MMO Week in Review: The E3 2015 roundup (June 21, 2015)

June 21, 2015 8:00 PM

Were you too busy gaming this week to pay attention to MMO news? Get caught up every Sunday evening with Massively Overpowered’s Week in Review!

After several years of dud E3s, this year’s expo took us by surprise, with big reveals for several major MMORPGs, including Star Wars: The Old Republic, which is retooling its faction system for its upcoming Knights of the Fallen Empire expansion, and Guild Wars 2, which opened prepurchases for its Heart of Thorns expansion only to be met with… let’s call it pushback from fans.

Read on for the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions as well as a roundup of all our E3 coverage.

THE E3 ROUNDUP

E3 2015: SWTOR Knights of Fallen Empire rumors are true

E3 2015: The Elder Scrolls’ TCG; ESO’s Orsinium, Imperial City

E3 2015: Guild Wars 2 Heart of Thorns prepurchase is live; we get the scoop on guild halls

E3 2015: Hands-on with Sword Coast Legends

E3 2015: The Division’s Dark Zone demo does the game no favors

E3 2015: Cory Jones discusses HEX, lawsuits, and cake

E3 2015: Blizzard on Heroes of the Storm’s Eternal Conflict

E3 2015: David Braben on Elite: Dangerous

E3 2015: Hands-on with Motiga’s ‘shooter MOBA’ Gigantic

E3 2015: See EVE: Valkyrie in action

E3 2015: Heroes of the Storm invites you to the Eternal Conflict

E3 2015: H1Z1 streamlines base building with construction boxes

E3 2015: Life is Feudal isn’t just another gankbox

E3 2015: Torchlight Mobile is a new Torchlight, not Torch-lite

E3 2015: The Crew announces ‘Wild Run’ expansion

E3 2015: Destiny’s The Taken King arrives Sept. 15; here’s the trailer

E3 2015: Gigantic’s closed beta starts in August

E3 2015: Rare’s Sea of Thieves might be sort of an MMO thing, maybe?

E3 2015: Elite is now previewable on Xbox One, Close Quarter Combat coming soon

E3 2015: The Division’s beta happens this winter, release in March [Updated]

FINAL FANTASY XIV: HEAVENSWARD

Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward starts early access, welcomes back players - [AL:FFXIV]Just a heads-up: If you have friends who play Final Fantasy XIV, you may not be seeing them at all today. That's because early access has begun for the Heavensward expansion, which will go on to…

E3 2015: Here’s the Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward launch trailer - [AL:FFXIV]The entire Square-Enix presentation at E3 didn't cover Final Fantasy XIV's upcoming expansion, but that's all right. Why? Well, for one thing, early access starts up in less than three days. For another, the launch trailer…

Wisdom of Nym: Preparing for Final Fantasy XIV’s early access - [AL:FFXIV]The long wait is almost over. Heavensward early access starts up on June 19th, and it comes with a lot of changes. Starting with, you know, all those new areas and stories and quests and abilities…

GUILD WARS 2: HEART OF THORNS

Why Guild Wars 2’s prepurchase deal has the internet raging - [AL:GW2]On the surface, ArenaNet killed it at E3, kicking ass with a much-wanted and huge expansion for Guild Wars 2, one of the biggest MMORPGs in the market. The studio unveiled a massive new guild hall system, one players…

E3 2015: Guild Wars 2 Heart of Thorns prepurchase is live; we get the scoop on guild halls - By now you are no doubt familiar with the guild halls arriving in Guild Wars 2's Heart of Thorns expansion. What you probably didn't expect is that the expansion is available for purchase as of tonight and is already stirring…

Flameseeker Chronicles: Guild Wars 2 guild hall and prepurchase pricing impressions - [AL:GW2]When Heart of Thorns was announced back in January, the Guild Wars 2 community exploded with buzz as guild halls were mentioned as a main feature that the expansion would bring to the game. I was just…

THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES

Perfect Ten: MMO terms that have overstayed their welcome - My original plan for this week - during the few moments that I was capable of coherent speech rather than just babbling about the upcoming Final Fantasy XIV expansion - was to give you lovely folks…

World of Warcraft 6.2 coming on June 23 with Hellfire Citadel raid - World of Warcraft's Patch 6.2: Fury of Hellfire is coming on June 23rd, we found out today. When it lands, the patch will be unleashing some of its toughest endgame content for Warlords of Draenor yet…

Housing looks unlikely for The Secret World [Updated] - If you're hoping for player housing in The Secret World, you should probably stop hoping. In a Q&A on the official forums, Funcom executive producer Scott "Nophex" Junior basically spends two paragraphs explaining how the devs would need to travel…

Punching dinosaurs in ARK: Survival Evolved - Five minutes after I logged into ARK: Survival Evolved, I punched a fish. A few moments later, I punched a tree. Shortly thereafter, I mustered the courage to punch a dinosaur, and while that didn't go…

Anarchy Online’s long-awaited engine upgrade looks to be coming soon - "You've waited, it's coming. In this year of 29489 on Rubi-Ka, you will see it," Anarchy Online's Twitter feed trumpeted today. We'll see what? You don't mean... you can't mean... the new graphics engine? That mythical…

WildStar is in the Humble E3 Bundle… for non-players - Getting WildStar for only a couple of dollars seems like a pretty solid deal, especially when that means an extra 30 days of game time. Sure, the game is going free-to-play, but it's not there yet.…

Landmark devs: Respawning is working as designed - Addressing complaints that respawning mobs and resources are broken in Landmark, Daybreak came out today to say that, on the contrary, everything is working as intended. The post goes into depth explaining how the respawn system…

Crowfall raises $2M in crowdfunding, demolishes the holy trinity - Crowfall continues to rake in hefty amounts of donations, as the title just crossed the $2 million threshold for crowdfunding to date. More than 19,000 fans have helped to fill Crowfall's coffers, both from its Kickstarter…

The Game Archaeologist: Seven MMOs operating on borrowed time - Most everyone who knows me well will acknowledge that I'm not generally a cynical, dark person. I'm not rooting for games to fail, for the industry to crash, for developers to be banished to the wastelands…

Star Citizen is handing backers the keys to all of its spaceships next week - If you're on a tight budget, Star Citizen's ships aren't always the most affordable pieces of virtual hardware in the gaming world. However, if you're on board as a backer in any capacity, then the game…

Skyforge details its founder’s pack rewards - Have we learned our lesson about founder's packs yet? If not (or maybe even if so), Skyforge is detailing the digital items it hopes to sell you as it moves closer to its free-to-play release. The…

Pathfinder Online adds free trial system in latest ‘early enrollment’ build - The business model of Pathfinder Online's current testing phase is odd, since you have to pay a box price and a subscription fee to take part in the testing -- at least, you did have to,…

EverQuest II outlines plans for new timelocked servers - It's hard to deny that there was a definite appeal to EverQuest's progression server when it first came out. So the EverQuest II team is also doing the time warp again by adding in PvP and…

Trove expands server capacity to handle population influx - It's a good problem to have: Trove's servers are filling up to the brim and even causing queues to form. Fortunately, Trion Worlds said that it will be expanding capacity on the hardware today to accommodate…

Eternal Crusade reduces scope, promises earlier delivery - Are you willing to take a swirl of good news and bad news with your alpha? Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade fans have no choice, as Creative Director David Ghozland confirmed that the title has reduced its…

THIS WEEK’S STREAMS