MMORPG News, Tips, Tricks, Ideas

Dragon’s Dogma 2’s director Hideaki Itsuno is not a fan of fast travel in open-world games. In an interview over at IGN, Itsuno affirmed his commitment to making traveling the world of Dragon’s Dogma 2 something players look forward to.

Ravendawn has been enjoying a successful launch, and the team at Tavernlight Games has released a new roadmap for the game, along with impressive player numbers. The team is also working to iron out some of the remaining issues as players numbers keep growing.

New World’s latest update is here, ending the Legacy of Crassus event until next time, fixing a bunch of bugs, and making several adjustments to narrative and stats for Eternal Frost content.  The update is live, and a confirmed announcement is here for server merge plans.

Heading into 2024, we knew of a couple of heavy hitter MMOs coming out with their next expansions. From Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail this summer, to World of Warcraft launching two expansions, one for each Classic and Retail, the year was already looking pretty meaty for MMO fans.

Myth of Empires has opened up a limited-time Steam playtest starting today through January 30th. The test comes as the open world survival sandbox set against the backdrop of warprepares for launch next month.

Star Trek Online opens a new chapter on PC today, with the release of the 31st Season: Both Worlds. Featuring a new episode, new Task Force Operation, and more to pay homage to Star Trek as the game heads towards its 14th anniversary.

Sony Interactive Entertainment and Arrowhead Studios dropped the launch trailer for Helldivers 2 earlier this week, giving fans another look at the game before its February launch.

Capcom has released a new teaser trailer for Ed, one of Street Fighter 6’s most hotly anticipated DLC characters.

It’s no secret that Palworld is taking the world by storm, as the developers at Pocket Pair are celebrating over 4 million copies of the game sold in only a matter of days. 

Timberborn, a city-building game where mankind has perished and been replaced by “lumberpunk” beavers, has received its biggest update yet.

Mintrocket, the studio behind Dave the Diver, has announced its newest project, a sci-fi MOBA called Wakerunners.

If you’re looking to improve the quality of your content, improving your lighting is one of the best steps you can take. Great lighting will not only make your photos and videos look more professional, it can also add visual interest and open new doors for your creativity. The FIVERAY M20C is the latest RGB video light from ZHIYUN, a company that has been producing some of the best gimbals you can buy for years, and has made a splash with its new lighting products. 

City of Heroes Homecoming, the officially licensed private City of Heroes server, has deployed it's first major update in almost a year to its beta server for testing.

Aftermarket keycaps are one of the best and easiest ways to customize your mechanical keyboard, but there’s a problem: though there are lots of sets to choose from, when you’re buying low-cost keycaps on Amazon, quality issues run rampant. Warped space bars; funky, oddly spaced legends, colors that look ever-so-slightly and maddeningly off. Every purchase feels like a roll of the dice: you might get a good set but you may be stuck returning it with days of wasted time behind you.

 Old School RuneScape’s 2024 roadmap is here, following the recent Winter Summit. The team has a lot on the way, with Varlamore opening up in March, a revamped Defender of Varrock and While Guthix Sleeps,  updates on sailing, Wilderness, and more

GellyBerry Studios has announced that their survival MMORPG,Ethyrial Echoes of Yore, will be getting a major overhaul within the next update. 

New World’s latest community Q&A is up, and this time, the devs answer questions on new content between now and a bigger content drop in May, faction imbalance, reward reworks, main story quest improvements, and more.

With the release of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League fast approaching, Rocksteady has dropped a new gameplay launch trailer for the game.

At CES 2024 last week, Mad Catz unveiled a revamped version of its popular MMO mouse, the MMO 7+. The new mouse, dubbed the M.M.O. 7+, aims to bring the highly customizable mouse to a new audience, with revamped ergonomics and performance.

Embark Studios released the first major game update for The Finals this week, adding a new solo limited time game mode and more.

Broken Ranks  is marking its second anniversary, with some gifts for the players and preparation for the next major update coming this week, Shadow of Hope.

The ACEMAGIC S1 Mini PC, adorned with an integrated LCD display, emerges as a tech chameleon, gracefully adapting to diverse needs and encapsulating a complete PC experience within its compact form factor. As we delve into its dimensions, this mini PC proves to be more than just a small tiny computer; it's a versatile companion for unleashing your creative projects.

Zoria: Age of Shattering is gearing up for its release this coming March, and publisher Anshar has shared an exclusive gameplay trailer to showcase the world of this tactical turn-based RPG.

Square Enix announced a Summer 2024 release date window and showed off new gameplay for Visions of Mana at this week’s Xbox Developer Direct.

I don’t know what I expected when I started playing Palworld. My initial impression was that it was Pokemon with guns. Then, it seemed there could be some crafting elements. With early word out from some of the super early-access players, it was apparent there were heavy survival elements in Palworld. At this point, I was pretty confused.

The producer of Throne and Liberty, Jongok Ahn, discusses the update heading to the game on January 31, 2024. 

AVerMedia has a long history of releasing excellent internal and external capture cards. As recently as last October we had the opportunity to test out the Live Gamer Ultra 2.1, a powerful, USB-C External card with HDMI 2.1 support. The good folks over at AVerMedia are at it again, this time with a pair of PCIe 4K cards designed to level up your content creation experience. The Live Gamer 4K 2.1 and the Live Streamer Ultra HD both offer some impressive features. Both support 4K capture and passthrough, low-profile designs, ultra-low latency and HDR/VVR support making them ideal for gamers wanting to push their capture or stream quality to the max. 

Ravendawn is the latest MMORPG to hit the masses today, as it is now available for play to anyone who enjoys a good ol’ top-down 2D classic style game with a massive open world to explore. 

The Elder Scrolls Online has a major reveal stream tomorrow, but to get us all ready for the announcements, there’s a new teaser of “Tamriel’s chaotic future” ahead of the big announcements.

As part of their CES 2024 presentation, Nvidia announced its upcoming lineup of 40-series Super GPUs: the RTX 4070 Super, RTX 4070 Ti Super, and the RTX 4080 Super. The first of these, the RTX 4070 Super sits at the bottom of the stack, taking the place of the RTX 4070, which launched last year. 

The Tarisland team continues to reveal some of the steps they are takingto course correct following extensive player feedback during closed beta. The latest update comes in the form of a YouTube video, where the devs responded to community questions over alleged pay to win, balance, PvE challenges, crafting, and more.

The dinosaur-filled FPS Exoprimal is heading into its third season, and the director Takuro Hiraoka, hints at the possibility of bringing the wrath and strength of the Rathalos from Monster Hunter to the game. 

Meletrix has made some of the best pre-built and affordable custom keyboards of the last two years, and it’s back with its first magnetic Hall Effect release with the BOOG75. Based on the outstanding Meletrix Zoom75, it’s the best magnetic switch mechanical keyboard so far this year and is poised to be the best overall. At $219.99, it’s a steal.

Tower of Fantasy is heading to new terrain in the next major update, “Beyond Horizons”, launching v 3.6 on January 30th. There’s an all-new map, Aquaville, a new main story, “Impending Storm”, new quests, and a looming battle with the Hive Mother. A new world may just be on the horizon after all.

Seeds of Renewal is live in World of Warcraft, bringing the Dragonflight epilogue chapters, expanding Dragonriding, adding new history to learn, world events, Follower dungeons, and more.

As I sailed forth from Jiwe to Kifo, which I considered to be my final journey in the land of Wagadu before I completed my review, I had nothing but hope for the final leg of my adventure. The Wagadu Chronicles by Twin Drums released on Steam into Early Access on December 4th, 2023. During my time I’ve met shamans, scouted elephants, battled a lion or two, and crafted a whole lot of confusing items. It’s time to lock up my final thoughts on this Indie Afro-Fantasy escapade.

Diablo Immortal is beginning to roll out its latest content update, with Season 22: Plague Reaper and a new Battle Pass,returning events, balance changes, and feature updates included.

Naughty Dog has released a new trailer for an upcoming behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of The Last of Us Part II.

With Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’s release date fast approaching, Rocksteady has gone ahead and lifted the NDA on the game’s recent Closed Alpha Test. Public perception around the game hasn’t been the greatest so far and previews also haven’t cast a favorable light on the game, so perhaps getting a diverse set of opinions from regular gamers who had the chance to play the game may change the conversation. Or not.

Players will be able to face off against the legendary Sphinx in Dragon’s Dogma 2, if they can find it.

For fans of Villagers and Heroes , there was a bit of a lull period due to a Data Center issue, but luckily those affected got a bit of good news because of the quick but slightly annoying server issue. 

The developers of Overwatch 2 received heavy backlash after revealing there were new healing changes coming to the FPS without providing much context. They now want to let the fans know this was a mistake, and explain themselves just a bit better in the interim. 

From the former designers of CD Projekt Red, better known for their work on the Witcher game series and Cyberpunk 2077, comes a new dark and twisted fantasy RPG titled Dawnwalker. 

New World is preparing to open its PTR server for its promised cross-world Expeditions, along with an improved group finder.

Get ready for some new and exciting content and an unannounced collaboration, as the developers of MapleStory showcase the Q1 roadmap to show players what to expect. 

The much anticipated Ayaneo Slide is finally upon us. Featuring a pop-up, angle-adjustable screen that reveals a physical keyboard beneath, this Windows gaming handheld comes complete with an 8-core, 16-thread Ryzen 7 7840U, Radeon 780M graphics, Hall Effect joysticks and triggers, and up to 64GB of RAM and 4TB of storage. Prices start at $699 through IndieGoGo, and $799 after early bird, but if you prefer a keyboard on your handheld, this is a device you won’t want to miss. 

RuneScape has unveiled the latest round of visual upgrades, this time for the Kingdom of Kandarin. The team has some new comparison screenshots and a new dev video taking us through all of the overhauls.

Skull and Bones is (finally) getting close to release on February 16th. Now, the latest edition of Ubisoft’s “Echoes of History” podcast, titled “Gangsters of the Seas” gets a first episode, featuring actress Michelle Rodriguez.

Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth is coming to PlayStation 5 next month, and Square Enix is kicking its campaign into gear with a brand new trailer and some new screenshots for the much-anticipated second installment in the planned remake trilogy.

The Elder Scrolls Online had a great 2023. The Elder Scrolls Online: Necrom Chapter introduced players to the Arcanist class and the Daedric realm of Apocrypha. It told a good story, even if I thought it was a slow starter . Towards the end of the year, the Endless Archive was released as a repeatable system for one to two players. While it introduced new class sets, those sets still share equipment slots with existing gear sets, limiting their viable use depending on a player’s build.

World of Warships: Legends has its first big update of 2024, with highlights that include new ships, a new campaign, two ships entering full access, Season 50 of Ranked Battles, and more Azur Lane. World of Warships Blitz is also in anniversary mode.

World of Warcraft Dragonflight keeps marching along with the consistent updates, and our next one is hitting on January 16th. The 10.2.5 Seeds of Renewal patch brings many story and system updates that tie up loose ends from this expansion and start the lead into The War Within . Having diligently avoided the PTR spoilers as much as possible, I am looking forward to many of the updates in this patch, so let’s jump in and get to the highlights.

Fractured Online is preparing for its big Endgame Changer update, but the team has hit a few snags. In addition to finding a significant dupe exploit that led to server downtime, they also had a failing server that needed repair.

The newly launched RPG Sea of Stars has already taken the title for Indie Game of the Year in 2023, and Sabotage Studio already have plans to introduce more content via a DLC that is claimed to be “wacky and mysterious.”

The latest event to come to Overwatch 2 launched this weekend only, where players got a taste of fast paced matches that upped the ante for new and old players alike. The developers have released a Directors Take , discussing their plans for the future and how fans have responded to the latest test event. 

Wemade is at it again with a new fantasy MMORPG called Night Crows which has opened its pre-registration on the web, as well as on Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store. Similar to Wemade’s other properties, the game will feature blockchain technology, though it is primarily used as a monetization tool in this instance.

On January 12, 2024, the latest season for Diablo III titled Season 30: The Lords of Hell was released, which is the first season to utilize the new season theme rotation system. 

Following the first day of the Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival in Tokyo this month, director and producer of the franchise Naoki Yoshida did a brief but captivating interview giving insight on where the game might be without him around . 

Last weekRunescape announced the closure of its official forums. For as long as the game has been running, the forums have served as a vital space for the community to engage in discussions and social activities beyond logging into the game itself.

Each week, we scour the internet for all things indie MMO-related, so you don’t have to. This week, Monsters & Memories (image above) gives an update on its development, the Wardens and Colonials go to war on Able, and Eternal Tombs teases its magic system. Plenty of other stuff is also going on, so let’s quit wasting time and get started with this week’s Indie MMO Spotlight.

Final Fantasy XVI producer Naoki Yoshida, better known amongst the Final Fantasy community as Yoshi-P, made some interesting comments regarding Final Fantasy XVII when speaking to former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida on the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Game Maker’s Notebook podcast.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, the ‘Romance of the 3 Kingdoms’ fantasy soulslike, will get a Complete Edition in February.

As if Lethal Company could get any scarier, a new mod adds full 6DOF VR support to the game.

Wuque Studio is back with its latest premium custom keyboard kit: the Freya and Freya Ultra. This keyboard is one of the most gorgeous we’ve ever seen and features a built-in touchscreen display, an intricately designed case with a spring mounting system, first-of-its-kind dual material plates, and if you purchase the Ultra version, a modular left side that can feature a volume slider or macro keys. It’s entering group buy later this month and, trust us, this is one worth taking a closer look at — even if you’re not currently in the market. It’s more than a little unique. 

Korean MMORPG Throne & Liberty will be merging down many of its Korean servers together, bringing a number of changes that these players will need to keep an eye on. The server merge comes in part to bring populations together, reducing queue times on group content and making guild recruitment more viable. Altogether, 18 servers will be merged into a much smaller and manageable 7. 

The monster-collecting battle RPG Temtem is moving away from officially working on its competitive projects to refocus on the primary game, it announced in a blog post. In the post, the team announced it’d be sundowning its Temtem: Showdown client, as well as ending the accompanying one-time Temtem Championship Series, or the “TemCS” as it was called. 

Online roleplay in Grand Theft Auto 5 is a phenomenon all on its own. Going beyond text and roles, people execute entire jobs and services, from hitmen to repair shops, mayors and the cops, making the world of Vice City come alive in new, exciting, and hilarious ways. Even beyond this, group servers like the famous Nopixel community elevate it with lore, perpetual stories, and tight-knit shenanigans. 

Welcome to the first of our MMO Launch Spotlight, where we compile the Massively Multiplayer titles and where they launched over the past week. While we can’t guarantee we’ll have an exhaustive list (because games have to launch in some state for this to make sense), we’ll do our best to keep you apprised of what launched each week. This week, Steam saw 4 games that describe themselves as “Massively Multiplayer” launch on their platform. Let’s get this spotlight started.

Bandai Namco has finally shared the release date of Sand Land , an action RPG based off Dragonball creator Akira Toriyama’s classic manga—and it’s well within sights. 

Adding to a painful week in gaming and tech layoffs, Discord is the latest company to announce downsizing, with a 17% cut to its staff.

 Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen has a recap of the December pre-alpha pledge playtest sessions. 

Almost every MMORPG player with a scrap of ethics hates bots, and has since the dawn of time. We see them taking up space in our hubs, running around, stealing mobs away from new players, smacking them for currency, and completing quests to try to sell on online black markets for real money, while us players have to endure the grind ourselves while already paying a subscription fee. 

Bethesda teased its “biggest Starfield update yet” on its X/Twitter page today. This major patch, likely the largest of many released by the studio and publisher already, addresses “over 100 fixes and improvements.” 

The update notes for World of Warcraft’s Seeds of Renewal patch are here, giving more details on everything we can expect in this concluding chapter of Dragonflight .

Guild Wars 2 ’s World vs. World restructuring beta got underway today, but the team is addressing an issue with matchmaking on the EU side. ArenaNet is also previewing the next major balance update, due January 30th. 

The anime MMORPG Astral Tale has officially launched its global open beta version on this week, and even though there was a small delay in release, players are stoked to be able to dive in. 

The second volume of the Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker art book series is coming in June, and Square Enix’ Manga and Books publishing arm is taking preorders.

The Eternal Tombs team released a new teaser showing magic (and more of the world, flora and fauna) within the upcoming game.

Indie MMO Grudge is an interesting open-world survival-craft MMO that features intense combat, base building and more, and it just hit Steam.

SMITE 2 was announced by Titan Forge Games and Hi-Rez Studios, bringing the next evolution of the MOBA series to PC, console, and Steam Deck. Built using Unreal Engine 5, Titan Forge Games states that the sequel to the God battling MOBA «distills ten years of learning» into the upcoming sequel.