Cinder City Wants MMO-Sized Chaos in a Third‑Person Shooter — Can It Actually Work?

Why Cinder City Caught My Eye

Say “hundreds of players in a shooter” and my ears perk up. We’ve seen true massive scale in Planetside 2, but most third-person looter-shooters keep you in cozy shards with a dozen randos tops. Cinder City, from Bigfire Games and published by NCSoft, is swinging for MMO-scale firefights inside an open-world third-person shooter with vehicles, nine hero classes, and instanced PvE dungeons. It’s ambitious, it’s loud, and if it lands, it could scratch an itch that The Division and Destiny have only teased.

Key Takeaways

• Big promise: shared outdoor zones with “hundreds” of players, plus 4-6 player instanced dungeons.
• Two ~7 km² locations at launch, with vehicle combat (bikes, helicopters) and server-driven NPC AI.
• Nine distinct heroes with their own campaign stories aim to mix MMO scale with character-driven PvE.
• 2026 launch window gives time to polish-but also leaves plenty of room for hype to outrun reality.

Breaking Down the Announcement

At launch, Cinder City is planning two sizable locations, each around seven square kilometers. Most outdoor areas are shared world spaces where large groups can collide at dynamic events-think public boss spawns and faction clashes. Specific areas flip to instanced “dungeons” for 4-6 players, with matchmaking or premades. It’s a hybrid we’ve seen work in MMORPGs and pseudo-MMOs like The Division 2, but the studio’s key flex is scale: Bigfire says internal playtests a few years back handled 150-200 players in the same space.

Vehicles are in from the jump-bikes and helicopters—immediately expanding the combat language beyond corridor cover-shooting. That matters: traversal and verticality make or break large-scale zones. Even better, NPCs aren’t simple scripts. According to CEO James Bae, enemies run server-side and adapt to terrain and context. Server-driven AI could be a double win: harder to exploit and more consistent across clients, assuming the netcode holds.

There will be nine heroes at launch, each with a campaign thread that fills in their backstory. We saw one, “Seven,” pitched as a middle-of-the-road super-soldier with grounded gear and a dash of future tech. That “middle” label implies a roster that’s willing to get weird, which this genre desperately needs. If Bigfire pushes distinct silhouettes and playstyles (support gadgets, deployables, crowd control, vehicle specialists), the sandbox could sing at scale instead of devolving into samey bullet hoses.

Bae’s motivation checks out for anyone who’s raided: “The thing that gave me the greatest sense of achievement was to defeat enormous bosses or break through challenging missions alongside fellow players… I thought, ‘Can we make that happen in shooters as well?’” It’s the right question. The trick is making those giant moments readable and performant when 150 people are spamming abilities at a mech in an intersection.

Industry Context: NCSoft’s MMO DNA Cuts Both Ways

NCSoft knows scale. Guild Wars 2’s world events and sprawling meta chains still deliver communal spectacle. On the flip side, recent launches like Throne and Liberty highlight how tough it is to balance technical ambition with fun moment-to-moment play and fair monetization. That’s my biggest flag here: Cinder City’s business model isn’t detailed yet. If the plan leans into aggressive boosters, paid power, or gacha-tier drop rates, the community will bounce, no matter how good the helicopters feel.

In the third-person PvE shooter lane, Cinder City is rolling into a crowded intersection. Warframe remains the gold standard for generous content and wild buildcraft. The First Descendant landed with flashy Unreal tech and crossplay, but it’s been dinged for grind and monetization friction. Ubisoft hasn’t announced The Division 3 yet, leaving an opening for someone to own the “urban battleground” fantasy at true MMO scale. If Bigfire nails public events where squads, vehicles, and a hundred bodies collide without turning into visual soup, that’s a differentiator.

The Real Questions Players Should Ask

• Performance and readability: Can UI, effects, and hit feedback stay clear with hundreds of players and AI in one fight?
• Class identity and synergy: Nine heroes need defined roles that matter in both 6-player dungeons and 100-player zergs.
• Content loop: Are the two launch maps dense with rotating events, boss variants, and reasons to log in daily/weekly?
• Vehicles as more than taxis: Do bikes and helicopters have meaningful combat utility and counters, not just spectacle?
• Monetization: Cosmetics-first, or do we see progression timers and stat boosts sneak in? NCSoft’s history means we need receipts.

Bae is refreshingly candid that success “hinges upon the reactions of players,” and that’s the right posture. The 2026 window suggests time to iterate on the unsexy stuff—server tick rates, ability culling, matchmaking rules, and anti-cheat. If the team keeps hosting large-scale tests and shows raw, messy gameplay instead of hyper-cut trailers, trust will follow.

Looking Ahead

On paper, Cinder City is exactly the kind of idea I want to boot up on a Friday night: jump in a chopper with friends, drop into a public mech event with a few hundred allies, then peel off for a tight 6-player dungeon. Two 7 km² zones isn’t gigantic by MMO standards, but if Bigfire packs them with layered events and uses vehicles to keep the pace snappy, it could feel big where it counts. The team’s MMO roots are an asset—just keep the monetization clean and the fights readable.

TL;DR

Cinder City aims to fuse MMO-scale chaos with a third-person PvE shooter, boasting hundreds of players, vehicles, and nine heroes across two sizeable maps in 2026. If Bigfire can solve performance, clarity, and fair monetization, this could be the large-scale alternative Division fans have been waiting for. If not, it risks becoming another flashy trailer that melts on contact with reality.