. Having to get specific Masterworks was a grind, but a fair one; Getting Legendary versions of those Masterworks is where people got irritated. With low drop rates and none of the Quality of Life methods we got later on, it was rough.
In fact, it was rough to the point that more content and more loot quickly became the most common requests from the vocal parts of the community. They still did a few developer streams then, to show off upcoming content (or recently released content) only for their chat to be filled with “Where’s the loot BW?” and other similar phrases. after those streams, we’d not see another on until that Cataclysm was prepped for a PTS release.
I am not able to find the original source of the information, but it was stated back then that Masterworks were the end game goal for gear, with Legendaries being a bonus. Much like the original source of that information, that ideal has since disappeared.
March and April 2019: Sunken Cell Releases
Throughout most of March, Bioware focused on fixing a lot of bugs and making quality of life changes. Changes like removing Common and Uncommon drops from the loot tables post-level 30, removing Permanent death respawn and allowing self respawn after ten or thirty second as well as changing how certain damage values scaled with gear. During March they did also slow begin to increase the drop rates in Grand Master 2 and Grand Master 3 difficulties.
Going into April, Anthem seen its first big update, Update 1.1, which included the Sunken Cell Stronghold, Legendary Missions, Elysian Caches, and Masterwork variant of Universal components were all added in this update. There was additional focus on Loot changes too, adding some much needed Quality of Life changes like Bosses dropping extra loot making bosses more rewarding.
This patch also brought the global forge access, letting you change your build in mission; Mission select as a end of mission option, letting you jump right into another mission and reduce the amount of time spent loading; and even making it so contracts are accepted via a job board, instead of having to visit each NPC in town.
June – August 2019: Cataclysm
These would be slow months in terms of the live game, seeing only bug fixes. However, these months also brought the first iteration of Anthem’s Public Test Server, featuring the massive Cataclysm patch, or Update 1.3.0 Which was finally released in August.
The Cataclysm was the largest and easily most anticipated patch of Anthem’s short life span. It was the biggest content drop we have gotten since launch. It Featured: Three Story Missions that lead into the Cataclysm, The Cataclysm mission itself, A few new Freeplay Events, Nine new weapons split between three types, Melee weapons which added another eight in total, and another eight abilities provided two for each javelin.
On top of that Content, we also got several major balance changes. Enemies and especially Stronghold bosses had their health reduced by a rather large amount, ranging from 33-66%. Melee and Item Effect damage both scaled with their respective items as well, reducing the need to be fully geared out to get max damage from them.
The biggest change here though was the Seasonal Store, which it was much more costly back then, it was a reliable way to get masterworks and even Legendaries, witch chests around that time having around a 10% Legendary Rate. It’s a small amount compared to now, but welcomed all the same.
September and October 2019: Season of Skulls
The Cataclysm continued throughout September, and we got a few Quality of life updates here too. Most notable of these updates was the Increase from 250 storage space up to 350. This same patch in September added a hidden cutscene to the Emerald Abyss (though it was alluded to in the 1.4.0 Patch Notes).
Going into October, we got our second set of Freeplay Events and a variation of the Cataclysm, referred to as Season of Skulls. These missions in Freeplay were a fun experience, really showing what they could do with the available mission structure. While the Cataclysm it self didn’t change much outside of the faction and some mini-boss triggers they did make the atmosphere more spooky.
Like most other patches, this came with a lot of changes and fixes as well. It also addressed a long standing quality of life concern of the community by finally adding Mass Salvaging. Mass Salvaging allowed you to finally just keep the things you wanted, without having to discard everything individually.
December 2019 and January 2020: Icetide
Update 1.7.0, or Icetide was essentially the last addition of content the game would see in its life span. We got modified strongholds, that has Cataclysm-like secrets and puzzles, Time Trials and Coolant Events. This would also be the patch that brought us the Tomb of the Legionnaires changes as well as open all item to the Power Level of 80.
The modified strongholds were a fun way to re-experience them and get extra loot from them via Warchests. It was also during this time that we began getting introduced to Legendary Warchests. While normal Warchests had a 25% drop rate of legendaries now, these chests were more random in terms of drops, but they were guaranteed to be legendary.
Time Trials were released with mixed reception, some people loved them and some hated them. A lot of the hate likely came from those trying to get gold times on the races, with Colossus and Ranger in particularly being incredibly tight on time, which were difficult to match without the extra mobility. These otherwise remained a permanent addition.
Then we got the Tomb of the Legionnaires update, which now made Weekly and monthly Cortex Challenges worth doing outside of Coin. They not Gave tokens which could be taken to a tomb and traded with a sum of Embers to get a legendary from a specific pool of items. In terms of getting more Legendaries, this system became pivotal, as it was a way to get a Javelin and type specific Legendary.
Finally, all Legendary drops on Grand Master 3 were increased to Power Level 80. Every item in the game could now be farmed for at the highest tier, and ultimate focused builds no longer had to sacrifice synergy for damage output.
February and March 2020: Anniversary and Regulator Shop Update
The End of February marked the Anniversary patch, 1.7.0. This patch was the last set of changes to be made to the game outside of a new addition in March which was done without a patch. It took all the past Seasonal Content from Cataclysm, Season of Skulls and Icetide and created an event rotation out of them.
In March, we got the biggest change to loot that nobody expected. We were able to trade our excess Coins for Legendaries. The only randomness this time were inscriptions. The Store had a fixed item rotation and would always give the item it presented as Legendary.
However, after this patch Anthem would be in “Maintenance Mode” while work on Anthem NEXT was to be done, as announced in February. While some were disappointed with this announcement due to the lack of live updates, other’s were happy to see that there was more work being done for the game.
Anthem NEXT: The Blog Series
Over the next year after going into maintenance mode, we’d receive a total of four blogs with several other tweets and teases. Since we’ve extensively covered the blogs and other info here on Vulkk, we’ll cover them real quick and sum them up for easy reading.
February 2020: Maintenance Mode Announced
The first blog is the one was the bigger disappointments for those following the game. Many had hoped we’d still see more content and fixes, but we really didn’t get much after this point. A few exploit fixes for seasonal events, that were never even announced. No Content, No Changes, nothing.
May 2020: Anthem NEXT Announced
Here’s where a lot of people’s hopes came back. Once it was announced they were essentially doing a full rework of the game, it brought a lot of attention. The new Incubation team was revealed it it made more sense as to why we haven’t gotten any further updates. There was at least hope on the horizon now.
July 2020: Loot and Equipment
The first blog with any significant details, and the one that easily brought the most hype to the game again, making people excited for when they could get their hands on it again. This one focused on Loot and Gear, the biggest hot topic of the current version of Anthem.
For me personally, this blog left the biggest impression on me as it was nearly everything I had hoped to see in Anthem. It fixed one of my biggest complaints, being that gear often rolled with useless stats or even stats that’s be great on another piece. All of that tied to the Modding system, which I recently covered, prior to the release of the news that sparked this article.
They wanted to make loot more rewarding. Have our time investment be met with equal reward. Being able to equip things as they drop. Scaling Power Cap. Everything in this blog sounded fantastic and worth the wait…
October 2020: Javelins and Builds
This blog felt less exciting than the equipment one. It did have one of the biggest teases that really got everyone’s hope up. While the builds and such were an exciting reveal, there wasn’t quite enough detail, to really spark the same interest as the previous blog, at least for me.
Skill Trees seemed like a fun concept, as well as the artifacts which seemed like a new tools for javelins to play with. The biggest thing here, at least for me was that create builds was going to be more reliable.
Reliably making builds would mean less inscription focus and more focus put on the tree and gear. Making and Optimizing builds was always my personal favorite thing to do, outside of exploration. It would have been both fun and engaging content to me to talk about.
Conclusion
While it wasn’t the best news, or even the news we hoped for, we finally got news of Anthem’s fate. It’s a shame it had to be announced on the second anniversary, or near it at least. At least they didn’t drag us along on the matter for too long.
With Anthem no longer receiving content in the near future, that means you’ll see less from us here at VULKK.com regarding Anthem unless some very significant news breaks later on down the line. Hopefully we get to talk Anthem again in the future.
However, if you have an interest in Outriders, we will be beginning coverage of that game, starting from the day of the demo with an Outriders Classes Guide, where you will have all the info you need to make a choice which class and role best fits your play style. So maybe we’ll see you there. For now though, see you around Freelancers.
