Older gamers remember a time when a video game shipped as a completed product. For better or for worse, the data on the disc or cartridge you brought home with you was what you were stuck with forever. With the ubiquity and increased accessibility of the Internet, games now receive patches on a regular basis. This has also led to the prevalence of the live service game, titles that constantly add updates to keep you strung along for years.
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While most games of this nature keep a stable structure on which to build, others take wild 180-degree turns and end up nearly unrecognizable throughout the years. This is most likely what has kept the games below thriving. However, if a game is slowly upgraded and has features replaced, is it really the same game you bought years ago? It doesn’t matter as long as they are fun and rewarding.
6Warframe
Warframelaunched at an opportune time, shortly after the PS4 and Xbox One. If you were disappointed with the early launch library, you could at least play this game for free. Free-to-play games were often dismissed as exploitative back in 2014, so Warframe was not a sure bet in the slightest.
It was a competent co-op shooter, though it was hard to see where it could go from there. Still, the game maintained support through the slow and steady growth of a dedicated fanbase. Over the years and updates, though, the developers added awealth of content, including new planets, classes, and missions. What was the original game is now only a fraction of the Warframe experience.
5Final Fantasy 14
The PS3 and Xbox 360 generation was tough forSquare Enix. It tried to build most of its games around a proprietary engine called Crystal Tools. While the games looked beautiful, the engine created a lot of development issues.Final Fantasy 14was originally built on this engine and launched in 2010. The game was considered a failure nearly from the start. Complaints were lobbied at technical issues and a lack of modern MMO conveniences.
What did Square do to remedy this? It built the whole game again in a new engine and then tore down the old game. A Realm Reborn is truly a different game and takes place after the original Final Fantasy 14, which no longer exists. Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn isone of the most popular MMORPGs today,something which likely would not have happened if they stuck with the original version.
4Destiny 2
Do you own a physical copy ofDestiny 2and like skeet shooting? Then you’re in luck because target practice is just about all that disc is good for these days. After making a sequel to 2014’s Destiny and selling it in stores, Bungie broke away from publisher Activision and turned Destiny 2 into a full-fledged free-to-play experience,cycling legacy content in and out while constantly pushing the story forward.
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While some major expansions cost money, there is way more than one game’s worth of content available for free if you don’t feel like buying anything. Not only is it now free, but it also has more gameplay than before.
3Grand Theft Auto Online
Grand Theft Auto Onlinelaunched a couple of weeks afterGrand Theft Auto 5as that game’s multiplayer component. It was hyped up as a pseudo-MMO experience where you would build up your own criminal empire by doing missions and buying up property. What launched was a bare-bones presentation of the concept. There simply was not a lot to do.Rockstartook its sweet time adding content,but it eventually delivered more updates, missions, and activities to engage in.
All of the actual missions are free, but they do cost in-game money to access. We also haven’t mentioned that the game has been upgraded with the bells and whistles of two console generations. Where the PS3 version barely reaches 30 frames per second and each map has 16 players, the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S editions run at a smooth 60 and each session has 30 players.
2No Man’s Sky
Before launch,No Man’s Skypromised an adventure in the infinite emptiness of space. The game delivered on its word, but for most the idea just wasn’t as exciting in execution. Developer Hello Games heard players' grievances, though, and got to work adding content for the game.
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The real kicker is that all of these updates are free. As word of mouth about No Man’s Sky’s improvements grows, so does its player base. Where the only purpose of the game was to reach the center of the universe, now you have a ton of options to explore, none of which were available when the game first launched.
1World Of Warcraft
If you weren’t tuned into gaming in the early 2000s, it is difficult to understand how big a phenomenonWorld of Warcraftwas at launch and the years following. It even had aSouth Parkepisode dedicated to it. It’s not quite where it was in the aughts thanks to competing MMORPGs like Final Fantasy 14, but the fact it still receives regular updates is commendable.
With each update comes changes to the gameplay, and even an improvement to graphics. It has changed so much that, in 2019, developerBlizzardreleasedWorld of Warcraft Classic, a game that recreates the old World of Warcraft experience, warts and all. It is an unprecedented move that shows how far the game and the genre have come since 2004.
