MMO

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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This week the folks at Blizzard teased "multiple Diablo projects in the works" coming to users in the near future. For those still playing Diablo 3, this could be good news, it could be bad. For everyone else who played Diablo II or the first Diablo dungeon-running masterpiece from times untold, this announcement is only golden. Today we're running down a few different possibilities for what these new Diablo projects might be.

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After being available in some form for more than 16 years, it's kind of amazing that RuneScape hasn't had a mobile release yet. After all, the browser-based MMO seems like a decent fit for mobile devices from a graphics perspective, and with 200 million registered accounts, the audience certainly seems to be there. Developer Jagex has finally realized this, announcing that it will soon be releasing a mobile client for RuneScape.

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The launch of the long-awaited and long-delayed Final Fantasy XV has brought the franchise back into the spotlight. That includes the MMORPG version of the game. Final Fantasy XIV is about to enter a new chapter in its life that will introduce not just new places but a new character class as well. And to entice both new and retired newbies back into the fold, Square Enix is waiving the 14-day limit to free accounts, letting you play as long as you want, until you hit the level cap.

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There's no question that World of Warcraft is the most successful MMO of all-time. After 11 years, the game is still running strong, with more current subscribers than any other. But this wasn't going to be their only MMO. For years there were whispers about another planned MMO, named Titan. But what happened?

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Earlier today the news broke that one of the most popular World of Warcraft emulation servers is being taken offline. The reason that it's going dark is due to the threat of legal action from Blizzard against both the team running the server, and the hosting provider that keeps it online. While Blizzard is legally in the right, it does bring up some interesting questions about the way MMOs change over time.

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