Patches & Expansions Category

We’re not even going to try to sort out the patches from the updates from the iterations from the campaigns and expansions and expanshalones. If it’s something going into an MMO that’s already out, it lands in this category! [Follow this category’s RSS feed]

PUBG’s new scooters are freakin’ adorable and I want one

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The FIX PUBG campaign, or the start of it, is materializing today, as the latest update to hit the PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds test servers tackles some of Bluehole’s to-do list, adding a new weapon, scooter, camera settings, reporting system tweaks, changes for custom matches, and bugxies. Cutest scooters ever. As for the Tukshai,

“The Tukshai is an upcoming Sanhok exclusive three-wheeled vehicle which we’d originally planned to release in the month after Sanhok came to live servers. Due to higher priority development tasks and the extra fine tuning required to make driving experience of the three-wheeled Tukshai feel just right, it will now be released in September.”

Meanwhile, the game’s mobile edition reached a new milestone this week: It’s been downloaded over 100 million times with 14 million daily players, and it’s only been running for four months. More impressively, those figures don’t count China, Japan, or Korea. It’ll be interesting to see how the game continues to perform, with its biggest competitor, Fortnite, recently hitting Android itself.

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Aion details all of its upcoming gear exchange rates for a big equipment overhaul

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The progression of equipment and power level in Aion may be a bit overly ornate at the moment, which is why the game’s next major patch for the NA version is overhauling the whole experience. Of course, the flip side to that task is that it also means a whole lot of changes to gear, and that means there’s a whole list of how your current gear can be exchanged for new gear when the update goes live. It’s large enough that it requires a separate spreadsheet, even.

To assuage one major fear, the game’s community team has reminded players that this is not an automatic replacement but an additional compensation; players will still have their old gear, they’ll just receive new pieces. Of course, the debate is running about the forums over whether or not the exchanges are fair or balanced for the community, which is always going to be a problem with this degree of gear change.

Source: Official Site

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Sea of Thieves extends the Cursed Sails campaign another week, teases open-world skeleton ships

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This week’s Sea of Thieves patch is… well, it’s kinda more of the same, as Rare has extended the Cursed Sails run another week, meaning you have more time to grind skelly ships for loot and commendations. (Reddit complaining ensues.)

In its dev update, Rare says it’s patched in new cannonball effects for the baddies, new event timers, and new sensitivity values. Oh yeah, and the kraken is still down for the count, though Rare promises it’s working to bring him back.

Going forward, the Sea of Thieves devs say they’re busy porting the skeleton ships into the “real” world, beyond the campaign itself, a bit like the megaladons work now. Cursed cannonballs will also be adding more exploration and strategy to the gameworld. Expect more Forsaken Shores details from Gamescom later this month.

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Elite Dangerous’ Beyond Chapter Three launches on August 28, players take on massive effort to salute community helpers

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The next phase of Elite Dangerous is en route – specifically, that’s chapter three of the Beyond rollout. In a brief tweet this afternoon, Frontier put a date on it – August 28 – and dropped a cryptic teaser video to boot.

Based on the game’s roadmap, we’re… actually still not entirely sure what’s in this episode because of how thin the copy is. Right now, new ships, missions, and scenarios are all that’s listed, as this is not expected to be a major update and Reddit seems anything but in hype mode.

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Tamriel Infinium: Three key takeaways from the Elder Scrolls Online Murkmire teaser

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Hopefully, everyone saw the Elder Scrolls Online presentation at Quakecon. If not, I’ll have that whole video just past the break. Game Director Matt Firor and Community Manager Gina Bruno stood on stage to give an overview of what ESO has in store for the rest of the year. Of course, Wolfhunter launched a couple of days ago, but I was definitely more interested in the Murkmire presentation.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: I believe that Black Marsh is the area of Tamriel that ESO will ultimately be known for, and that’s because no other game in the Elder Scrolls series has touched that area of Tamriel with any significance. Firor explained what we would discover in Murkmire, but I believe his last line explained it best: “Along the way you’re going to get a really deep dive into Argonian culture, philosophy, and religion — really, what drives them, and what makes them so weird.”

During the presentation, Firor and Bruno gave us our first look at the Murkmire DLC in game. During this one-minute clip, we didn’t see much, but I’ve pulled it apart. And I’m going to hopefully reveal some things that you didn’t notice.

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Stardew Valley mod sends a multiplayer farm owner into a coma for true MMO action

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The multiplayer mode in Stardew Valley is a pretty standard multiplayer arrangement with one player serving as the host and everyone else serving as guests or indentured servants. This is not exactly unusual. But what if you could put the host to sleep forever and let everyone run around with abandon with no masters? Behold the latest mod to the game, which allows the host to basically become completely inert while others continue to play in the game world to great effect.

Of course, there are downsides to this, chief among them the fact that the actual host will need to leave the computer hosting the game powered on 24/7. (You know, like an actual server.) It also means that the host can’t actually participate while the game is frozen, which is fine for short jaunts away but can cause unwanted effects in the longer term. Still, it’s a step toward turning the game into your very own farmland MMO… with an absentee leader imprisoned in a void of darkness. That seems fine.

Source: Nexus Mods via Rock Paper Shotgun

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First impressions of World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth, part 2: Content

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The first part of this first impressions series yesterday was all about the mechanical changes made for this expansion. This time, I don’t want to talk about the mechanics of World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth; I want to talk about the actual content. Not the narrative text, but just the actual moment-to-moment stuff you’re doing in the game. Which, I think, is what this expansion is going to be judged on at this stage by a lot of people.

Put simply, the game could have the best combat it has ever had with the best gear enhancement system conceivable, but if the actual things you had to fight were a boring slog, no one would like it anyway. Solid content covers a multitude of sins.

There are several people who would likely argue that Legion had some of the best content we’ve ever seen in WoW, and while there’s room to debate that, I think it’s definitely worth considering. So BfA started off on something of the back foot, and that was exacerbated by the fact that it has not one but two continents to fill out almost entirely separate.

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Check out some of the new dwarven zones coming in Lord of the Rings Online’s Update 23

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At GenCon earlier this month, Lord of the Rings Online studio Standing Stone dished on some of the goodies coming to the game in Update 23, dubbed the Grey Mountains update. As we discussed on the podcast, that means good stuff for fans of the dwarves – maybe even lady dorfs too, though that’s apparently still up in the air.

What’s definite, though, is the regions appearing (and reappearing) in the update, as LOTRO Players lays out in a trio of videos today. First up is a trip through the Grey Mountains – aka Ered Mithrin – themselves, encrusted with dwarven ruins, mines, and dragon bones but also a glacier biome and a unique forest too. The second video covers the Iron Hills, with more Easterling towns and functioning dwarven mines and fortresses, but YouTuber Andang notes that the zone is mostly empty right now. Finally, the Lonely Mountain of Erebor is getting some love!

We’re still running our regular LOTRO Legendarium column here at Massively OP; most recently, columnist Justin Olivetti pondered just how well the game is aging.

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MMO Skyforge is getting a battle royale mode, but it won’t utilize your MMO character

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So this is happening. Skyforge is getting a battle royale mode of its very own, following in the footsteps of other MMOs that have adopted the mode into their virtual worlds. The catch is that it looks like you’ll be playing one of a dozen premade toons, not your actual Skyforge character. In fact, you can jump in even if you don’t really play the MMO at all, and it’s boasting a “skill-based action game feel” that’s still “familiar for MMO players” but with less focus on auto-aim.

“Skyforge will soon launch an all-new free ‘Battle Royale’ mode providing its own massive multiplayer twist on the popular format. Skyforge takes its unique mix of sci-fi and fantasy setting to a vicious virtual reality arena, parting with the game’s normal concept of players being immortal. Out of all the participants that start the match, only one can stand victorious in this divine test and win the ultimate favor of the gods. Skyforge: Battle Royale can be launched from the start screen and requires no progress on any character in the MMO; players can dive into a brutal free-for-all right from the start!”

Launch is anticipated for August 28th on PC, with consoles trickling out later that same week. To tide you over until then, My.com is running a series of summer events too.

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The Daily Grind: How much of an MMO do you have to play before you feel you’ve got a handle on it?

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MMOs are big. Really big. You wouldn’t believe just how mind-bogglingly big they really are. Although you probably would, since you’re here reading about them. And the sheer facet of scale means that it can be really difficult to establish a point when you’ve seen enough to have a good sense of the game.

Obviously, five minutes logged into an official World of Warcraft server won’t give you any idea about the game as a whole; pretty much anyone could agree on that. And at the other extreme, it’s unlikely anyone would expect you to play every piece of content in Star Wars: The Old Republic before you can decide on whether or not the game delivers on what you’re looking for.

Realistically, every game offers you a different amount of things in different combinations and in such arrangements that every game will require different amounts of time to evaluate. You could argue that a few matches in World of Tanks tell the whole story about the game’s mechanics, after all. But then, just playing and leaving means you miss out on the meta and the overall sense of what the game is like over the longer term, which can often be a pretty important element. So what do you think, readers? How much of an MMO do you have to play before you feel you’ve got a handle on it?

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In Conan Exiles’ upcoming pet patch, thralls ‘don’t poop, somehow’

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Conan Exiles’ parity patch has finally hit the Xbox One servers after a week’s delay. Funcom says it ought to mop up crash problems, although there’s apparently some fresh lag issues to deal with now. PS4 players, however, are still waiting, as apparently Sony rejected the PS4 patch for being too big, so the studio’s “working on reducing” it. There’s a crude joke in there somewhere. This is Conan we’re talking about.

That’s all in this week’s community newsletter, in addition to news about the first phase inbound pet system, which is due to launch on the test server this week. Here’s where the poop comes in.

“When we roll out the pet system we’ll also be rolling out new functionality for your thralls,” Funcom says. Yep, you’re going to have to feed them.

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Albion Online makes trade mission bundles much heavier

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A little change can make a big difference in terms of balance. It’s what Albion Online did with its latest patch; all that’s really been changed is that trade mission packages have had their weight increased by around 400 kg. The thing is that a heavier package means using different pack animals to transport it, which in turn means not being able to rely upon using mounts with more survivability… and, in turn, it means that these trade missions become a lot riskier. See? Balance from a little change!

The patch also contains some other balance tweaks for faction leaders, as well as updating the marketplace UI with several quality-of-life features and fixing several bugs along the way. But the biggest change for the patch is, well, a little change that should make things harder for a lot of players who will rely on more vulnerable mounts now, which encourages more back-and-forth warfare, which is exactly the point.

Source: Official Site

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The Black Death starts you in your underpants. Deal with it.

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Thanks to the latest patch for the medieval survival sandbox The Black Death, all players will start their lives in the game in their underwear. It’s best to tap into those deep-rooted nightmares early, in our opinion.

The recent patch wasn’t just about roleplaying Captain Underpants and the Plague Doctors. The team said that the priority for the patch was to fix some LAN server issues and put an end to land claim exploits that were running rampant on PvE servers.

What else do we have here? Well, girls are starting to get their own clothes, although right now this is limited to a primitive vest. YOU’RE WELCOME, FEMALES. There are also new dagger animations, a “new potato procedural resource” whatever that is, and a sleeping bag for players’ tents. Truly, this is a patch to rival all others.

Source: Patch notes, #2

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