Were you too busy gaming this week to pay attention to MMOÂ news? Get caught up every Sunday evening with Massively Overpowered’s Week in Review!
The Elder Scrolls Online relaunched a day early this week as “Tamriel Unlimited” with a fresh buy-to-play model and a shiny-new cash shop. Massively OP’s own Larry Everett discussed why it’s worth returning to the game in his Tamriel Infinium column.
Meanwhile, EVE Fanfest 2015 drew to a close; CCP spent the convention talking up its new VR tech, four new side projects, and EVE Online’s inbound customizable structures and player-built stargates. We also learned that DUST 514’s do-over, Project Legion, may be in dev limbo.
Read on for a look at the rest of this week’s top MMO stories.
- Final Fantasy XI will head into maintenance mode at the end of 2015
- Trion made amends for ArcheAge’s dolphingate
- Perfect World suffered serious layoffs; Cryptic alone lost 18 employees
- Guild Wars 2’s Heart of Thorns stress test begins March 24; its latest patch was plagued with bugs
- H1Z1 backed down on plans to soon charge for Battle Royale
- The Secret World offered huge discounted bundles for new players
- SWTOR’s dev stream introduced a new planet and the outfit designer
- Skyforge will kick off its second closed beta on March 24th
- Crowfall promised VR support and hired former CCP exec as new community manager
- Origins of Malu begins early access on March 20th with PvP only
- Landmark abolished claim upkeep and began the EverQuest Next Qeynos Foundation Museum contest
- WAR40K Eternal Crusade killed its early game modules to focus on founder access
- Das Tal devs said they are considering a buy-to-play model
- Elite: Dangerous will begin Mac beta on March 31st; it also named a space station after Terry Pratchett
- We explored Cabal II’s fluid combat in an exclusive dev diary
- WildStar’s contracts system is a bright spot in a week of otherwise dark predictions
- EverQuest kicked off its 16th anniversary with player-designed missions
Here’s what our Stream Team was up to this week:
- The Stream Team: Guild Wars 2 and a giveaway
- The Stream Team: Preparing for The Secret World’s Issue #11
- The Stream Team: Getting spacey in Landmark
- The Stream Team: A reintroduction to The Elder Scrolls Online
- The Stream Team: An EverQuest anniversary with gifts for you!
Our friends at Blizzard Watch posted some fun stuff too:
- How to get the S.E.L.F.I.E. camera and take great photos in WoW
- New Warlords short story from Blizzard: The Code of Rule
- Has RNG outlived its usefulness?
This week, as we wait for the Kickstarter surveys to finish rolling in (we’re just shy of 80% returned now), we’ve begun tackling the long pile of Daily Grind and Overthinking questions that we’ve vowed to answer. Expect more this week!
