MMORPG News: Oath Drama, Durango Shut Down, GW2, BDO, ESO, FFXIV & More

We’ve got a ton of news this week.. so much so that I wasn’t sure if I could fit it all into a single news video. But here we are.
So, since we got so much to talk about, let’s not waste time dawdling and jump right in, yeah? So welcome to this week’s Weekly Byte of MMORPG News.

Let’s start this off with some good news, first: Love it or hate it, Astellia Online is doing.. pretty well, I’d say. Well enough to warrant a brand new EU server a few weeks after launch, anyway.
According to the team behind the game, “Since the official launch of Astellia, we have continued to see a steady growth in our community.”
The reasoning for this is due to their concern of “maintaining a high level of server stability” and to “support the natural growth of healthy and sustainable communities within each server.”
Honestly, I played Astellia and.. it wasn’t a great game, but it wasn’t a bad game. It was pretty traditional and it seems as though that’s what people want – as the game is doing pretty well for itself.
Despite popular belief, it’s definitely no Bless Online.

While I’ve yet to make it in-game yet due to the ridiculous queues and login issues that have been plaguing the launch of the game, I would like to note that ArcheAge Unchained has officially launched.
Mrs Stix and I held a giveaway for this and the winners have both since downloaded the game – but that isn’t the end of our giveaway.
We’re holding a Christmas giveaway where we’ll be giving away copies of any MMO – including ArcheAge Unchained to winners that participate. So if you haven’t already.. go on participate!
Disregarding the giveaway, Unchained will continue to be updated regularly in tandem with its free-to-play counterpart.
Unchained adds with it a lot of aesthetic changes and upgrades along with the new Swiftblade class skillset for players to take for a test run.
Whether Unchained is going to be successful or not remains to be seen, but Gamigo have already added various additional servers to deal with queues.. not that they’ve helped much.
Players have been complaining ever since the launch, and I don’t see that ceasing for a little while.
Add on to that the Steam launch delay that might prevent some players from gaining land.. yeah. Not the best launch, but could be worse.

Fractured has had a few delays recently, but that all looks to be a thing of the past. The game had its first Alpha test a little while ago and is currently gearing up for its second.
The team behind Fractured confirmed that the second Alpha test will be taking place in November – although an exact date has not been confirmed, nor has the duration of the Alpha.
Last week they had a small stress-test that lasted a couple days and additional stress-tests in the future are a guarantee, so make sure to keep an eye on the game!

While there’s still a lot of.. bad blood between players and the Bless IP, Bandai Namco and Neowiz both seem to be attempting to do everything they can to dissuade the community from ignoring this iteration of the game.
They’ve taken into consideration repeated rounds of feedback and are going as far as making alterations – major alterations to the already improved combat.
Exactly what changes or improvements they’re making can be looked over on their website, but even so, I highly doubt it’ll be enough to change popular opinion.
Whether the community itself likes the modification to combat will become apparent during the Open Beta in November.

The Yellow King is a brand new MMO with a planned Early Access release date of November 21st. The game features a dark massively-multiplayer online world inspired by the horror writings of H. P. Lovecraft.
Currently, no official release date has been given for a full-launch, but nevertheless, it is expected to release some time in 2020.
I love seeing new MMOs go into Early Access or Beta testing, and this looks.. kinda interesting, actually.

While everyone is talking about the new All Saint’s Wake event in Final Fantasy XIV along with the adorable new Ahriman mount that comes with it, I was looking at the official website that detailed patch 5.1.
The update specifically will go live this month, bringing with it the NieR themed 24-player raid, a brand new dungeon, new gear and a continuation of one of the franchise’s best stories – Shadowbringers.
I hope you’ve all been preparing for this. But if you’re looking to tide yourself over while waiting, then again, I reiterate that there is the All Saint’s Wake event you can participate in that brings with it some epic goodies.
Also worth noting is that the GARO collaboration along with all of the GARO-specific items will be going away with 5.1. So if you haven’t already.. now’s the time to finish farming for them!

This one comes with a lot of controversy, but I will attempt to remain objective. Portalarium, the developers behind Shroud of the Avatar have sold their game to Catnip Games.
While that in and of itself isn’t terrible news, this means that they are no longer required to hold up their promises to deliver any and all Kickstarter rewards.
To add insult to injury, Portalarium is also mass-purging the official forums of anyone that is questioning the decision to no longer go through with delivering the Kickstarter rewards.
The reward in question was a signed book – however, they instead plan on delivering some in-game items in place of said book which is a big middle-finger to their community.
Catnip Games is a studio that was established by Chris Spears, who served as CTO of Portalarium for over 6 years, and was then appointed as President of Portalarium this year.
Make of that what you will.

This.. actually came as a surprise to me as I wasn’t aware Nexon closed down mobile games. Ha.. ha. Okay, so jokes aside, I really am surprised.
Durango Wild Lands, a survival MMO for mobile devices is closing down, and the game in question hasn’t even been up for an entire year yet – the game came out only a few months ago here in the West!
That’s.. crazy. Nexon has content and events slated for the game until its inevitable closure on December 18th so for those of you that still actively play.. that’ll be the final day you get to log in.

There’s a lot of stuff happening on October 21st. Joining the long list of games with events planned is the Elder Scrolls Online and their upcoming Dragonhold DLC.
Well, their PC release – as their console release of the DLC will hit the servers on November 5th.
If you haven’t already, then there’s currently a prologue questline available to play through in preparation of the DLC – and it’s completely free meaning you don’t need to have purchased the DLC to participate.
So if you have yet to play through it or are anticipating the Dragonhold DLC.. you don’t have long to wait!

For fans of Red Dead Redemption 2 and its online counterpart: Red Dead Online, you’ll be glad to know that the PC version of both will be available via the Epic Games store on October 23rd.
If you don’t want to support the Epic Games store then you could alternatively wait until it launches onto Steam in December.
But! For fans of the game, or for players that are interested in trying either version out, you’ll finally have the opportunity to.

I.. never expected to include Fiesta in a news segment, but here we are, in 2019, talking about the desolate Anime MMORPG Fiesta Online. And not for some amazing new addition, or an overhaul, or.. really anything impressive.
Instead, Gamigo is releasing a Battle Royale mode into the game allowing players to.. well, fight one another in a brand new PvP mode.
I highly doubt this will do anything to assist the already dead game but if they think a Battle Royale – something every other game has tried and failed to implement will help.. more power to them.
Shows the disconnect with their playerbase which is always fun to see.

I don’t believe I’ve ever done a news video that included a mention of anything “Adventure Quest” related. So I guess this marks a first.
AdventureQuest 3D is adding the brand new “Yokai Isle” into the game, continuing your quest to find the second piece of the Sea God’s Trident.
There will be new quests – spanning both the Isle itself and a new underwater area. But that isn’t all – you’ll get the opportunity to fight against a brand new boss and craft some epic ninja gear.
Why ninja? ’cause it’s a ninja isle.. and they’re not trusting of outsiders.

While I’m in the process of doing a dedicated Destiny 2 video now that it’s launched its brand new Shadowkeep expansion, I would like to talk about it.
If you weren’t aware, Bungie and Destiny 2 broke away from Activision, gaining their freedom at last. #FreeHongKong I mean, #FreeDestiny2.
Since gaining their freedom and launching onto Steam, their numbers have skyrocketed, with almost 200,000 players playing concurrently – being in the top 5 most played Steam games.
That is.. quite impressive. Bungie have a plethora of updates planned for the game in the coming months, so stay tuned if you’re interested in the game!

Black Desert is preparing for their new Great Expedition update on October 23rd – which, just a quick FYI, I will be doing a dedicated video on.
The update in question is aimed out at the sea as opposed to the land for a change, bringing with it additions such as wind direction, ocean currents, new UI, new ships to create, a bartering system, and the ability to recruit a crew for their ships.
You’ll also be able to fight the giant Khan sea-boss as well, which will require a lot of skill, coordination, and.. well, luck.
Additional oceanic themed updates are planned in the future in an attempt to make navigating the seas as exciting as the land.
In preparation for the update, a plethora of prelude quests are being held for players to participate in to acquire ship parts before the Great Expedition goes live.

So, it looks like several Guild Wars 2 developers have decided to open their very own gaming studio called “Tenacious Entertainment.”
They’ve also raised over $3.3 million dollars in funding with the goal of.. well, unfortunately not making a new PC MMO, but instead, “shaking up mobile gaming.” Yup.
With the knowledge and experience of one of the better PC MMORPGs on the market, they opt to go the route of mobile gaming.
Sure, sure, they make claims that they’ll be focusing on “competitive titles” and no “pay-to-win monetization,” but don’t they all?
They have a game scheduled for release in 2020 that’s supposedly a “competitive PvP arena” title but.. I dunno. It doesn’t sound all that promising to me.

And finally.. the topic I know a lot of you guys have been waiting for.
Now let me preface this by stating that I’m going to be completely objective here. This is not influenced by my personal opinions or any relationship I have with neither the people or companies engaged in this situation.
That being said, this whole “Oath” situation is quite baffling.
On the one hand, we have various Youtuber’s, MMO news websites and even Reddit accusing Ready-Up Studios, the team behind the upcoming Oath MMORPG of being a scam.
Or at the very least, of scamming Ocean Spark Studios out of money – where this whole predicament started.
Now as I’m sure you’re all aware, there are two sides to every story.
On the one hand, Ocean Spark Studios claim that they were scammed out of money – to which Ready-Up Studios claim is at least partially true.
While Ready-Up have actual statements proving that Ocean Spark were paid on various occasions, they have admitted to not paying them their final paycheck.
This is due to what both parties confirm is an issue over Ocean Spark using content that they didn’t own the copyright to.
While honestly, I feel as though Ready-Up could’ve very easily brought this to their attention and they could’ve moved beyond this, they refused to pay them their final paycheck while they confirmed the validity of the remainder of what they’d worked on.
Then there were accusations of incompetence and a lack of any actual game progress from Ocean Spark, which Ready-Up proved just wasn’t the case.
However, how Ready-Up went about handling the situation was incredibly unprofessional but how they act is completely up to them.
Since this entire event begun, Ready-Up went ahead and disabled their Discord channels to prevent people from discussing the topic, and according to users, began pruning their forums of topics talking about it.
Then Ocean Spark went and removed their Tweets, their Facebook page and shut down their entire website afterwards.
This.. pretty much sums up the entire situation to my knowledge. I opted to not do an entire dedicated video on the subject like I have in the past because of two reasons.
Firstly, I don’t have the time to properly invest into getting all the information to conduct a proper objective conclusion of the topic.
Secondly, it’s impossible to get all the information from either party, because honestly, I’m sure both companies are withholding information since it’s just not the public’s business.
Both companies acted very unprofessionally and this entire debacle was handled rather poorly, but both studios are fairly small and still learning.
Whether or not Oath or the team are scamming people is up for discussion. But suffice it to say, I’m a little dubious of the integrity of either now.
Again, that’s just my opinion based on the information both studios presented to the public.