Terraria - The End?

From small beginnings come great things, as the saying goes. Off the top of my head I would be hard pressed to find a game more suited to that than Terraria. A game that was released in the beta phase of development that soon garnered a legion of fans thanks to its extremely addictive gameplay and the constant free updates brought about by its developers at Re-Logic. However not long ago, the aforementioned developers said there was to be no more updates for the game, that it was essentially finally ‘finished,’ and they were moving onto new things.

I was asked to write a piece on Terraria and seeing as I’ve not been very active on the writing front lately, I was happy to do it on something I enjoy. I’ve sunk around 70 hours into Terraria’s worlds so far, and compared to some that’s nothing, but I’ve always enjoyed jumping on, even if only for ten minutes. However when I booted up the game this time, something was different. I had recently done a fresh install of Windows on my PC and had lost my save, usually when that happens I’m happy enough to start over, enjoying the progression, but this time I had no desire to mine minerals, or find better materials to build my shelters with. No desire to upgrade my equipment to defeat the bosses and certainly no desire to progress to hard mode and take on the end-game content. I played about ten minutes and shut the game off. What brought about this change? I can’t say but I’m going to link it directly to the game actually having an end now.

On previous experience, I was more than happy to grind away for Hellstone for fiery equipment, then when there was no further upgrades, I’d start a new world with a new character and do the same with them; knowing at some point there would be something new added and I could go back and find this wonderful new stuff whenever it was released, whereas now, once I’ve got everything, it’s done, over. An odd train of thought I’ll admit, considering the point of playing a game is generally to beat it, but Terraria always had the ‘something else is coming’ quality to it, now that’s gone, I just can’t muster the same enthusiasm for it, or by the looks of things, any enthusiasm at all.

The game still plays as addictive as ever, it’s still a great game and there’s no way I’d ever say any different, but the artificial blocks you’d run into before a new update kept me happy, wondering what I’d be upgrading to next, now there’s no artificial walls, just completion. With other games that doesn’t bother me, but it’s just so final for a game that has until now constantly expanded. Clearly I’m in a minority with this, as I’ve a few friends who still play it a whole hell of a lot, and the general consensus of the Internet seems to be to keep playing anyway, but I think it’s time for me to now find a new time-sink. Something else for those times when I’ve got 20 minutes to kill and need a quick fix of something. Perhaps the recent craze for all things Kickstarter will get me something to fill the void, but Kickstarter is something for another day.

I can’t think of a suitable way to end this, other than to say in my own selfish mind I’m disappointed the developers didn’t keep adding to this forever. It’s not very often I find a game I take such a liking to, with only three or four other games able to take that place. Since I have no words for an end, I’ll instead as a question to any Terraria players: yay or nay? Is it still worth playing despite there being no more content updates, or is it time for you to move on too?