The idea behind Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade was a truly impressive one. It was supposed to be a gigantic, PvP focused MMO where multiple factions would square off against each other with unique characters, weaponry and abilities. And just to make things even more enticing, the Ork Waaagh! would've consisted mostly out of free-to-play players, thus ensuring there would always be hordes of Greenskins roaming around.
Unfortunately, things didn't end up working out like planned. Due to numerous technical problems Eternal Crusade was downgraded from an MMO to a more classic multiplayer shooter, which would've still been fine if the whole thing wasn't continuously plagued with untold bugs and issues. As such, even after launching from Early Access Eternal Crusade continued to bleed players until there was nothing but a dedicated few left.
Since you can't exactly have a multiplayer focused shooter with barely any players, it should sadly come as no surprise to hear that Eternal Crusade devs have now opted to close the servers down for good.
"We are proud of all of the work that went into Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade, and for the amazing community that rallied behind the game," reads the brief update. "Thank you for everything, we appreciate all of your support through the years."
The one bit of good news is that Warhammer and Warhammer 40k are more popular than ever these days, so while we might have to wait a while, there's still a pretty solid chance we'll get an awesome multiplayer shooter at some point in the future. Vermintide 2 developer's Darktide is certainly one such candidate!
As for right now, however, you can take one last look at Eternal Crusade over at Steam and imagine what could've been given better cirumstances.