MMO Week in Review: Roadmaps for LOTRO and SWTOR, multiplayer for No Man’s Sky (May 20, 2018)

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Were you too busy gaming this week to pay attention to MMO news? Get caught up every Sunday evening with Massively Overpowered’s Week in Review!

Roadmaps! Getcher roadmaps! Both LOTRO and SWTOR released gameplans for the rest of the year this week; LOTRO has a class revamp, new regions, and a level cap bump to 120 on deck, while SWTOR aims to tackle some faction-blending and go all-out on PvP fixes.

Meanwhile, we got hands-on with State of Decay 2, Worlds Adrift hit early access, Boss Key shuttered, Pantheon revealed a trio of classes, and No Man’s Sky announced multiplayer for real this time.

Read on for the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions.

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Would you attend a Path of Exile con in New Zealand?

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How does an ExileCon sound to you? Grinding Gear Games wants to know if you’d be interested in traveling down New Zealand next year to partake in all the dev and demo trappings of a convention specifically for Path of Exile. Understanding that travel costs to its home city Auckland in November 2019 would be expensive, the studio wants to gauge interest in the event before committing to run it.

Besides announcements, including the big 4.0.0 mega-expansion, players would get to hang out and talk to devs, play demos, buy merchandise, party, and revel in swag. On top of that, there would be finals to various tournaments. GGG also wants to run competitions that will grant winners free flights and accommodations to the event.

If this sounds like something you’d consider, head on over to the official forums to fill out a quick form to let the team know!

Source: Path of Exile Twitter

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The MOP Up: Old School RuneScape puts the finishing touches on Theater of Blood (May 20, 2018)

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The MMO industry moves along at the speed of information, and sometimes we’re deluged with so much news here at Massively Overpowered that some of it gets backlogged. That’s why there’s The MOP Up: a weekly compilation of smaller MMO stories and videos that you won’t want to miss. Seen any good MMO news? Hit us up through our tips line!

Maybe you’ll discover a new game in this space — or be reminded of an old favorite! This week we have stories and videos from Hellion, Reign of Guilds, Skyforge, Old School RuneScape, War of Rights, Lineage M, Heroes and Generals, Aurcus Online, ARK Park, Dark and Light, Wild Terra, Citadel: Forged With Fire, and Hearthstone, all waiting for you after the break!

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World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth adds 2 more character slots per server, 58 new mounts

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Blizzard is doing nothing to stem your rampant altoholic nature these days, but instead the studio is downright encouraging it. With all of the new allied races currently in World of Warcraft and coming with Battle for Azeroth this summer, the pressure is on to roll up a few new alts. But what if you’ve already maxed out your server’s 16 character slots?

The good news is that the studio is increasing the capacity with the expansion to give you two additional slots: “In Battle For Azeroth, the per-realm character limit will be going up from 16 to 18 to make room for the two new Allied Races (Dark Iron Dwarves and Mag’har Orcs).”

And those new characters are going to need a fun way to get from Point A to Point B, naturally! They’ll certainly have a wide selection from which to choose, as Battle for Azeroth is adding around 60 new mounts to chase. Get a preview of all of these in the video after the break!

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Legion: The Eternal War’s evil magic pits Elves against Humans

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Here’s an indie MMORPG that you may not have known about before this week. Legion: The Eternal War is a small title that’s been in development for a while by Nexus Division, but as of late the project seems to have picked up pace.

The setting of the game involves a world where formerly united Elves and humans have become bitter enemies thanks to the introduction of magic by some sinister crystals into the world. “The game will be filled with entertaining stories, rewarding progression systems, and refined mechanics,” the team wrote. “All of this is presented to produce a memorable experience highlighted by social interaction and nail-biting tension.”

The dev team is staking the game’s future on systems such as player housing, an expansive fantasy world, PvP, character customization, a wide array of magic, wars with guilds, and alliances. Last December, the team showed off a few prototypes of the different biomes that players might find in the game.

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One Shots: A sense of place

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Why do you play MMORPGs? What keeps you questing through these ever-growing worlds? I think a lot of us might answer like Zyrusticae in Blade and Soul here, as we enjoy inhabiting and exploring virtual fantasy worlds.

“See, this is the sort of thing I play MMORPGs for,” Zyrusticae writes. “That sense of ‘place.’ Being somewhere else, even if it’s only behind a computer screen. Old shots, yes, but still some of my favorites just for that. It’s a very pleasant feeling, really.”

Will you find your sense of place in the following player screenshots? Let’s find out!

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The Daily Grind: Have you ever run unauthorized MMO modifications?

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In the earliest days of Final Fantasy XI, you couldn’t alt-tab without crashing the game. Thus, the Windower program, a little add-on designed to force the game to allow alt-tabbing like basically anything else in the world. The add-on was also disallowed, but the developers eventually adopted a “don’t be an idiot” approach to it; you have native window support now, but if you still want to use it for its other functionality, just don’t shout about it in-game and you’ll probably be fine.

Of course, it’s hardly the only unofficial modification that affects a game’s functionality; multiboxing in World of Warcraft, various map add-ons for City of Heroes, the DPS trackers for Final Fantasy XIV. Every game has stuff that’s not technically allowed, but isn’t any sort of cheating tool; it’s just there to improve your life as a player. So have you ever run unauthorized MMO modifications? Not cheating tools, those are a different story, just mods that alter the functionality of your chosen games?

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Make My MMO: Albion Online hits Steam, Camelot Unchained tackles crafting (May 19, 2018)

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This week in MMO crowdfunding, buy-to-play sandbox Albion Online, which launched back in 2017, formally landed on Steam, bringing its blend of PvP warfare to a totally new audience. While the game never ran a Kickstarter, it did raise close to $10,000,000 from a quarter of a million backers through website crowdfunding and preorder packages prior to its release last summer, making it one of the higher profile crowdfunded MMORPGs to actually make it to launch and keep on producing content.

In Camelot Unchained – you’re still keeping an eye on the upcoming beta one, right? – the devs are busy sending early backers into the test server this weekend to break things. Among the bits and bobs CSE is working on? The crafting system, a major environment bug, character creation rendering, new ambient music, scenario maps, trait icons, animations, and “a new template for the home islands.”

Meanwhile, the Pantheon team sat down for a stream and revealed the first of its three classes, Ship of Heroes posted gobs of new screenshots to its Instagram, Elite Dangerous proposed making its factional combat mode entirely open PvP, and Legends of Aria patched in some good stuff, including the first iteration of secure trading.

Read on for more on what’s up with MMO crowdfunding over the last week and the weekly roundup of all the crowdfunded MMOs we’re following.

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The Stream Team: Returning to Radical heights before it ends

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Even though Massively OP’s MJ is not a fan of battle royale, she was amused by the atmosphere of Radical Heights. And since the game can shut off at any moment now that the studio has closed, she wants to get one last session of crazy ’80s in. Join us in live at 6:00 p.m. for what could be the last day ever for…

What: Radical Heights
Who: MJ Guthrie
When: 6:00 p.m. EDT on Saturday, May 19th, 2018

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Warframe reworks Saryn once again with its latest patch

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The most poisonous frame in Warframe had been reworked before, but Saryn needed another pass through the workshop. She has emerged even more powerful, with new uses for Molt and Toxic Lash (which were previously underwhelming) and a general effort to make her abilities hang together more organically. She’ll probably do well with the new particle physics settings that are intended to replace Nvidia PhysX particles, so you can really get the sense that she’s just filling the air around her with sickness and spreading corruption.

You will not, however, want to fill your expanded Dojo with sickness and corruption. That would be a bad thing. But you will have a bunch of additional options with your aforementioned Dojo, including new obstacle courses. That’s in addition to numerous other quality-of-life improvements, fixes, and alterations; check out the lengthy patch notes to get a sense of everything that’s coming. And if you start singing a song about toxicity whilst playing Saryn, we can’t stop you.

Source: Official Site; thanks to BrotherMaynard and sophiskiai for the tip!

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The Game Archaeologist: Warhammer Online

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When it comes to notable years in the MMORPG genre’s history, 2008 stands out as one of the most significant. World of Warcraft’s debut onto the scene in 2004 caused an upheaval in ways far too numerous to go into detail here. Suffice to say that its overwhelming popularity drew the attention of game designers who looked at the staggering numbers of players and found themselves envious of the potential to grab a slice of that money pie.

Many projects went into high gear following WoW’s launch, with plenty of them trying to copy the formula and structure that Blizzard established in the hopes of making it at least partially as big as that game. So-called WoW clones began to pepper the market and there was a sense that gamers were ready to move on from World of Warcraft to the next generation of MMOs. In many players’ minds, this would be either 2008’s Age of Conan or Warhammer Online, two big-budget MMOs with strong IPs that carried a lot of the weight of expectation.

Little did anyone realize that 2008 represented a bubble that was about to burst on the industry and the WoW clones that followed — including Warhammer Online. Today, we’re going to take a look at “bears, bears, bears,” the high hopes of Mythic Entertainment, and how WAR became a casaulty on its own battlefield.

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The Stream Team: Welcome to ARK’s sheepball!

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Massively OP’s MJ has been looking forward to today for a very long time. It’s the inaugural game of sheepball! That’s right: This amazing new sport has been fully developed for play on ARK: Aberration.  Who will score the most? Tune in live at 12:00 p.m. to watch this new amazing sport that’s sure to take the survival genre by storm. If they all had sheep.

What: ARK: Aberration
Who: MJ Guthrie
When: 12:00 p.m. EDT on Saturday, May 19th, 2018

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WRUP: How to make bird walk edition

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Hello and being welcome to What Are You Playing, column that is for creating most excellent guide on subject of common knowledge to human beings which is also written by actual real human being too. Today column subject focus on how to make bird walk in good walk pattern for movement because human limbs are bad for walk.

First is be find bird. Bird should be more big than human, not more small. More small is bad. Once is finding bird, place two simple human leg over bird back and say in language of bird, “You are now my walk maker.” Bird will peck and scream so much. So much. So much. Why is bird angry? We are using human leg. Frustrating!

Bird is still outside doing so many scream. We do not know how to make bird walk. Tell us how to make bird walk. So many scream from bird. Help us. Help us make bird walk.

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