MMORPG News: New ArcheAge Scam, Upcoming MMOs Astellia, AxE: Alliance vs Empire English Launches

I honestly didn’t think that there could be more news this week than there was in last week’s Byte of MMORPG News video but boy was I wrong. And I hate being wrong.
But yes, there is even more to get through this week – some good, some bad and some.. strange.
So, I hope you’re ready.

Let’s start off talking about Ragnarok Online 2.
If you weren’t aware, Ragnarok Online 2 was a terribly received sequel attempting to bank on the popularity of the Ragnarok Online MMO series.
Where Ragnarok Online had a plethora of classes, depth and a very intricate class system, Ragnarok Online 2 was the complete opposite, being a carbon copy of every other Anime MMORPG released in 2012.
Nothing stood out about it and therefore it died as rapidly as it released.
Now, in 2019, WarpPortal have announced that they will be completely removing the development team assigned to the game – meaning no additional content will be added, ever. No further support will be offered and all in-game events will cease.
However, don’t worry. The game itself is not shutting down. Instead, they have plans on keeping their single server up and leave the cash shop in operation. So, y’know.. if you wanna continue to spend money in the game, you still can!
Support the company that doesn’t want to offer any further support to its playerbase. I don’t know what WarpPortal are smoking but it’s clearly affecting their decision-making skills as this is a ridiculous thing to do.

I bet you haven’t heard of this one.. and if you have, you’re older than I thought! Webzen’s unique golfing MMO, Shot Online, is actually launching on Steam on the 22nd.
Yes, it is a golf MMO. Golfing. These exist. Shot Online, in fact, has actually existed for 14 years. Yup.

In new Ashes of Creation news.. Intrepid Studios have announced that the next round of beta testing for their Ashes of Creation MMO, wait, sorry, Ashes of Creation: Apocalypse battle royale will be running from January 24th to the 27th.
The battle royale is free to play and Intrepid have made sure to inform the playerbase that Apocalypse is definitely a large focus right now, saying they’re working on network issues, bug fixes, server performance, stability and the game mode itself.
For those of you that didn’t think they’d devote time and effort to the battle royale.. you may want to re-evaluate.

Now in ArcheScam news, many players thought, wrongly I might add, that Gamigo purchasing ArcheAge would mean that Trion could no longer scam them out of money with their pay to win BS that had plagued the game up until this point.
However, in their latest shiny new update, Gamigo listed a large selection of updates to whet player apetite. They detailed these updates in their patch notes. Although, Gamigo neglected to mention a teeny tiny little alteration: Mount normalization.
Many mounts have been rescaled back down to the base speed for mounts in-game. This includes various very expensive mounts that players thought would retain their increased movement speed.
Mounts that were even advertised and sold with a higher base movement speed for several weeks. All of this without any warning or even acknowledgement from Gamigo themselves.
This is the exact same thing that Trion did back in 2017 – so guys, it’s good to know that ArcheAge has a new publisher.. but employs the same shady money making tactics. Expect a new cash shop mount in the future with increased movement speed!
Oh, if you hadn’t already.. then I would advise bailing on ScamAge and going on over to the ArcheRage private server where the majority of the community went when Gamigo bought rights to ArcheAge. Link will be in the description and pinned comment.

The Elder Scrolls Online has a large patch incoming that is going to shake up the way Racials are handled.
Zenimax have stated that they believe the current system severely limits players’ freedom to create and play characters the way they want.
Many fans of ESO have likely experienced this personally in-game, where you get kicked due to playing a race with marginally lower capabilities due to what they deem to be a mathematically-inferior class to race combination.
Such as healing as a Khajiit as opposed to an Argonian, or playing a non-High Elf or Dark Elf sorcerer.
This change to racials will essentially homogenize the racial ability system all together giving players more freedom to play the race they want as the class they want, which is Zenimax’s primary goal.
Additionally, Zenimax revealed that Elsweyr, the homeland of the Khajiit is actually their next chapter. It will bring with it the new Sunspire 12-man raid, new dungeons, large PvP updates and over 30 hours of main scenario questing.

The developers behind the upcoming MMORPG Legends of Aria have announced that their planned Early Access will be targeting a Spring 2019 release.
The game has a large content update scheduled for January 30th that will include a large selection of dungeons, but their goal is to launch their game onto Steam with as little issue as possible.
Some people are upset with the delay but honestly, Steam users love leaving negative reviews purely for the sake of leaving a negative review. This will hopefully dissuade some of them, which is ultimately a good thing for the longevity of the game.

Blade & Soul, which is still alive and *BARELY* kicking is celebrating its third anniversary with in-game events and free costumes. So if you haven’t already, and want to nab it while you can, log in!
And yes, the game is still alive, even after three years. Whales, man.

A Blade & Soul AND Tera update in one news video? Wow!
In TERA’s latest update on the 15th, En Masse released quite the sizable PvP-related update.
A large 7v7 battleground called Shore Hold that takes you into a smaller-scale battleground with faster queues, because let’s be real here.. the population is so low that the lower team size means you might actually be able to participate now.
There’s also new Disciplinary, Harmonic and Impregnable PvP gear for players to purchase. On the PvE side of things, a new PvE Training Ground has been introduced as a solo-instance for level 65 characters to jump into and practice in.
Although this update doesn’t really do anything to aid in the lack of endgame content, it’s nice that they’re trying to keep PvP alive by allowing less players to participate in battlegrounds at a time.

If you want more Lost Ark information to drool and ultimately cry in a corner over due to no confirmed Western release date then I got your back!
Last time I talked about Lost Ark I mentioned that they had already worked on the next large patch which was soon to be released.
The new patch featuring the continent of Rohendel will actually release this month on January 30th providing players even more to do and even more to explore.
However what was most interesting was that they’re already hard at work with the next large content update after Rohendel which will be introducing both a new guild system into the game and a functional battleground.
You jealous yet? Russia will be getting Lost Ark soon and we.. we’re still left in the dark. #feelsbadman.

I think we’re half way through. Are we half way through? Jesus.
For fans of the Anime MMO Closers, you’ll be saddened.. or maybe happy? To know that En Masse have confirmed due to overall low population on both the North American and European servers, they will be holding server merges in an attempt to combat further declines.
The merge is scheduled to take place on January 29th and will last roughly half a day.
En Masse have also confirmed that only a maximum of 20 character slots will be given, so if you have more than 20 characters, they are advising you delete unwanted or unnecessary characters.
As for character names, En Masse have stated that there will no doubt be naming conflicts once the merges have been completed.
In light of this, players in the North American region will be given priority, which means European players will be forced to rename their characters after the merge is complete.
Where the “World server” they have plans on making will be held is unconfirmed, but due to North American players receiving priority.. it’s likely European players will be forced to play on North American servers with increased ping in the future.
Which is why I play on the Code Closers private server anyway. Further ahead, healthier population and no issues like this. Like ArcheRage, link will be both in the description and pinned comment.

Nexon announced earlier this week that it has plans for a Western release in mind for AxE: Alliance vs Empire, an upcoming mobile MMORPG that focuses on an “epic war” between two conflicting factions: The Galenos Alliance and Darkhaan Empire.
According to Nexon, the game is a “next generation fully-featured MMORPG on mobile devices with a sprawling and ever-changing open-world” that features “console-quality HD graphics.”
AxE supposedly has a large focus on PvP, including large 150-player battiefields and more traditional four vs four player Arena matches.
But that doesn’t mean PvP is its primary focus, the game offers various dungeons and raids as well, like most MMOs including mobile MMOs do in this day and age.
My main concern is whether or not it’ll be auto-play or not.

On the 22nd, the new Battle of Dazar’alor raid will open for both Normal and Heroic difficulties, the new Mythic Keystone season will launch, and players can begin battling one another for the 2nd PvP season.
Not much in the way of fixing current issues players are having but Blizz have promised the Rise of Azshara update will fix a lot of the problems players have with the current systems as they are.

Here’s a game I bet you’d all forgotten about until now: Bless Unleashed.
You know, Bandai Namco’s free to play version of Bless Online when Bless Online was still buy to play? You know, before Bless Online went free to play and ultimately scammed everyone out of their buy to play money? Yeah, Bless Unleashed.
Glad you’re all caught back up. Anyway, Bandai Namco released a new video earlier this week detailing the five classes found within Bless Unleashed: The Berserker, Crusader, Mage, Priest and Ranger.
Bless Unleashed is still scheduled for a 2019 release on Xbox One. You guys ready to spend your hard earned money in the cash shop for Bless 2.0? Let’s fund Neowiz’s Bless Mobile game that’s in the works, hell yeah!

PAX South is set to have a pretty sweet reveal this year, with Astellia – a AAA MMORPG that provides players the ability to collect dozens of magical companions known as Astells and take them into both PvP and PvE combat set to make an appearance.
The team behind Astellia are very excited to be able to fully show off Astellia, claiming that they are creating an “MMORPG for fans of the genre”, going as far as claiming it will be a “place they will be proud to call home later this year.”
Whether players will receive the game as well as they are hoping remains to be seen, but nevertheless, Astellia does have several beta periods planned over the course of 2019.
Astellia features the holy trinity class system, providing players the ability to play the Assassin, Mage, Ranger, Scholar and Warrior. The game also features both traditional group dungeons along with solo dungeons for players to tackle alone.
Astellia is definitely promising but we’ll have to wait and see.

If you weren’t keeping up to date with Dark and Light then allow me to quickly catch you up:
Dark and Light launched to a concurrent player count of over 14,000 in 2017. As of right now, the game is sitting at less than 1,000 concurrent players.
Snail Games, the terrible publisher behind Dark and Light recently revealed that they are going to be merging servers together to attempt to combat the death of the game: Stating that they will be merging over 70% of their servers together.
Good job, Snail Games!

Yes, this game is still alive and online. Actually, and this may surprise you, Atlantica Online has been online for 11 years now.
In celebration of their 11th anniversary, Atlantica Online will be providing players various large events and updates that will be rolling out all month long.
Updates and events include the Mentor and Mentee system, a level cap raise up to level 200, a new PvP mode called “Chaos Ladder”, 13 level 170 talents and an update to ranked battles.
I actually miss Atlantica Online – it is by far one of the most unique tactical MMORPGs out there. You should check it out if you haven’t already or at the very least, check out one of our videos on it.