MMO Week in Review: WoW picks its Battle for Azeroth launch date, Ultima Online goes free-to-play (April 8, 2018)

April 8, 2018 8:00 PM

Were you too busy gaming this week to pay attention to MMO news? Get caught up every Sunday evening with Massively Overpowered’s Week in Review!

Classic-but-still-updated MMORPGs were on fire this week! World of Warcraft kicked off PAX East with a bang by announcing Battle for Azeroth’s launch date of August 14th, and then Ultima Online released its Endless Journey patch, taking the 20-year-old game free-to-play for the first time ever.

Stay tuned early this week as we roll out all our PAX coverage! In the meantime, read on for the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions.

THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES

World of Warcraft’s Battle for Azeroth expansion launches August 14 - Who had August in the poll? Anybody have August 14th specifically? Because that, my friends, is precisely when World of Warcraft's Battle for Azeroth expansion is launching. So sayeth Blizzard's official…

Ultima Online’s F2P conversion, Endless Journey, is officially live with new ‘deluxe starter pack’ - At 20 years old, Ultima Online is finally doing what its EA-backed handlers at Broadsword once said it would never do: It's going free-to-play. Game update 99, Endless Journey, should…

Perfect Ten: Why I (grudgingly) put up with Secret World Legends’ reboot - [AL:SWL]Less than a year ago, I faced a crisis as a fan and player of The Secret World. Funcom abruptly announced that it would be throwing the current game --…

GDC 2018: Hands-on with Elder Scrolls Online’s Summerset and a chat with ZeniMax’s Rich Lambert - [AL:ESO]Elder Scrolls Online: Summerset was announced during GDC 2018, which may or may not have surprised you, depending on how many spoilers you'd already seen. As I still haven't gotten…

TERA launches on consoles - [AL:TERA]Fans of console-based hacking and/or slashing should rejoice today, as TERA is now out for consoles. En Masse happily touts it in the trailer down below as the only MMO…

Making my way through RIFT Prime’s progression server - [AL:Rift]It has been a month since that fateful day back in March when the MMO collectively lost its mind by rushing back to play a seven-year-old game as if it…

Chaos Theory: Rushing Secret World Legends’ main story mission is a bad idea - [AL:SWL]If there is one thing this past week has emphasized to me, it's that powering through just the main story missions of Secret World Legends is bad. Heed my warning…

City of Heroes emulator pumps out its first public release - Former City of Heroes players have plenty of options to try to fill the void of their favorite MMO. There's a chat shell that uses the original client, there are…

Occupy White Walls is the most bizarre new MMORPG we’ve seen in years - Are you tired of being a murder hobo in MMORPGs, tasked with little more than mindless slaughter in between gear grinds, achievement hustles, and lockbox shenanigans? If so, you're going…

PAX East 2018: Ashes of Creation will launch alpha one this year - Ashes of Creation will hit alpha one by the end of the year, Intrepid Studios announced today during its panel at PAX East. The game slipped into a phase it's…

Here’s something nobody saw coming, and by nobody we mean everybody: Sea of Thieves griefers are abusing the brig - Did you think Sea of Thieves' patch yesterday, which aimed to address respawn griefing, was going to put an end to players' torment? Yo-ho-ho not a single chance of that,…

Boss Key mostly gives up on Lawbreakers, moves on to ‘passion project’ - Long after players had tried and moved on from the gravity-defying Lawbreakers, its studio has conceded defeat. Boss Key Productions put out a statement today saying that the game was…

Hyperspace Beacon: The SWTOR prank that revealed so much about the hungry fanbase - [AL:TOR]With April Fool's Day falling on a Sunday, Passover, and Easter, I didn't actually spend a lot of time on the internet watching the pranks and funny videos. Even Star…

Hands-on with Conan Exiles’ launch build: Farming, frolicking in the swamp, and other feature fun - The early access days of Conan Exiles are coming to a close. In less than a month, the survival sandbox will launch. At that time players will get to explore two…

Black Desert prepares to switch service providers for better service - [AL:BDO]Graphics and music aren't the only aspects of Black Desert that are getting an upgrade -- the team announced that it will be switching service providers later this month to…

Diablo’s Deckard Cain joins the cast of Heroes of the Storm - Don't skip this article -- stay a while and listen! The big news for Heroes of the Storm this week is that Blizzard is bringing over one of its most…

ArcheAge 4.5 Legends Return launches tonight with new fresh start servers - [AL:Arche]ArcheAge's 4.5 update is going live tonight, complete with raise-able dragon battle mounts and shadow invasion content provoked when big world bosses are downed. But what most players are probably…

Choose My Adventure: Warframe in review - [AL:WarF]It's funny how presentation problems can have such a huge impact on the same product. Warframe, as a game, is almost crippled by its lack of guidance and the poor…

Black Desert opens up Ellie’s Mystical Lake Festival, invites you to walk there - [AL:BDO]We hope you've cleared your schedules, Black Desert players, because it's Wednesday, and you know there's always something new to do in-game on Wednesdays. This week, it's Ellie's Mystical Lake…

Rumor: Ubisoft and Massive are building a battle royale game - According to a report on Gamereactor, Ubisoft would like a piece o' that PUBG and Fortnite action. The publication claims to have an "anonymous source inside the studio" who's told…

PUBG Corp sues Netease for cloning PUBG in Knives Out and Rules of Survival - Let the battle royale lawsuits begin! TorrentFreak caught wind of a new lawsuit in California that ought to set all the cloners on edge: PUBG Corporation is suing NetEase for…

Nexon is fined for using shady lootbox ‘gachapon’ techniques in South Korea - If you've ever been frustrated over online games refusing to disclose the odds of winning anything in lockboxes, then get ready to do a little fist pump for justice. South…

Massively Overthinking: How do you maintain your health while binging MMORPGs? - Kotaku put out a piece this week on how to game without wrecking your body, something that's probably bound to come up in the average MMORPG player's life. It's filled…

Former BioWare boss expounds on EA’s role in substudios and business models - Everybody loves to dump on EA for wrecking companies like BioWare and escalating microtransactions and lockboxes to ludicrous heights, but is it warranted? Kotaku recently spoke to former BioWare studio…

ArcheAge players fear pay-to-win practices will infect new progression server - [AL:Arche]With ArcheAge's new progression fresh start server going live today, players are raising concerns that Trion Worlds has slipped in pay-to-win elements in its cash shop mere hours before the…

Overwatch devs consider harnessing machine learning to fight toxicity - According to a new Blizzard interview on Kotaku this week, Overwatch toxicity has a new enemy: AI. Jeff Kaplan says that Blizzard has "been experimenting with machine learning" in order…

SWTOR teases its new expansion, Cartel Market updates, and more coming by year’s end - [AL:TOR]With all the April Fool's updates and misinformation that were flying around this weekend, it was a little difficult to tell what was a prank and what was real, especially…

GDC 2018: Bridging and embedding cross-platform online communities - As this year's GDC coverage is winding down, I am finally coming to the topic I saved for last: community. MMOs are more than just multiplayer. We attract the "alone together"…

Journey to South Africa in Secret World Legends’ Dawn of the Morninglight today - [AL:SWL]Just a few short weeks ago, stalwart Secret World Legends players learned the location of their next adventure: South Africa. And when the servers return today, that patch - heralding…

SoulWorker Online leaves open beta, preps for release [Update: It’s launched!] - Say farewell to SoulWorker Online's open beta -- and hello to release! Gameforge announced that the import has wrapped up its one-month-plus open beta test and is preparing the title…

Amazon Game Studios picks up former Daybreak CM Greg Henninger - Daybreak's loss is Amazon's gain -- again. Former H1Z1 Community Manager Greg Henninger revealed that he has jumped ship from Daybreak over to Amazon Games Studio. "I am moving on…

Black Desert players overload servers in mass protest over ongoing connection problems - [AL:BDO]Back in March, Kakao issued a round of compensation for Black Desert players in North America affected by service interruptions in what the company characterized as "issues with [its] carrier."…

More Elder Scrolls Online players play High Elves than anything else, and other fun fourth-birthday stats - [AL:ESO]Let's just pile on some more events in The Elder Scrolls Online, shall we? This latest round is in honor of the game's fourth birthday and kicks off on Wednesday.…

GDC 2018: Depictions of violence and war in video games and Destiny’s Sword - I love stories. Maybe it's the teacher in me, but I love stories not just for their raw entertainment value, but for their ability to teach. It's not heavy-handed like…

GDC 2018: How to get exploiters to happily surrender in EVE Online - [AL:EVE]EVE Online is not known for being a happy place. It's shown even in mass media as a cutthroat world of war and theft. Dealing with exploits is key to making…

EVE Evolved: Get ready for EVE Fanfest 2018! - [AL:EVE]There's just a week and a half to go before EVE Fanfest 2018, the biggest event in the EVE Online social calendar. The event kicks off on April 12th and will…

THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS

AND FROM OUR FRIENDS AT BLIZZARD WATCH

What you need to do before the end of WoW Legion

PVP Honor levels to become account-wide, open-ended in Battle for Azeroth

Player solos +15 Mythic Cathedral of Eternal Night in WoW

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.