Ramen VR, the studio behind Zenith: The Last City, announced it’s ceasing development on the VR MMORPG, citing a struggle to retain players.
The studio announced the news in a video, linked below, which describes some of the reasons behind the decision:
“Zenith has struggled with retaining players since very early on. Even though we’ve had hundreds of thousands of players, the vast majority of them stopped playing Zenith after about a month,” the company says in an FAQ.
Initially the result of a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2019, the Steam Early Access title went on to secure $10 million Series A funding round, later landing a $35 million Series B in March 2022. Just two months before securing its Series B, the studio released Zenith on PSVR and Quest 2, putting it in the best possible position to capitalize on its ability to play cross-platform.
In early 2024, Ramen VR revealed Zenith was running at a loss on a month-to-month basis “for the better part of a year,” which prompted the studio to release Infinite Realms, a free-to-play model, in hopes of attracting paid users.
“Despite our best efforts over the 5.5 years of development (and well before Infinite Realms launched), we weren’t able to improve retaining players. Zenith started losing money and it isn’t feasible to continue running it at a loss,” the FAQ continues.
While the studio is shutting down development, it’s not killing off the game entirely. Shards for both its paid Zenith: The Last City game and free-to-play Zenith: Infinite Realms version will be running “for the foreseeable future,” Ramen VR says. “The community will be the first to know far in advance if that changes.”
The studio behind VR-exclusive MMORPG Zenith: The Last City (2022) Ramen VRannounced earlier this month the game was soon being rebranded to Zenith: Nexus amid the launch of its free-to-play mode ‘Infinite Realms’, which the studio is using to bolster user engagement. An open beta of the mode is now live on Quest, Rift, and SteamVR headsets.
Update (February 19th, 2024): The studio announced the release of its free-to-play ‘Infinite Realms’ open beta over the weekend. Quest and Rift users can access the open beta without having without previously purchased a copy of ‘The Last City’ by following the links above and accepting the ToS.
SteamVR players can access the open beta as well, however must already own a copy of ‘Zenith: The Last City’ and then manually opting in. You can find a complete guide on how to join the open beta here.
Ramen VR calls the open beta “an early build, so the artwork, balancing, and content may be temporary. We’re stress testing the shards and the game’s performance so you may expect bugs and hitches.”
The original article announcing Infinite Realms and the game’s upcoming premium currency follows below:
Original Article (February 2nd, 2024): Nexus is set to host access to content from both The Last City as well as a newly announced free-to-play section, called Infinite Realms. This departs from the usual free-to-play retrofitting we’ve seen in other MMORPGs, such as OrbusVR, which lets users play up to a certain level before introducing a paywall.
For users jumping into Zenith: Nexus for the first time, content from the open-world Last City part of the game will be available for purchase as an additional DLC, provided you don’t already own the game. The free-to-play Infinite Realms game mode will be a season-based, procedural action-adventure RPG with co-op sessions, a revamped locomotion system, redesigned social playground “and more,” the studio says in a blog post.
We’re still waiting on specifics and a release date for Infinite Realms, however Ramen VR says The Last City players will have “an exclusive opportunity to boost their first character in Infinite Realms to match the level of their The Last City character as well as the first paid cosmetic on the store for free.” The studio is also looking at ways to reward players for having grinded for items.
Following many free-to-play social VR platforms, such as Rec Room and Roblox, Zenith is also set to introduce a premium in-game currency, called ‘Zennies’, which the studio says will be used to access seasonal content as well as purchase cosmetics items.
“Going free to play will boost the social multiplayer experience. The new virtual currency and shop will open an avenue for revenue we never had before. With an arcade-like experience that’s more accessible than ever we’re inviting millions of new players to Zenith: Nexus and potentially The Last City too,” the studio says.
In 2019, Zenith successfully raised funds through Kickstarter, followed by a $10 million Series A funding round. Garnering further investor interest, the studio was able to land a $35 million Series B in March 2022, just two months after its launch on all major VR platforms. Despite early traction, the studio revealed last month that Zenith had been running at a loss on a month-to-month basis “for the better part of a year.”
Zenith: The Last City receives a new PvP mode in the upcoming Skyward Summit update, introducing 1v1 fights and team duels.
Announcing this Zenith: The Last City addition through PlayStation Blog, developer Ramen VR offered a first look at this new mode for its MMORPG. It confirms Skyward Summit’s PvP will “primarily focus on the implementation of one-on-one and team duels,” but states the team’s exploring additional options for PvP in future patches. Ramen also reveals this next update will introduce the Cyber Ninja class, alongside player housing, resource harvesting and crafting.
Introducing PvP in Zenith: The Last City A thrilling new way to put your skills to the test in #PSVR2.
It’s not all good news for Zenith fans lately, however. Last month, Ramen VR announced it’s dropping support for the original Quest and PSVR headsets later this year. While Quest owners will have full access removed after September 15, 2023, original PSVR owners can still play in their own isolated shard running version 1.2.2 of Zenith. In a separate post, Ramen cites PlayStation Move as a factor, stating support for these controllers is “just not possible” despite the team’s efforts.
Zenith: The Last City is available now on the Meta Quest platform, PSVR, PSVR 2, and PC VR, while Skyward Summit is currently targeting a Q2 2023 release window.
If you’re worried you won’t have enough players, don’t stress – there’s now a in-game matchmaking system for dungeons and raids. You can queue alone or as part of a party, with the remaining spots automatically filled by other players before you start.
There’s also new overworld dungeons, 20 new quests, new armor sets, and quests involving brand new weapons as well. We’ve only really scratched the surface here – there’s a bunch of fixed issues, balanced changes, minor additions, feature updates and new content and systems – you can read the full breakdown here.
Zenith is getting its first major update next week with the launch of ‘The Celestial Throne’, a v1.1 patch that’s slated to bring a massive slice of content to the MMO.
Update (June 16th, 2022): In addition to the new instanced dungeons rolling out today, Zenith studio Ramen VR additionally says players can expect headgear such as masks, helmets, and crowns. This comes in addition to a new item infusion mechanic to level up gear, amid more daily and weekly quests, 50 pieces of armor and godstones, 10 brand-new full-size quests, and what the studio says are “lots of new interactive puzzles and objects across the game world.”
The update will be live today on all supported headsets. The original article follows below:
Original Article (June 10th, 2022): On June 16th, the Celestial Throne Update is set to introduce what developers Ramen VR say will be “dozens of hours” of new content, including three new four-person dungeons and three eight-person raids.
The studio says we should expect:
Explore an awe inspiring giant castle and giant obstacle course you must scale to reach
Delve 6 meticulously crafted instanced dungeons including a ton of new interactive puzzles
8 new armor sets + helmets
20 new quests
Matchmaking, Daily Quests, New Armor Sets, New Enemy Types, and much more
Of course, there’s also a brand new story element too—The Celestial Throne itself. Here’s how Ramen VR describes it:
Emerging from the violent storm essence that kept it hidden for the last 60 years, a flying castle hovers down near the surface once more. Within the suspended castle and scattered around the world, adventurers will find six new instanced dungeons filled with interactive puzzles, traps, adversaries, and an abundance of treasure. Assemble parties of 4-8 players through instance matchmaking, then get ready to test every skill you have, both as individuals and as a team.
The studio shows off a few of the challenges that await in the new release trailer, including the previously revealed ‘Furnace’ dungeon, which is at the heart of the castle.
“The Furnace keeps the enormous fortress afloat with the power of superheated flames and lava. You and your party must feed fire-starters to the forges to generate updrafts from the heat vents. Well-timed updrafts will then carry you across scorching lava pits, and deeper within the Furnace to where a beast awaits,” Ramen VR says.
There looks to be some really interesting environmental hazards along the way too (skipping a laser rope?!).
Zenith revealed a new teaser for its next update, promising ‘dozens of hours’ of new content and six instanced dungeons.
Content patch 1.1 will be the first major update for VR MMO Zenith: The Lost City, which launched back in January for PC VR, Quest and PSVR. Since a hugely successful launch, a lot has happened — the studio behind the title Ramen VR raised an additional $35 million in a funding round, while also announcing major plans for ongoing updates that would add new content to the game.
Zenith: The Celestial Throne Update Teaser Trailer
The studio looks set to deliver on the second part of that promise very soon, with six brand new instanced dungeons arriving in update 1.1, which you can catch a glimpse of in the short teaser trailer embedded above.
It’s only a short bit of footage for now, but there’ll hopefully be more to come very soon. A tweet from the Zenith account says the dungeons are “filled with interactive puzzles, adversaries, and of course – lots of LOOT!” If we were Zenith fans looking for more details, we’d be keeping an eye out on any upcoming VR showcases, if you know what we mean…
Beyond the 1.1 update, there’s still more plans and lots to come for Zenith. We know that the upcoming third class, the Cyber Ninja, will be stealth-focused and use a ranged bow as its weapon.
Developer Ramen VR has attracted a great deal of attention from virtual reality (VR) enthusiasts since the release of Zenith: The Last City, with the game even briefly hitting the top of the Steam player charts.
Though still in Early Access, fans are hopeful that Zenith represents a step towards the fully immersive VR MMORPG popular in fiction. To explore the ideas, influences and future plans for Zenith: The Last City, Upload VR spoke to Andy Tsen, CEO and co-founder of Ramen VR.
Ramen VR itself is a small business for an ambitious project like Zenith: The Last City, employing only 15 people. Tsen was frank about the challenges the developer faces and meeting people’s expectations: “When we launched Zenith, there were a lot of people who expected Sword Art Online or World of Warcraft. We’re more like Ultima Online, a few guys trying to create something we’re passionate about.”
Comparisons to media about VR MMOs such as Sword Art Online or .Hack is inevitable, and Tsen said that anime and Japanese culture did indeed have a significant influence. “The inspiration for the game comes from every game that I’ve played,” he says. “Anime was a large part of my formative years, so we took ideas from Final Fantasy XIV, World of Warcraft and even Nier. We wanted to create a world inspired by anime and JRPGS. You can see it in the open world, such as the Plains area, we reference a lot of Miyazaki and a lot of Nier.”
Speaking about the tone and genre of the game, Tsen had this to say: “If you look at the city we have a solarpunk going on, while the starting area was inspired by Midgar of Final Fantasy VII and a lot of other cyberpunk media. There are sci-fi elements to it, but it’s very fantasy inspired, but it’s going to be more solarpunk themed and styled than cyberpunk.” He also indicated that in storyline terms, it won’t be so black and white as ‘the bright happy place is good, the dark spooky place is evil’. There will be nuance and subtleties for players to discover as the game world is expanded and refined. There is also a tendency for Solarpunk media to be more optimistic in tone than the more grungy and bleak Cyberpunk media.
A common criticism of many modern MMOs is that intuitive, fun gameplay can be lost amidst a sea of complex systems, rewards and currencies such that it becomes more akin to a job than a game played for fun. “I think a lot of the immersion has been lost in modern MMOs,” Tsen commented on that topic. “Our goal was to create an immersive world where people could reach their full potential, without worrying about what’s going on in the real world. It’s a gaming-focused new reality. We want to focus on making fun experiences for people.”
Asked about how that feeds into accessibility for players, Tsen said that the team ensured it was possible to play Zenith from a seated position, then added: “A lot of times accessibility is just good game design. You don’t lose anything by making a game more accessible.” He indicated that this is just a starting point for Ramen VR, and that they are keen to integrate accessibility into the game during the Early Access phase, saying for just one example: “We had to work with some of our team who get very simulation-sick, so we came up with things like our out-of-body locomotion to mitigate that.”
Tsen also said this focus on accessibility extends into online safety and comfort within the game, emphasizing the tools given to players. “You can block people, or you can deafen. For us safety is incredibly important. We have GMs who can invisibly wander the world and make sure everything’s okay,” he said, adding that bots have limited effectiveness when protecting a community. “There’s only so much you can do with automation, so you always need human judgment involved.”
Tsen also stated Final Fantasy XIV as a worthy example to follow, because Square Enix implemented positive reinforcement systems that allow players to issue a commendation to fellow players who impressed them during a Duty, Dungeon or Raid. This works as a counterpoint to blocking and reporting systems to help foster community, something that Ramen VR also hopes to develop for Zenith.
Ramen VR has already promised to add hundreds of hours of new content in its next major update patch, and Tsen spoke enthusiastically about what Zenith players can expect in the future, “There’s a lack of end-game content at the moment. We need to do a lot more. In our next major content update our goal is to address that, and expand it so there’s things for casual players to do, things for hardcore players or those who want to just grind for cosmetics.”
Indeed, Andy also indicated during GDC that there were plans to add more exploration and environmental puzzles, but that’s not the only thing the development team has planned: “We’re excited about player housing, crafting, even PvP – that’s a little down the line though. What’s currently available for Zenith is only about 10% of what we want to provide for our players.” Considering that Zenith has already met with a solid response from the Upload VR review in its current Early Access state, what the 90% of additional content could provide is worth considering. Creating an MMO is not an easy task, and plenty of developers have failed to clear the hurdles involved with growing a small company in a sustainable way.
Tsen hopes they can continue to grow and meet the challenges implicit in creating and maintaining an expansive MMORPG. “We have great investors, we’re cash-flow positive, but the next big question is how to scale it while keeping the culture that’s got us this far.”
Zenith: The Last City is available on Quest, Steam and PlayStation Store.
A new Zenith update features two key changes for the VR MMO.
Firstly, your inventory size is about to get a lot bigger. You’ll now have three times the space for storing loot and armor, and developer Ramen VR has added a new tab for cosmetics as well. That’ll mean you don’t need to recycle your gear to upgrade parts quite as often as you do now.
New Zenith Patch Released
The second change is a more curious one. Ramen VR is throwing out its old Discord-based referral system and starting up a new in-game system. This will give you a code that you can give to new players. If they enter that code when signing up for an account, you’ll get points that go toward an exclusive set of cosmetics.
Elsewhere this patch polishes up some aspects of the game including UI when creating an account and shard selection. Finally, there’s the expected array of bug fixes. You can check the full patch notes right here.
We’re expecting to see much more out of Zenith in the weeks and months ahead as the VR MMO moves toward the launch of its first major content update. No word on when that first big patch will release, but we do know that the developer is currently working on a third major new class and a major update to dungeons.
Still on the fence about the game? We think it’s more than worth a look if you’re into MMOs.
“But, crucially, it’s a solid foundation that already comfortably establishes Zenith as VR’s best stab at the genre yet,” we said in our review. “There’s hours to spend here exploring with friends and maxing out character stats, and even the current straightforward quest structure makes the game hard to put down.”
It’s difficult to talk about upcoming VR MMO, Ilysia, without mentioning Zenith.
True, there’s enough space in VR for multiple entries in any genre but, with Zenith’s January launch going down so well and developer Ramen VR grabbing headlines with continued investment, one has to wonder if Zenith hasn’t already eaten Ilysia’s lunch.
Creative Director Arthur Fogle doesn’t see it that way.
New Ilysia Interview
“We’ve always seen Zenith as Final Fantasy, 14 to our World of Warcraft,” Fogle said when I interviewed him in UploadVR’s studio last week (full interview above). “Two products, fundamentally different companies, fundamentally different games. To us, we’re basically just these two products that exist happily together in the workspace.”
Ilysia is currently in the last days of its Alpha 2 testing and is now selling access to its first beta, due to launch later this year. Though the build only shows you a fraction of what the team has planned for even the first beta, it’s impossible not to draw comparisons between the two fantasy worlds, where players can meet up with friends, build their characters and head out on quests together.
“I’ve played Zenith,” Fogle adds. “At this point, I think most of us on the team have played Zenith. It’s got its fun points. It’s got its things I wouldn’t do. But it’s a great game otherwise. The art style is great. I think it’s a beautiful world. I’m really stoked for just the success they’ve had; series a funding, series B funding. It’s been great to see that there’s that much funding out there for VR studios making great products. For us it’s been a boom, we are getting an idea of our worth now for any future plans that we may have moving forward.
“But yeah, I would say there’s not really anything they do that I would say I want to do. And I don’t think there’s anything that we do that they probably say “We should be doing that.””
For now, Fogle says that comparisons between Zenith’s early access launch and the team’s second alpha are “a huge compliment” for the team. “It makes me excited for our continued future as a product and as a company and what we’re bringing to everybody,” he said.
VR MMO Zenith’s first major content update could provide “dozens to hundreds” of hours of additional content.
That is according to Ramen VR CEO Andy Tsen, who caught up with the Beyond Realities team reporting on the ground at GDC 2022 for UploadVR. “We’ve talked about some of the technologies we’re excited about,” Tsen said of what’s next for the MMO. “We have instance dungeons, instance raids, group content. The stuff that people really have come to look for in a virtual reality game we’re now looking to incorporate. And what we’re trying to do is make the environment a big part of the dungeon itself.”
Ramen has already spoken about expanding on the game’s dungeons in the future, but Tsen explained that this would mean more of the open exploration that players have come to expect from Zenith’s core areas.
So you can expect “more environmental puzzles, more parkour-like things,” Tsen said. “And we want it to feel different from what you might get in a traditional MMO, so we’re really excited to have that out soon. But it should provide dozens to hundreds of additional hours of endgame content depending on whether you’re a casual or hardcore player.”
There’s no word yet on when exactly Zenith’s first major content update will launch, though the developer hopes to release one big update every quarter. We also know that Ramen VR is working on a third major class for the game in the Cyber Ninja, and that the studio recently raised another $35 million to help grow the game.
We thought Zenith had a rock-solid launch earlier this year but definitely wanted to see more content and a lot more polish added into the game. Fingers crossed all of that isn’t too far out.
A thrilling new way to put your skills to the test in 
