ALL THE POSTS
The Daily Grind: Do MMOs make our characters too powerful too quickly?
When I think back to all of the MMORPGs, CRPGs, and JRPGs I've played and the part of each game that I like the most, it typically is the very first section. I love starting out as a nobody -- weak, relatively unskilled, and wearing tissue paper armor. That means that every step forward in those opening hours and...
The Stream Team: Factions, reputations, and the Friday before Black Friday in AdventureQuest 3D
'Twas the week before Black Friday, when all throughout Lore
Massively OP's MJ was raking in deals galore;
Who cares if it's early, she must buy more bags,
Her backpack's so full, it makes the game lag!
For some reason this year, there's been a rush of treating other Fridays in November like Black Friday. Even AdventureQuest 3D has gotten in on the...
Betawatch: Path of Exile 2’s early access is almost here
It's almost time: On December 6th, Path of Exile 2 will enter the early access club. Classes: Six. Acts: Three. Endgame: Available. And hopefully it will not be forcibly removed from the club as a result of any of that. To be fair, the total number of classes will double by the time of full launch, but it is...
MapleStory adds an all-new Dark Ride event, revamps classes, and opens the Page of Memories in latest patch
Most of the time the events and updates applied to the global version of MapleStory are from the Korean version; this shouldn't come as a surprise to most players. However, our global version of the MMO forked away from Korea a while ago, and this week's newest update - subtitled The Dark Ride - continues that trend with an...
Temtem Swarm shows off its ‘living roadmap’ for future development
"The living roadmap" sounds like it's almost but not quite something that's been put together by Jack Kirby if you ignore certain basic facts (like Kirby being very dead and never having worked in game development). But in this case it's really about Temtem Swarm's ongoing development, with the "living" part being mostly about the fact that it can...
Old School RuneScape will sunset its Java client next year and revive Leagues V next week
If you can remember all the way back to 2020, then good for you. Would you care to tell me what sort of diet you're on that helps with that? Also, do you happen to recall when Old School RuneScape began working on replacing its old Java client as part of plans to deprecate it? Well if you didn't,...
Sea of Thieves’ community weekend event promises treats and tricks starting November 23
Now that the stormy seas of Season 14's launch are behind it, Sea of Thieves can get back to the proper business of celebrating its community and making mischief at the same time. Provided you're not one of those who have committed the crime of enjoying the game in PvE, anyway. That's because starting this Saturday, November 23rd, the...
Elite Dangerous makes changes to powerplay earnings and highlights the top five powers in-game
Many of Elite: Dangerous' players have been digging in to the newly updated powerplay mechancs, and now that a few weeks have passed by, Frontier Developments is ready to make a few tweaks to the system now that there's some data to act on.
The recent patch has applied what the studio calls significant reductions to the time and effort...
The Stream Team: Returning to Palia for the Season of Splendor – and pond plushies
MOP's Chris is once again coming back to the cozy multiplayer life RPG that is Palia for one thing and one thing only: pond plushies! OK, maybe there's more to his return than that considering the Season of Splendor update is live in the beta, but it's mostly about plushies! Join him today at 2:00 p.m. EST for some...
Multiplayer RTS titles ZeroSpace and Immortal Gates of Pyre plan public tests this weekend
This month, multiplayer RTS ZeroSpace moved from alpha to beta testing, and to celebrate, developer Starlance Studios will throw open the gates for a public demo from November 22nd (today) through 24th.
Of greatest interest to our readership will likely be the first draft of ZeroSpace's MMO-inspired Galactic War mode, in which players participate in co-op missions to contribute to...
Massively on the Go: Preparing for Pokemon Go’s Wild Area event
Pokemon Go's Wild Area event is being held November 23rd-24th, but despite being advertised as a new yearly event akin to Go Fest or the Go Tours, it really isn't exuding the usual pre-event hype, in spite of the fact that several people I know went to the recent live event. In fact, I'm going to frontload this by saying...
Diablo IV to test Patch 2.1’s armory and witchcraft systems in early December
The date is rapidly approaching for Diablo IV to begin testing its first big expansion update, as Patch 2.1 will go onto the public test realm from December 3rd through the 10th.
There is a lot to test here, too, starting with the new armory system that allows players to save, load, name, and swap builds on their characters. Players...
Wisdom of Nym: Final Fantasy XIV Mobile might not be for you, and that’s fine
Ugh. Do I have to? Yes, apparently I have to. Let's talk about Final Fantasy XIV Mobile as a new thing related to Final Fantasy XIV, which is something I already don't want to do - but not because I hate this thing existing. I've already gotten a couple dozen people asking me what I think about this because,...
So the WoW Classic Classic fresh start anniversary launch last night was pretty smooth
If you're starting to get that déjà vu feeling in WoW Classic, it's because 2024 is looking like 2019 is looking like 2004. The 20th anniversary "Classic Classic" realms launched last night for the legacy branch of the MMO, offering players an opportunity to return to their old favorite stomping grounds.
By most accounts, the launch itself went relatively smoothly....
Four Winds: The early leveling experience in Amazon’s Throne & Liberty
In the last edition of Four Winds, I covered the opening hours of my journey through Throne and Liberty. Overall, the tutorial island did a good job at introducing me to all the basics of character movement and the game's unique approach to a class system.
But of course, the tutorial was barely even a scratch on the surface of...
Final Fantasy XIV Mobile devs promise the game will be more than a ‘bite-sized mobile experience’
There was some understandable skepticism and general recoil after the announcement that Final Fantasy XIV is getting a mobile spinoff, but the developers at Tencent's Lightspeed Studios don't appear to be shying away from some of those gamer conclusions. In fact, they're attempting to address them directly in a message to fans.
"We know that Final Fantasy XIV is much...
Daybreak confirms work on EverQuest 3 is happening, though it might not be called EverQuest 3
It would be easy to presume that the future of EverQuest is largely about putting forth new expansions for the existing two titles instead of putting forth any work on a new game. However, that isn't entirely the case according to a video interview from YouTuber MinnMax, who sat down with lead artist and logo designer Kevin Lydy and...
Stars Reach unveils the earliest stages of its player housing homesteading system
Development on Playable Worlds' Star Wars Galaxies-esque MMO sandbox Stars Reach is continuing at an apparently speedy pace: The latest dev blog heralds the pre-alpha testing of the game's player housing system, and in so doing, it shows where it's improving on the SWG model.
The studio is calling the housing system "homesteading" since you can literally make a go...
PlanetSide 2 confirms NA server merges, plans new assault facilities and faction-agnostic mecha for 2025
This year marks 12 years since the launch of PlanetSide 2, which means that the game is now older than PlanetSide was when the sequel originally launched. To celebrate, PlanetSide 2 promises to continue merging servers!
OK, that may sound bad, but it's not: Readers will remember that owing to popular demand, Daybreak/Toadman merged two European servers earlier this fall...
The Daily Grind: What one simple fix would help your favorite MMORPG?
In the comments of the 490th MOP Podcast, multiple people chimed in to talk about Guild Wars 2's Heart of Thorns expansion after I said I have been very, very slowly working through what I consider to be the most challenging map in the game: Tangled Depths. As I type this, I'm down to one hero point left to claim...
