2015 is shaping up to be the year of the MMO expansion, headlined by Guild Wars 2’s Heart of Thorns, Final Fantasy XIV’s Heavensward, Star Wars: The Old Republic’s Knights of the Fallen Empire, and World of Warcraft’s Legion (its announcement, anyway!). Even 18-year-old Ultima Online is due for an expansion this fall. And still more MMO studios lined up this week to walk back their plans to skip expansions in favor of smaller updates; EverQuest, EverQuest II, and EVE Online are all returning to the expansion model.
Read on for the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions.
WildStar previews a new single-player instance, Alpha Sanctum - The Eldan of WildStar weren't content to rest upon their collective laurels; they wanted to do more. The story of what happened after they tried to reach beyond what they had been is, well, one of…
DarkScape introduces free-for-all PvP ganking to RuneScape - DarkScape is RuneScape, only it's not. It's an official spinoff of the existing game, it features all of the game's content that's been developed over its lifespan, but it also has features that the core game…
Host your own sandbox with Wurm Unlimited on Steam - Code Club has just announced a new phase in development for fantasy sandbox Wurm Online: Wurm Unlimited. Arriving on Steam on October 21st, Wurm Unlimited "allows you to play in the Wurm world locally on your PC and…
ArcheAge adds $250 item pack to its store - Sometimes everything comes down to timing. Take ArcheAge's latest store pack, for example. In and of itself it's just a $250 pack, which is hardly new, and the game's one-year anniversary in North America just came…
World of Warships leaves drydock for live waters - The majestic aircraft carriers and battleships of World of Warships are sailing into battle today as the game transitions from beta to live. "Captains, thank you for all your feedback during the alpha and beta," Wargaming…
Guild Wars 2’s Scrapper turns the Engineer into a tank - Guild Wars 2's Engineer has long been the master of long-ranged attacks, using rifles, turrets, grenades, pistols, and other gadgets to bring the pain to enemies. ArenaNet is going to shake up that paradigm with the…
Final Fantasy XIV demos ‘VR Titan Suppression Battle’ at Tokyo Game Show - [AL:FFXIV]If you happen to be in Tokyo for the Tokyo Game Show this week, make sure to drop by the Sony booth to gawk, as Square-Enix has told Japanese fans that it will be showing Final Fantasy XIV on…
‘SWG 2.0’ Divergence Online hits alpha 3, launches Indiegogo campaign - If Divergence Online sounds familiar, that's because it's been in pre-launch testing for a few years already. This week, it's entered its third alpha and launched its third crowdfunding campaign. The game bills itself as "SWG 2.0" and…
You can test fly Star Citizen’s Avenger for the next week - If you're a Star Citizen backer but you haven't purchased a pre-order package with access to the Aegis Dynamics Avenger, Cloud Imperium is letting you take the ship on a week-long test flight in the Arena…
Elder Scrolls Online is coming to Japan in 2016 - Can Elder Scrolls Online take root in an eastern country such as Japan? That's what we're going to find out, as ESO will be launching a Japanese server in spring 2016. The news came out of the…
MMO Burnout: Star Wars Uprising - When I heard that Disney's first foray into the new Star Wars gaming universe was a mobile-only RPG, it made me sort of angry. Not Vader-force-choking-his-wife angry, but angry enough to indulge in a brief dark…
Is WildStar’s cash shop pay-to-win? - Is WildStar going to be pay-to-win when the free-to-play patch hits on September 29th? That's the topic du jour of a video that looks at the setup of WildStar's upcoming cash shop and business model. YouTuber…
Champions Online begins Supervillain Onslaught - Cryptic has been talking up Champions Online's new Supervillain Onslaught mode over the past month, and now it is finally here! Players can temporarily step into the shoes (or boots or claws) of a mighty supervillain…
Black Desert’s Ninja gets a new trailer - Earlier this week we heard about Black Desert's new Ninja class. Today, developer Pearl Abyss and publisher Daum have released a new trailer for the fantasy sandbox's 12th playable class. The clip itself is pretty short,…
Gaming industry reports identify leading studios and online trends - Details strewn within a trio of industry reports offer clues as to the health and direction of online gaming in 2015. First up is a report from Research and Markets, which says that digital distribution is…
Crowfall scales up its pre-alpha testing - ArtCraft announced that it is working on scaling up Crowfall's pre-alpha testing to accommodate more players than before. The studio said that it has already made progress in this regard, allowing for a few hundred players to be on…
Tamriel Infinium: Six great things to do in Elder Scrolls Online that aren’t endgame - Two weeks ago, ZeniMax launched the Imperial City DLC for Elder Scrolls Online, and yet I have little desire to check the new content out. It's not that it's completely off my radar; I understand that this…
Destiny: The Taken King breaks PlayStation records - If you had any doubt that Destiny is a huge force in the online world right now, Activision's announcement that the game is smashing PlayStation records might rid you of such notions. The company said that…
Guild Wars 2 player finds himself trapped in the Super Adventure Box - Players in Guild Wars 2 have been eagerly awaiting the return of the Super Adventure Box content more or less since the moment it went away, but it seems to be in no hurry to return.…
Elder Scrolls Online’s Imperial City DLC is now on consoles - Cyrodiil's capital district is now available on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 systems. Elder Scrolls Online's Imperial City DLC pack includes new PvE and PvP content, additional dungeons, new weapons, armor, currency, and more. You can…
WildStar will make crafting less complicated - Carbine has great news for players who feel a little too frazzled and overwhelmed with WildStar's circuit board crafting system: Making stuff will be less frustrating when this month's huge free-to-play patch hits. "Our goal with tradeskills…
Kickstarter campaign ordered by attorney general to pay fines, make restitution - One of the very real risks of donating to a Kickstarter campaign is the danger that a company could take your money and never deliver on the project. We've seen this happen several times, whether it…
Guild Wars 2 will end Mordrem invasion today with no further adjustments - As we reported last week, Guild Wars 2's Mordrem invasion had a rough go of it as players experienced bugs and other issues with the lead-up event to Heart of Thorns. While some of the community…
WoW gets new rewards for Brewfest and Harvest Festival
Blizzard and Random House deal brings new writers to Blizzard franchises
Finish these WoW achievements before summer is over
Finally, we wanted to address the problems we’ve had with our ads this weekend. We aren’t a fan of them either, especially the loudness of the sound, and in this case, those who care the most about ads were also most affected (as cookie-blocking only made the ad reappear, which was not the intent — it was supposed to be shown once and then never again). I appreciate those of you who took the time to send polite emails (as opposed to threats and insults) registering your displeasure with the ad. We hear your complaints loud and clear and are working to ensure we don’t serve those kinds of ads again and aren’t locked into an agreement that requires them. Today is supposed to be the last day for that ad, and then we will be taking those types of ads off the table for our advertisers. We hope you will accept our apologies and our promise to do better. -Bree
Every week, get caught up on the MMO genre’s latest news and Massively OP’s best content in our MMO Week in Review! For even more speedy summaries, try Friday’s Betawatch for MMO testing highlights, Saturday’s Make My MMO for MMO crowdfunding updates, and Sunday’s The MOP Up, which mops up all the little bits of news we didn’t want to pass up.
