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]

World of Warcraft’s pre-expansion patch has a rough start as Blizzard levies bans and grants past content to subbers

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The rollout of yesterday’s pre-expansion patch for World of Warcraft could have gone smoother. Much, much smoother. During the day, many players were completely unable to log in, and the problem reportedly popped up on Overwatch’s servers as well. While progress seems to have been made toward fixing the issue, Blizzard did take its Communities feature offline to improve stability.

Of greater concern for certain players is the fact that Blizzard is lowering the boom against players using certain cloud gaming services. Multiple users have reported that suspensions and even bans have been levied for those who have used cloud services to stream the game and play it remotely.

“If you are still using cloud gaming services for WoW, I recommend stopping now until Blizzard stops being anti-consumer about it,” said one Reddit player. “This is a real blow for my gaming for a while, as I don’t have the cash to buy hardware to play anymore at the level I was on my cloud machine.”

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Citadel Forged With Fire is revamping character creation, PvP, and mana tomorrow

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It’s been a hot minute since we checked in with Citadel Forged With Fire, but Blue Isle Studios is pushing through the negative early access reviews to deliver a hefty patch tomorrowday. Character creation is getting the biggest punch-up.

“As many players noted during our first year of Early Access, our character customization options were quite limited: Players were historically only able to modify two physical components (ie: head type and hairstyle). With this update we’ve upgraded this with a total of thirteen new customization options, all of which (aside from head and hair) can be precisely tweaked and modified with full slider support!”

The company does note that hitboxes/jump height won’t be affected by the character changes, so it shouldn’t affect PvP. That said, PvP is getting rebalance of its own, raid spells will be harder to craft, damaged structures will appear on the map, spawn rates should be “dramatically” sped up, resource yields will go up, mana management should be less irritating, weapon trees will revert to their old layout, and you can finally delete your old toons.

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Overwatch’s Hamster hero hits next week

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We’re going to bet that a literal hamster ball (albeit a well-armed ball) as a hero is going to divide the Overwatch community. That’s to be expected, but if you’re on board with Wrecking Ball — a genetically-enhanced hamster who crafted his own battle mech — then you’re going to be counting the days until he arrives next week on July 24th.

Wrecking Ball may be small, furry, and oh-so-adorable, but he is also packing a punch. His mech includes quad cannons, a grappling claw, mines, and shields. If that’s not enough, W.B. can roll over or slam into his competition.

Hamster or no, Overwatch is happy that its recent endorsement system and looking for group feature has proved to be major hits for the team shooter. According to VG247, chat abuse is way down, as much as 26.4% less in the Americas than it used to be.

Source: Overwatch, VG247

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Destiny 2 deploys Solstice of Heroes: Moments of Triumph update

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Good times just might be here if Destiny 2 has anything to say about it. Today, the sci-fi shooter deployed Update 1.2.3 and the bounty of content goodness contained within.

There’s a lot here, although some players are griping at the endgame raid focus of the patch. The update contains prestige raid lairs, 6v5 quickplay in the Crucible, Iron Banner upgrades, tuning for exotic armor, additional bounties, and a ton more. Plus, starting on July 31st, the Solstice of Heroes event will unleash the new Moments of Triumph bounties. Complete enough of these bounties, and you’ll be able to earn a t-shirt, Sparrow, and emblems.

Go into depth with the developers on the July update after the break!

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Guild Wars 2 is bringing back the Festival of the Four Winds next week – it’s the next best thing to Cantha

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You know what Guild Wars 2 could use right about now? How about a festival? Yeah! How about the return of a festival that’s been dormant for years? Yassss! How about the Festival of the Four Winds? Bringit!

“On July 24, a big summer celebration is blowing in—the Festival of the Four Winds! A collaborative effort by Her Royal Majesty Queen Jennah of Kryta, the Zephyrites, the Lionguard, and even the Black Lion Trading Company, this annual festival brings back popular summertime activities in both Divinity’s Reach and the Labyrinthine Cliffs.”

As it did way back in 2014, the Festival offers numerous minigames; the wiki lists dolyak flying, the Sanctum Spring race, and the Aspect Arena battle, and it’s a good bet we’ll see some of those brought up to date with the game’s current mechanics (like mounts). ArenaNet’s official blurb this year also mentions hot air balloons (wheee) and the Boss Blitz, whose “vicious villains and their contemptable compatriots are represented by the new, improved, and entirely secure Watchknight Mk II system.” Definitely updated for 2018!

And the best part is that everything looks like Cantha. Which is in my estimation exactly as it should be. The launch is on July 24th.

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Blade & Soul’s False Idols update rebalances battlegrounds, dailies, and hard mode loot

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Are ya ready for Blade & Soul’s next big thing? It’s called False Idols, and it’s bringing sweeping change to multiple game systems. Expect new buyable loot in hard mode dungeons, a soulstone rebalance to make them valuable again, updates to PvP battlegrounds to reduce the impact of disconnections, and multiple itemization tweaks. Dailies are also due for an update.

“We’re continuing to tweak the Daily and Weekly Challenge rewards following the changes introduced in the Blade & Soul: Eternal Night update,” says NCsoft. “Shifting the tradable materials from Weekly Challenge to Daily Challenge should make them more accessible to a wider range of players. The Daily Challenge Reward Chest now always contains 5 Gold, with a chance at additional Gold. The amount of tradable upgrade materials in the Daily Challenge Treasure Chest will be increased and the amount of tradable upgrade materials in the Weekly Challenge Treasure Chest will be decreased.”

NCsoft has previously deep-dived the two raids coming in False Idols; you can read about that in our post from last week, and you probably should, as MOP reader Rafael pointed out these particular “raids” are actually intended for non-raiders, with great drops but no grind or punishing mechanics. False Idols lands on July 25th.

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World of Warcraft confirms that allied race requirements aren’t changing any time soon

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Today is the day of World of Warcraft turning to the first page of Battle for Azeroth with the expansion prepatch going live today. Next week sees the story buildup kicking into high gear. But if you’ve been holding off on trying the expansion until the Allied Race requirements (added several months ago) were eased up… well, you’re going to be waiting quite some time, as the official word is still that there are no plans to ease the requirements for unlocking Allied Races.

Players who wish to unlock Highmountain Tauren, Nightborne, Lightforged Draenei, or Void Elves will still need to reach Exalted with a specific reputation for each and finish a story achievement, just as before. (The other allied races will have other requirements and can be unlocked once the expansion is live.) Of course, this isn’t actually a change; players have had these requirements in place since the pre-purchase bonus was announced, and that means several months to unlock the races. If you’ve waited in hopes that it would be easier by the expansion launch, though? Not going to happen.

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Sea of Thieves’ July 31 Cursed Sails update adds creepy skeleton ghost ships and a three-man vessel

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Who doesn’t love a good ghost ship story? I’m a sucker for them, so Sea of Thieves’ Cursed Sails, the game’s second major update, definitely has my eye. According to the new trailer and blog post, players are getting that promised new ship, some new story lore, and the three-man Brigantine, along with the hinted-at multi-boat alliance system and the NPC skeleton ships that will be popping out of the sea to wallop your crew as the “emergent threat” they are. Nothing like watching a ship helmed by skellies literally dive into the depths and drag everything with it. Reddit is freaking out (in a good way) over the crab sighting too.

“Cursed Sails will change things forever on the Sea of Thieves, as the sails you see cresting the horizon are no longer guaranteed to be other players making their own way through the world. The decks beneath those masts may now be manned by skeletal marauders returned to the seas from their restless graves. All that sustains these grinning terrors is a thirst for battle that leads them to terrorise Outposts and call out defenders to face them on the tides…”

The update launches on July 31st; you can watch the preview trailer down below. Arrr!

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No Man’s Sky’s Next update drops next week with absurd amounts of space and land content

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Don’t call it an MMO yet, but Even More Multiplayer is making its way to No Man’s Sky with its “Next” update. Hello Games today dropped a new trailer showing off how the “limitless procedural universe” is coming along. In fact, you haven’t got long to wait to play it yourself, as it’s rolling out next week on July 24th (Europeans have to wait an extra three days to the 27th for some reason).

“The new mode will be added to the limitless procedural universe across all platforms next week via the No Man’s Sky NEXT update, coinciding with the game’s launch on Xbox One, in a publishing partnership with 505 Games for physical retail. With this launch, players across Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Steam for PC will be able to explore, fight and survive with friends as they voyage across the vast celestial sandbox.”

Hello Games is touting a whole slew of features, including small-group exploration, the chance to “prey on others to survive,” building shelters and colonies, exocraft racing, custom race track creation and sharing, “epic space battles,” unlimited base building, fleet control, capital ships, “challenging multiplayer missions,” and a massive visual upgrade. Holy crap. Maybe that’s why the game’s recent reviews on Steam are pretty positive, eh?

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Check out all of the Warframe’s TennoCon 2018 videos

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If you missed out on the glory of TennoCon 2018, you can take in most of the Warframe experience thanks to the cache of videos of the event Digital Extremes posted last night. Probably the most important bits are the Railjack and Fortuna previews, but there are several other vids, including the art and sound panels and the cosplay contest.

Massively OP’s MJ Guthrie was on-site for the event; if you’re not into lengthy videos, check out her written coverage and interviews!

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PUBG is testing custom matches, so you can roll your own zombie survival game… hey wait a second…

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It’s a big day for PUBG as its latest patch has just hit the test server, and it’s a doozy: It’s the one that finally allows custom matches. Players will be able to combine their selected game mode with other presets, like weather, spawn types, and maps. Apparently “zombie mode” is the one to watch; according to RPS, regular players have been jonesing for this option ever since influencers started streaming it. Now everyone can whip up a humans-vs.-zombies match in PUBG, and we have finally come full circle in the world of survival/battle royale games.

Over on Steam, players are ascii-spamming – is there a better word for filling a comment section with word-art of your demands for the devs? – about the game’s ongoing desync issues. There are new weapons and beat-up ol’ trucks in testing now too; you can preview those down below if that’s your thing.

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World of Warcraft kicks off the Battle for Azeroth era

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While the expansion won’t be here until August, World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth officially begins today. That is thanks to Blizzard’s tradition of releasing a features pre-expansion patch with many of the changes that will help to usher players into the new era.

Patch 8.0 is live today with a lot for players to explore and experience. The highlights include a wide array of class changes, PvP War Mode, Communities, upright Orc postures, and a Legacy loot mode (who’s going transmog hunting this week?). Also, next week will see the debut of the Teldrassil and Lordaeron playable scenarios, both of which lead right into the expansion.

And since your Battle for Azeroth fever is burning bright, why not add a couple of degrees by watching the new trailer to a trio of upcoming animated shorts that Blizzard is making? Check it out after the break.

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Kritika Online update adds danger zones, class awakenings, and pet gems

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Kritika Online seems like it’s one of those sleeper MMOs that doesn’t get a lot of attention yet is really aggressive and faithful in putting out regular content updates. Hot on the heels of its first birthday celebration, last week’s content update offered up a host of new features and experiences for the action MMO’s playerbase to enjoy.

The patch kicked off with the addition of two new danger zones, Corsairs’ Cove and Coldsnap Village, which are in the “extreme difficulty” range and shouldn’t be attempted lightly. Five of the game’s classes and sub-classes also received second awakening questlines, which when completed will transform the Assassin, Catspaw, Wolf Guardian, Psion, and Vamp into noble (advanced) versions.

There’s a lot of other little improvements, such as five more pets, multiple class skill adjustments, plenty of new special titles, a third force of Etherforce, and brand-new pet gems. These gems increaes the power level of faithful companions and can be upgraded over time.

Source: Patch notes

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