While rumours from 2022 indicated that an MMORPG based on PlayStation’s Horizon franchise was in the works, a new report indicates that the title may have been cancelled. As spotted by ResetEra user –R, members of NCSoft’s development team working on a host of projects codenamed Pantera, H and J were told to stop development of these titles, according to MTN.
The reports indicate that development the three games was halted at the end of 2024, with the development teams being told at the start of this year to prepare for transfers to other teams. Of these now-cancelled titles, Project H is speculated to be the Horizon MMORPG.
–R was also able to point out that some of the recent departures from NCSoft’s development teams match up with the timeline from the MTN report, lending further credence to the idea that these projects might have been cancelled. Neither NCSoft nor PlayStation have made any announcement about a Horizon MMO, much less its cancellation.
Of these games, while Project J is still an unknown title, Pantera is expected to be a new game in the Lineage franchise, known internally as “Raise Lineage M“.
The cancellation might have been a part of the larger trend at PlayStation of shutting down development of live-service titles. More recently, the PlayStation has reportedly cancelled development of unnamed titles at Bend Studio and Bluepoint Games. The move was likely made in the fallout of the failure of Concord, which was shut down less than a month after its release.
NCSoft has a long history in developing MMORPGs, with one of its more popular ones in the west being Guild Wars 2. When rumours about the Horizon MMO first came about, NCSoft itself was relatively cagey about the game, instead stating: “It is difficult to confirm information about unpublished projects that are currently under development.”
While the Horizon franchise may ultimately end up not getting an MMO, players can instead check out the single-player offerings, including the recent remaster of the original Horizon Zero Dawn. Read our review for the remaster here.
