MMO Week in Review: New World’s truncated season, Corepunk’s paid alpha

New World just can’t stop seem to stop hitting itself: This week, Amazon suffered an undisclosed issue with its season leaderboard and wound up just canceling the season early rather than repair and continue the elongated event through October, when Aeternum is meant to roll out. Not a great look as far as PC gamers are concerned.

Meanwhile, Corepunk launched alpha 4 (and wiped it already thanks to exploits), Nightingale and Palia both teased massive updates, and MMO players continued to argue about Stars Reach for sport.

THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES

The Soapbox: If MMO classes aren’t broken, please leave ’em alone - Last week was a pretty big one for Lord of the Rings Online. The 17-year-old MMO opened up a pair of new progression servers, introduced its second-ever hobby with birdwatching,…

Stars Reach’s Raph Koster on MMO trust, fear, and freedom: ‘We understand how nervous players are about griefing’ - Regular MOP readers know that our commenters have already spilled a lot of ink about Raph Koster's in-development MMORPG Stars Reach - and he's clearly reading it as he's been…

A nasty exploit has forced Corepunk devs to wipe the alpha test and reset all characters - Corepunk's current paid alpha four appeared to be going well over the course of this week, barring a few issues with the EU and Korean servers - but the fun…

Vague Patch Notes: Is it time for MMORPGs to start embracing romance? - The other day, I was writing about Baldur's Gate 3 celebrating its anniversary with statistics about all the companions that people have smooched over the course of the game's first…

This is not a drill: Star Citizen ship interiors can catch fire in alpha 4.0 - There are more than a few things that can go wrong while piloting a spaceship in Star Citizen, but when alpha 4.0 drops, players are going to have to consider…

Nightingale’s massive Realms Rebuilt update offers a crafting progression and structure revamp - Nightingale has drifted a bit out of the gaming consciousness since its early access launch earlier this year, but Tencent's Inflexion apparently means to change that, as it's thrown down…

New World effectively ends Season of the Guardian early after ‘issue’ takes out season leaderboard - Welp, if you weren't already worried about New World with its Aeternum on the way and its ongoing PC content drought, the drought just got droughtier. Droughtier is too a…

WoW Factor: The black mark of World of Warcraft’s player economy - Sometimes, I like to play a little game with MOP's Bree. I say I like to because the game is "Give Bree An Aneurysm," and I don't think she actually…

LOTRO Legendarium: How can LOTRO keep legendary server vibes strong? - As I write this, it's been a full week since Lord of the Rings Online activated its most recent pair of legendary worlds, Angmar and Mordor. And what a week…

Pax Dei is working on soloable PvE content, a HUD compass, and combat responsiveness for next updates - Pax Dei is continuing its information onslaught in Discord as Mainframe Industries took the opportunity this morning to post a state-of-the-game memo to social media and Discord. "During the weeks…

Sea of Thieves wipes out the progression of 20K players who used a Season 13 rewards exploit - There was a pretty big exploit that ran rampant in Sea of Thieves when Season 13 went live. How big? Well, it introduced 300B in gold to the game's economy…

Pantheon Rise of the Fallen shares what will and will not be in early access launch, elaborates on server wipe strategy - The end of this year is promising to be a pivotal one for Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen, with the PvE sandbox headed into early access in December. And while…

Massively Overthinking: Is financial honesty the best policy for struggling MMORPGs? - Back in June, at the height of the New World Aeternum announcement debacle, we did an Overthinking about what Amazon was doing - and why it wasn't working. MOP's Tyler…

RIFT opens its test server once more but doesn’t disclose what players will be testing - Good news, RIFT fans! After recent months when most of the news about the game has been about merges and transfers, the game's test server is being re-opened until August…

Pearl Abyss Q2 2024: Equinox bolstered EVE Online revenues as Crimson Desert waits in the wings - The dog days of August bring a whole deck of financial results for companies - including MMO companies like Pearl Abyss. The Korean gaming giant's Q2 2024 report shows a…

Guild Wars 2 makes a lot of spear adjustments prior to Janthir Wilds - The spear was once described as the "king of the medieval battlefield," which makes its omission from many fantasy MMOs puzzling. This won't be the case for Guild Wars 2…

Black Desert launches the Mountain of Eternal Winter expansion on console today - Console Black Desert players are capping off their summer with some winter - Mountain of Eternal Winter, that is. The console version of the expansion is live today on PlayStation…

MMO Business Roundup: Sony, SEGA, and Square-Enix drop a mixed bag of quarterly financials - Welcome back to another roundup of MMO and MMO-adjacent industry news - this time 'round, it's all about quarterly financial reports. Square-Enix: Square saw another broad drop in games sales revenue…

Finnish game studio Social First secures $4.2M in funding for a ‘cross-platform social MMO’ - At first blush, the announcement that's the source for this story looks like a corporate word salad bar, but once you cut through all of the fat, there is some…

Perfect Ten: 10 tabletop games based on World of Warcraft - So here's what inspired this particular article: I was thinking about board games based upon MMOs of various scales because the other day I wrote about Valheim's board game, and…

EverQuest II GU 126 Immeasurable Menagerie hits open beta August 13 - EverQuest II's GU 126 update is hitting the beta test server next week, and while at first I wondered whether it was named after my daughter's endless collection of animal…

Elite Dangerous deploys its new ship and engineering revamps in the Type-8 Update - Today is a pretty exciting day for a lot of Elite: Dangerous players (this writer included) as Frontier Developments is deploying the Type-8 Update today, August 7th, bringing with it…

APB Reloaded preps New Horizon patch with new F2P content and anti-cheat tech - Little Orbit has major plans for APB Reloaded on deck - and we don't just mean sunsetting the console version. Version 1.31, dubbed New Horizon, is aimed directly at free-to-play…

Corepunk engages alpha four today with new biomes, trading, and mounts - And they're off! Corepunk's alpha 4 officially kicked off at 4 p.m. EDT today with an amusingly stoic preface from Artificial Core: "On the first night, there might be things…

Lost Ark’s style book and planned Echidna raid nerfs won’t make it into next week’s patch - Just a week after its summer-to-fall roadmap dropped, Amazon is tweaking Lost Ark's plans a pinch. The studio says that most of the content planned for the August update is…

Choose My Adventure: Mission runs cap off a welcoming return to Elite Dangerous - What a difference a month makes. When I first started these series of Elite Dangerous posts for Choose My Adventure, I had gone into it with the assumption that I…

Fight or Kite: Marvel Rivals replaces Overwatch heroes with Marvel flair - I don’t think we’ll ever be certain, but I am pretty sure I can guess exactly how Marvel Rivals was initially created. Someone walked into an executive’s office with a…

Diablo IV brings wave survival and widespread gameplay tweaks in todays Season of the Infernal Hordes - It's pretty clear that Diablo IV is about killing hordes of demons, but as of today's latest Season of the Infernal Hordes launch, there will be more demons. Waves of…

Allods Online sees a spike of Steam activity as 15.0 update promises a new area and class tweaks - Allods Online is one of those MMOs that just keeps on rolling despite its existence not really making any major waves in the wider MMORPG universe, but that changed earlier…

LOTRO’s new progression servers grapple with wraith frequency and character rollbacks - It's been a wild and wooly first week for Lord of the Rings Online's latest progression servers, NA's Angmar and EU's Mordor, and while the population is strong and SSG…

Fallout 76 prepares caravans and outpost management for its next update - Six years into Fallout 76 we still don't have guilds or text chat, but Bethesda is working on a new feature that should keep players busy and engaged nevertheless. Currently,…

Wisdom of Nym: The story beats that really work in Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail - Before I dive into this week's column, I want to start things off by noting a weird aspect of storytelling that's true in Final Fantasy XIV as much as anywhere…

Rumor: Riot Games is working on a Valorant-themed MMOFPS - For several years now, Riot Games has made noise -- and more -- about its desire to enter the MMO scene. And while the previous Runeterra-themed project is in a…

Tencent and Square Enix are reportedly working on a mobile version of Final Fantasy XIV - How do you put 10 years' worth of MMORPG like Final Fantasy XIV into a mobile version? We could all be seeing an answer to that question in the coming…

Bungie scraps Destiny spinoff Payback, shifts away from expansions for Destiny 2 - Last April, a Redditor who claims to have connections with former Bungie devs raised a few eyebrows with initial details of a Destiny 3-style project codenamed Payback; there was bare…

Palia sets Elderwood zone for 2025, says that over 1M homes have been toured so far - Palia seems to have gotten its second wind (or second chance) following the Daybreak buyout earlier this summer - and Singularity 6 has been taking advantage of this increased attention,…

Pearl Abyss America CEO steps down for ‘a new career challenge’ after six years - The very tippy top of the organizational structure at Black Desert and EVE Online company Pearl Abyss America is changing: Jeonghee "JJ" Jin, who has led Pearl Abyss' American office…

THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS

Massively OP Podcast Episode 479: The MMO that must not be named

The Stream Team: A Dungeons & Dragons Online Tavern Brawl

The Stream Team: Backseat Streaming enters the RTS arena of Immortal Gates of Pyre

The Stream Team: Back in the spaceship saddle with Elite Dangerous’ new update

The Stream Team: Frolicking in Guild Wars 2’s Festival of the Four Winds

The Stream Team: Warframe’s Dog Days adds pearls for assists

The Stream Team: Avoiding a fashion cat-astropy with a new AQ3D onesie

The Stream Team: After-mission power planning in ICARUS

The Stream Team: Final Fantasy XIV’s biggest fans seek out the Moonfire Faire’s big fans

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.