With the arrival of the newest Fortnite season, Fortnite OG, the Fortnite community had its largest player blow-up ever. Fortnite had a record-setting release with around 44.7 million players on the game at once. This caused a few problems with queue times being about 25 minutes, which angered many, but for others, it was worth the wait. Fortnite OG brought back all the original and nostalgic parts of the game with the old landing spots, old weapons and even the old lobby and item shop coming back. This was an incredible save by Epic Games, because the game was dying before this announcement was made with Fortnite being at an all-time low in its previous seasons.
Fortnite OG not only saw a return of old landing spots and weapons, but it also brought back many of the original Fortnite streamers including, TFue, Mongraal, Dakotaz, Ceeday and many more. The most popular places of interest (POIs) that returned were Tilted Towers, Pleasant Park and pretty much all of the other POIs, but everyone prefers their special landing spots and lucky rituals. There was also the return of the old spawn island, which is where all the players in the game start. This was one of my favorite bringbacks, along with the sniper rifles and Shifty Shafts.
Epic Games decided that the best way to push through the new Fortnite season was to introduce a new OG season every week. For example, the OG Fortnite season started on November 3 and continued until November 9. I think that the first part of the season should have lasted a little longer because they had so many players in the game, but I get why they changed it so quickly. They would have lost players if they brought back the season for too long because the people would get tired of it, The nice thing is that they kept all the new mechanics in the game like sprinting, mantling and turbo building. In the old Fortnite, they had a limit on how fast you could build, but now, the so-called “sweats” are the ones that build the fastest and are very good at editing the structures.
One of the latest trends on social media is the “OG” versus the “Sweats,” which shows “OG” players finding old ways to eliminate the new players. It also revived many old funny ways to eliminate yourself, whether it was throwing an impulse grenade at your friends to knock them off a cliff, or if it was throwing a boogie bomb at your friends to cancel out the Chug Jug they were about to finish. TikTok was one place in particular where this trend exploded with many memes and popular creator pages using funny video scripts to showcase their talent or memes. This brought even more popularity to the game and the total player count skyrocketed to around 140 million total accounts that have played the new season.
Epic Games did an incredible job with the new season. They got everything right and found the perfect way to get their game booming again. It would have been nice if they would introduce a way to let the players be able to play in whatever season they want, but only make it so a few certain seasons are available at one time. Epic is going to have a tough time recovering when this season ends because many players will likely stop playing afterwards and this will be a tough fall for Fortnite. This season seemed like a last-ditch effort to get the game booming and make as much money as possible in the span of the OG Fortnite season. The Fortnite OG season has been rumored to have an end-of-the-season event hosted by Eminem the rapper, along with a future Lego collaboration. This will most likely be the end of the Fortnite hype train, as likely about half of the players will remain for at least part of the next season just to see what it is about, but after that, Fortnite won’t be as popular as it has been in the past. With the fall of Fortnite inevitably coming again, the question continues, how will Fortnite keep its game alive? It also introduces the question, what will the next big game be? Whether Fornite keeps rocket-riding into the top charts or gets impulsed off a cliff, it will forever be remembered as one of the best games ever.
