Posted in: Games, Video Games | Tagged: Global Agenda, Hi-Rez Studios

The Third-Person Shooter Global Agenda Is Back (Sorta)

You probably haven't heard of the game, Global Agenda.  It peaked just before World of Warcraft had destroyed a million marriages. It had one tournament with a cash payout (featuring talent like cloud-9's Surefour) and all available data indicates that GA's total player base never toppled 15,000 accounts.  Despite that, Global Agenda is a game where the name or sound of the log-in theme brings nostalgia and feels for those in the know. Global Agenda is a game that was unique and fine enough to leave a mark lasting even years beyond an official 'death' where servers went down in a way that gave The Matrix Online a run for its money. Hi-Rez Studios even deleted the forums and most real traces of its game from their website.  That is, until January 25th, 2022.

Global Agenda's servers are back up.

And not only that, but the old rumors that character data had been deleted turned out to be bogus because players could log in, and everything is there. Like a few blood drops in the veins of something supernatural, the dead game became undead. City chat, vets vs scrubs, and players trying to figure out how to use the jetpack in Dome City are things again. Even one of Hi-Rez's former owners, Eres Goren himself, logged in to spill the beans on more Hi-Rez news.

While he teased about some new game releasing later this year around Prophecy (built around Smite — HiRez's most financially successful IP) it's possible that a community of Global Agenda players couldn't care less.  Global Agenda was a game that came with grit and guts.  Its Agency vs Agency game mode is unique and unforgiving, and its mechanics were smooth and came with politics that were almost Machiavellian. Global Agenda ended up as a concept with no comparison.  The same can't be said for any of other of Hi-Rez's remaining franchises which are sequels, or remixes of concepts already been done.

When a game noiselessly turns back on, and word of mouth alone revives old communities, and has players reconnecting (which, apparently has been the regular case since Tuesday) you can tell it's made its mark. Arguably, that's a bigger indication of a game making an impact on its players — even more than however many bucks they've forked over.  This is worth appreciating because it's arguable that Global Agenda was not a financial success for Hi-Rez. But here we are, more than a decade after GA's release facing an indisputable fact: all the company had to do was flip the switch, and players are more than happy to fly back and explore mechanics that still echo in heartstrings and muscle memory.

If you had a Global Agenda account, you can download the client again over Steam and give it a go. If you don't, that's unfortunate. The game is literally not at full Steam yet.  You'll have to try buying someone else's account to be able to explore exactly why its playerbase was so dedicated, check out Youtube, or, take our word for it.

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