ESO Greymoor Chapter

Up first is The Elder Scrolls Online, which will be launching its 4th Chapter, the second update of this year’s Dark Heart of Skyrim year-long adventure called Greymoor. Players will be heading back to Western Skyrim to investigate mysterious happenings all over the region, including the depths of Blackreach. It’s an new dark, broody and gothic story line which we’ve not seen before!

Additionally, the chapter has revamped the Vampire skill line complelety, and adds more flavor to the gameplay experience and what it means to be a creature of the night in ESO. Expect plenty of new PvE content too, from new delves and bosses on the landscapes, to Harrowstorms and Trials and public dungeons of course. The Chapter arrives on the 27th of May.

Guild Wars 2: No Quarter Episode 3 of the Icebrood Saga.

In ArenaNet’s Guild Wars 2, brand new content is coming our way on the 27th of May too, forcing ESO and GW2 players who play both games to make a difficult decision! The third episode of the Icebrood Saga, known as No Quarter, will launch next week and brings a new map to play on, the Drizzlewood Coast.

This new map plays unlike anything else released recently, and it has a push-and-pull World vs World feel where players will battle NPCs for strategic locations on the map to earn resources, when not playing through the main story – which also tackles a Char civil war that’s been brewing for months now. Expect all new rewards to earn in the form of armor, weapons and skins.

Fractured May 2020 Open Free Test

Upcoming isometric sandbox MMORPG Fractured has some great news. It will be opening up its next test phase to everyone, free of charge, on the 28th of May, and all you need is to register for an account. Fractured is a living breathing world where players can build, craft and survive using skill you can earn and learn from simply interacting with the world and through defeating monsters on the landscape.

It has a decent community so far and there’s plenty of exciting features ahead that will be coming over time as the game continues its alpha test transition. Fractured backers can jump in two days earlier on the 26th of May, and if you want to grab a founder’s pack, click here.

AION

Aion North America has a major update coming for players of this free to play MMORPG, known as the Shadows over Balaurea, which launches on the 27^th of May. For those up-to-date with current story, your pursuit of Inanna continues, with a major revamp happening to the land of Balaurea, with Inggision, Gelkamoros and the Silentra Canyon seeing changes. There’s new instances too like the new 6-player Alter of Ascension which drops new Burning Altar accessories, on top of a new PvP battleground, the chaotic Vale, which is stat-equalized. In other areas, you can expect new systems like Renown, which unlocks more travel portals, merchants, quests and other benefits for leveling up renown ranks, that can be done through killing monsters and questing throughout Baluarea

Be sure to join our community Discord: https://discord.gg/D8MYHkG

The post MMORPG 2020: The Biggest Launches Happening Next Week (25-29 May) appeared first on Mmos World.

Mobile MMORPGs

Love it or hate it, mobile MMORPGS are here to stay. It’s incredible to observe this particular platform’s market growth rate especially in the East where mobile gaming and MMORPGs in particular, looks set to dominate the year ahead. Games like Black Desert Mobile, Spiritwish, and the upcoming World of Dragon Nest and more have generated plenty of buzz and it looks like mobile MMOs will continue to be an avenue of interested for major Asian developers to pursue. Why? The obvious reasons – the region makes the most mobile revenue and the target audience uses mobiles more than the PC, which means they are likelier to spend more money on mobile. Majority of mobile MMORPG resistance comes from the West who still prefers traditional PC gaming experiences when it comes to online gaming, in addition to not having to deal with pay to win or gacha mechanics. But we are seeing more titles announced in the Western market too, like Warhammer: Odyssey for example.

Crowd Funding Remains Key

If the last couple of years have thought us anything, it is that we should expect less triple A MMORPG announcements and should embrace indie projects instead if we want new MMORPGs with fresh ideas. Last year we did get lucky – out of nowhere, major games like Corepunk, Magic: Legends and New World emerged as upcoming big studio titles and that’s great. But throughout the year, majority of new MMORPG announcements have come from small studios that have crowd funded their way to publicity. Many will have reservations about games taking this route especially on Kickstarter (see Star Citizen, Ashes of Creation and Shroud of the Avatar) due to the game and its makers failing to provide backer rewards, deviating from promised plans and more, which is totally understandable. Unfortunately, this is also a very popular way for developers to bring their ideas to life, as the traditional method is expensive and takes time. The last $200 million dollar or more MMORPG project was 2014’s Elder Scrolls Online, and it’s unlikely we’ll see that amount of money, time and man-power used to make a triple A MMORPG again.

Traditional Expansion Releases Will Decline

This is something we’ve started to see over the years, but recently more established titles are adopting to this. The traditional expansion cycle is dying, but not for the top few MMORPGs like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV, who still relies on the expansion cycles and subsequent patches to sell units and game time. This will never change for these two in particular. However, the landscape is vastly different for everyone else in the lower tiers. Expansions are now being treated as separate content patch updates either quarterly or as-and-when available, which is popular especially among Asian MMORPGs that rarely do traditional expansion releases. Guild Wars 2 is the latest MMORPG that looks like it will follow this method, after having indirectly hinted that the new Saga updates would replace expansions (but still unconfirmed). Another game, RIFT, also confirmed to fans on social media that no new expansions would be coming, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no new content.

The post Top 3 MMORPG Trends That Will Continue In 2020 appeared first on Mmos World.