What Modes Can I Still Play in NBA 2K20 After the Server Shutdown?

With NBA 2K20‘s servers now permanently discontinued as of December 31, 2021, players can no longer access online multiplayer modes or any features requiring remote connectivity. However, you can still enjoy several deep offline game modes that offer hours upon hours of basketball action without an internet connection.

MyCAREER

Undoubtedly one of 2K20‘s most popular modes, MyCAREER puts you in the shoes of a customized basketball player on a journey from amateur prospect to NBA superstardom. Build your MyPLAYER from scratch, dominate college showcases, get drafted, upgrade your attributes and skills, and eventually build your way up to a 99 overall legend battling against current NBA stars.

While the online VARIATION of MyCAREER has Park/Neighborhoood and competitive Pro-Am modes, the offline experience is still incredibly fun and rewarding with full seasons, playoff runs, endorsements deals, badge progressions and more to play through. Customization addicts will also enjoy tailoring everything about their player‘s appearance, animations, and playstyle without paying for VC.

Over 75% of MyCAREER content remains fully playable offline

Play Now

The aptly named Play Now mode allows you to instantly jump into an exhibition game using any current NBA teams with up-to-date rosters, perhaps to settle a debate over which squad is truly dominant in the league right now. Want to see if the new-look Nets can take down the Warriors? Stage that matchup in seconds without any extra bells and whistles.

Playoff fever getting you excited for the latest postseason bracket? Choose Playoff Mode to run through the Eastern and Western conference championship brackets to crown a champion. With gameplay sliders, you can also customize the style of play, difficulty, and rules to craft your perfect basketball experience.

While not as flashy as card-collecting MyTEAM or empire-building MyLEAGUE, Play Now distills NBA 2K20 down to its excellent 5v5 core mechanics. It‘s the quickest way to jump into heart-pounding crunch time ball when all you want is to hit clutch buckets without the grind.

MyLEAGUE

For the armchair GMs out there, MyLEAGUE gives you the keys to your favorite NBA franchise to guide them to dynasty status over multiple seasons. Acting as owner, manager, and coach, you have full control over roster construction through trades, the amateur draft, and free agency.

Customize your team‘s offensive and defensive playbooks, fine-tune rotations based on matchups, manage player morale and personalities all while balancing the team‘s finances and budget. If you want to sink your teeth into nearly two decades of NBA action, take any team from the 2002-2003 season all the way to today‘s stars and see how dominant you can make them using your own vision of moves and lineups.

The only missing elements are online league functionality and certain event triggers, but offline MyLEAGUE still captures much of the franchise-building magic that hardcore NBA fans crave.

MyGM

For the ultimate NBA fantasy fulfilment that stops just short of actually suiting up yourself, MyGM puts you in the GENERAL manager‘s chair to steer every aspect of your organization to supremacy. Schedule team practices and workouts, hire and manage coaching staff, medical personnel, and scouts while handling media obligations and owner directives.

MyGM connects all the background elements of operating an NBA franchise into one cohesive experience that Showcases your executive decision-making chops. Can you strategically manage player workloads, egos, and relationships while appointing the best supporting cast of assistants and staff? This is your chance to pull the strings like a real-life GM sans the multi-million dollar price tag.

Just like MyLEAGUE, you‘ll lose out on online league features but can still architect an NBA contender for years on end.

Many modern sports games rely on online connectivity to Drive ongoing player engagement and recurring revenue streams after launch. Consider FIFA Ultimate Team, Madden Ultimate Team, and NBA 2K‘s own MyTEAM as prominent examples where new cosmetic items, card packs, tournament entries, and other limited-time content offer fresh motivation and rewards that keep fans hooked.

However, these online-dependent modes typically sunset within a 2-3 years as publishers migrate fans to newer releases. Servers eventually shut down, in-game economies grind to a halt, and purposefully overpowered cards expire into oblivion during seasonal resets.

Meanwhile, NBA 2K20‘s offline modes showcase how well-crafted single-player experiences withstand the test of time for vastly longer than superficial online features. The core basketball gameplay and mechanics carry future installments forward, not cheap dopamine hits from loot packs and daily login bonuses. A rewarding sense of progression and creative freedom persist by perfecting your play on the virtual hardwood, not maintaining some arbitrary meta that constantly moves the goalposts to squeeze more money from players.

So while you‘ll sadly be denied bragging rights on global leaderboards or rubbing virtual elbows in multiplayer lobbies, the heart of NBA 2K20 beats on for the foreseeable future through its offline game modes.

Progression and Economy Changes

The demise of NBA 2K20‘s servers spells the end of Virtual Currency (VC) – the lifeblood of leveling up MyPLAYERS, purchasing cosmetic items, and more in recent NBA 2K games. Without the ability to earn small VC rewards from completing online games, goals, and events or buying large VC packs from the Marketplace, your player progression options are now solely limited to raw XP gains from playing offline games.

Prepare for a more sluggish grind slowly upgrading your attributes, badges, and skill through legitimate court time rather than lean on instant, paid shortcuts to 99 OVR godhood. Additionally certain cosmetic clothing or animations will no longer enter circulation as seasonal event rewards that offered them for free to online players.

However, this shift rebalances 2K20 ecosystem into fairer, more consistent advancement for all rather than gating power behind either an endless VC grind or real money credit card charges. Dedicated players will still be able to craft elite, Hall-of-Fame worthy MyPLAYERS – it just requires more patience sans shortcuts. Ultimately the purity of playing games rather than leveraging microtransactions still offers rewarding long-term gains.

My Perspective as a 2K Player

As an avid NBA 2K fan across multiple installments with hundreds of combined hours played, I firmly believe the offline experiences available in NBA 2K20 can still offer tremendous fun and value despite lacking certain online components. At its core, NBA 2K20 features best-in-class presentation paired with immensely deep gameplay systems recreating the modern NBA landscape.

For the friendliest entry point, Play Now mode delivers instantly gratifying basketball in its purest form pitting all your favorite players and teams against each other with minimal distractions. MyLEAGUE and MyGM provide virtually endless franchise roleplaying appeal, letting you experiment with all-time great team construction ideas over multiple seasons. And MyCAREER transforms into an extensive offline RPG as you lead a promising rookie towards hardwood greatness over a full career.

Each experience excels on its own merits, allowing you to engage with the sport in a variety of ways mirroring real-world analysis, debate, management, and development fantasies diehard fans entertain everyday. While the lack of seasonal roster updates could make rosters stale overtime, custom roster support ensures the community can manually keep lineups current if desired. Roster editing capabilities also open up creative opportunities to experiment with radical lineup changes, fantasy draft classes, historic team overhauls and more.

For players who never migrated fully into the "games as service" model of recurring payments and engagement metrics, NBA 2K20 represents a welcome return to form – a feature-rich package you simply purchase and enjoy offline on your own terms with no recurring costs. The focus returns to overcoming challenges on the court, not on your credit card statement or daily countdown timers coercing more play time. Virtual currency comes secondary to virtuoso stick skills and basketball IQ.

So while NBA 2K20‘s offline landscape looks decidedly more sparse compared to the bustling 24/7 connected experiences modern sports gamers may be accustomed to, it is far from a desolate wasteland. In many ways, this reduced feature scope removes the noise and distractions from NBA gaming’s roots – excelling at the pure skills challenge of besting opponents in simulated head-to-head matchups. The courts are still polished, the sneakers still squeak sharply, and the rims rattle satisfactorily with each swish – beckoning you to log just one more game.