MMORPG News: Blue Protocol New Info, Soul Worker Academia, Crimson Desert No Longer an MMO

I know it’s not technically the new year anymore, but for those of you that missed the last news video, I’ll say it one more time: Happy New Year, everyone!
Hopefully you’ve all had an amazing first 2 weeks of 2021, and I genuinely wish you all an amazing year where you accomplish every goal you set out to achieve!
We have quite a bit of news to talk about today, so let’s go ahead and jump right into this.

The final patch for Shadowbringers is fast approaching us, and you know what that means, don’t you? Yup, the announcement, and subsequent release of the next expansion.
Nobody currently knows what the next expansion will be titled, let alone what it’ll feature in terms of story, setting or new potential classes. But Yoshi-P did reveal a little tidbit earlier this month in the form of a quote:
“Our progeny may never know. Wherefore we look unto the sky, Nor why we dig for truths below; We bear their scorn or watch them die.”
There’s been a ton of speculation all over Reddit and the official forums trying to decipher what that ultimately means, but.. we’ll just need to wait and see.

If you haven’t played Albion Online yet, then this might be the ideal time to.
According to the dev studio, the game has seen an increase in active player-population numbers all year, averaging at over 125,000 daily active players, in addition to their substantial number of updates pushed out over the same time period.
Albion Online has turned into something truly remarkable and packed with life, and 2020 was only the beginning. 2021 holds even more for the game, including the – as much as we as PC MMO players hate to see it.. mobile adaptation of the title.
Well, adaptation is a strong word. It’s going to be cross-platform compatible, much like RuneScape did. Which admittedly might not be a bad alternative, as so long as it’s a PC game with mobile functionality, I feel as though we’re in a safe spot with regards to the game.

I-wow. 20 years? RuneScape has been around for 20 years, now? Man does that make me feel old. Jagex, the studio behind the popular MMO announced that as part of its 20th anniversary, they plan on holding events.. over the course of the ENTIRE year.
Yes, a year-long anniversary for hitting 20 years old. There’s a variety of events planned for players that are wanting to participate — some that have been mentioned already, and some planned for much further down in the future.
So if you’ve been holding off playing for whatever reason, then this might be what you’re looking for to either jump back in – or try it out for the first time. This applies to both RuneScape and OldSchool RuneScape.

How many of you guys ever thought we’d have a segment dedicated to Elsword? Yeah, neither did I, but here we are, in January 2021 talking about a brand new update for the game and the introduction of an entirely new character, “Noah.”
This is the first character to be introduced in over 2 years, and with the new character comes a surplus of events to participate in. I haven’t played Elsword in over 4 years myself, but considering this was on my radar as a game to jump back into, this might be motivation to do so.

For those of you awaiting the new Elyon MMO with bated breath–and for those of you that are simultaneously interested in the PvP aspect of the game, you’ll be glad to know that after recently launching within South Korea, Elyon has introduced a brand new 300-player faction war system.
This is the very system we saw in trailers for Ascent: Infinite Realm that utilized large siege weapons and other forms of mechanical warfare, however these faction wars are limited to weekends, so if they’re not of interest to you you know when not to be available.
Elyon is confirmed to be releasing this year in 2021 as a buy-to-play MMORPG, for players wanting to try the game out.

I’m a huge fan of Soul Worker. It’s an Anime MMO that I’ve found I’ve spent more time in than almost any other, and that’s because I enjoy the combat, the character customization, and the aesthetic look and feel of the game.
So when they announced multiple Soul Worker mobile ports – all of which turned out to be absolute garbage, mind you, I was disappointed.
That is until I heard about Soul Worker Academia, which admittedly looks to be its very own game, with its own unique identity. Something that its mobile predecessors failed to establish.
With this in mind, while little is known about the game other than it’s a sequel to the PC incarnation of the game with a different setting and different mechanics, I’m still interested to see where this ultimately ends up going.

I have a much more detailed look coming for Crimson Desert next week, but I thought now would be the perfect time to elaborate just a little on what I plan on covering. And that is pertaining to whether or not Crimson Desert is going to be an MMO.
According to Pearl Abyss, “Crimson Desert is not a traditional MMORPG, but rather an open world action-adventure game based on a narrative-focused single player campaign. There is also a multiplayer mode, and player’s will find that the single player and multiplayer experiences are both connected.”
So while yes, they officially came out and said what we’ve all been speculating for a while now, and that is that Crimson Desert is not an MMORPG.
They did define that the game isn’t a “traditional MMORPG,” but will instead feature a game that has a very story-driven focus, with the option of players playing either together with groups of people or alone.
So this might be closer to something like Borderlands, Warframe, Soul Worker or even Genshin Impact.

For those of you anticipating the upcoming Gran Saga cross-platform MMORPG, you’ll be glad to learn that it’s actually launching in South Korea on January 26th, and will be playable easily enough outside of the country.
An English release is on the way, but, at least currently, there’s no officially confirmed release date for neither North America nor Europe. But it’s likely to be later this year, the beginning of 2022 at the latest.

Earlier this month the devs behind the upcoming Crowfall MMO did a livestream where they showcased a little of what players can expect from the game and went into quite a bit more detail.
They discussed topics like their current attribute system and how they want to overhaul it, turning it from the unique system they had in place from the beginning of the game and making it much more standardized and normalized.
Then there’s a new progression system, lobby interface and.. honestly, it’s an hour long stream and there’s a ton of info. But it’s looking less and less unique, and more and more generic, unfortunately for the game.

Blade & Soul has been available over in the West now for 5 years. Five. Entire. Years.
And while NCSoft have essentially driven the game into its own grave, with terrible update after terrible update, there’s still enough active players to warrant new content and events – and this is one such time.
The anniversary event started earlier this week and features a ton of goodies up for grabs. Not only can you win your very own PC for participating, but there are outfits to obtain in-game, free premium membership, daily and weekly challenges, and.. yeah.
It’s a party. If you’re still playing then you know it’s already begun, but for those of you that don’t.. here ya go.

I guess I gotta do a dedicated video on this eventually as it’s an interesting looking new upcoming MMORPG.
Yes, you might look at it and at first glance instantly write it off, but let’s be real here: I love games that look like this, and knowing that this is an MMO with a bunch of social features like player-housing, farming, questing, and even providing the ability to grow both wealth and influence over the land is an interesting trip for sure.
Most noteworthy is the fact that this isn’t a Kickstarter funded MMO, rather, it’s already on Steam and has a release date scheduled for 2021. The developer confirmed they have all the funds they need to hire a team and begin working on it full-time, overhauling not only the graphics but also the animations and story.

I feel like this is more of an “anniversary video” than anything else. DC Universe Online is yet another MMO celebrating an anniversary this month, turning 10 years old – quite the feat for an MMO in this day and age.
DC Universe Online in specific, however, is celebrating its 10th year being online different, as we get a brand new event raid that has us going up against the Kraken in an effort to thwart the Anti-Monitor, yes, the very same Anti-Monitor that was featured in the final season of Arrow, that Oliver went up against in a huge DBZ-worthy fight.
There will be plenty of rewards for players that want to participate in the event, and might actually be reason enough for me to jump on in so I can see all of this take place in person. Well, virtually.. in person.

I.. admittedly never played Ever, Jane. I was asked to. On multiple occasions I was reached out to to cover the game, but I just couldn’t bring myself to. It just looked so.. bleh to me, and thus I kept delaying it, writing it off as something I’d do “eventually.”
Turns out that will no longer be possible as the game is now shut down, never having even left its Beta test phase. This is due to the studio behind the game making.. well, let’s put it this way. They required in their words “$500-$600USD monthly to cover servers and licensing.”
But they’d only raised “10% of our goal,” and if you can’t raise the few hundred dollars to keep your game online.. yeah it’s probably best you close it down in all honesty.
Anyone that enjoyed the Roleplaying MMO will miss it, but considering the active playerbase numbered in the single digits.. it’s unlikely.

RaiderZ is an upcoming.. older, once-shut down already MMORPG that has been entirely overhauled by Masangsoft, a developer that takes dead MMOs and milks them for a ton of money before letting them die all over again.
RaiderZ is their newest venture, however, this time they’ve taken the time to actively overhaul quite a significant amount of the game, removing features that made it unique and turning it into much more of a generic, traditional MMO much to the dismay of the playerbase.
Regardless, they released a brand new trailer for the game showing several of the beginner areas completely overhauled – and I’ll admit, they do look a little better, but that isn’t what players wanted. They just wanted RaiderZ back. Not an entirely different vision for the game they loved.

After Blue Protocol’s first Closed Beta test, they went ahead and held a questionnaire where they asked players to leave feedback on what they want added into the game going into the future.
Things like fishing, player housing, mini games, more freedom over character customization, new classes, new Imajinn’s, guilds, PvP, varied quests, more dungeons, more raids, and additional options were included, enough so where we can speculate exactly what Bandai Namco plan on adding into the game.
We’ve already seen them hard at work on new customization options, including outfits and sliders. We’ve seen them announce they’re working towards creating new classes for players to choose when the game eventually launches.
They’re no doubt working through a list of most-requested to least-requested, so it’s interesting to see what players generally felt was the most important to them. Either way, this might end up being a lot larger than I’d originally anticipated!