EA’s Abandoned Harry Potter MMO: Close But No Cigar

Hogwarts Legacy is in its final stage of development and will launch in 2022. That's public knowledge, sure. But what's not public knowledge, however, is the fact that Electronic Arts once had a Harry Potter MMO in the works almost twenty years ago. So, what happened to it? Well, it's not great news, I'm afraid.

Speaking with Original Gamer Life, former product marketing director Kim Salzer touched base on some of EA's earlier works. One of these, surprisingly, included a Harry Potter MMO which, going by Salzer's 2000 to 2003 tenure, was being developed around the same time as The Chamber of Secrets. However, despite the franchise gaining a huge following in 2002, the project never actually saw the light of day.

According to Salzer, the game was going to feature a mixture of both online and offline modes. To add to that, the former director also said that players would have received real-life rewards in the mail for completing in-game tasks. Sort of how an owl would deliver an acceptance letter, but with gift codes and certificates for your mantle piece instead. I mean, that's sort of how we picture it.

EA definitely had the tools for the job, so why the change of heart? What stopped the developer from building the MMO?

Oh, ye of little faith…

Although EA did aim high with the MMO, the project was eventually cancelled by 2003. Apparently, the publisher's top dogs had little faith in the Harry Potter domain, and strongly believed its popularity would dwindle before too long. And so, as a result of this, the game was canned.

Of course, there's more than likely a bunch of other key details that contributed towards its unfortunate outcome, though Salzer failed to let any of it slip. But seeing as it was being developed twenty years ago, I suppose we can learn to forgive and forget. After all, Hogwarts Legacy bears the torch now. And honesty, we're fine with that.

Hogwarts Legacy will launch in 2022 on Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC. You can follow the updates for the game on the official social handle here.