You’re already late to the party, what with Diablo III kicking off its 15th season this past Friday! No worries, you can still catch up on all of the fun and start earning yourself some bonus goodies. The special twist this time around involves bounties spitting out twice as many Horadric Caches as normal. Blizzard is rotating seasonal conquests with this one, challenging players to speed race through the game, collect 50 million gold, or destroy all bosses within a time limit. The 15th season is live on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, and will run until December 16th. More or less.
Read on for a roundup of other smaller MMO news stories and videos from this past week in this edition of The MOP Up!
New Games and Testing
- Prosperous Universe: Work continues on the game’s vital Chamber of Global Commerce. The good news? It’s about complete!
- Ragnarok M: If you live in Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, or Vietnam, you can pre-register now for Eternal Love. No word on a launch date just yet.
Patches
- OrbusVR: A small patch added dynamic level scaling to dungeons and opened up dungeon queuing for you virtual munchkins out there.
- SMITE: Embark on Hera’s Odyssey with the new Update 5.17 and continues over the next seven patches.
- Ultima Online: Publish 101 is out with 21st anniversary rewards, lots of fun with astronomy, the start of the Halloween event, and lots more.
- PUBG: Update 22 is currently on the test servers, where players can get a preview of the ranking system, the return of map selection, and a “convenient” new wheel menu.
- Knights of the Wasteland is live in Crossout.
- Aion’s New Dawn 6.0 update went live for European players under the Gameforge banner.
Events
- Grand Theft Auto Online: Rockstar has brought back its Running Back Adversary mode from now through October 1st with all sorts of extra rewards.
- Hearthstone: Blizzard explains how the Days of the Frozen “brawliday” came to be.
- EverQuest II: Daybreak is kicking off another round of Gear Up, Level Up starting tomorrow, September 24th.
Odds and Ends
- Professionals from Hearthstone and League of Legends call for more women to be involved in the esports industry.
- League of Legends landed a big sponsor for its esports: Mastercard!
- Warface: This “tactical team-based shooter” is now out for free on the PlayStation 4. Note, this is Warface, not Warframe. Because I know this MOP writer who keeps confusing the two.
Videos
Jagex went in-depth on RuneScape’s OST.
Go on a Conan Exiles excursion through the Midnight Grove with the developers:
Studio closure
Finally, and this isn’t really MMO-related, but multiplayer-related: We’re sad to report that Telltale Games is closing down, laying off (according to some reports) 250 people without severance.
To clear up the Telltale confusion:
It's not closing down.
But it is laying off 225 of 250 people.
That's about as close to a closure as you can get without actually ending the company.
That seems like the source of the confusion.— Jeff Grubb (@JeffGrubb) September 21, 2018
Re: I got laid off at Telltale
None of my sleepless nights or long hours on weekends trying to ship a game on time got me severance today. Don’t work overtime unless you’re paid for it, y’all. Protect your health. Companies don’t care about you.
— Brandon Cebenka (@Binkysaur) September 21, 2018
Our hearts go out to the rank-and-file devs who will suffer the most from all this, as well as for the fans and folks unlikely to ever see a return on their season purchases.
