MMO Week in Review: Tower of Nightmares

No, that’s not a Halloween haunted house; that’s the name of Guild Wars 2’s latest living world episode, which launched this past week. Also launching this past week? Fractured Online (into early access), Elite Dangerous 4.0, Star Trek Online Ascension, and ArcheAge’s new fresh start servers.

We also took a peek into Temtem, gaped at the swift sunset of Babylon’s Fall, pondered a possible WoW Classic Cataclysm, and raised eyebrows at the latest confirmation of ArcheAge 2. Grumpiness over LOTRO’s Minstrel mess may be assuaged by teases for a 2023 expansion – we’ll see.

THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES

LOTRO Legendarium: LOTRO’s Minstrel revamp is a master class in studio obstinance - Does anything in this world produce a cold sweat faster than a developer abruptly announcing, "Oh hey, we're going to retool your class?" Unless your profession is sleeping in the…

Flameseeker Chronicles: First impressions of Guild Wars 2’s restored S1E4 Tower of Nightmares - Here we are at the penultimate episode of Guild Wars 2's restored and retooled Season 1 content! The pieces are finally starting to fall into place, as Scarlet gathers more…

Blizzard is considering WoW Classic Cataclysm, according to new survey - We are not even to the official launch of Wrath Classic, but Blizzard Entertainment apparently is already considering the next steps for the legacy version of the MMO. According to…

Lord of the Rings Online executive producer hints that 2023 expansion is ocean-themed - While Lord of the Rings Online fans are still waiting to get a full view of this fall's mini-expansion, Before the Shadow, the studio behind the MMO teased what is…

Kakao and XLGAMES reconfirm that ArcheAge 2 is launching in 2024 - If you follow MOP, you already know that ArcheAge 2 has been in the works for quite a while; XLGAMES quietly confirmed it was in production back in 2020, with…

WoW Factor: How much does World of Warcraft matter to Blizzard? - My initial plan this week was to write about whether or not World of Warcraft was successfully creating an echo chamber in which everyone still invested in the game was…

Four Winds: What made Lost Ark so successful where Elyon failed? - I'm sad about it, but I have to eat my words about Elyon and its place in this decade's pantheon of MMOs. I honestly thought Elyon was going to be…

Kickstarted MMO sandbox Fractured Online swings into early access today - As promised, Fractured Online is officially moving from beta to early access as of this morning. MMO readers will remember that Fractured Online - then going by just Fractured -…

Vague Patch Notes: Queues do not tell the story of an MMO’s success - It's time to talk about queues to log in to a game, and you know what game we have to talk about in this context. I mean, it's pretty obvious.…

Star Wars The Old Republic players will be getting a more efficient and faster launcher soon™ - I'm going to be honest, whenever I get the random urge to re-install Star Wars: The Old Republic, I'm almost immediately punished for it by the game's slug-like launcher. Apparently,…

Someone hijacked Wizard101’s in-game alert feed to spam toxicity - Wizard101 is normally associated with kid-friendly fun, but over the past weekend it got decidedly more adult in terms of its language as someone - either a hacker from the…

Ashfall is a post-apoc ‘adventure shooter MMORPG’ from NetEase arriving to PC and mobile devices in 2023 - This year's Tokyo Game Show is host to plenty of different games across the broad spectrum of gamer interest and sub-genres, and that's where we have been given word of…

New World’s Brimstone Sands, greatsword, and newbie redesign are on the PTS - If you're one of the many players returning to New World and forcing Amazon to open seven new servers, you're probably doing so because of the big patch on the…

Massively Overthinking: Have you ever returned to an old MMO and fallen in love? - Earlier this month, MOP's Eliot penned a WoW Factor that doesn't quote but certainly does evoke the ol' Heraclitus quote about how you cannot step into the same river twice.…

Elite Dangerous releases its 4.0 codebase update and Aftermath narrative to all PC players today - Today marks an apparent new beginning for PC players of Elite: Dangerous as the promised 4.0 codebase update has been dispatched to players today along with the beginning of its…

New World adds three more new servers today – that’s seven in the last week - Over the last week, Amazon has announced multiple new servers for New World. Fae, Atlantis, and Eden opened last week, followed by Caer Sidi over the weekend. Apparently, the game's…

Grab an ArcheAge Witchcraft Disciple outfit to wear on the new Unchained fresh start servers launching today - ArcheAge is having one helluva week: Not only is the franchise celebrating its eighth anniversary and welcoming a new sibling, but Kakao is opening new western fresh start servers for…

Mortal Online 2 talks up plans to upgrade to Unreal Engine 5 - Apparently, StarVault's ambitions for Mortal Online 2 won't be stopping anytime soon, as the studio has reiterated its plan to upgrade the newly launched MMORPG to UE5. "Mortal Online 2…

Tabletop-like MMO Mist Legacy makes its way out of early access - At the beginning of the year we cast our eyes toward Mist Legacy, a free-to-play turn-based tabletop-like MMORPG from the small development team at Virtys. The studio touted the game's…

Perfect Ten: An MMO sunset tour for 2022 to date - MMO sunsets can be weird. I am never happy when a game that people love goes away. It always represents a lot of lost time and effort, the loss of…

New World hints at possible fresh start servers in the works - With interest -- and populations -- increasing in New World this fall, Amazon Game Studios may be considering doing a little more than recalling old servers back into service to…

World of Warcraft Classic opens new fresh start realms, offers free transfers to relieve population crush - The chaos and crush of incoming players for Wrath Classic's prepatch has resulted in a bevy of emergency measures by Blizzard. As some servers face extraordinarily long queue times, the…

Self-described ‘infinite open-world MMO’ DreamWorld releases early access build and a free trial - Back in March 2021 we got wind of a new Kickstarter MMO called DreamWorld, which talked up a huge amount of game upon its arrival, touting an “infinite open world…

Fallout 76 officially opens up expeditions to The Pitt in today’s update - Expeditions into The Pitt have been the primary thing that Fallout 76 has been talking about over the past few weeks, and now players of the game can experience the…

Choose My Adventure: Hitting the reset button and getting hit in return during Temtem’s launch - To be honest, I wasn't really expecting my full reset to the launch version of Temtem to feel too different, but I also was sort of hoping for a little…

Star Trek Online’s new episode and event go live on PC – here are the patch notes - Today is the day when players of Star Trek Online can tell Wesley to shut up (presumably) through the vehicle of phaser fire. The MMO's new patch featuring a fight…

Fae Farm is a ‘magical and cozy co-op farm sim’ coming soon to Nintendo Switch - Most of our readers know Phoenix Labs as the dev studio behind the multiplayer co-op monster slayer Dauntless, but the studio's newly announced game is a complete and delightful 180°…

Vitae Aeternum: The best solo armor and magical weapons in New World - I now return to bring you the second part of my analysis of weapon and armor choices for the solo player in New World. If you're just joining us, know…

Babylon’s Fall is shutting down on February 27 - It turns out that building a looter-shooter that is more of a looter-slasher is harder than it looks. Square-Enix and Platinum Games' Babylon's Fall launched in March of this year…

Star Citizen’s CitizenCon officially kicks off on October 8 – here’s what to expect - Followers of Star Citizen have likely heard some early rumblings about the game's annual CitizenCon showcase, but now they have much more information about when the event is happening and…

Wisdom of Nym: Making money in Final Fantasy XIV isn’t what you think - So let me start with a statement: Gil is pretty much irrelevant to me in Final Fantasy XIV because I already have enough. We are going to be talking about…

The Wagadu Chronicles’ second alpha kicks off today with a schedule of in-character and player events - Alpha 2 for afrofantasy sandbox MMORPG The Wagadu Chronicles has officially begun today, and the devs at Twin Drums are doing it up big with a lineup of events set…

Corepunk promises closed beta by the end of the year - For fans of the genre hybrid Corepunk, it's been a most distressing year of silence. After several delays and an announcement this past May that it was dropping Russian support…

Monumental, the studio that bought Crowfall, just bought Boundless too - To make some sense of this press release and why it matters to MMO fans, we're going to have to throw it back to not one but two different games.…

THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS

Massively OP Podcast Episode 388: Elyon descends through finite care

The Stream Team: Taking a turn at the tabletop MMORPG Mist Legacy

The Stream Team: Raiding the Red Monastery in AQ3D’s Nulgath Saga Part II

The Stream Team: Making more runs at some of Final Fantasy XIV’s older raid content

The Stream Team: Aiding dragons to squash the Cults of the Dragons Below in Dungeons & Dragons Online

The Stream Team: Playing cowasaurs and dinoboys with Trove

The Stream Team: The republic stories of SWTOR’s Balmorra, Taris, and Corellia

The Stream Team: A first-timer’s foray into the frontline of Foxhole (for real this time)

The Stream Team: So much Snargle in Guild Wars 2

The Stream Team: Searching Elder Scrolls Online’s Storm Talon Temple

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 bits of news we didn’t cover anywhere else.