Live service games are the natural evolution of companies trying to earn players’ money and time in modern times. With their goal to keep players coming back via drip-fed content combined with heavy monetization, live service isn’t a term that usually sparks joy. That said, here are the top 5 longest-running live service games of all time.

What are the Best Long-Running Live Service Games?

Live service games have had quite a divisive time with players as of late due to an overemphasis on monetization and flawed delivery of new content. That hasn’t stopped the oldest live service games from thriving in their own right. Below are some of the best long-running games that are technically live service, based on how they are still iterated.

Destiny 2 has no shortage of currencies. Thankfully, Legendary Shards are getting the axe for the benefit of those currently overwhelmed. Here are the best ways to spend your Legendary Shards before they leave on June 4 once The Final Shape launches.

How Can You Use Your Legendary Shards?

Legendary Shards have certainly had their use over the years in Destiny 2. Now is your chance to use your stockpile of shards one last time before The Final Shape’s launch in Destiny 2. Here’s what you can do with Legendary Shards now:

Arena Breakout Infinite is the new kid on the extraction shooter block, and it has some large boots to fill. That said, ABI improves on the traditional extraction shooter formula with myriad improvements that make the military sim infinitely more accessible. Here are ten things Arena Breakout Infinite does better than Escape from Tarkov.

In What Ways Does Arena Breakout Infinite Beat Escape from Tarkov?

Arena Breakout Infinite Looks and Runs Better

For a mobile game port, Arena Breakout Infinite is remarkably stable and optimized, especially as a shooter in 2024. This can be attributed to two things: ABI and its mobile version are made using the latest version of Unreal Engine 4, and the developers have been iterating on their mobile version for years now. On the other side of the fence, Escape from Tarkov uses a relatively newer version of the Unity engine.

It has been nearly a year since Diablo 4’s release. Despite some meandering sentiments in the community regarding the game’s post-launch support, the recently released Season 4 might prove to be a hit.

For almost a year, Blizzard has been iterating on Diablo 4 with a multitude of changes to many of the game’s core systems and content—the game’s loot specifically needed the most help. While the first three seasons of Diablo 4 weren’t entirely hated, when playing, it still felt like the game was missing some core functionality that made it fun. It didn’t take long for the community to pinpoint how the loot itself is not only pretty dull, but is a chore to sort through, and misses a lot of those big dopamine moments.

Achievement hunting to earn that satisfying 100% completion can be a mixed bag, but some 2024 release can help. Some games have dozens of difficult, and often, secret achievements, while other games have just a few and can be 100% completed easily. Today, we’re looking at the five best games for achievement hunting in 2024 so far.

Best Games for Achievement Boosting in 2024

Helldivers 2

Helldivers 2 is one of 2024’s most successful new games. A live-service tour-de-force that does so many things right. The gameplay, the progression, and the way Arrowhead Game Studios is constantly drip-feeding new content, enemy variants, and meta progression have been great. But did you know that Helldivers 2 is actually not too difficult to 100%?

Escape from Tarkov has been upset many of its players with recent developmental decisions as of late, introducing a $250 version of the game. Games like Arena Breakout Infinite—a direct extraction shooter competitor—are looking to provide a haven for Tarkov defectors.

Arena Breakout Infinite is actually a PC port of a pretty popular mobile game called Arena Breakout. Going to its page on the Google Play Store reveals a 4.5 rating from 500k reviews, and over 10 million downloads. It also has the “Editors Choice” highlight. I would argue one of the biggest reasons for its popularity is how it plays a lot like Tarkov. It even has the little details of opening a can of sardines and visually scooping out a spoonful to replenish your food meter.

Fallout 76 is enjoying a resurgence of popularity six years after its launch. That’s in no small part due to the Fallout TV show, leaving fans ready to live out their own Wasteland adventures. Whether you’re a new or returning player, we’ve compiled a short list of helpful tips and tricks for Fallout 76 in 2024.

Fallout 76 Tips

Join a Casual Team

Fallout 76 has a variety of different teams you can join or make depending on the activity you want to do. There’s a team for daily ops that grants much more XP than usual. You can also join teams for exploration, which increases your HP stat and adds a higher chance of not catching diseases. Those are just a couple of examples of the six available teams.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is a much bigger game than its predecessor. This includes the game’s world map and even its much taller mountains. That’s why we are here to tell you that there is some worth in climbing Dragon’s Dogma 2’s mountains.

Dragon’s Dogma 2’s map measures about 30 square miles, which makes it as huge as it feels. As you explore this large world, there are quite a few of its mountains you can scale on your own through clever use of spells, abilities, and pawn AI. Unfortunately, not every mountain will allow you to climb to its tallest peaks, as there are in fact invisible walls in certain locations that stop you from climbing too high.

One of Dragon’s Dogma 2’s more divisive features is how its fast travel is quite limited, which is for the better in my mind. Here, we’re going to look at why that change works in Dragon’s Dogma 2 and how limiting fast travel would work in other games.

While Dragon’s Dogma 2 doesn’t completely limit fast travel functionality, it still deemphasizes the feature itself. This can be felt in the rarity of Ferrystones, but this is by design. The world itself, enemy variety and performance issues aside, feels alive in the many roaming enemies, NPCs, and Pawns.

For the past 10 years, the Metro series has left its mark on the post-apocalyptic subgenre of first-person shooters. Today, we will be examining all the Metro games in order of release!

Metro 2033 (2010)

Developed by 4A Games, Metro 2033 is the first Metro game and is largely linear, while taking place mostly underground. You play as the protagonist, Artyom, a man who was raised underground, which is a bit safer from the outer world’s post-nuclear dystopian landscapes. At least, until you meet violent mutants, bandits, and other haunted spookies further below the surface.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is one of the biggest games to come out in 2024, but it’s not the only open world RPG of its kind. Today, we’re looking at the best games like Dragon’s Dogma 2.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Following the adventures of Geralt of Rivia, The Witcher 3 is a large and living world in some of the same ways that Dragon’s Dogma 2 is. You play as a Witcher, an enhanced human that hunts monsters and creatures with swords and magic at your disposal. The combat is fast, fluid, and responsive as you dodge enemy attacks, follow up with some of your own, and then blast them with a wave of fire.

At the time of this writing, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is less than a week away from release. While it’s nice to distract yourself from counting the endless minutes between now and then, preparing yourself for this next big RPG is a good idea. Here are the five best ways to prepare for Dragon’s Dogma 2.

Upgrade Your Hardware

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is a huge modern RPG with incredible vistas. As such, it may be a good time to give your gaming device of choice a tune-up or upgrade. If you have a current-gen console, then you’re likely stuck between a locked 30fps frame rate and an unlocked frame rate that could reach 60 fps.

Outcast: A New Beginning is essentially the sequel to a game you likely have never played from 25 years ago. That said, this new Outcast is certainly worth your time, even if it’s a bit rough around the edges.

The original Outcast came out in 1999 and was ahead of its time in the technological department. The original used an early version of Voxel technology to build out its open world, alongside the usual blocky 3D characters that were appropriate for the time. And yet, the game had early implementations of lip-syncing and emotive faces with an impressive amount of voice acting.

Over half a decade later from when the servers shut down, moba-hybrid Gigantic is returning to PC and consoles and players couldn’t be more excited. So, here’s what’s changing with Gigantic.

When you look at Gigantic, it’s rather quite unique in its visuals and design. Even as an Unreal Engine 3 game, it still holds up in certain areas today. Unfortunately, its crossplay was segmented, the original developers ran out of funding after a timely delay of the game’s launch, and they had issues monetizing the game properly. By the end, Motiga, the developers at the time, couldn’t keep the lights on as they bounced from publisher to publisher.

Nightingale has been one of the most highly anticipated survival crafting games of this year. Unfortunately, its early access launch has highlighted the game’s shortcomings that need to be highlighted. Here are five things Nightingale needs to improve before its 1.0 launch.

Offline Mode

This has been something players immediately clamored for. Because of Nightingale’s always-online framework of dedicated servers hosting realms, it’s clear the developers underestimated players’ desire to play offline and host realms on their own. This is especially true when not long after Nightingale’s launch, Inflexion games clarified that an offline mode was coming very soon.

Last Epoch on PC

In a time where good ARPG releases are few and far between, Last Epoch is moving out of early access with a 1.0 launch that is redefining what an ARPG launch looks like.

When it comes to the full package, Last Epoch is it. You get a sprawling story, five classes with three mastery classes each, a very approachable, yet deep, crafting system, co-op multiplayer, support for hardcore, and an auction house system. On top of an endgame system that revolves around three bespoke activities, with everything wrapped in impressive, modern graphics.

In Helldivers 2, friendly fire is a feature that can’t be avoided, so it’s best to embrace. Because of that, you are bound to die many hilarious deaths, so here are the funniest ways to die in Helldivers 2.

Helldivers 2 has a deep sandbox-like nature to it, with many of its systems having realistic nuance. There’s no gamey resilience to your stratagems, powerful weapons, explosive grenades, or anything. And because of how little health you have and how many things explode, dying from friends or from forgetting that you’re cooking that grenade can and will happen.

Helldivers 2 is the kind of game that has a tutorial but also doesn’t explain a lot of its nuances. So, today, we’re looking at five hidden mechanics Helldivers 2 doesn’t explain to you.

One reason Helldivers 2 is so compelling as a game is because of the way it doesn’t hold your hand post-tutorial. It’s the many details you discover along the way that make the moment-to-moment gameplay so rewarding.

2024 has been the year for big survival crafting releases with Palworld and Enshrouded both doing well respectively. Can Nightingale carve out a chunk of the already saturated pie and make a name for itself?

At its core, Nightingale has what you would expect from a game coming out of this genre. So, it won’t come as a surprise to you when you’re picking up rocks and sticks to make your first mediocre shelter and starting work bench. From there, it’s business as usual as one new workbench leads to new recipes, which leads to new equipment, which leads to the ability to mine and harvest new resources that ultimately leads to another new workbench of some kind.

Many people are eagerly anticipating Helldivers 2’s launch for a variety of compelling reasons. One of those reasons has to do with the Warbond system. So, today, we’re going to explain how Helldivers 2’s Warbond-battlepass system battles the fear of missing out.

One of the biggest issues with most live-service games these days is their FOMO nature. Publishers have been using the fear of missing out to keep players coming back week after week so as not to miss out on content or battlepass unlocks. Case in point, Destiny 2 does this with their mid-seasonal mini battle passes and stiff quest requirements that demanded constant weekly play. Like Destiny 2, Helldivers 2 will have its own battlepass system dubbed Warbonds.