MMO Week in Review: Tarisland on the horizon

April 23, 2023 8:00 PM

Prepare to be not in Azeroth anymore (again), as Tencent made plans this week to not only fill the gap left by the untimely death of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft in China with Tarisland but also launch it in the west too. Well, this ought to be interesting!

Meanwhile, Throne & Liberty is (probably) delayed again, BlizzCon is still on, Pax Dei talked up its housing, Mad World began its founder headstart, and the genre said farewell to EVE Anywhere.

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Read on to catch up with the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions today as every Sunday (since 2010!) in Massively Overpowered’s Week in Review!

THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES

Perfect Ten: 10 ways World of Warcraft feels like a dead mall - There was a time that I lived next to a very small mall that's tucked kind of out-of-the-way in a part of my state. It was already kind of a…

BlizzCon 2023 is still happening, Blizzard’s Mike Ybarra tells Twitter fans - Blizzard's fan-centered live event BlizzCon used to be one of the highlights of the year for the MMORPG genre - until COVID drove it out of Anaheim and to online…

Tencent’s World of Warcraft clone, Tarisland, plans global rollout - The vacuum created by World of Warcraft's closure in China back in January created an opportunity for a new title to fill that void: Tarisland by Tencent. With dragonriding, stylized…

Rumor: Throne & Liberty has been delayed to fall 2023, CBT arrives in May - Korean media are reporting today that NCsoft's Throne & Liberty has been delayed yet again, though of course since we've been waiting since 2014 and lost count of all the…

LOTRO Legendarium: Making sense of LOTRO’s virtue system - If you look at how your character gains power and progression in Lord of the Rings Online, you'll see four major categories. There are levels, which automatically bestow stats upon…

Diablo IV is running a ‘Server Slam’ stress test the weekend of May 12 - This morning, we noted the rumor that Blizzard might be plotting another Diablo IV beta, and during the studio's stream this afternoon, that's exactly what it confirmed: "From May 12,…

Mad World’s founder headstart launch is about to kick off - It's a big day for Mad World fans who bought the game's largest founder packs, as the earliest of the early bird headstarts is set to kick off today at…

Lord of the Rings Online celebrates 16 years of adventure with a fireworks goat mount - Raise a pint of ale, for Lord of the Rings Online is 16 years old! Or rather, it will be as of Monday! The Middle-earth MMORPG kicked off its anniversary…

Torchlight Infinite will finally launch globally May 9 with the Cube of Rapacity season - XD Games is finally gearing up to move multiplayer crossplatform OARPG Torchlight Infinite from open beta early access - where it's been since last October - into launch. "On May…

Pax Dei demos nighttime housing gameplay, teases ‘high-stakes PvP’ and PvP building - Earlier this week, the devs of upcoming sandbox MMORPG Pax Dei posted a video and FAQ all about the game's buildable housing. Now, Mainframe Industries has followed up that infodump…

Star Wars The Old Republic previews several class balance adjustments coming in Update 7.3 - Another major update is looming on the horizon of Star Wars: The Old Republic, and it's bringing with it a variety of balance tweaks for several classes. The post reads…

Square-Enix claps hands with a blockchain game platform that ‘hides web3 technology under the hood’ - At this point, game publishers and developers are likely wise to the fact that the vast majority of gamers don't want, like, or need speculative blockchain and NFT nonsense worming…

Champions Online’s Cryptic says it’ll ‘start exploring more inclusive customization options’ - Over the weekend, a Champions Online player tipped us off to a conversation on the game's official forums in which players are chronicling their multi-year efforts to convince Cryptic to…

City of Titans shares its work in Unreal Engine 5, promises to open up access to a larger map soon - It's time yet again for us to circle back around to City of Titans and see where this developing MMORPG is headed, and it appears that some major moves have…

Massively Overthinking: What should MMOs do when guild leaders vanish? - Last week, we covered that wild story about a "heist" in EVE Online that allowed the perpetrators to make off with trillions of ISK in cash and assets, amounting to…

DC Universe Online releases Episode 45 Shock to the System to PC and all consoles today - It's been held back for a week, but at last players of DC Universe Online can experience a Shock to the System today, as the newest content patch is now…

Frozen Flame’s survival mode moves from open beta to early access beta - Did you miss the open beta build of the early access build of Frozen Flame? You don't have to worry about that because the test of the test is done…

Embers Adrift offers a running QA tally of fixes, promises another free weekend and more advertising soon - Just in case you forgot, Embers Adrift has been running an ongoing forum post that shares Stormhaven Studios' homework. Specifically, the thread offers a running log of fixes being planned…

Albion Online begins testing Knightfall midseason patch tomorrow – with WASD movement - Yesterday, Sandbox Interactive dropped patch notes for Albion Online Knightfall midseason patch, and it's a doozy with a long list of tweaks. When the test servers are live tomorrow, players…

CCP Games is already sunsetting EVE Anywhere after just a year in the wild - Back in 2021, CCP Games made a big to-do over a browser client for EVE Online called EVE Anywhere - essentially a cloud-hosted version of the game that denizens of…

Four Winds: The Artist has become my favorite support class in Lost Ark - Here's a thought experiment: How would have Anakin Skywalker turned out if he had grown up on planet covered in paint rather than coarse, hateful sand everywhere? The answer will…

Vague Patch Notes: If there’s any sort of metaverse, it’s already here – and it’s not what you think - We've had a lot of fun here having a good little giggle about the whole saga (if you want to call it that) of the metaverse, the bugbear of so…

Lost Ark aims to spend 2023 reducing grind and improving the newbie and catch-up experience - Lost Ark has been live in the west over a year now, giving Amazon and Smilegate the opportunity to reflect on how far the game has come - and where…

New World prepares to merge 11 servers and open transfers from fresh start worlds - Before the launch of New World's first season, Amazon devs has promised that they would revist the server population situation, and now they've made good on it. In a post…

World of Warcraft previews Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible and flight in Zaralek Cavern - You there! Are you excited for Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible in World of Warcraft? Or, as you more likely remember it being called if you are excited, Next Major Raid…

Harry Potter Quidditch Champions is a competitive multiplayer title currently taking playtest signups - The made-up sport of quidditch is a big enough portion of the Harry Potter franchise that it can become its own separate game, though the last time that happened was…

The Swordsmen X Survival quietly lists an April 27 early access release date on Steam and releases new trailers - Last month we took a peek back in the direction of Swordsmen X: Survival, a martial arts survival sandbox that first crossed our desk last year with the promise of…

Multiplayer cozy game Fae Farm has been delayed from spring 2023 to late 2023 - Dauntless studio Phoenix Labs first announced upcoming cozy multiplayer title Fae Farm last fall, with a launch window on the Nintendo Switch of spring 2023. Unfortunately, the team isn't going…

Minecraft Legends launches with plenty of blocky multiplayer battle strategy - If you were to go back to the year 2000 and tell everyone that a game primarily made of boxes would absolutely dominate the market, you'd be locked up for…

Massively on the Go: Splatoon 3’s Eggstra Work could be fun if it entailed less social work - Splatoon 3 players recently got to experience the first weekend of Eggstra Work, and it's controversial to say the least. The very basics are that the mode is like Time…

Guild Wars 2 tests map queueing feature, finishes DirectX 11 migration, and fixes the Elementalist exploit - Guild Wars 2 released a minor update today with some interesting implications for players trying to join specific maps that are already full.[AL:GW2] "Players can now add themselves to a…

World of Warcraft producer claims Blizzard is bleeding talent and creating ‘crisis maps’ for feature releases - It would appear that another bout of brain drain is afflicting Blizzard as a whole and World of Warcraft in specific. One of the MMORPG's game producers took to Twitter…

Pax Dei elaborates on its sandbox housing and building systems – check out the new video - Pax Dei's reveal at the top of March was a surprise of the welcome sort for fans of immersive fantasy sandbox MMOs, as studio Mainframe Industries - headed up by…

Choose My Adventure: Rocking my way to max level Bard play in Neverwinter - The journey in Neverwinter continues with pure, unadulterated focus on my Bard, as suggested by the voting public. And I promise, I won't ask the same question a third time.…

Pokemon Go’s Niantic pushes Marvel World of Heroes into beta, announces Monster Hunter Now - Niantic is continuing is thus far unsuccessful attempts to make MMOARGs besides one attached to the Pokemon IP happen following the flop of its Harry Potter game, as we're now…

Dark and Darker’s alpha playtest slammed by ‘sophisticated’ DDoS attack - Remember how, just last month, Ironmace studios urged fans "not to worry" about Dark and Darker's future? So... it might be time to start showing a mite bit of concern.…

Elder Scrolls Online begins testing green-flavored Necrom chapter - As any kid who's choosing a summer popsicle stick knows, green is always a solid pick. Elder Scrolls Online hopes that the magic of this life-affirming shade will rub off…

Nexon formally files a copyright infringement lawsuit against Dark and Darker studio Ironmace - Considering the very public back-and-forth between Nexon and Dark and Darker developer Ironmace, this development seems like a foregone conclusion, but it is now official: Nexon is taking Ironmace to…

Leaderboard: Is an overlay map essential in OARPGs? - Is an overlay map critical to your experience in OARPGs? Blizzard apparently doesn't think so, as it's not planning on implementing one in Diablo IV in spite of the fact…

Embers Adrift defends its subscription monetization model in latest dev video - The most recent developer livestream from Embers Adrift began as most others, with the game's community manager Elloa reading patch notes for March's update and an April hotfix, playing the…

MMO legend Richard Bartle reviews the highs and lows of New World - When one of the founding legends of MMORPGs spends 360 hours in your game, chances are that he has Opinions about how you did stuff. And so the New World…

Riot MMO’s principal game designer steps down in what former Riot dev calls ‘a natural part of the life cycle of a game dev’ - The MMORPG that Riot is developing has apparently lost another member of its senior staff. Justin "Xenogenic" Hanson announced his departure from Riot this past Friday for an unexplained new…

THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS

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.