Tree of Savior announced plans this week for a staggered launch: early access in March for a fee, and free-to-play in June. Community uproar caused IMCGAMES to rethink that plan and put the schedule to a vote; the new schedule includes a launch for paying founders on March 29th and a free-to-play server opening on April 28th.
Meanwhile, the MMORPG community turned its attention away from EverQuest Next and toward Landmark, Daybreak’s future, and what it all means for western gamers.
Read on for the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions.
EVERQUEST NEXT & LANDMARK
Working As Intended: The fate of the MMORPG genre
EverQuesting: Let EverQuest Next live on in Landmark
Dave Mark: EverQuest Next’s AI ‘was not vaporware’
Landmark’s next big update arrives Monday, wipes claims and characters
Landmark’s storytelling system really is incoming
Dave Georgeson says he’d have delivered EverQuest Next ‘to vision’
Global Chat: The death of EverQuest Next
Landmark plans two more character and claim wipes
Massively Overthinking: The future of Daybreak
Daybreak is shutting down the EQ Worlds mobile app
PlanetSide 2 is shutting down in China
THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES
Desert Nomad: Diving deep into Black Desert’s cash shop - Hello, friends, and welcome back to Desert Nomad. This week, I'd like to take the opportunity to talk about a subject that has been the focus of much debate in…
Black Desert is working on ghillie suit countermeasures - Community Q&A sessions are pretty popular these days, but usually they involve developers selecting questions and parceling the answers out accordingly. This Black Desert interview turns that format on its…
See the new Warcraft movie trailer and poster - Warcraft's June 10th movie premiere is coming a lot faster than you'd think, and the promotion machine for the fantasy film is well underway. There's a new one-minute TV trailer…
The Division promises that a new update is coming next week - After many delays, The Division is out and in the hands of players everywhere. The development team has posted a quick state of the game update, promising players to provide…
Camelot Unchained’s new patcher, Friday Night Fight Nights, and new pics - Camelot Unchained's weekly update has arrived, and the team is still crunching away. Mark Jacobs delivers news on several ongoing projects: An early alpha version of CU's new patcher is…
SWTOR announces KOTFE Chapter 12: Visions in the Dark, due April 7 - [AL:TOR]BioWare has just announced the next story chapter for Star Wars: The Old Republic's Knights of the Fallen Empire expansion: Visions in the Dark. [prspeak]"In Visions in the Dark, releasing April…
Pantheon hopes to ‘bring back the magic’ of classic MMOs ‘without the tedium’ - Gamers Nexus has a timely video interview with Pantheon's Brad McQuaid that might allay the fears of those watching the development of his old-school MMO. "The main thing we want to bring…
Exploring ‘The Video Game Debate’: Are MMO communities real or fake? - We've come a long way in our discussion of Rachel Kowert and Thorsten Quandt's book The Video Game Debate: Unravelling the Physical, Social, and Psychological Effects of Video Games, and while this…
EVE Online player spends three years visiting every system - Despite the common perception that EVE Online is nothing but corporate intrigue and scams, some players do actually eschew the cutthroat capitalist meta game for something else entirely. One such…
Tree of Savior puts its early access to player vote - The Tree of Savior devs are reworking their plans for early access based on player "feedback." IMCGAMES says that its three-month exclusive access plan was conceived from concern over stability…
Blade & Soul’s Silverfrost Mountains expansion includes eight dungeons - NCsoft has just announced more content coming to Blade & Soul this spring in the form of what it's calling the Silverfrost Mountains expansion. "The Silverfrost Mountains expansion for Blade…
Rumor: Retailers pegging World of Warcraft: Legion’s release as June 30th - The cycle has begun. Every time a World of Warcraft expansion doesn't have a fixed release date, retailers begin assigning a release date to the expansion, and people watch carefully…
GDC 2016: PlayStation VR launches in October for $399 - Sony's PlayStation VR is launching in October with a $399 pricetag, significantly less than the tech world assumed and much less than the Vive and Oculus Rift. Writing from GDC, The…
Raph Koster on Crowfall’s social gameplay and robber-baron badasses - This month's Crowfall Q&A video is all about social systems, which means design consultant and MMO industry veteran Raph Koster is on camera to discuss how the PvP game will…
Player-created space cities arrive in EVE Online when Citadel launches April 27 - CCP has announced that EVE Online's next big expansion, Citadel, is officially landing on April 27th following EVE Fanfest. At the heart of the expansion are the citadels themselves, "massive player-created…
ARK: Survival Evolved is splitting in two with a F2P version - See below for the update. Strange things are afoot at ARK: Survival Evolved, my friends. The site posted a partial picture of a metallic dinosaur under the header of "Mysterious…
Hyperspace Beacon: Should you resub for SWTOR: Disavowed? - [AL:TOR]Hello, friends. I hope you don’t mind my calling you that. I do respect my readers. Thankfully, most of you are rational and thoughtful. And I do my best to…
Tree of Savior enters Steam early access tomorrow, launches F2P June 19 - The English version of Tree of Savior is on the way, and today we know when. Beginning tomorrow, March 16th, the game will enter early access on Steam, with a…
Jagex has been sold to a Chinese company for $300M - Jagex has a new master today. According to The Financial Times, Shandong Hongda, a company known primarily for its iron ore mining operations, has apparently purchased British games company Jagex…
Black Desert players are up in arms over the P2W Ghillie Suit - There's some controversy in the Black Desert community about an item that you can buy offering a serious advantage, and yes, it's the Ghillie Suit. You knew it was going…
WildStar’s Chad Moore: ‘There are still exciting days ahead’ - Last Friday's announcement from Carbine about its layoffs and WildStar's cancelled China launch was doused in a double-dipping of PR-speak. For those who found that statement cold and lacking comfort, then…
Guild Wars 2 living story news, Salvation Pass video - If you missed the recent Guild Wars 2 AMA on Reddit, then you'll be happy to see that there's a handy compilation posted of all of the subjects and questions…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 55: Black Friday fallout
The Stream Team: Dishing out keys to open Das Tal’s alpha doors
The Stream Team: Facing Path of Exile’s first Ascendancy trial
The Stream Team: EverQuest anniversary adventures
The Stream Team: Chasing leprechauns in The Secret World
The Stream Team: Happy birthday Xsyon!
The Stream Team: A Pi Day quest for Black Desert pie
AND FROM OUR FRIENDS AT BLIZZARD WATCH
SyFy’s Face Off focuses next episode on Warcraft movie
WoW Legion: Marksmanship Hunters get their pet back
Blizzard Voice Chat in alpha testing
Every week, get caught up on the MMO genre’s latest news and Massively OP’s best content in our MMO Week in Review! Want more roundups of content? 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 cover anywhere else.
