MMO Week in Review: Throne & Liberty, New World’s seasons, and a pile of MMO birthdays

Amazon made two huge announcements that stole the MMO show this week: First, it’s publishing NCsoft’s Throne & Liberty in the west, and second, it’s converting New World into a seasonal MMO with the Fellowship and Fire update launching in late March.

Meanwhile, players are celebrating loads of anniversaries right now for RIFT, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Black Desert, and Old School RuneScape.

THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES

Amazon Games will publish NCsoft’s Throne & Liberty in the Americas, Europe, and Japan - The rumors were true: Amazon Games is publishing NCsoft's Throne and Liberty in the west. The companies announced the partnership early this morning. "Amazon Games and NCSOFT today announced an…

Vitae Aeternum: Previewing New World’s first season and updated 2023 roadmap - Last week, Amazon Games invited members of the press to a presentation where it unveiled its plans for a new seasonal content model for New World. Season one will launch…

WoW Factor: Does World of Warcraft need more classes? - So how many classes are there in World of Warcraft? There are wrong answers, but there's more than one right answer. If your answer was "13," you are right. There…

Gamigo is granting 15 free days of sub time to new and returning RIFT players - Has Gamigo abandoned RIFT? Given the lack of updates and massive layoffs and tiny population, you might think so, and we've certainly been wary of the company's intentions. But maybe…

Perfect Ten: 10 things I really dislike about Final Fantasy XIV - Sometimes, when I have a series of columns planned, I start off by saying, "Hey, here's a series of columns I plan." And sometimes I let it just be unstated…

Embers Adrift lowers its box price and subscription price, maps out content for 2023 - Over the course of the last few months, Embers Adrift has held sales for its brand of PvE MMORPG gaming, including free-to-play weekends and a limited-time discount to its subscription…

The Game Archaeologist: The tale of Infinite Crisis, Turbine’s extremely short-lived DC Comics MOBA - Sharp minds will recall that back in 2012, EA Mythic attempted to turn its declining MMO fortunes by repackaging Warhammer Online into a MOBA called Wrath of Heroes. This grand…

The Daily Grind: What type of fashion does your MMO characters wear? - As the truth-in-comedy joke goes, the real endgame for MMORPGs is fashion wars. Whichever player creates the best cosmetic outfit from collected pieces and strategically applied dyes is the true…

Jukebox Heroes: Six great EverQuest II expansion tunes - When's the last time you stepped back and realized just how big and expansive some of your MMORPGs have become over the decades of their existence? It certainly gives me…

Artifact Krewe, a Guild Wars 2 exploration fan game, is out now - Is your favorite part of Guild Wars 2 getting to explore maps, jump around, discover treasures, and generally just see what the world has to offer? We can understand exactly…

X-LEGEND confirms its plans for a global re-launch of Eden Eternal - Earlier in the week Redditors discovered some indications that Eden Eternal was on its way to a return following its closure by Gamigo. We can now confirm that X-LEGEND will…

Massively Overthinking: The MMO characters we want to love but don’t - A few weeks ago, MOP reader Neurotic pinged the MOP Podcast with a question about characters we want to love but just don't. He had found that in spite of…

Wayfinder begins closed beta next week, plans no-wipe early access for May - MMO-inspired but smaller-scale co-op PvE hack-and-slasher Wayfinder wormed its way into our hearts last year with its familiar visuals and splashy combat, and now, it's worming its way into a…

Baldur’s Gate 3 announces August launch date with multiplayer - After years in early access, Baldur's Gate 3 finally got a Baldur's Date... of release. That is to say that this multiplayer co-op CRPG is coming out on PC, Mac,…

Coreborn Nations of the Ultracore offers up its open world co-op survival sandbox to alpha testing March 2 - Another survival sandbox is making its way into our radar (and likely part of our list of beta titles). This time we're casting our eyes towards Coreborn: Nations of the…

Games startup Elodie Games announces Project Skies, a ‘social cooperative action RPG game’ - At this point, we all see a press release from a new startup studio with tons of investment money touting devs from the likes of Blizzard, Riot, and BioWare and…

Massively on the Go: Preparing for Pokemon Go’s Global Hoenn Tour - Pokemon GO's Hoenn Tour is swiftly approaching, and as usual for the POGO regional tours, we have a nice little checklist for you global players out there. While, as usual, Niantic is still…

Vague Patch Notes: MMO events are not for the high-level playerbase - Let me start with a statement of fact: I actually really like limited-time events in MMORPGs. I don't like them as a means of conveying major story beats (looking at…

Lord of the Rings Online increases its virtue and legendary item cap, talks about ‘new work in Gondor’ - In case you missed it -- possibly because it wasn't initially broadcast to all channels -- Lord of the Rings Online recently increased both the virtue cap and the legendary item cap.…

Pantheon will test updates to crafting and gathering in this weekend’s pre-alpha - It may not be exciting, but Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen has apparently made gobs of progress on infrastructure that is largely invisible to players. That's the takeaway from the…

RF Online’s western version has been sunsetted thanks to an apparent contract issue - News coming out of the sci-fi MMO RF Online has mostly been a trickle of headlines - the last report involved Korean developer CCR announcing its intent to chase the…

Dungeons and Dragons Online’s Update 58 gives away a free dungeon and anniversary cosmetics - As Dungeons and Dragons Online reaches its 17th anniversary, Standing Stone Games is spreading the celebration far and wide with this week's Update 58: Unlikely Heroes. [AL:DDO]The starting point for…

RIFT kicks off Carnival of the Ascended in celebration of its 12th birthday - Go ahead and pinch yourself to check, but you're not dreaming: Gamigo's now done two good things for RIFT in the span of a single week after years of neglect…

Singapore detains teen for playing on Roblox terrorist worlds - You know how they say that "all publicity is good publicity?" Maybe that's not quite true in the case of Roblox and... well, everything that's been going on in this…

Massively on the Go: Pokemon Go’s Vegas Hoenn Tour was Absol-utely bad - Prior to Pokemon GO’s recent in-person Las Vegas Hoenn Tour, a few people in my community joked about what could go wrong. Obviously lag and login issues were on the…

Elder Scrolls Online highlights some of the quality-of-life and accessibility features coming with Update 37 - As usual, the next update to Elder Scrolls Online isn't only about the Necrom expansion and all of its gubbins; it's also about Update 37, aka the portion of the…

Old School RuneScape celebrates 10 years with a cake-centered quest full of new cosmetic rewards - When someone has a birthday, it's customary to make a birthday cake, and Old School RuneScape is most certainly no different, as cake is the prime focus of the MMORPG's…

Microsoft strikes deal to put Activision games on NVIDIA GeForce Now - Nintendo was not the only video game corporation striking big deals with Microsoft yesterday: Microsoft is also teaming up with NVIDIA to put Activision titles, including Call of Duty, on…

No Man’s Sky adds a new spacecraft, enhanced VR features, and a new expedition with the Fractal update - No Man's Sky has done it again: Early this morning the sci-fi survival sandbox released another sizeable patch known as the Fractal update, with more features and enhancements available to…

Black Desert celebrates seven years on PC and four on console with giveaways and bonuses - It's birthday season for Black Desert, as Pearl Abyss is celebrating its "milestone anniversaries" for the PC and console versions of the game over the next month. Here are the…

Diablo IV previews the world of Sanctuary in a new video - The Diablo IV team is no doubt feeling the pressure of trying to make long-time series fans happy, trying to carry Blizzard's fortunes on its back, trying to make people…

Fight or Kite: The Witcher card game GWENT checks off a lot of the right boxes – but too many of the wrong ones - Continuing on my journey to digital card game bliss, I chose to try out a game I had mentally filed as one of the top contenders in the genre: GWENT.…

Choose My Adventure: Returning to Destiny 2 was both bumpy and engaging - As we close out this random whim of mine to enter shooter MMOs for this month's Choose My Adventure, we clear out our list of games with Destiny 2, a…

Throne & Liberty heads into its final test phases in South Korea today - After 12 years of development, the NCsoft game now known as Throne and Liberty is finally nearing completion. NCsoft reiterated last night on Twitter that its final small-scale test is…

Microsoft and Nintendo ink deal to put Call of Duty on Nintendo consoles for the next decade - Well here's another nudge from Microsoft in its efforts to buy up Activision-Blizzard: As international regulators debate the merger, Microsoft inked a deal with Nintendo that promises to put Call…

Wisdom of Nym: Final Fantasy XIV’s unseen character is (not) the Warrior of Light - In Final Fantasy XIV lore, the Convocation's overall lineup has changed a little bit as we've learned more. At first it was just a dozen members. Then we realized that…

EG7 Q4 2022: Revenues are up thanks to mobile as LOTRO sees ‘mainstream resurgence’ - Enad Global 7's Q4 2022 investor report dropped over the weekend, with a recap of the year for Swedish games corp EG7 and its subsidiary Daybreak Game Studio, which is…

The Secret World Classic’s account site is down, but the original version is still running - [This issue has been resolved as of February 21st, thankfully!] There are some mild-to-moderately concerning developments concerning The Secret World -- the original version, that is, not the Legends reboot.…

THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS

Massively OP Podcast Episode 410: Cyberpunk meets gaslamp

The Stream Team: Taking a return trip to Tales of Yore

The Stream Team: No reason not to No Man’s Sky

The Stream Team: Knight and the living Druid in AdventureQuest 3D

The Stream Team: Healing for actual humans for the first time in Final Fantasy XIV

The Stream Team: Extinguishing Fire Cultists in Neverwinter

The Stream Team: Backseat Streaming remembers Sanju in SWTOR

The Stream Team: Clearing the quest ledger and avoiding cyclopes in New World

The Stream Team: Battling Aetherblades Guild Wars 2

The Stream Team: Into LOTRO’s Ill Omens

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.