MMO Week in Review: Embers Adrift vs. the hot messes of Elyria and Aria

This week in MMOs, we had a pile of bad news: Legends of Aria’s blockchain version changed its token and its name, and Chronicles of Elyria crowed over the dismissal of the lawsuit its backers had lodged against it – both stories that give MMO crowdfunding a bad name.

But in happier news, Embers Adrift, which once looked doomed after the drama that plagued it back when it was known as Saga of Lucimia, actually made it to launch.

Plus, Guild Wars 2 is going all out for Extra Life, Blade and Soul released Symphony of Destruction, and MOP’s Chris ran down the highlights of Star Citizen’s CitizenCon.

THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES

Chronicles of Elyria dev celebrates dismissal of backer lawsuit as next phase of ‘hero’s journey’ - The sorry saga of Chronicles of Elyria has a new chapter today, as Soulbound Studios' Jeromy "Caspian" Walsh has released a Q3 update, and it's... well, not a great day…

WoW Factor: Was the faction split ever good for World of Warcraft? - Before I had played World of Warcraft and back in the time when I allowed myself to speculate more freely on what games would be like rather than just actually…

LOTRO Legendarium: Four options for character leveling in LOTRO - One of the unsung benefits of maturing MMORPGs is that they generally offer far more options for leveling and adventuring than what was present at launch. This, in turn, allows…

Legends of Aria’s blockchain mess gets a new name – BRITARIA – as its token sinks - The crypto shenanigans around Legends of Aria just keep getting weirder. Readers will recall that Legends of Aria, Kickstarted by MMO players as Shards Online, struggled throughout its development and…

Activision-Blizzard is being sued by yet another of its sexual harassment victims - Well, damn. We saw this story floating around the other day with weak tabloid-esque sourcing, but now it's been confirmed by the attorney: Yet another Activision-Blizzard employee is suing the…

Four Winds: The refinement of item enhance systems in MMOs, from Granado Espada to Black Desert - Itemization is a foundational system in many modern MMOs. After players reach the level cap, item levels largely drive the measurable progression of a player. Final Fantasy XIV, for example,…

Overwatch 2 counts over 25M players in 10 days, announces double XP weekends to celebrate - Despite all of its launch problems, it would appear that there were a lot of people checking out Overwatch 2 over the past week and a half: 25 million people,…

New World’s game director on the lessons he’s learned during the MMO’s first year - It has been a year since New World has launched, and through its soaring heights, its near-catastrophic lows, and the current righting of its ship and arguably growing popularity, Amazon…

Jennifer Hale returns to Guild Wars 2 to voice a child character based on a real kid for Extra Life - As part of its Extra Life 2022 efforts, the Guild Wars 2 team is going all out to celebrate one of the children helped through the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals…

Pantheon Rise of the Fallen discusses its latest pre-alpha, tours Sevil Manor and the updated Wellpond - Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen made a lot of noise about the fact that pre-alpha testing came back at the beginning of this month, and now that the test has…

Final Fantasy XIV previews a spooky new location for this year’s All Saints’ Wake - What's the first thing that the new preview of Final Fantasy XIV's All Saints' Wake event focuses on? The fact that you get a new dyeable long coat for every…

Book of Travels eyes price increase, newbie hand-holding, and targeted DLC - Book of Travels just marked its first anniversary from its October 2021 early access launch, you might be surprised to realize. The "micro-MMO" initially struggled with stability issues, permadeath quandries,…

Massively Overthinking: Do gaming ‘tourists’ ruin MMOs? - Yes, I know that's a provocative title. Yes, we're gonna talk about it with some nuance. It's a topic inspired by a Reddit thread from several weeks ago in which…

Final Fantasy XIV details the upcoming first stage of expanding the North American servers - If you were around for the launch period of Final Fantasy XIV's latest expansion launch, you know how it feels when the game's servers are at capacity. This is why…

Vague Patch Notes: Finger-pointing in the MMO and multiplayer games industry - I know for a fact that I've already made the joke at this point about how Babylon's Fall just straight-up Babylon Fell, but the wordplay amuses me. That's not what…

Embers Adrift wraps up beta and starts launch rollout - With the beta test behind it, Embers Adrift is full steam ahead for launch. And, in fact, some backers are already in the game thanks to the headstart rollout. This…

World of Warcraft will finally let Horde and Alliance share mob tagging with Dragonflight - The once-uncrossable line separating Alliance and Horde in World of Warcraft is about to be blurred even further. With cross-faction grouping added to the game this past May and cross-faction…

Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier is shutting down in January after less than a year of operation - It's apparently the season for Square-Enix to cut loose its various online games that are severely underperforming, as Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier has received an official sunset notice…

After weeks of teasing, the City of Heroes SEGS Engine project has released its ‘very alpha’ build - Over the past while we've been covering the progress of the Super Entity Game Server (SEGS) Engine, a fan-run project that's trying to rewrite the code of City of Heroes…

Blade & Soul plays the Symphony of Destruction today – here are the patch notes - Today is the day when Blade & Soul players get to rock out. Well, they get to rock out as hard as a harp will allow them to, but since…

New World’s latest trailer demos the brutal greatsword weapon launching next week - When the Brimstone Sands patch drops for Amazon's New World next week, players will be doing a lot more than getting sand in their armor. They'll also be swinging a…

Perfect Ten: 10 MMOs that went through complete technical clownshows - I've gone on record multiple times to state that when you get right down to it, MMOs look pretty darn complicated. There are a lot of moving parts when it…

Magic the Gathering Online details the last leg of its transition to Daybreak next week - I'm betting folks have forgotten all about this by now, but last December, Daybreak and Wizards of the Coast announced that Daybreak would be taking over publishing duties for Magic…

Torchlight Infinite launches into early access with cross-platform multiplayer - The Torchlight franchise just welcomed its newest member into the fold this week -- but this one may not look and feel like the games that proceeded it. Torchlight Infinite…

SMITE raises regional prices for Turkey and Ukraine due to ‘economic forces and abuse from players’ - I'm personally not smart enough to even speculate about what's happening in the global economy, but apparently Turkish and Ukrainian fans of SMITE are going to be facing a harder…

Not So Massively: Eternal Card Game is a solo-friendly hidden gem - Over the past year or so I've developed what you might call a bit of an interest in collectible card games. Mostly I play with physical cards, but sometimes I…

Elder Scrolls Online players have made the Firesong DLC free thanks to their efforts in Heroes of High Isle event - Congratulations, Elder Scrolls Online players, you've gotten yourselves a free DLC. The end of September saw the MMORPG kick off the community-driven Heroes of High Isle event that unlocked rewards…

Overwatch 2 suffers another DDoS attack, accidentally removes everyone’s earned heroes - The goof parade that is Overwatch 2 keeps marching along, regrettably. The most recent SNAFU suffered by players of the game involved an intended lockdown of a couple of characters…

New World’s server queue ‘heat map’ identifies which servers to flee ahead of Brimstone Sands - In case you were wondering about the fate of your New World server when Brimstone Sands launches next week, Amazon has released a graphic showing the anticipated server queue situation…

Chimeraland is merging its global servers after just three months, and yes you might lose your house - Chimeraland fans, if you've been thinking that the game's population is shrinking and is in need of a merge, then Level Infinite agrees with you. "Recently, it's come to our…

Massively on the Go: Comms failures exacerbated Pokemon Go’s underwhelming raid day - Almost one year ago, the Pokemon GO community rallied around #PokemonNO, a movement spawned from players who knew #HearUsNiantic would fall on deaf ears. Well, not totally deaf, as Niantic did…

Wisdom of Nym: Looking forward to Final Fantasy XIV’s imminent patch 6.25 - Well, that was... sooner than I expected! I had honestly been expecting patch 6.25 to be further out than... well, next week, but here we are! Final Fantasy XIV is…

The foam pit at TwitchCon ended up being a landscape of serious bodily injury - Foam pits sound like fun on paper, especially ones that have elevated platforms where people can duke it out American Gladiators style, but the promotional foam pit area that was…

Star Trek Online’s Enterprise-F confirmed as canon in Star Trek: Picard trailer - The latest Star Trek: Picard Season 3 trailer had a whopping surprise for both fans of the franchise and players of the MMORPG. Amid all sorts of yelling and legacy…

Shroud of the Avatar is back online, but that ‘test’ rollback to August has become a live reality - It has been a long week for the developers and followers of Shroud of the Avatar. The problems began when developer Catnip Games sought to put out Release 106 at…

Stick and Rudder: Everything we learned from Star Citizen’s CitizenCon 2022 presentations - I've lost five hours so you don't have to. This year's CitizenCon event for Star Citizen was definitely something, and while a great deal of it was interesting as CIG…

THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS

Massively OP Podcast Episode 392: Don’t rollback my heart

The Stream Team: The quest to be a cat in Star Trek Online

The Stream Team: Pirate101 turns 10 for Halloween!

The Stream Team: Starting the quest for the Samurai in AdventureQuest 3D

The Stream Team: A spot of Elementalist mapping in Guild Wars 2

The Stream Team: ‘Tis the season for undead and liches in Dungeons & Dragons Online

The Stream Team: Continuing the Machinist journey in Lost Ark

The Stream Team: Catching up with Guild Wars 2’s Keeper of Beasts

The Stream Team: Storming the castle in Elder Scrolls Online

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.