MMO

At the moment, the MMO scene feels very robust, especially for a genre that seemed like it was on the way out just a little while ago. There is, as always, World of Warcraft in both of its retail and Classic flavors. In addition, New World is (presumably) coming out at the end of September, and Lost Ark is finally heading west sometime this fall thanks - strangely - to Amazon, even though it has its own in-house MMO to focus on. However, perhaps the most noteworthy MMO right now is Final Fantasy XIV Online.

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If you were looking forward to Amazon's incoming MMO, New World, then we've got some sour news for you. In response to player feedback after New World's most recent closed beta, Amazon has decided to delay the game once more. This isn't the first time New World has been delayed, but the good news is that this delay isn't nearly as long as the others.

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At one point in time, Amazon was poised to go hard with its Lord of the Rings license, and while that might still be true for the company's upcoming Lord of the Rings TV show for Prime Video, it's no longer the case for its planned MMO set in the Lord of the Rings universe. Amazon has cancelled the game, which is just the latest in a string of setbacks for a gaming division which just can't seem to catch a break.

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People might have some stereotypes and preconceived notions of how game developers look and work but, as with any such concepts, reality is far different and sometimes even stranger. True, these are professionals in their trade but even pros do make mistakes or overlook some things, especially when there are many cooks involved. Sometimes, it may take a fresh pair of eyes to actually pinpoint some performance problem and, fortunately for both players of GTA Online and one particular programmer, Rocksteady was more than willing to own up to the error.

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BioWare made a name for its self with its Dungeons & Dragons games but it did have a few original IPs of its own even back then. The game dev studio made a big bang with its new properties Dragon Age and Mass Effect but, after three major games each, doubts started to rise whether BioWare still had what it takes to do something completely new. If Anthem was supposed to be its answer, it wasn't a very good one, and the cancellation of its NEXT version will probably raise those doubts even higher.

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When Amazon revealed its grand gaming ambitions, there was understandably some confusion and even doubt if the e-commerce giant even has what it takes to play in the triple-A market. After all, this would be a first for a company better known for its retail and cloud chops more than game development know-how. The rather mixed reception of its Crucible team-based shooter doesn't do it any favors on that front but that won't stop its even more ambitious title from getting the ball rolling for its delayed release in August.

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Over the last week we've become very aware of the fact that game developers are trying for a sea change. It might instead be that gamers are the ones that've made this change happen - maybe developers are only doing what the market demands they do in order to survive. In any case, we've seen three major games announced as new, their developers revealing that instead of making new games, they'll be putting more time and effort into the games that people already love.

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This week Bungie announced that they'd be moving beyond the traditional model for games - beyond what we've come to expect from any major gaming developer. In the past, they'd release a new game every year, or a new game every few years. This was fine, when games were offline - and it's been acceptable even through more than two decades of Massively Multiplayer Online Games. With Destiny 2, Bungie's changed the way gamers will expect games to evolve.

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The folks at Bungie responsible for Destiny and Destiny 2 just announced a landmark decision for the game - no new games! Instead, they've decided to adopt a Disney sort of "vault" model. Disney used to place certain big-name movies into the "Disney Vault" to create artificial scarcity (which worked GREAT before the internet). Bungie will place Destiny content in a "Destiny Content Vault (DCV)" when it becomes "older, less actively played content", so that they're able to concentrate on new content and content updates for the game currently called Destiny 2 for the foreseeable future.

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If you've been looking forward to the release date of Amazon's new MMO New World, then here's some sour news: Amazon has announced that New World has been delayed. Originally, New World was supposed to launch in May, with a closed beta slated to begin sometime this month. With this delay, the release date has been pushed back to the other side of summer.

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We already knew that Amazon is working on a Lord of the Rings TV series, but today, the company's game development arm confirmed that it's working on video game as well. Apparently, Amazon has partnered with Leyou Technologies and Middle-earth Enterprises to make a new free-to-play MMO set in the Lord of the Rings universe. Details are fairly slim at the moment, but Amazon is letting loose a few morsels today.

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At E3 last June, Bethesda dropped multiple bombshells, many of which still have to actually land in players’ hands. One of the most anticipated but also most doubted of the pack is Fallout 76, an online survival version of the widely popular franchise. The skepticism and concern mostly come from the Herculean task of bringing elements that made Fallout a hit to an online setting without also bringing the most hated elements of online games. And at QuakeCon, Bethesda revealed exactly how it plans to do that.

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