ALL THE POSTS
Amazon’s New World adds achievements and updated faction PvP to the alpha
As if to reassure everyone that Amazon Game Studios really is planning on launching New World rather than canning it like everything else, the team has launched another alpha patch today. At the heart of this update is a new ice-themed gauntlet for casters, new expeditions called Lazarus Instrumentality and Dynasty Shipyard, updated milestone rewards, and updated faction PvP...
Massively OP Podcast Episode 318: Middle-earth no more
Justin and Bree discuss Amazon's Lord of the Rings MMO's cancelation, LOTRO's Bilbo patch, FFXIV's 5.5, and SWG Legends' Bespin expansion, with adventures in WoW Classic, Guild Wars 2, Albion Online, and Cozy Grove, plus mailbag topics on ugly duckling MMOs, reconciling immersion, and superhero MMOs.
EVE Online highlights how industrial players provide the fuel for the sandbox MMO’s wider wars
As any player of EVE Online will tell you, waging galactic-sized wars in the game requires a lot of resources -- especially when those wars rage on for 41 weeks. It's the job of the industrial players of EVE to keep that war machine fueled and chugging, and those efforts were highlighted by CCP Games in a flashy new...
Jeff Kaplan leaves Blizzard Entertainment and his position as director of Overwatch
Everything is going super great at Blizzard Entertainment, and the proof of this can be found in the newest announcement of employment shakeups. Jeff Kaplan, a veteran of the studio who was until today serving as game director of Overwatch, has apparently departed Blizzard after 19 years. Given that this is not even the first time this month that the studio...
Interview: Mortal Online 2 CEO on stress testing, persistent plans, and the MMO market
It's not every day that I actually get an answer, let alone a number, when I ask an MMORPG developer how many people showed up for a stress test. But that's exactly what Mortal Online 2's Henrik Nyström offered up in response to our candid interview with him this past week, and now it's got a much bigger slice...
City of Heroes’ Homecoming buffs travel powers and adds tour guide missions in today’s i27p2 update
Back in March, we covered a new patch that had just gone in testing for the test server for City of Heroes' Homecoming rogue servers. (Yes, emulators with proper test servers. It's a weird period in the MMO genre.) Anyhow, that patch is finally live for all Homecoming players today, and it includes some hefty changes, most notable among...
Choose My Adventure: Further group adventures (that weren’t IAs) in RIFT
Once again, the polls from last week were a split between people saying I should queue for normal dungeons and others saying I should just roll around in Hammerknell. So, I elected to try them both out for this week's run through RIFT, seeing as some of the comments granted me the impression that finding a dungeon group was...
Flameseeker Chronicles: Possible futures for Guild Wars 2’s strikes and dragon response missions
Guild Wars 2’s Icebrood Saga gave us a new type of endgame group content starting with its prologue chapter: Strike Missions. Each episode introduced one or more of these mini-raids, up until the release of Champions, which in turn introduced us to dragon response missions, which became the new formula for delivering both new instanced, repeatable content, and story...
Chris Metzen’s Auroboros: Coils of the Serpent Kickstarter funded in 11 minutes flat
Remember a month ago when former World of Warcraft VIP Chris Metzen announced a new Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting and book called Auroboros: Coils of the Serpent? It went up on Kickstarter this morning, and if you blinked, you missed the funding, as it took only 11 minutes to fund and is still going strong as it begins...
Swords of Legends Online opens preorders with minimum $39.99 buy-in for closed beta
If you've somehow missed the deluge of class reveal trailers from Swords of Legends Online the last two weeks - or you can't be arsed to watch them all - then good news for you: Gameforge, Wangyuan Shengtang, and Aurogon have released a new video smooshing all the highlights of the Reaper, Berserker, Bard, Spellsword, Spearmaster, and Summoner.
Worth noting...
Casually Classic: Four alternative day one strategies for WoW Classic’s Burning Crusade
OK, real talk time, people. Is there anyone out there that, knowing the zone design of Burning Crusade and Blizzard's track record with launches, isn't anticipating an unholy mother of a mess when TBC Classic releases? We're talking about funneling thousands of primed characters through the Dark Portal and into a single zone. It's going to be a disaster.
If...
Path of Exile exploit banwave hits one of the game’s main streamers, furor over accessibility ban caused by a troll
Today in "garbage members of the Path of Exile community" news, we've got a couple of unfortunate instances to report from the multiplayer ARPG. First off, a number of players have been banned from the game due to an exploit in Ultimatum that allowed them to generate excessive rewards. Among those 20 players was Empyrian, a streamer of the...
Guild Wars 2 Judgment episode is unleashed April 27 – here’s the new trailer
Back in March, ArenaNet hinting that the fourth and final episode of Guild Wars 2's Icebrood Saga would roll out in late April, and now we've got a hard date, as the studio just announced this morning that Judgment is upon us next week on April 27th.
"With ally Braham, norn of prophecy, on the cusp of confronting his destiny,...
Playable Worlds’ MMO will leverage cloud gaming to simulate a world and be playable on multiple devices
Over the past few weeks, Playable Worlds' Raph Koster has been kicking out lots of blog posts about what his studio's game is aiming to become -- in fact there's been so many of these posts that we've started to pool together a list. While we still have no concrete details on what this dream game is actually going...
WoW Classic lets you store world buffs for later, pushes Burning Crusade beta forward
A late-cycle patch for WoW Classic hit the servers today with a couple of significant changes to how buffs work in the game. First of all, spell batching has been removed to make player abilities more snappy, and buffs are now prioritized to keep the most important ones on player characters if the buff limit is reached.
But the buzz...
The Daily Grind: How do you occupy yourself when your MMO is offline all day?
As promised, Daybreak's entire suite of MMORPGs is offline for 24 hours today, which means DCUO, EverQuest, and PlanetSide 2 fans are going to be looking for something to do. While some folks retreat to Twitter to crack 420 jokes (go ahead, it's bound to happen), I'm hoping y'all have something better to do.
A lot of gamers will be...
The Stream Team: Facing Path of Exile’s Ultimatum for the first time
After it had such a rocky launch, Massively OP's MJ is glad she waited to jump into Path of Exile's new Ultimatum league for the first time. But she can't hold out forever, so she's ready to jump in. Will things be more settled now? and just how much will she risk? Tune in live at 8:00 p.m. as...
Wurm Online previews its upcoming animal update with donkeys
Tired of plodding around in Wurm Online on a cow? Then we've got good news for you because here come donkeys. Yes, with the game's upcoming animal update, donkeys will be available for players and can serve as mounts for non-premium players. There's also the distinct possibility that your horses and donkeys can wind up making for a mule...
The Cycle previews its updated UI design
Fans of The Cycle will get to enjoy a new and improved UI in the not-too-distant future, and the latest development diary on the game is all about showing off what's changing with the user interface while also discussing some concurrent gameplay and system-wide changes. For example, the game's seasonal pass is being reworked to have a single unified...
Destiny 2 brings back the Guardian Games on April 20 with revamped scoring and a new playlist
Life in Destiny 2 already feels pretty competitive, what with all of the PvP and world first raid races and running to the highest Power levels possible, but now that competition is getting another layer added on as the Guardian Games are returning this coming Tuesday, April 20th.
For those who missed out on how this event worked last time,...
