ALL THE POSTS

This is the face of giving a damn.

Vague Patch Notes: The limits of data in MMORPGs

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Yesterday, I went on a rant about data. As you probably guessed from the various columns wherein I attempt to use data to analyze future points, I like data. I like math. It's really interesting to see the ways that data will line up, converge, and ultimately give us if not a story at least the outline of one...

Donkey Crew debuts new trailer for survival RPG Bellwright while Last Oasis languishes in early access

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Readers of our site are likely familiar with Polish studio Donkey Crew and its woodpunk survival sandbox Last Oasis. The game, which was first unveiled in 2019, cast players as nomads traveling a desert wasteland aboard large walking wooden ships known as Walkers. It made its early access debut in 2020 after numerous delays but faced a wave of negative...

Enlisted Reinforced quickly suspends Steam early access over pricing and technical issues

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At the tail end of January, we reported on the WWII FPS Enlisted's plans to launch into Steam early access, complete with a new name of Enlisted: Reinforced and all of the various feature updates the shooter got on other platforms. That launch was supposed to happen today, March 29th, but Gaijin Entertainment has elected to suspend the release...

Elite Dangerous previews visual updates of summer’s Powerplay 2.0 while promising more details later

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Elite: Dangerous fans likely remember that the start of February had big plans for the spaceship sandbox, including a reworking of the powerplay mechanic among them. Some of those updates have been showcased by Frontier Developments in its latest showcase stream as the devs call attention to a few of the visual updates that "Powerplay 2.0" will introduce. The preview...

Monsters and Memories hopes to launch into early access by the start of 2026

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Does it help or hurt to know that a wishlisted game now has a release date -- and that this date is still almost two years away? That's the question that retro-themed MMO Monsters & Memories fans have to ask themselves as Niche Worlds Cult announced that the project is aiming for an early 2026 release. "Monsters & Memories will...

The Daily Grind: When has a wholesome MMO feature wound up backfiring?

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A few weeks ago, the Ultima Online team released a newsletter, and its very first entry caught my eye. "I want to address a pressing issue regarding the distribution of misleading materials in town," the devs wrote. "Dropping books that claiming any third party client is legal, along with instructions on how to use it, will result in a 24-hour...

The Stream Team: All done with Neverwinter’s The Dwarven King

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Sadly, Neverwinter's The Dwarven King doesn't have nearly enough Bruenor Battlehammer for Massively OP's MJ's taste (or even his helm, for that matter!). Instead, she dealt with a Thayan wizard Candelaria, then rescued a missing Dwarven soldier. However, that's not going to stop her from wrapping up this epic adventure arc. Tonight she'll run through the final third to...
spooky, kinda

Massively Overthinking: Lies about MMOs we thought were true

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A totally not-gaming video inspired this week's Massively Overthinking: Hank Green's video called I Believed These Four Lies. Green elaborates on a quad of things he thought were true but turned out to be, well, lies - or at least based on untruths. I want to riff on that idea but drag it back to the MMORPG genre since......

Paragon-spinoff Predecessor has soft launched into F2P open beta early access on Steam (and everywhere else)

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Predecessor - the latest shooter spawned from the ashes of Epic Games' defunct MOBA Paragon - has officially launched into open beta today on a list of platforms as long as my arm: PC, Steam, the Epic Games Store, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. In fact, it's the first chance Xbox players will have to try...

MMO Business Roundup: The Gearbox sale, GDC 2024, and layoffs for SEGA and Smilegate

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Welcome back to another quick roundup of some MMO and MMO-adjacent industry news! Embracer - The ailing games giant announced this morning that the rumored sale of Gearbox is indeed happening. The company has sold Gearbox Entertainment to Take-Two Interactive for a whopping $460M. However, the sale does not include Cryptic Studios (Neverwinter and Star Trek Online) or even Gearbox...

Warframe launches Dante Unbound (sans Deep Archimedea) and TennoCon 2024 ticket sales

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Dante Unbound hit Warframe last night - just in time for the game's 11th birthday (it soft-launched March 25th, 2013). "Defend the Leverian from the avaricious clutches of Parvos Granum and the Corpus!" Digital Extremes says in its usual opaque lore-encrusted way. "Drusus, curator and caretaker of the Leverian, requests your help to get out from under Parvos’s gilded...
I asked Bree if we could have Night Elves and she said we have Night Elves at home.

Tarisland looks at the Misty Forest in its latest map preview

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Full marks to the Elves of Tarisland, they live in a place called the Misty Forest. That's it. Most Elves, they'd be calling the place Milliulussorieth, and you'd have to look through four translation guides to realize the name translates to "forest what got some mist going on," so it's still basically named Misty Forest, but now you have...
king-shark-bird.gif

World of Warcraft’s Holly Longdale reassures players that further PvE-based experiments are coming

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If you're a World of Warcraft player looking at Plunderstorm with some combination of bafflement and trepidation about the possibility that every further "experimental" bit of content will be PvP-focused, you can rest a bit easier. Holly Longdale has put out a very brief statement insisting that there are future bits of content coming which are entirely PvE-focused, including...
BORK BORK BORK BORK

Final Fantasy XIV confirms the most important element of its Final Fantasy XVI crossover

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From the moment that Final Fantasy XIV producer and director Naoki Yoshida revealed that he had finally made peace with Final Fantasy XVI producer Naoki Yoshida, we have all known we would be getting a crossover event. And the first video trailer made it clear we were getting FFXVI's goodest boy, Torgal, in both mount and minion form. But...

Dungeons and Dragons Online has a date with Fred the Mindflayer, LOTRO updates delving rewards

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Depending on how your romantic life is these days, a date with a very nice mindflayer may be the swoony highlight of your spring. So why not swing into Dungeons and Dragons Online, where Update 67: Slice of Life arrived yesterday with a few unusual quests? The free adventure pack of three quests allows you to "take part in a...

Embers Adrift plots more solo content, additional bosses, new areas, and more in latest roadmap

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What's the state of Embers Adrift? One with lots and lots of plans, according to an address from executive producer John Gust, which features a new content roadmap for 2024 that outlines plenty of updates on tap for the sandbox MMORPG. The roadmap doesn't provide any dates or release windows, electing instead to categorize features by three different development priorities....

Black Desert offers a first look at new areas and features of Land of the Morning Light’s Seoul

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The Land of the Morning Light in Black Desert will soon throw its... uh, morning light across a new area, as Pearl Abyss has provided another peek at the Seoul region that will be arriving to the MMORPG and adding on more gameplay details since the last preview at December's Calpheon Ball. The end of the 20 minute-long dev commentary...
HNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG

WoW Factor: Blizzard didn’t reveal World of Warcraft sub numbers – it drew a Mystery Line

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It will not surprise anyone reading this to learn that there are things which upset me. This is just part of being a human being; there's no greater moral architecture to it than that. The vast majority of you do not interact with me on a daily basis and thus do not really see it beyond when I write...

New Hellgate game for PC and console, codenamed Hellgate Redemption, is in the works

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Hellgate: London is mostly known nowadays as the IP that just won't die despite resurrections continuing to prove to be increasingly shambolic - a topic that our Game Archaeologist Justin has covered before. It looks like there's still some meat to pluck off of the title's bones, as developer Lunacy Games has announced plans to make a new Hellgate...

Cozy MMO Palia handwaves its bizarre beta obfuscation on the grounds that it’s free-to-play

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Yesterday, we recapped the ongoing drama with Singularity 6's cozy mini-MMO, Palia. The short version is that the game hit beta last summer and has been launching on different platforms ever since, all while weirdly obfuscating the fact that it's still in beta. For example, as we noted, the game's Steam launch early this week bears no mention of...

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