A modder is asking for help resurrecting Borderlands Online, an MMO version of Gearbox’s comedy gun-runner that only ever saw daylight in China. It was announced in 2014 and shut down in 2015 alongside development studio 2K China, but footage of the abandoned project appeared online earlier this year. Now, intrepid digital archaeologist EpicNNG is trying to overcome “thousands of errors” and restore the MMO to a playable state.
You can hear about these mighty ventures in the latest update video, below. The build EpicNNG is working with “has been publicly available for the past 10 years”, but was only recently discovered by another modder, Lewis, with the cautionary note that “a lot of the downloads were riddled with viruses”. They’ve now confirmed that “we have got the full game” and “can get in eventually, it is just a matter of when”.
That’s providing, however, other people pitch in, and EpicNNG is concerned that Take-Two Interactive, 2K Games or Gearbox might block the project ahead of the launch of Borderlands 4. “God forbid that happens here, and this gets shut down, and I receive a cease and desist because we’re taking away from the marketing of Borderlands 4,” the video frets.
Earlier this week, we covered a Stop Killing Games survey which held that around 70% of games with online requirements are doomed. Here’s hoping this one returns from the abyss. It’s the first I’ve heard of the Borderlands MMO, and while I’ve fallen off the series, I’m curious to see how the developers at 2K China reworked the fittings.
Borderlands 4, meanwhile, launches on 12th September. Gearbox frontman Randy Pitchford has recently been saying daft things about it. He does so love doing that. Thanks for the tip, Gamesradar.