Posted on February 15, 2013, James Murff Why You Should Play the MMO DarkSpace

Welcome to MMO Unknowns, a new ongoing series here at GameFront that aims to showcase obscure MMOs that still persist to this day.

A huge volume of games are released every year, and a lot of them slip through the cracks. MMOs are no exception to this rule. Sure, there are a fair amount of mid-tier MMOs that end up eking out a modest existence with a dedicated fanbase, like the now-defunct City of Heroes. But what about that games that have only a few thousand active subscribers, and concurrency that never exceeds three digits? What about developer teams and fans that just don’t quit, despite the age and lesser production values of the games they are so beholden to? What about MMOs that, despite all odds, are somehow still running?

Every dedicated MMO player has at least one title they love that never really took off. For me, that MMO is DarkSpace. Released in 2001, DarkSpace had the unfortunate luck to go up against both EVE Online and considerable legal troubles. It’s also twelve years old at this point, and the seams are definitely showing, although the volunteer programmers and artists are doing their damnedest to update the game to modern standards. It’s a shame that DarkSpace never grabbed a wider audience, as it captures my imagination more than any other MMO before or since.