MMO Week in Review: Pouring one out for Cryptic Studios

Embracer has apparently all but finished off the remains of Cryptic Studios: While Neverwinter, Star Trek Online, and Champions Online have been incrementally shipped over to the stewardship of Deca Games over the last year, Embracer has been handing out pink slips to the Cryptic Studios devs who built and maintained the popular MMORPGs all these years – and were even training their own replacements. This week, the latest round of layoffs has reportedly wiped out all but a handful of execs and staffers.

Meanwhile, business is booming for the brand-new Throne & Liberty, Brighter Shores is on track for November, and we’re ready to go for New World Aeternum’s launch this week.

THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES

Throne & Liberty counts 3M players in its first week as Amazon has now added 55 extra servers - The MMORPG community may be confused over the burgeoning Steam counts and mixed reviews for Throne and Liberty, but somebody is thrilled with the game's performance - two somebodies, even.…

Embracer-owned Cryptic Studios will suffer devastating layoffs at the end of October - We've been keeping a very worried eye on Cryptic Studios for the last year or so, ever since it became clear that the floundering Embracer Group was planning to split…

Brighter Shores confirms November launch date following October 22 closed beta - Back in August, we learned that Brighter Shores, the new MMORPG en route from Jagex and RuneScape co-founder Andrew Gower, was targeting November 5th for its early access launch -…

World of Warcraft’s 20th anniversary update goes live on October 22 - World of Warcraft players now have a hard date for Update 11.0.5, which is coming in less than two weeks on October 22nd. The big feature of this patch is…

Choose My Adventure: Throne and Liberty continues to both intrigue and concern - I appreciate that reading that summary about my current feelings regarding Throne and Liberty comes off as conflicting, but that's primarily because I continue to feel conflicted much as I…

LOTRO Legendarium: Should all LOTRO expansions include ‘special systems?’ - It's been an exciting week for Lord of the Rings Online as full details and testing for this fall's expansion, Legacy of Morgoth, arrived in earnest. While I'm not much…

Here’s the timeline for New World Aeternum preloading and launch by region and platform - We're now less than a week away from the launch of New World's Aeternum expansion and the welcoming of console players to the mix. And before that launch, you're going…

Perfect Ten: The complete list of CCP’s weird EVE Online projects and offshoots - CCP Games, like some other studios we could mention, seems to be a place where the team got one very successful MMO off the ground and then could never make…

ArcheAge Chronicles video highlights its acrobatic combat and vast persistent online world - A couple of weeks ago XLGames and Kakao Games showed off a rebranded and revised ArcheAge 2, with the name of ArcheAge Chronicles and a label of online action RPG,…

Vague Patch Notes: What is good meaningful leveling in MMORPGs? - All right. So we are here at long last, at the end of Leveling Month, although it's actually more like Month And A Bit. But at long last, we come…

Star Trek Online ends grandfathered subscriptions – in exchange for free lifetime memberships - As if the news of Cryptic's mass layoffs and de facto demise this week wasn't news enough, now Star Trek Online's new caretakers appear to be tinkering with the game's…

Massively Overthinking: How do you stop MMOs from feeling like (or becoming) a part-time job? - In last week's Choose My Adventure, MOP's Chris penned a perfect paragraph summing up the paradox of MMORPGs - it doesn't even matter what game he was talking about. "And…

Global Chat: Does the MMO genre need a good rebranding? - As we all seem to love the topic of MMO definitions, it's with little surprise to see blogs discuss it as well. Contains Moderate Peril asked the question that seems…

Game of Thrones actor Kristian Nairn says World of Warcraft helped him kick a drug addiction - Actor and DJ Kristian Nairn is a lovable geek icon of the past decade or so, having made his mark as Hodor in the occasionally viewed Game of Thrones series.…

Microsoft is sunsetting multiplayer functionality for Age of Empires 3’s classic version - So we have some good news and some bad news about multiplayer RTS Age of Empires 3. Let's do the bad news first: It's sunsetting, or at least part of…

Legacy: Steel and Sorcery is an multiplayer co-op ARPG made by ex-WoW devs - If you, like us, make a hobby of following the various projects that former World of Warcraft devs are creating, then you might be interested in Notorious Studios' Legacy: Steel and…

Design Mockument: How would you make a good mecha MMORPG? - So because I am me, I decided to be on the bleeding edge of topicality and start figuring out how to make a Robotech MMORPG. Don't blame me; blame the…

Star Wars The Old Republic readies public testing of its next lair boss and dynamic events system soon - Star Wars: The Old Republic game director Eric Musco has some fresh details about the game's incoming Game Update 7.6: Galactic Threads patch - specifically, a couple of the gameplay…

Fallen Earth remake’s new Unity servers are ‘quite far along’ as devs target launch for Q4 2025 - After a 10-month period of silence about Fallen Earth and its Unity remake, Little Orbit CEO Matt Scott sat down for an hour-long AMA with fans at the top of…

New World’s latest Aeternum trailer splices cutscenes into gameplay to sell the experience - Does anyone remember back in 2021 when Amazon's media saturation for the launch of New World was insane? I sure do! I can't say that Aeternum is quite rising to…

Villagers and Heroes plans The Crux update for October 28, eyes subscription hike - Villagers and Heroes is gearing up for its next big thing: It's called The Crux. The first part of it, anyhow, and it includes a new zone and content -…

Lord of the Rings Online gets its Harvestmath fall festival underway - What's the best Lord of the Rings Online festival? That's a point of fierce debate among the Free Peoples of Middle-earth, but there's a case to be made for the…

Stars Reach’s world reshaping tool test rewarded curious players with ‘spectacular’ death - Stars Reach is continuing to push onward with playtesting that almost no one is in, but at least we get to hear about it after, eh? MMO players will perk…

Roblox Corp denies short-seller’s report that it lies to investors and hosts ‘a pedophile hellscape’ - The dark clouds that hang over Roblox have been well-documented by us for quite some time, but now there's a damning new report from short-seller Hindenburg Research that accuses the…

Final Fantasy XIV’s October 15 Moogle Treasure Trove event includes a… donut earring - The next Final Fantasy XIV Moogle Treasure Trove event is kicking off next week, and it is clearly aimed at the Homer Simpson crowd. Why? Because like every one of…

My Time at Evershine devs: Get our Kickstarter to $2.5M and we’ll leap past early access - We weren't particularly surprised to see My Time at Evershine, the multiplayer follow-up to Pathea Games' My Time at Portia and My Time at Sandrock, fund on Kickstarter in less…

Bungie faces copyright infringement lawsuit from an author over Destiny 2’s Red War story beats - It's been a long time since Destiny 2's launch, so it might have been easy to forget the Red War and some of its characters and story structure, but the…

Lost Ark will be offline most of today patching in the Arkesia Ignited update - It's patch day for Lost Ark, though you may not get to play much today, as downtime for Arkesia Ignited is currently underway, with T4 for endgamers and the new…

New World details the rewards coming in Aeternum’s Season of Opportunity - Again we're back talking Amazon's New World as the studio has this afternoon decided to lift the veil on the season pass that will launch alongside Aeternum and bring the game's…

Destiny 2’s Revenant episode launches today – here’s the new trailer - Today is the day when Destiny 2 can go from Guardians to Slayer Barons. The newest episode/season for the shooter, Revenant, is going live today and is being heralded with…

Star Citizen shows off new character creation choices and successfully crams dozens of players into a tram - As one might expect, Star Citizen is heads-down focusing on the arrival of CitizenCon (and stealing developers' weekends to do it), which basically means there are just a few tidbits…

Project Friendship, Spry Fox’s new cozy MMO, just opened tester signups - Way back in 2021, we first caught wind that indie developer Spry Fox was hiring for a new "non-violent" MMO, essentially a cozy game. The Road Not Taken and Cozy…

Lord of the Rings Online begins testing its Legacy of Morgoth expansion - The very first public beta for Lord of the Rings Online's fall expansion is now up on the Bullroarer server. Legacy of Morgoth is available to preview as a level…

Diablo IV’s Vessel of Hatred expansion officially unlocks tonight - It's go time for Diablo IV as Blizzard has officially launched Vessel of Hatred as of 7 p.m. EDT tonight - just as this post is going live, in fact…

Kickstarted survival sandbox Fractured Veil is sunsetting this week, having never left early access - I'm sorry to report today that survivalbox Fractured Veil is throwing in the towel. "Today we’ve made the tough decision to stop development on Fracture[d] Veil," the Paddle Creek Games devs…

Vitae Aeternum: The best New World Aeternum solo builds in 2024 - Earlier in New World's life, I did a few guides analyzing the virtues of different weapons and armour for the solo player. Most of what I said there still holds…

Ubisoft ponders a buyout by Tencent and Guillemot family’s company after second quarter stumbles - It's become clear now that the Star Wars and Assassin's Creed IPs are not as ironclad as they once were for Ubisoft: Following a readjustment to financial targets resulting from…

Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis brings new missions, placeable water, and the spooky season this month - The month of October is once again promising to be full of things to do in Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis, as the anime MMO has laid out its…

Game dev accuses Fntastic of asset flipping to create its upcoming co-op platformer Escape Factory - At the end of September, we reported on the return of The Day Before developer Fntastic to game dev and Kickstarter with its debut of a new title and a…

THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS

Massively OP Podcast Episode 488: Amazon vs Amazon

The Stream Team: Enjoying the Harvestmath festivities in Lord of the Rings Online

The Stream Team: Mercs make a Foundation of Discord in Dungeons and Dragons Online

Stream Team: A hero’s work is never done in Enshrouded

The Stream Team: Answering the call of Purribean adventure in Cat Quest III

The Stream Team: Fighting titan blight in Guild Wars 2

The Stream Team: Elder Scrolls Online’s Fallen Leaves of the West Weald

The Stream Team: A rousing round of the Rodent Rumble playtest

Stream Team: Returning to ICARUS for Sandbox Saturday

The Stream Team: Sunday funday in Final Fantasy XIV

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.