MMO Week in Review: Aeternum, Janthir Wilds, Dawntrail, Gold Road, and War Within

The not-E3 of early June seemed like it wouldn’t have much in store for MMORPGs, but this week delivered in the end: New World announced its Aeternum reboot with its extremely and unnecessarily confusing console access, World of Warcraft set a date for The War Within, Elder Scrolls Online launched its Gold Road expansion, Guild Wars 2 announced its Janthir Wilds expansion (with housing!), and Final Fantasy XIV dropped the embargo on its massive media tour – don’t miss our extensive coverage of the new jobs, dungeon, and zones! Any of these five stories would’ve carried a normal week, and here there all landing at the same time. Can’t complain!

THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES

Vitae Aeternum: New World’s Aeternum relaunch is actually a solid update – with terrible timing and comms - After months of waiting, New World's June mystery announcement has been revealed as New World: Aeternum, a console release coupled with a rebranding and a decent content update, if not…

World of Warcraft The War Within launches August 26, Diablo IV Vessel of Hatred launches October 8 - As some rightly predicted while looking at the end of Pandaria Remix on August 19th, World of Warcraft's next expansion is coming very soon afterward. Blizzard announced over the weekend…

Guild Wars 2 announces Janthir Wilds expansion – with player housing and raid – coming August 20 - So who's up for a new Guild Wars 2 expansion? What if I told you Guild Wars 2 is about to get a real housing system, and I'm not talking…

Elder Scrolls Online’s Gold Road chapter and Update 42 is now live for PC players - Whether you're interested in story, spellcraft, or wondering just what sort of Daedric prince Ithelia is, today is the day to find out: The latest chapter and game update for…

Summer Game Fest 2024: New World, Dune Awakening, Palworld, and more MMO reveals - Geoff Keighley's Summer Game Fest - aka not-E3 - is set to begin this evening at 5 p.m. EDT, and if you've been following it, you probably already know that…

First Impressions: Corepunk’s MOBA-esque closed alpha was fun – with lots of room to grow - I've got a pretty good poker face, especially when nobody can see my face. So I've been pretty subtle about my excitement for Corepunk over the last few years. But…

MassivelyOP’s complete coverage from the Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail media tour - The next major expansion for Final Fantasy XIV launches in under a month, with early access starting on June 28th... but as is tradition, media got a chance to check…

SGF 2024: Amazon unveils New World Aeternum, its console relaunch of the MMORPG - Ever wish New World were more cinematic - and more available on more platforms? Well, all of those things will be true come October 15th, 2024, as Amazon Games just formally announced…

Vague Patch Notes: Chasing the metagame in MMOs isn’t the metagame at all - So a few weeks back, I did a column on what the metagame actually is in MMORPG, and then I discussed how noob traps (or to use the scientific name,…

LOTRO Legendarium: Is Lord of the Rings Online’s new birding hobby a flight of fancy? - My father-in-law is an obsessive birdwatcher. He took it up as a hobby a few years ago, and now he travels all over the country looking for specific, hard-to-find fowl…

World of Warcraft: The War Within begins beta testing - "To preserve our world, we must face the shadow." With this call to action, World of Warcraft's newest expansion invites in beta testers from around the globe. The War Within…

Persist Online interview: CipSoft explains why Persist is an MMORPG, not a survival shooter - Earlier this week, we covered the surprising news that Tibia developer CipSoft has a new MMORPG on the way. At least, the studio is calling it an MMORPG; Persist Online…

Massively Overthinking: If you lost your account in your main MMORPG, would you start over? - The other day, MOP's Justin came into our work chat understandably nervous because he couldn't log into his Lord of the Rings Online account; it was giving a cryptic message…

MMO Burnout: Cozy Caravan brings an incomplete yet instantly charming chore-filled break - One of my dream jobs in sandbox MMORPGs is to run logistics. Whether it's flying space trucks around or steering a caravan, delivering goods from one place to another is…

Global Chat: FFXIV’s out-of-control cutscene scene - Here's a terrifying and fascinating fact: Did you know that Final Fantasy XIV's cutscenes now total up to 159 hours of non-interactive, viewable-only content? Gamer Escape thinks that this number…

Stormforge is a new multiplayer survival sandbox inspired by D&D and The Stormlight Archive - Among the new multiplayer games announced this weekend during not-E3 is a fresh "open-world fantasy survival crafting game" called Stormforge (you might have heard of it back when the team…

Gamigo/KingsIsle parent company MGI is rebranding as AI ad platform Verve - Gamigo and KingsIsle's parent company, the Swedish-based Media Games Invest aka MGI, has been pushing hard into its advertising and marketing segment over the last few years as it appeared…

For Science: Gamer Motivation Survey data suggest strategic gaming in is a nasty decline - When I first got access to a PC as a kid, it was a couple of years before the first true MMORPG launched, and I had no idea I was…

Awake: Afterdark Apocalypse is a ridiculous gen-AI Kickstarter game that purports to be ‘the spiritual successor to the MMO’ - Pack it in, kiddos, for the new champion of MMOs has arrived on the scene. It's called Awake: Afterdark Apocalypse, and if the title and use of heavy metal in…

Guild Wars 2 previews Janthir Wilds’ spears for Guardians, Rangers, and Necromancers - When ArenaNet told Guild Wars 2 fans that it would be expounding soon on how Janthir Wilds' new land spears will work for different classes, it really meant it: Today,…

Ikea wants to pay people to sell furniture and serve meatballs inside of its digital Roblox store - It looks as if shopping in a boxy Walmart was just the tip of the retail hell iceberg in Roblox: The furniture store Ikea has opened itself up to hiring…

Star Citizen’s May dev report shares work on new ships, new game modes, and progress towards 4.0 and 1.0 - It's time yet again for a monthly Star Citizen progress report, and while much of the May 2024 edition is understandably about alpha 3.23 work, there are also the usual…

Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail media tour: Questions and answers with Naoki Yoshida - Interviewing Naoki Yoshida is always a heck of a time. There are people whom I can interview about the games they run and get relatively little feedback about the game…

Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail media tour: Exploring Dawntrail’s Tuliyollal, Urqopacha, and Kozama’uka zones - I'm not going to lie to you, dear readers: Getting to walk around in Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail was always like catnip to me because I love this stuff. I…

Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail media tour: Hands-on with Dawntrail’s first dungeon, Ihuykatumu - The first dungeon of a Final Fantasy XIV expansion tells you a lot about what to expect from the rest of the expansion. I think that history has borne that…

Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail media tour: Ranged, magical, and healing job abilities in Dawntrail - To start things off, I am going to basically restate what I did in my last column about Final Fantasy XIV's existing jobs heading into Dawntrail: If you already like…

Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail media tour: Tank and melee DPS job abilities in Dawntrail - Here's the good news and the bad news for folks going into Dawntrail: If you like how your existing job plays in Final Fantasy XIV, you are probably going to…

Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail media tour: Hands-on with the Pictomancer and Viper - It's Stormblood all over again when it comes to Dawntrail because Final Fantasy XIV has once again handed us a new melee job and a new caster DPS job to enrich…

Guild Wars 2’s Janthir Wilds land spears are actually part of a new mastery line - I know you all want to hear about Guild Wars 2's new Homestead housing system, revealed yesterday as part of the Janthir Wilds expansion announcement. ArenaNet knows that too, and…

EVE Vanguard developer talks about the shooter’s gameplay, update plans, and references to DUST 514 - EVE Vanguard, the integrated companion FPS to EVE Online, represents something a bit different for the otherwise spaceship-focused MMORPG but certainly not something that CCP Games hasn't tried and failed…

Former City of Heroes developers talk design chaos, sequels, and the MMO’s enduring legacy - Last night, I happened to log into City of Heroes Homecoming just as the team was posting up the promised mega Q&A with former Paragon devs organized back during the…

Perfect Ten: 10 reasons World of Warcraft is pure cozy comfort - There's something weird and fun that happens in my brain around this time of year, which is that I start to get into a summer mentality that seeks so-called "cozy"…

Guild Wars 2 picked up a former Sims 4 dev to help develop Janthir Wilds’ housing system - Two new maps? New story? Land spears? Pish-posh; none of that compares to the personal housing system coming to Guild Wars 2's Janthir Wilds expansion, and while word of the…

WoW Classic’s Season of Discovery ‘is cruising along’ as Blizzard delays Phase 4 - Remember when WoW Classic's Season of Discovery was the new hotness that had everyone's attention? That era seems to have passed -- at least for now -- with Pandaria Remix,…

Legends of Aria’s crypto version, Britaria, goes bust over ‘financial constraints’ - When Citadel Studios announced back in April that it was planning to relaunch the Kickstarted MMORPG Legends of Aria (fka Shards Online) as a "Classic" version on Steam, it came…

MapleStory’s two-part Go West update adds new events, revamps Angelic Buster, and maintains currency earning status quo - Back in April, the western version of MapleStory resolved to "follow its own direction," with updates intended to move away from direct parity from the Korean version in terms of…

Choose My Adventure: Returning to Star Citizen (and fussing with tech) - It's been a long while since I got to hop into Star Citizen. Not for a lack of desire, but mostly for a lack of hardware grunt; my PC hasn't…

Fractured Online plans summer launch, new server, and a major PvP ruleset revamp - Following the relaunch of Fractured Online’s early access and its first mega patch, Dynamight Studios has now released a full roadmap for the sandbox game - including a release window…

Destiny 2’s long-delayed Final Shape expansion is officially live today - [AL:D2]The time has come at last for the Guardians of Destiny 2 to face off against the Witness, aka Ol' Smokey Jones. The looter shooter's newest expansion, The Final Shape,…

Second Wind: World of Warcraft’s Dragonflight story dragonflies right off a cliff - We come now to the third part of our four-part Second Wind series on revisiting World of Warcraft after quitting at the end of Legion. This will be the darkest…

Final Fantasy XIV confirms four new NA servers and related housing lottery start times for June 11 - Final Fantasy XIV already expanded the lineup of NA servers back in 2022 when it introduced the Dynamis data center, effectively adding four more servers to the game. That list…

Sandbox MMORPG Pax Dei opens preorders for its newly announced June 18 early access - Is it too soon for Pax Dei to be hitting early access? We're about to find out, as Mainframe Industries announced this morning that it's bringing the MMORPG survival sandbox…

New World is rolling out new layered instancing tech Amazon is calling ‘shards’ - You might think this is just another post about murdering bunnies in New World, but you're only partly correct. New World is in fact kicking off Rabbit's Revenge today, meaning…

Concord is a team vs team FPS that promises approachable but deep gameplay - Evidently game studios smell Overwatch 2's blood in the water because we've got yet another addition to the team vs. team hero shooter sub-genre. Say hello to Concord, a 5v5…

Ashes of Creation shares a preview of its node war PvP system - The PvP sandbox of Ashes of Creation already has talked about making players fight for things like dungeon spots and caravans, but now it's thinking bigger, as in node vs.…

Wisdom of Nym: No new crafting or gathering in Final Fantasy XIV - Every new expansion for Final Fantasy XIV has increased the total number of jobs available for players, although the exact numbers have varied from expansion to expansion. (Especially depending on…

Tibia dev CipSoft just announced Persist Online, a post-apoc PvPvE MMORPG - Tibia developer CipSoft has a big announcement lined up for this morning: It's working on a new MMO. In fact, it's calling it a "real MMORPG" - with a "post-apocalyptic,…

World of Warcraft arrives on GeForce NOW’s cloud service, as Blizzard confirms support on the forums - Do you like yourself some cloud gaming? If so, there's a good chance you've investigated or used GeForce NOW's cloud platform, where a single membership gets you access to dozens…

THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS

Massively OP Podcast Episode 471: A Gold Road to the promised Tarisland

The Stream Team: A quick run through the Wayfinder Echoes update

The Stream Team: Hunting for answers at DDO’s Icemount hunting lodge

The Stream Team: Star Trek Online’s Unparalleled and space cockroaches

The Stream Team: Trying out the story missions of Destiny 2 The Final Shape

The Stream Team: Guild Wars 2 goes Into the Spider’s Lair

The Stream Team: Into the Infinite Panopticon in Elder Scrolls Online

The Stream Team: Acquiring rubber ducky and Cosmic Raiment hats in AdventureQuest 3D

The Stream Team: Wild wolf extermination in ICARUS

The Stream Team: Obtaining Final Fantasy XIV’s wobbliest piece of headgear ever

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.