Speaking in a 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:new interview with GamesRadar+ on all things Occult Crescent, Final Fantasy 14 assistant director Tsuyoshi Yokozawa and battle content designer Daisuke Nakagawa say that, although reactions to their initial reveal of the ne🐼w entry in the MMO's growing series of Field Operations came too l🍷ate to "impact" development, Square Enix received quite a lot of feedback on previous iterations like Eureka and Save the Queen that helped.

"When we announced that we'd be adding the Occult Crescent, our planning and some implementation were already underway, so there was no direct impact on development," state the devs. "That said, we received a great deal of feedback on previous Field Operations, and the impact of this feedback has been extremely significant on the development of this content." That's not all, though – Field Operations have proven more popular than expected.

In fact, many fans were waiting for more since the close of Endwalker and the later arrival of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Dawntrail. "The requests for Field Operations that continue from Endwalker were reiterated by the many voices of anticipation we received when we announced the implementation of the Occult Crescent," explain Yokozawa and Nakagawa. "We feel that player demand and enthusiasm have increased c🃏ompared to when we originally released Eureka."

The two describe the surge in interest in Field Operations – one I'm sure will continue with Occult Crescent now, as a longtime player myself. "Back then, we thought it would be the kind of content that would really resonate with the select people who love the concept - but now, Field Operations serve as a major type of content in Final Fantasy 14, and it feels like even more players than we expected are looking forward to the next piece."

Looking for something else to play? Here are the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best MMORPGs available to try now.

Instead, backlas♑h has now come thick and fast from the Run🅷eScape player base. Other Jagex staff, many of whom opposed the Pride shrinkage internally, have joined in as well.

Sharing the original report from on Bluesky, : "I worked on RuneScape 2005-2014. I ꦺhaven't thought about it much since then, but it occasionally pops up in my feed and seeing i🍎t usually makes me happy and nostalgic. But this makes me really angry. Cowardly and disgusting."

, Ayliff responded to the jokey comparisons that the Old School RuneScape community has drawn between Bellamy and an in-game character named Sigmund, a member of the game's human supremacist group that seeks ꦅto expunge or eradicate non-human races.

Ayliff actually wrote Sigmund as part oဣf the OSRS Dorgeshuun questline, and says, "I could not have predicted when I created this quest villa𝓰in that he would end up being used to mock a cowardly and/or bigoted CEO, but I wholeheartedly approve."

Ayliff added that "we couldn't get away with openly queer NPCs back then but I always imagined Zanik the cave goblin was bi, so I was delighted when the 2017 Tales of Pride made her canonically b꧋i."

Now-deleted posts from a separate Jagex staff member supported claims that these Pride events were only canceled after a fair amount of work had gone into them, and that there was no data 𓆏indicating Pride events had been dam🍎aging to player counts.

T🏅he backdrop to this is fairly among many RuneScape players, especially in the larger and historically vocal Old School RuneScape community. The main 2007scape Redd𝓰it community is one thing, but even , dedicated to one-man-army Ironman-type accounts, has a new pinned post that reads: "Homophobia is not welcome here."

"With the removal of in-game events to focus on content we want and to ste🃏er away from representative content, can we expect that our two Holiday Events that are also strongly representative of a belief of faith to be removed?" .

This is one of many parodies making the rounds. "This is Old School RuneScape, not New Politics WokeScape," says the ཧcreator of that would remov⛄e indigenous people, pronouns, and women, and gift all players with a set of robes worn by the aforementioned human supremacist organization HAM (Humans Against Monsters).

of the Pride event's implications is also rising up the community, pointing out, among other arguments, that RuneScape is filled with political topics and the "leave politics out of games" argument🀅 doesn't hold up to any scrutiny.

We've reache🌜d out to Jagex for commenꦛt but have not yet received a response.

Jagex lays off RuneScape staff and indefinitely pauses Old School RuneScape's Project Zanaris private servers, but says the MMOs won't be hurt in the long run

"The d💃evelopment of Field Operations continues to evolve with community feedback obtained through the release of Eureka and Save the Queen, and our work on the Occult Crescent is no exception," explain the developers, stating that implementing such content was "extremely challenging" at first. The main attraction of Field Operations, as🉐 they say, "is that you can feel the presence of other players while playing the content."

That's the draw of content like Eureka, and now Occult Crescent. "These connections develop organically – either as a loose association or something more tight-knit, depending on how you play," say the devs. The "new form of contꦦent" that came in the form of Eureka and subsequent Field Operations succeeded. "As it turned out, a good portion of the community understood what we were going for, and we received a lot of positive feedback."

To this day, as the two po﷽int out, "There is still a core Eureka player base, showing how much people love the content even now." Its release proved "there is a certain level of demand for this style of content." Not all feedback was positive, however – and Square Enix took it all into account while developing later Field Operations. "On the other hand, we also received a lot of negative feedback about gameplay being unclear and/or the content being boring."

Second draft

The team used both positive and negative feedback to refine Save the Queen's own content, with a goal of making it more accessible, "especially for players who want to play Field꧅ Operations in a more casual way." Reception, while overall positi✅ve, was still a mixed bag with some fans thinking "there were not enough core elements to keep them invested for longer" after post-Eureka and pre-Save the Queen changes.

"This resulted in a lack of content that people could really sink time into and a lower degree of freedom," recall Yokozawa and Nakagawa. "In Save the Queen, we incorporated impro🅠vements on issues we experienced with Eureka, and encountere🍒d new issues raised from the community's feedback." That's where Occult Crescent comes in. "We took it upon ourselves to conduct another thorough investigation into the good and the bad of Eureka and Save the Queen, and further evolved the good points, and made corrections to improve the bad points."

How did the devs do so? "First of all, we have added more variety to the gameplay than was in Eureka and Save the Queen. We wanted to create a place where players could do what they feel like when they feel like it – whether that's creating a goal ahead of time for themselves or just diving right in and having fun wa🐲ndering around." Th๊e two also discuss the integration of Phantom Jobs, and how they add to the latest of the Field Operations' experience.

"In addition, the Phantom Jobs are one of the major elemen🅰ts of the Occult Crescent, and there is truly a wide range of jobs that can be freely swapped around depending on the situation," describe Yokozawa and Nakagawa. "The actions and abilities are very effꦏective, and we believe that even if you cannot skilfully master them, you will feel their effects."

How did fans' reactions following the Occult Crescent reveal impact development, though? Not too much, apparently. "When we announced that we'd be adding the Occult Crescent, our planning and some implementation were already underway, so there was no direct impact on development," the devs admit. "That said, we received a great deal of feedback on previous Field Operations, and t💦he impact of this feedback has been extremely significant on the development of this content."

The popularity of Field Operations also came as a surprise. "We feel that player demand and enthusiasm have increased compared to when we originally released Eureka. Back then, we thought it would be the kind of content that would really resonate with the select people who lඣove the concept – but now, Field Operations serve as a major type of content in FFXIV, and it feels like even more players than we expected are looking forward to the next piece."

Field Operations, including Occult Crescent, are likely becoming more popular thanks to the feedback take༒n on board by devs. "The Occult Crescent has been improved based on feedback from the community to make it even easier to enjoy, with a high degree of freedom in how you can play it. We hope those kinds of players will be sure to try it out whenever they're in the mood and see how they like it for themselves."

Some of these improvements are reward-related, with Yokozawa and Nakagawa suggesting that especially dedicated fans give obtaining them all a go. "In the Occult Crescent, we have increased the amount of new items compared to previous Field Operations. The more time you play, th💎e more items you will naturally acquire, so we encourage completionists to see if they can obtain them all."

That's not the only fun suggestion the two devs have, either. "For those of you who want to explore absolutely everything on offer, we recommend trying your hand at conquering the Forked Tower. There are, of course, excluꦫsive items that can be obtained by clearing the Forked Tower, and the more you master Phantom Jobs and enhance your content-specific equipment, the easier it'll become to clear."

In other words, "the more you grind, the higher your chances of success" – a mantra to live by as a frequenter of Fields Operations, for sure.

Looking for something else to play? Here are the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best MMORPGs available to try now.

My former colleague at writes about their early experiences with Dune: Awakening, saying on their own server, theirs and one other guild have built , areas where you can gather water at dawn. This makes it very hard for new players to progress♋.

There are other unscrupulous methods ♚at work, too – Baron Harkonnen would be proud. My friend at TheGamer had their ornithopter blocked by a player putting down a subfief, which allowed them to build around the machine, leaving them stranded.

Other players have apparently been blocking passageways with their own buildings, meaning low-level players without flying transport can't get through. Fortunately, it seems that this has mostly been unintentional, and players are now sharing new building methods and styles that don't impede 𓆉travel.

One built a tunnel through their structure so that you can just walk straight down the middle. "To the person who called me out for blocking the path – I heard you, and I'm sorry. I’ve found a solution. Sometimes we all need a wake-up call. So… 🎶thank you," the poster writes. It's lovely to see the community growing and working together so quickly.

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Another building has a large arch constructed beneath it that allows land vehicles to drive under. "My showcase of how I built a functional bridge while leaving room for others to traverse the canyon," the poster proudly writes. I don't think someone 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:riding a sandworm would fit through there, though.

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Honestly, it wouldn't be out of hand for Dune: Awakening players to keep being bastards and hoarding all the water and blocking off all the easy routes. It would actually be ver༺y in-keeping with the way the colonizers on Arrakis do things, but it's sweet to see everyone playing fair.

In the meantime, check out the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best online games you can play with your friends – just remember to play nice, yeah?

According to Valve's own charts, the biggest strategy game on the books in the June 2025 Fest is Anvil Empires. Currently topping the daily players chart and at second place in the wishlist charts, it's certainly an early success story. Given its pedigree, however, that's not a surprise - Anvil Empires comes from Siege Camp, best known as developers of Foxhole, a 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:cult warfare MMO in which logistics are just aꦏs impo𝓰rtant as combat.

A chance to combine Foxhole's player-driven narratives with my f﷽avorite part of any strategy game - turtling inside my base while wave after wave of enemies smashes themselves against my defenses - meant that Anvil Emp🦄ire was one of the first Steam Next Fest demos I downloaded. But when I went to play it for the first time, I was pretty sorely disappointed.

On the Steam Next Fest page, Anvil Empires appears like any other demo. It's only once you visit its page or start installing it that you learn you're actually getting access to its "massive battle stress test." That meant that the fiꦑrst time I opened it, the demo told me I'd need to come back in about five hours if I wantedꦰ to play, because that would be the next time that the stress test was actually active.

For the record💝, I probably will be back. And I also think that what Siege Camp has done here is pretty smart - using the kind of influx of players that a successful Next Fest can bring in is a really smart way to make sure your stress test does actually push the servers as far as they can go. But I've also never seen anything quite like this in several years of covering these demos - with so many titles vying for attention, turning players away seems like the exact opposite of what you'd want to do.

There's♓ clearly a science to this, and it seems to be paying off. One bonus of making sure that all your players have to show up at the same time is that it almost guarantees you a spot high up on the Top Demos charts. And Next Fest is a much simpler way of bringing new faces to your MMO's server tests than a complex marketing campaign. But I can't help but feel slightly stung by Anvil Empires, even if I am still counting down the minutes until the next test launches.

I guess I'll pore over our list of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best strategy games while I wait.

Starting in 2025, Zenimax🐻 Online ditched ESO's long-running update structure of dropping one massive annual expansion in th𓆉e middle of themed years, adopting a seasonal release cadence in i🐎ts place. Well, the first major update of the Seasons of the Worm Cult saga is out now on PC, and it's the first update in ESO history to put a lid on the story told in the base game.

"For the first time in ESO's history, that I'm aware of,𒅌 we're moving the timeline forward. The story itself is advancing," said zone lead Jason Barnes in a recent preview attended by GamesRadar+. "We are basically saying, 'the events of the base game, which is Molag Bal's Planemeld, have already happened. Molag Bal is defeated, the Planemeld is ended, and the world is recovering.'"

Barnes was quick to stress that this advancement of the timeline in Seasons of the Worm Cult won't lock you out of any existing content. You can still play Seasons of the Worm Cult updates and then go back and play the base game, and the base game story will still be playable as ever. It's just that in the world of Seasons of the Woꦓrm Cult, everything that went down in the base game is in the past.

After years of asking, Elder Scrolls Online fans hear the 3 words they've dreamt of since playing WoW and Lord of the Rings Online: Difficulty options are "in the works"

Yesterday, the main RuneScape Reddit community that so💮cial media accounts belonging to several Jagex staff members, or moderators, had disappeared. In a reply to this post, Jagex's Mod Hooli confirmed "there have unfortunately been job reductions at Jagex."

"These have be🍒en made as part of changes in a company restructure as Jage𝓡x puts more emphasis on RuneScape games and community growth," Hooli said. "The majority of roles are from non-game dev and non-player facing areas. There are some exceptions within the RS team as part [of] the company's focus on a streamlined development approach."

The scope of the layoffs is unclear. Theඣse layoffs have come just months after Jagex changed CEOs, appointing Jon "Mod North" Bellamy – an executive shake-up that came roughly one year after the company was acquired by private equity firm CVC Capital and games investor Haveli Investments. Private equity overseers making cuts𝐆 to departments routinely seen as non-essential by corporate owners? Color me surprised.

Hooli says these staff cuts won't affect the RuneScape roadmap laid out by Mod North. "Our Roadmap won't change because of these job reductions▨, and we'll continue the great path we've been on with our content," their post reads.

"the incredible talent behind [Project Zanaris] ꦍhave been redistributed across Jagex or directly moved to Old School to help with ongoing improvements and exciting new 🔥initiatives."

Granted, Jagex hasn't up and said community servers are dead, but they sure sound comatose. Officially, Zanaris has only been "paused" indefinitely because "it wouldn't have met expectations until much later in development." If or when work on Zanaris may resume is unclear, but ⭕Jagex say🔥s it would rather "prioritise the things that matter most to you today."

With no community servers, much of the work already completed for Zanari🌜s will evidently go unused, but the project's "talent and technology" will benefit OSRS going forward. In its blog post, Jagex spells out a few k💃ey advancements it's making:

• "Faster, More Creative Events & Content Ideas: The Zanaris team had lots of new gameplay ideas and incredible concepts for events and features. Rather than shelving these, we'll explore how we can introduce some of these innovations through carefully curated temporary worlds. This means we can give you fresh experiences without impacting the OSRS core you love.
• Improved Server Infrastructure: We'll be using the cloud server technology developed for Zanaris to enhance our existing game worlds. This means greater reliability during peak periods.
• Wider Region Support: We're exploring options to bring an improved service to underserved regions outside our core world locations (UK, US, Germany, Australia)
• More Engaging Customisation: Zanaris brought us many customisation options that can now be introduced to main OSRS worlds or special event servers. These improvements will allow us to create more exciting time limited events and experimental content for you to enjoy.
• Strengthening the Roadmap: Members of the Zanaris team will be actively contributing to key initiatives on the OSRS roadmap, helping to enhance major content and support the game's long-term development"

"Although there was good wor❀k made on Zanaris, there's a lot that we're taking from the project that can benefit OSRS and more," on R⭕eddit.

Additionally, Jagex says the main ▨idea behind Zanaris, letting players screw around with experimental content in their own little private garden, hasn't been forgotten.

"Rather than custom, player-hosted worlds, we're exploring the prospect of delivering more Community Events," the company says. These would be similar to the existing Deadman Mode and League events – respectively, a limited-time PvP mode and accelerated grind-a-thon – and "could even 🐷be a space where you can trial new content before it potentially makes its way into🌳 the main game," seemingly not unlike a Public Test Realm server.

As it fills the voiꦰd left by Zanaris, Jagex has also asked players to submit ideas of their own, even opening a new feedback forum in the official OSRS Discord.

On Reddit, when not expressing disappointment over the custom modes and quests that Zanaris might have given them, or perhaps relief that Jagex is instead doubling down on the main game, play𒀰ers have suggested ideas ranging from one-life account modes to an offline version of O♎SRS.

Another OSRS staffer, Mod Ayiza, in the context of the Z🐷anar🌱is decision. "Whilst it is unfortunate news, I'd like to make it clear that the reductions are completely unrelated and the decision to pause Zanaris was made prior to this," he said.

Asked if﷽ the OSRS team had been affected by the redundancies, Ayiza only said "it's not my place to comment but given we sign off on each news post you'll be able to confirm any changes yourself with the next ♚update."

Jagex's latest release, RuneScape: Dragonwilds, is Steam's newest survival game hit.

To be clear up front, ZOS hasn't explicitly revealed any concrete plans for ESO's difficulty, but the topic was broached during a roundtable interview GamesRadar+ attended recently. Specifically, one attendee asked if ZOS has any plans to add more of a challenge to ESO's story and open world, and this is what zone lead 🍒Jason Barnes had to say:

"There are ongoing plans for that, and it's in the works. We're not ready to talk aboutไ it yet, but we've acknowledged it openly, that it is something we're looking at, and there's people working on it. I'll leave it at that."

Again, it's bread crumbs. Tiny, stale bread crumbs that have been picked apart by rats, but it's something. The issue of ES𒉰O's difficulty, particularly for longtime players, , so far without any official acknowledgment from Bethesda or ZOS, so the fact that we're finally getting that acknowledgment as well as something of a pledge to address it, is worth shou♚ting from the rooftops.

It's worth noting that RPG-style difficulty settings aren't terribly common in MMOs by virtue of the fact that many 🍰players can fight the same monsters simultaneously, but there are examples of MMOs adding options to tweak difficulty in certain areas. Lord of the Rings Online added the Landmark Difficulty system in 2023, letting players choose between 10 different levels in Landmark encounters, and World of Warcraft lets you crank up the difficulty in raids and dungeons.

I'm sure there are more, but you get the point. It's possible to let players adjust difficulty in MMOs; y🔥ou just have to get a little more creative than the standard easy/normal/hard settings we see in most games. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's excited to see what ZOS has in-store for ESO in this regard.

In the meantime, find out where ESO ranks on our list of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best MMOs to play today.

As an American raised and educated in the South, the Boston Tea Party is one of those things that I saw 🐽romanticized within an inch of its life, but in fairness I'm pretty sure it✃ did involve more than one dude throwing 28 cups of tea on the ground at the end of a port. But we all do what we can, and that's what Reddit user Jesus-Bacon, a fittingly American name, planned as their grand act of defiance.

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"You think the British wou🎃ld have learned by now," they said, chanting "no taxation without representation" in their post title. "Let's remind them what happened last time!" (Unlike many MMOs, OSRS does notably give players direct representation through in-game polls for many changes, though this tax update was not polled.)

RuneScape and Old School RuneScape developer Jagex is, of course, British. The best part? Jagex staff usernames have a gold crown in-game, so just like the tea hurlers of the 18th century, OSRS players are quite literally sticking 🌺it to the crown.

Jes🎶us-Bacon was not alone, mind you. The endlessly inventive OSRS Reddit community roleplaying as everything from ♕medieval serfs .

"The problem is trade imbalance," one OSRS economist reasoned. "Monsters are exporting more alchables than they are ꧙importing." (Alchables, for folks who don't sp📖eak RuneScape, are items commonly converted into gold coins via the High Alchemy spell. Interestingly, the existence of "alch values," or how many coins you get from alching an item, is actually pretty core to the game's economy, as it effectively sets a price floor on many high-volume goods.)

"The rich mega rare billionaires should be taxed more because they h💦ave a greater ability to contribute without compromising their standard of living," . "We need to im🍰plement a progressive tax that increases based on bank worth. Start with 100m at 2% and go all the way up to 50% if you own all 3 mega rares."

Oppositely, : "There are far more middle a👍nd lowe♛r class players. Raise their taxes and eliminate ours. It will impact the economy much more. Thank… much appreciate"

If you're wondering where all of this𓆏 came from, Jagex an increased GE tax on May 29, billing it as a way to remove more gold from the game in order to combat market inflation fueled by a steady increase in the amount of gold entering the game through various sources.

There's a separate argument to be had about how and why more gold pieces 💙a✱re being minted, especially as OSRS continues to combat bots and some loot tables flood the market with resources, but this gold sink is actually a pretty simple subject. It's also an interesting look into the economics of a game that's been alive for this long and looks to have many, many years ahead of it.

"The goal here isn’t to punish🍨 trade, but to ensure that Old School continues to have a vibrant and sustainable economy for years to come," Jagex wrote. "Increasing the GE tax is one of the most effective ways ﷽we can do that."

The tax will remain capped at 5 million gold for pricey items, some "early-game utility items" will be exempt from taxes, and sub-50 gold items won't be taxed at all, but new trade offers for all other cases will use the✤ 2% rate going forward.

"At the end of the day, this isn’t just about numbers - it’s about keeping the Old School economy healthy, 𒁏so your GP stays valuable and prices stay fair," Jagex says.

Now, taxes are meant to be used as a budget for infrastructure, essential services, and societal safety nets. Where do OSRS taxes go? A lot of this taxed g🅷old vanishes outright – again, gold sink – but, Jagex reiterates, some is also used as a budget "to buy certain items from players and sink them into the void, permanently deleting them from the economy" in order to prevent prices from cratering as supplies swell.

With the tax now going up, one citizen of OSRS . "RuneScape's roads are a national disgrace," they say. "We’ve poured billions of GP into building gilded thrones, trimming armor, floating cities𓆏, 🍸and role-playing farmers... Yet somehow we can't manage a flat stretch of dirt without it turning into a combat trial."

You know what? They've got a point.

Square Enix considered shutting down the original Final Fantasy MMO years ago, but the devs received "a lot of support" to keep it going.

In an interview with CEO Colin Cragg and 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Equinox: Homecoming director Craig Morrison, Ashley Bardhan asks what t🐲he challenges 🍸associated with opening a new studio right now are.

"It's terrifying," admits Cragg. "To call the situati🌱on the industry is in at the moment "ridiculous" would definitely be an understatement. It's silly.

"Here we are in 2025 where, at the beginning of t🌼he year, with the change in government in the United States, everyone's like, 'Oh no, it's gonna be pro-business now, and everything's supposed to start kind of unlocking itself.' […] But […] the risk element of things right now has everybody holding their breath. Everything is locked up, nothing is moving."

The impact of Trump's tariffs have already been felt in gaming, with Nintendo Switch 2 pre-orde🍨rs being dela𒈔yed in the US. Despite the difficulties, Morrison still believ⛦es in what the studio is doing.

"Why do it? […] We genuinely feel that there's a space in the market for something new and different, and that takes different demographics seriously," Morrions says. "Because we didn’t want to be 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:the 45th survival game that's going to market in the next six months."

Equinox: Homecoming certainly sounds like something new. A horse-riding mystery MMORPG set on an idyllic island is 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:not the kind of game you see every day.

Morrison states: "We really hope that that starts to show people that there is another path and that it attracts both audience and invest🍌ors in the future — that we're able to show that you can🐬 make quality experiences for people that aren’t […] neatly within the gaming box."

If you want to see what other new and exciting projects are coming out, have a look at our list of all the upcoming 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:video game release dates and see if any stand out.

Previously, Bandaiꩲ Namco said it had "come to the conclusion that it will not be possible to provide a service that satisfies all of you."

Tencent-owned developer Bokura has now picked up the ball and is running with it. The open-world MMORPG reboot has already had a tests on PC and mobile in China, with the developer gearing up to pu෴t it on Steam and the Epic Games Store soon.

I'm not much of an MMO guy, mainly because I'm turned off by all t𝕴he grinding, but the trailer embedded above definitely has me sold since it promises you can do fun stuff with your friends... and also grind with tꦕhem. Fishing, fighting, and mining are all here.

Buღt do you know what else you can do with pals? Glide around a gorgeous world, ride adorable little capybara mounts, take selfies, go for a swim, and jump aboard hulking mechs. You can even race atop these weird, mechanical, custom balls - it just looks like a fun space t༒o catch up with pals.

All your usual MMO bits are included, too, as Bokura promises there will be guilds, community events, and raids in the full game via a press release. You can also customiꦯze your own characters, pick from a list of classes, and buildcraft however y🍨ou like.

Plus, Star Resonance will support cross-play and cross-progression between PC and mobile when it drops later 💝this year.

For now, keep an eye on the other 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:new games of 2025 and beyond, as well as our roundup of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best MMORPGs.

Last month, Marc 'Tryndamere' Merrill⛦, Riot's co-founder and chief product officer, spoke about his company's culture and design philosophies on stage at the D.I.C.E. conference. Those comments were then picked up by LoL lorekeeper Necrit, who outlin🍌ed Merrill's (brief) suggestion that the company's long-struggling MMO project was still alive, despite its many tribulations.

Towards the end of his sp🌜eech, Merrill explained that it was Riot's hope to continue "to earn the opportunity to serve [the League of Legends] community for a🉐 long time to come."

That, he says, is a sentiment with which Riot should continue to ap🌄proach new ideas and projects, whether that be "getting back to fundamentals" in long-running games like LoL and Valorant, or "setting our sights on new crazy ambitious challenges that we're trying to tackle, like finding ways to add value to the [Fighting Game Community] or even perhaps the MMO community."

The FGC is likely to be better served by Riot in thඣe short term - Riot's two-character fighter 2KXO is steadily making its way to release. By contrast, the MMO community likely has a lot longer to wait, as the LoL MMO isn't really anywhere to be seen.

The most recent update before DICE came in November 2024, when Merrill admitted the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:LoL MMO had "a lot of momentum", and that it was the project he was spending the most time on. 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:That came after a "reset" at the sta🔯rt of 2024 - four years into🤪 the proj🌌ect - when Riot said it was "going dark".

In the time since its initial reveal, the LoL MMO has left several core developers, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:including its lead, who had alluded to the fact that Riot woul♋d be prepared to cancel the entire project if it wasn't good enough. That's not necessarily the type of news you want to hear as someone with an interest in an upcoming project, espℱecially when we've seen almost nothing of the MMO since then.

Two years ago, almost to the day, I said that I was "starting to get really worried" about this game - and I'm not sure I feel much better about it yet.

"What would happen if we actually approached a title for this demographic with the same seriousness and budget that we woul☂d give to, like, a double A kind of production for any other demographic? Traditional teenage dudes in black t-shirts and jeans?" Blue Scarab CEO Colin Cragg – previously the C🌟EO for tween horse MMO Star Stable – tells me during a recent interview.

"What if we gave this audience half of the respect tha✨t we financially provide to all of these other projects?" he continues. "How would this demographic react?"

Graceless, American; rough hands, and breath that smells of apple pie – the stereotypical female horse enthusiast, or horse girl, is more often the subject of ridicule than she is offered the dignity of playing the hero. Her affection for animals, golden hay and farm life makes her hard to romanticize, unlike the suntanned, white knights of mostly-male centric horse games like 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Red Dead Redemption 2 or 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 3.

But because of his experience with Star St🔯able, which he tells me pulls "$35 million of recurring revenue every year," Cragg is confident it's time for video games to be made specifically for women.

"The appeal for your game doesn't have to be, why are they going to play your game over the other 55 titles that are extremely similar that are coming out? And, oh, well, 'Our guns are the coo𒆙lest,'" Cragg sa𒊎ys. "Oh my God, you're ignoring 52% of the world population."

Having myself noticed indie and double A games slowly, but insistently, start prioritizing historically female interests like dress-u♔p, romance, and , I agree with him. And, now, having experienced an hour of Equinox: Homecoming during its playtest period, I'm dizzy over how perfectly Blue Scarab seems to understand its chosen audience.

The MMORPG – whic𓂃h will cost $25 during its year-long Early Access – focuses on your customizable character and horse as you return to your hometown, hoping to uncover why your mother went missing, and why a local girl suddenly turned up dead.

Immediately, I was impressed with the character creator's customization options. As a 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:FromSoftware enthusiast,🅺 I'm used to "makeup" in RPGs meaning congealed, gray eyelaꦛshes and a bit of berry stain around the mouth.

But Equinox: Homecoming's playtest let me do my character's eyeliner exactly how I do my own in real life – a heavy cat eye on both my top and bottom lash 🅺line – and it was the kind of Allure magazine detail🌃 that made me feel like I was being catered to. For once.

"It's a big fir⛎st," Cragg says about Equinox. "We're trying to actually make the title for the [female] demographic and have it developed by the demographic, like, closely in tandem, so that we're actually making what th✨ey want."

And, crucially, I didn't feel like Equinox: Homecoming was a begrudging "girl game," either.💦 It didn't seem infantilizing. There's grown-up love in its details, which attempt to push the boundaries of both the MMO g🍎enre and female-focused gaming.

Blue Scarab used motion capture on both 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:its human and horse actors, so trotting into a canter, and then a world-spinning gallop with my magnificent Bay horse felt good on my Steam Deck's controls. Naturalistic dialogu♏e also means characters say "fuck" like the teenagers they're meant to be, r💝ather than speak in My Little Pony talking points about friendship and magic.

Of course, while exploring the forested cliff faces and dirt hills of Alderwood Island, I noticed that Equinox: Homecoming features many mechanics expected from the cozy genre, too. You can ta▨lk to skep🐎tical neighbors, for example, or do meditative chores like brush your radiant horse and scoop gunk out of its hooves.

But the game also thrummed with potential like an exposed piece of wiring. My mother's empty barn sat like an abandoned church to my childhood. The patchwork quilts and old Chri𒊎stmas lights I found in her bedroom looked inviting, but there was a distinct, X-Files whiff beneath the moth balls. Why did she leave? What's this hiding behind the closet? Why did she tell me my dreams had meaning?

The syrup of mystery settles into my twitchy fingers after I put my playtest down. I know that Blue Scarab t🦄akes me seriously, and I'm itching to return to its serious barnyard adventure when Equinox: Homecoming releases in Early Access on May 8.

Infinity Nikki and The Sims' return are only the start of a retro gaming renaissance for Y2K girlies.

Burgee plans to add many more NPCs ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚto Erenshor as it progresses , and hopefully without repeating an issue that's come up in player testing in a stroke of unbelievable irony.

GamesRadar+ spoke to Burgee about how he's acting on feedback post-launch, and it turns out he accidentally made his own version of Leeroy Jenkins, a World of Warcraft player🐲 whose gungho battle cry and ill-fated aggro pull has been heard around the world and immortalized in countless videos and references.

He's, uh, acting on it.

"The simulated players are definitely a big focus for a lot of the players now, getting them to behave a little bit more predictably," Burgee says. "We've had players report that they're staging up for a boss in a dungeon, and then one lone simulated player, wearing no gear, will engage tꦕhe boss instead and then train it on top of them.

"[I'm] trying to minimize those events a little bit more, and then just the quality-of-li🐼fe. The UI needs a lot o✱f work. Getting that to be a smoother experience for people have been the two main focuses this week."

It's hard to unpack the irony of a solo developer, who hasn't actually been a big MMO gamer himself post-Everquest, stumbling into a r𒉰ecreation of arguably the biggest MMO's most memorable player. It's nearly shot-for-shot perfection, right down to third-partying your own teammates. All we need now is a pre-pull number crunch.

I'm reminded of Bethesda veteran Joel Burgess' theory that "澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:g༺ood th🌳ings often happen by accident." Even in offline MMOs, Leeroy Jenkins lives on.

I'm not sure if I'd call Simulated Leeroy a bug or a feature, but Burgee says it's happened "a couple of times." To that end, "the latest patch notes I just pushed said simulated players will always w𝔉ear pants now. I saw a lot of streams where they, for whatever reason, weren't. The logic wasn't quite there but it should be💖 fixed."

This is almost as ironic as a developer making a solo experience emulating a multiplayer one and players suggesting that he add actual multiplayer.

"🦂From May 9 until May 12, the largest Beta yet will take place, with a huge number of new players joining compared to previous closed Betas," the devs say in a press release. "Players can get a taste of both spice and story in the large-scale Beta weekend, featuring the first 20 hours of the game and most of Act 1 of th🤡e story."

You can request access to the playtest on , and it looks like♔ the devs aren't kidding about this being "large-scale." In addition to the early Steam invites, Funcom will also give out "tens of thousands" of beta keys during a on May 10.

"U🐠nlike previous Betas," the devs add, "this one has no NDA, meaninﷺg all information is open to share, and the game can be streamed for all to see."

Alongside today's news, we also have a that offers a taste of the game's plot. While this is a survival MMO through and through, it looks like we'll have a fair bit of Dune political intrigue to guide the gameplay, t🍨oo.

Dune: Awakening was previously scheduled to launch on May 20, but 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:suffered ⛎a last-minute delay to June 10 – though certain editions o🐬f the game will let you play as early as June 5.

Dune Awakening launches for $50 without a stay in early access, and while the survival MMO "will not have a monthly subscription," it will have "optional" paid DLC.

At least that's what it's supposed to be – but fans are saying it's anything but "casual" now, as more invested players bulldoze progress throဣugh Cosmic Exploration and leave others with nothing to do. A recent meme shared on highlights the issue, with the caption reading "Cosmic Exploration on populated servers be like" and the attached image saying "Cosmic Exploration just arrived... aaaaand it's finished."

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Comments see players agreeing with the meme, with one saying they were "off today for it and still missed the first two phases," admitting it's "crazy how fast it goes." Another on the platform shows fans criticizing 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Square Enix for the debacle, titl꧙ed "Cosmic Exploration infrastructure🐠 expansion already finished the morning of Day 1?" The OP questions how the developers didn't "think to add some sort of basic time gate."

Not everyone feels the same, however. "FFXIV players are the type to finish a small segment ofꦍ time-gated content and start dooming that they finished all the content and there's no time gating," reads a elsewhere on the site, seemingly poking fun at those complaining that Cosmic Exploration isn't properly time gated. Another expresses a similar sentiment: "I feel people are overexaggerating how much they missed on Cosmic Exploration."

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It's all almost too reminiscent of Island Sanctuary's own release in Final Fantasy 14 back with patch 6.2, and 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:how quickly players were optimizing it rather than enjoying it as the relaxing, casual content it was meant to be. You can always count on MMO sta🎀ns to min-max, though, I suppose – especially if it's multiplayer-based content that requires collaboration rather than a single-player focused instance like the Island Sanctuary.

After 8 months, Final Fantasy 14 expansion Dawntrail finally goes back to "Mixed" Steam reviews as MMO fans praise patch 7.2: "A massive improvement in all regards"

Former Helldivers and World of Warcraft develop𓆉ers have teamed up on a new multiplayer, open-world horse-riding-management game called , but since the four legged friends arꦕe so central to every part of the adventure, the team decided it needed to mocap every animation.

H💖ow do you go about even doing that? "It's 🦋the same way you do with a human," studio director Craig Morrison told GamesRadar+. "We put them in a suit, and the white balls go on the suit, and the suit that we had, I think it was tailor-made in Ireland, right?"

"Eventually, the actresses and actors were in suits with those helmets and the cameras, and the horse actor 🍌was also in the suit with the dots, and dots on the ears," CEO Colin Cragg added. "Everything had to be built so that it functioned exactly the same for the horse as it did for the peop🍰le."

After auditioning a number of different horses, the team settled🍨 on the "very calm and patient" Bella, who doesn't sound like she caused any problems during production. The issues instead came from, well, almost everything else.

"The other element of mo-capturing a horse is, we had to set up a facility in Canada in a 🦩barn which was large enough to have a horse to be able to trot, and cantor, and gallop, and us be able to do the capture," Morrison continued.

Cragg explains that they had about 60 cameras "mounted to the out𒉰side of the building," but the wind would sometimes shake and vibrate the building, "which de-syncs all of the cameras." So, the team had to build a "secondary superstructure inside the building to prevent the vibration from the weather."

And as if that wasn't all enough, the delays from the superstructure and the weather "pushed things late enough into the season" that the team only had three and a half weeks with the actors and Bella in the "outdoor riding arena," Cragg continued. "Because it was Canada, the temperature dropped to minus 28 degrees, so we had to bring in industrial heaters to get the space up to a le🌠vel where al🀅l the performance capture artists wouldn't look like they're freezing to death in the scenes."

Check out all of the other 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming games of 2025 and beyond.

"I do not plan to add multiplayer," Burgee Media during a 🔯recent Reddit AMA. Also in the thread, they'd be able to implement local multiplayer, either, and the same goes for c📖o-op.

Erenshor "was designed from t💟he ground up for single player (also meaning it wasn't designed with any networking in mind)," Burgee Media . "Modders have already sworn to do 💦it, and good luck to them."

As the Early Access title collects more Very Positive Steam reviews, more players seem to be getting the familiar itch to vanquish its lakeside dragons with a knightly pal, the way they would in more traditi🧸onal fantasy MMORPGs.

But Burgee Media seems uninterested in "traditio🥂nal" – it's too inconvenient.

"I've had this idea for 25🌌 years," the developer says . "Since I was 14 and couldn't play Everquest with friends, be🐓cause it was too laggy."

"We only emulate the good bits around here," . Ultimately, Erenshor is a strange and innovative addition to the monolithic realm of adventuring MMOs, a💛nd the genre is better ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚfor it.

"Found a new game I didn't know I wanted," says .

Erenshor, the 'MMORPG' with fake players that's not actually an MMO at all, gets an imminent release date.

Settled is known for concocting custom rule sets that dramatically limit his options while playing new OSRS accounts and totally warp the way he plays the game. His breakthrough video series was arguably Swampletics, which locked his account to the swampy region of Morytania and forced him to get creative with limited resources, but he's alsꦛo done fringe speedruns and a "Tileman" run where his ability to walk around the tile-based game was tied to how much skill experience he earned.

The rules themselves are absurd and eye-catching, but it's Settled's abil𒐪ity to collate and narrate these stories, while teaching viewers weird facts about OSRS and sneaking in increasingly elaborate animations and edits, that's built his 731k YouTube subscriber base﷽.

Settled's latest series, "Nightmare Mode," required a custom-built plugin (by fellow OSRS sicko , who is 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:no stranger to absurd OSRS nooks and cra🉐nnies) that permanently deletes your account password if you take any damage whatsoever. If you're unfamiliar with OSRS combat mechanics and environmental systems, just know that it's alarmingly easy to take damage from all kinds of sources, from traps to random critters to hard-hitting bosses. Eating food (often seafood, funnily ✃enough) to recover from d🦋amage is a core part of the game.

Playing OSRS without taking any damage, effectively setting your hitpoints to one, is like trying to find a needle in a haystack without popping the balloons covering you head to toe. This account is also an Ironman, meaning Settled can't trade with players and has to source all items himself. Naturally, this 🙈has required extensive planning and, the mother of all innovations, a lot of failure, to say nothing of the 🌸mechanical skill needed to use protection prayers to prevent unavoidable hits from actually dealing damage.

For some time, Settled has been playing his 109th Nightmare Mode account, and compared to some early setbacks and resets (the fence arc is a must-watch, and I'm not kiddingꦬ), it's come impressively far.

With♊out taking damage, Set𓂃tled has cleared the iconic Fire Cape Fight Caves challenge, to all and sundry a critical OSRS milestone, and built a solid collection of armor sourced from a dangerous minigame that's filled with chip damage.

With his final challenge, Settled set his eyes on the Colosseum, a relatively new combat gauntlet which puts players through multiple waves of enemies featuring myri🌞ad combat styles and special modifiers. The Colosseum was added to OSRS in early 2024 and is still generally regarded as one of the most difficult encounters in the entire MMO, on or near the level of the exhausting multi-wave Inferno which🅺 awards the coveted Inferno Cape.

Most players enter the Colosseum seeking money or the untradeable Dizana's Quiver, which boosts your ranged attacks significantly, but Settled was in it for the glory. The whole point of this series was to see how far a Nightmare account could ꧙go, and without wishing to spoil the 68-minute finale – packed with close calls and yet more cinematics for the OSRS YouTube hall of fame – he's certainly pushed it to a rare extreme.

New RuneScape co-op survival game debuts to 79% positive Steam reviews in Early Access, but it can't escape Valheim's shadow.

Cragg tells GamesRadar+ that he was "very ex🌠cited" when AI entered the scene, because it might be able to do those ♈grunt jobs that people don't enjoy. AI "was supposed to vacuum my house and fold my laundry," as Cragg puts it.

"With a lot of the grunt, unpleasant tasks being taken care of, that was supposed to free up the time of humanity to make music, to make art, to do things we’re passionate about," Cragg continues. ꦜ"But some ridiculous Silicon Valley tech bros decided that, no, the AI is going to be the thing that’s going to make the music and the art now, and I’m not happy about it."

For Blue Scarab Ent♛ertainment, Cragg says, "We look at AI tools as a way to remove the parts of production that you don’t want to be doing. Like, UV mapping a texture around a mesh. Artists? Generally not excited about that kind of t🅘ask. They want to do the sculpting and the modeling and make something – they don’t want to do UV mapping of the object."

Broadly, that seems to be the take much of the game industry has on AI. Nintendo won't rule out the use of AI tech but acknowledges "what makes our games special is our devel꧒opers." Swen Vincke of Baldur's Gate 3 studio Larian thinks AI is "a tool that we use t💎o help us do things faster" 𒆙but doesn't think "it'll ever replace a creative side" of development.

But "are🥃 we going to start replacing all of our concept🐼 artists with Midjourney?" Cragg asks rhetorically. "Hell no."

The team has already run into some accidental AI issues because of " little pieces of art within one of the [game’s] environments. Peopl🔴e looked at them and said, 'Oh, that’s AI.' And we’re like, 'No, it's not.'" Cragg says the team's multi-hour, sometimes multi-day concept🍌 work results in work that "looks amazing, but it gets flagged up as being AI because that person’s work is on the internet, and it’s been used to train the AI."

"We’ve had to take earlier versions of the work from before we felt it was complete and use those instead," Cragg concludes. 💮"So we’re putting a less polished version of it in there, so that i🐻t doesn’t rustle people’s jimmies, would be the English expression, about 'that could be AI.' We have to make it look worse than what the artist was capable of doing, so that people don’t get upset."

"AI is not as effective as it might appear": Dev of AI-focused Soulslike RPG says they didn't use any AI-generated content and it can't match "genuine creativity"

Dawntrail's long-awaited release was somewhat of a disappointment to many longtime fans, despite leading to 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:"a record number of concurrent users" initially, eventually earning "Mostly Negative" reviews on . Players compared the expansion to Stormblood, citing its weak characters and story, "bland job design," and an overall lack of content in negative reviews, with many hoping that post-launch patches could bring it home in the future.

It would appear that, 𒈔after all, patches are doing just that. Recent Steam reviewꦗs have risen back up to "Mixed" after eight long months of sitting within the "Mostly Negative" trenches, and fans leaving positive feedback seem to largely be praising patch 7.2 and crediting it with helping Dawntrail "get better" over time. A thread echoes similar thoughts as players gather to discuss the expansion's newly improved reviews on Steam.

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"7.2 is a massive improvement in all regards,"🀅 comments one fan. Another says that "7.2 has been very good and for once I am genuinely interested in what's happening in the MSQ." Not all players are convinced by the patch, officially dubbed Seekers of Eternity, however. "The base game and 7.1 had very poor writing," reads one such sceptical commenter's response on the onlin🤪e thread. "7.2 being better doesn’t mean much for me at this time."

It's an understandable position to take, especially when considering other disappointing moments within Final Fantasy 14's history – including more recent ones, too, like 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:this year's Hatching Tide event reward, a simple parasol. Hopefully, Square Enix pays close attention to fanꦓs' improving reviews following patch 7.2 and kicks even more solid content into gear come future Dawntrail updates. I kno🃏w I'll be keeping my own fingers crossed.

Final Fantasy 14's Yoshi-P was unsure about referencing Final Fantasy 9 so heavily because it's a "masterpiece, and everyone has a strong emotional attachment to it"

With a dev team that includes live service vets from games like Helldivers 2 and World of Warcraft, Blue Scarab hopes to correct that oversight by creating something completely original – a mysterious true crime, horseriding MMORPG 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Equinox: Homecoming. Yes. While the rest of the industry focuses on pumping out more extraction shooters (like Marathon, Bungie's lat♔est sci-fi project), Blue Scarab's hucking horseshoes.

"What would happen if we actually approached a title for [women] with the same seriousness and budget that we would give to a doubl🍌e A kind of production for any other demographic?" Cragg, who is also the former CEO of 2012's favorite, maraschino cherry-sweet🐭 online horse game Star Stable, tells me of his thought process in co-founding Blue Scarab. "Traditional, you know, teenage dudes in black T-shirts and jeans."

"It's been a really exciting opportunity to try and actually work within those guidelines and say, 'Okay, we're not making th💯eꦬ next shooter. We're not making an extraction shooter. We're not making another survival PvP title,'" Cragg continues later in our Zoom conversation.

"The entire industry is totally and completely clogged with releases with $300 million budgets that all foc𓄧us on the exact same gameplay," he says. "Like, you're ignoring 52% of the world population."

As a member of that 52%, I can't wait to wander through dandelions on horseback, armed with not a gun in my hand, ♓but simply a Lovecraftian appetite for the occult.

Infinity Nikki and The Sims' return are only the start of a retro gaming renaissance for Y2K girlies.

Soken created the score for the Final Fantasy 14 base game along with Nobuo Uematsu, Ryo Yamazaki, Tsuyoshi Sekito, and Naosꦍhi Mizuta, but for Final Fantasy 16, he took on the role of lead composer. At the same time, he was hard at work on the score for Dawntrail, and in an interview with , he said he'd "never" work on two Square Enix games𒀰 at the same time again. It seems the main issue is the fact that the action-RPG Final Fantasy 16, with its dark and moody setting, has a very different vibe musically than the bright and colorful MMO Final Fantasy 14.

"I can't really come up with a specific example, mainly because of the sheer amount of work that was neededဣ, but in terms of the spirit that went into the creation of 14 and 16, I would say that it was very different," Soken said. "Actually, I expected it to not be that different, but I found that it wa🐷s, indeed, very different. If I were to put it into very few words I would say that 14 has variety and 16 requires stories."

As someone with a vaguely creative job, I've definitely had moments where I'm wꦯorking on two different things simultaneously and it can be a bit jarring, but it sounds like Soken's pain goes a lot deeper.

"Every day was a really horrible hell – really something beyond your imagination of hell," he said, adding that the reaso🥂n he was able to pull off this seemingly daunting feat is because he had already "had the experience of working on two massive games" when he was scoring the original, now-defunct Final ꦦFantasy 14 1.0 and its replacement, A Realm Reborn, at the same time.

Looking forward, Soken is dead set on never putting himself in that position again, saying he would turn down Square Enix 🌳if they ever asked him to score Final Fantasy 17 while he was still working on Final Fantasy 14. "I would just say 'no, I don’t want to'... If I had two bodies, I would do both."

Hear that, Square? Don't even ask.

In the meantime, here are the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best MMOs to play today.

During today's , game director Rich Lambert revealed the MMO's brand new Subclassing feature, which will become available to all players in June with the launch of Part 1 of the Seasons of the Worm Cult update. Details are still light at the moment, but Zenimax Online did confirm that Subclassing will unlock for all p🍨layers at level 50 and that all of your skills and progression will be available account-wide.

ESO systems designer Carrie Day said that with the addition of Subclassing, ESO players will have about "3,000 different options of combinations for skill lines" across all classes, meaning no matter what class you are, you'll be able to kit out your build with skill li🌌nes from any other class.

Zenimax Online had a lot more to show during today's 𝔉ESO Direct, including the new tropical zone Solstice, a continuation of the base game storyline for the first season, the game's first-ever server-wide world event called The Writhing Wall, and a new tool that organizes all of the game's features designed to welcome back returning players. If you missed the stream and want a general breakdown of the big beats, I'd point you to my broader writeup on ESO in 2025 and everything that's happening in the long-running MMO.

Otherwise, find out where we ranked ESO on our list of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best MMOs to play right now.

Opening up today's , which previewed a myriad of substantial updates coming to the long-running MMO this year,🎃 Frior started with a broad sta𒀰tement on the studio's overall direction.

"After a long and successful run, it's time to shake things up in ESO, change the way we deliver content, put more of a focus on te💦sting new ideas, a꧂nd ensure the game stays fresh and modern for years into the future," Frior says.

"We've heard your feedback abou෴t wanting more variety and to shake things up. We agree, we want to keep telling great stories but also mix in new ideas and gameplay systems, and that's exactly what we're gonna do. But we'll do this in a different cadence, one that allows us the developers to broaden our focus and increase variety.

"Instead of a single yea𒈔rly major release, we plan to﷽ spend more time delivering an assortment of new content and gameplay systems aimed at enhancing the base game, making everything better for new and returning players, and above all, focusing on experimenting with new and different types of content."

We don't know alꦕl of the tricks Zenimax Online has up its sleeve yet, but Frior and co. did get into some pretty significant specifics. We've heard previously that ESO is ditching its tradition of releasing new chapters every year as part of its year-long adventures, and now we've learned a little more about what's replacing that update cadence.

ESO's first season is focused on the Worm Cult that'll see the return of OG big bad Molag Bal, who's back for the first time since the base game's main storyline. Seasons oꦏf the Worm Cult, Part 1 – which arrives in June, with Part 2 due out sometime in Q4 2025 – will also bring back a bunch of familiar allies from the base game main quest including Skordo the Knife, Razum-Dar, and Gabrielle Benele. In a media Q&A attended by GamesRadar+, game director Rich Lambert says the game's first season is a "direct sequel to the base game storyline."

Instead of dropping all at once in one big chapter, ESO's new seasonal structure will see the release of new themed story content, dungeons, and in-game events on a seasonal cadence, and it all kicks off in the island of Solstice, off the Southern cost of Tamriel. The new zone offers up two distinct visual styles, with the Western side being a Caribbean-inspired tropical paradise. Sunport is the main city of the island,♕ with truly stunning architecture influenced by a new tribe of Argonian called the Tideborn.

Naturally, it's not all vacay vibes as the Worm cultists have arrived to harsh everyone's mellow, establishing a camp on the island and building a giant wall made of literal "soul juice" that divides Eastern♕ and Western Solstice. More on that a little later.

For the first time𝄹 since the game launched in 2014, ESO players will soon be able to mix up their builds with skill lines from other classes with the addition of Subclassing in June with the start of Seasons of the Worm Cult. That'll 🐠unlock for all players with characters that have reached level 50, opening up a whopping 3,000 ways to mix and match skill lines compared to the seven available classes now.

There's also a new system that organizes all of ESO's features designed to welcome back returning players who feel overwhelm♔ed by all there is to do in the game, which really speaks to me as someone who drops everything to plow through the game's big updates and then usually falls off until the next one.

Anyway, remember that soul juice wall I mentioned? Well🍰, another big highlight of today's stream is the new "world-changing in-game event" called Writhing Wall, which begins in Q3 2025 and literally puts players up against a giant ethereal wall in the middle of Solstice. The event is ESO's first-ever server-wide world event, in which all players on a server will have to work together in phases to penetrate the wall and put the Worm cult to bed.

In the post-show Q&A, I asked Lambert what happens if the wall isn't 🍰breached, and he confirmed that there is an opportunity for failure here: "The goal is that the server has to unlock it, so if the server doesn't work together to unlock it, then they won't be able to go to this new area."

ESO's first battle pass will bundle in the Fallen Banners dungeon pack, which is available to play now. Parts 1 and 2 of the Worm Cult expansion🔯, the Writhing Wall even𝐆t, and another dungeon pack, Feast of Shadows, are arriving in Q3.

ౠAnd finally, in terms of the ESO team's broader development app⛄roach, Frior summarizes:

"We'll learn by experimenting by being more flexible as a development team. We'll๊ make adjustments and we'll launch new content, but we will always work as hard as we can to keep Elder Scrolls Online fresh, fun, and memorable, just as we've done for the last decade."

Find out where we ranked ESO on our list of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best MMOs to play now.

The Hatching Tide event arrives every year during the🐼 spring, and it's usually accompanied by an array of limited-time items to snag, ranging from cosmetics to mounts. This year's big rewards aren't so big, however – in fact, there's only one, an𝐆d it's a chocobo-themed golden parasol. While this reward might seem like a fair one to those less acquainted with Hatching Tides of previous years, longtime fans aren't too impressed.

A recent online announcing the event proves as much, with dedicated players taking to the comments to express their dismay. One questions whether Square Enix is pulling a prank with the reward. "You're serious, a parasol?" Another fan criticizes the parasol when other, arguably better items are available for real money via the Mog Station. "And here's where the dying game makes all good rewards cash shop only, and you get꧃ a yellow umbrella."

Elsewhere, a thread regarding this year's Hatching Tide event sees players sharing similar thoughts. "Definitely a reward obtained through a seasonal event," jokes a fan. Below their response, another simply lists every Hatching Tide reward since 2014 – and 2025 is, to say the least, nothing to boast about. In 2017, the ღMMO gave participants a whole mount and furniture, while in 2022, it rewarded them with a minion, emote, and housing items.

As a big Final Fantasy 14 stan myself, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't sad to see what this year's reward is. While the parasol is admittedly cute, this Hatching Tide feels like a mediocre event compared to itsꦆ predecessors. I don't think Square Enix will ever manage a cooler ⛦spring reward than the 2024 mount, Peatie, the goobbue maiden, though – but at this point, I'd be thrilled to see any sort of minion or mount (or anything other than a parasol at all).

Final Fantasy 14's Yoshi-P was unsure about referencing Final Fantasy 9 so heavily because it's a "masterpiece, and everyone has a strong emotional attachment to it"

Devel🐻oper Jagex revealed RuneScape: Dragonwilds today, and it's already on Steam ahead of its spring 2025 early access launch. CEO Jon Bellamy adds that it's "an entirely new RuneScape experience set within the iconic world of Gielinor and is a game which is worthy of wearing the RuneScape name."

"We’ve built an entirely new team filled with industry veterans who are focused on making sure that RuneScape: Dragonwilds sits naturally within the RuneSc♓ape franchise, and a game that is loved by both our biggest RuneScape fans and entirely new players alike," Bellamy says.

Dragonwilds is built for one to four players, and its "grind skills, slay dragons" ethos will sound familiar to 🥃RuneScape and Old School RuneScape players. But apart from some shared spells and skills, tꦡhat's seemingly where the gameplay similarities end. This is a decidedly more Valheim-flavored adventure where you'll grind resources, build bases, and master "light RPG elements" as you survive on the "never-before-seen" continent of Ashenfall.

With Jagex rolling out its own open-world survival craft-'em-up, the Valheim comparison brings us full circle, as that game was previously praised by some RuneScape players for capturing a similar wonder. The goal here is "a blend of survival and RuneScape," which is ceℱrtainly the vibe so far.

Dragonwilds has a similar feel, but there's a greater emphasis on magic, with our trailer heroes using spectral axes to decimate trees and summoning wind to leap over huge gaps. The classic Bones to Pea⭕ches spell is back, too. "Prepare potions, craft gear and level yourself up to do battle with the💛 most powerful force on the continent," the Steam page reads.

This being an early access launch, Dragonwilds "is currently not a finished game and may or may not change significantly over the course of development," Jagex says. The current plan is to stay in earl📖y access for "as long as it takes," with a tentative "early 2026" 1.0 launch in mind.

New skills, quests, enemies, seasonal events, resources, items, and "vaults to uncover" will be added in and ahead of the full version of Dragonwilds, Jagex explains. It sounds like we'll get more dragons, too, as the game will only launch with "the first Dragon," Gener🐬al Velgar. (Fittingly, Velgar looks to be a green dragon.) The price of the game will eventually go up once it leaves early access, and Jagex "may release post-launch content as paid DLC in the future."

Old School RuneScape, especially, is known for polling proposed changes and acting on player votes, and Dragonwilds is said to be similarly player-first. "The best way to make a game we know fans will love, is to make it with them!" Jagex says on Steam. "We're bringing players along for the journey. RuneScape games have always been better for community voice being at its heart, and we're taking that same mindset in listening to the community from day one."

I was worried this MMO's first new skill in over 12 years would change things too much, but Sailing in Old School RuneScape feels just like home.

Those of you who enjoy 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:WoW Classic have been having a rough time recently as a DDoS attack (distributed denial-of-service) has been causing plenty of you to disconnect mid-match. In a standard game, this would be annoying, but not much else. However, in a hardcore server, when you die, your character becomes a ghost and cannot be resurrected, effectively🎉 ending your run.

One of the game's most famous guilds, OnlyFangs, said, "If this is just how it is, then yeah, that's the end🍷," deciding to stop raiding after som𒁏e of their members lost characters due to being disconnected by the DDoS attack.

But now, in an update shared to the , associate production director Clay Stone writes: "In the future, Blizzard may elect – at our🍸 sole discretion – to revive Hardcore characters that perish in a mass♔ event which we deem inconsistent with the integrity of the game, such as a DDoS attack."

That's welcome news for Hardcore fans who previously had to take it on the chin, even if their character died unfairly or unintentionally through something like a DDoS. Don't go intentionally disconnecting if you think you're about to die, though, as Stone adds: "Our broader stance on character restorations or death appeals has not changed. To be clear, we do not intend to revive characters which have died due to server disconnects, lag spikes, gameplay bugs, or any other reasons. Blizzard Customer ♌Support cannot assist with issues related to characters who have died on Hardcore realms."

So, while some of your characters may well be revived if they die during this DDoS attack, don't expect𒈔 any leniency if they die in any other way. This is WoW Hardcore; it's not for the faint of heart.

Peoꦐple on Twitter seem to be mostly in favor of this rule change. "I'm 100% ok with Blizzard reviving affected players of DDoS attacks," one player. "Extremely rare Blizzard W," another.

However, some people think this has only been done because a high-profile guild like OnlyFangs🅺 was going to quit. "Nepotism is alive and well at Blizzard," one person. "Thousands of paying customers that lost their characters with hundreds of hours due to griefers, DCs, and server instability told to suck it up. But when a bunch of their favorite streamers/friends are affected, they suddenly bend the knee."

One player even thinks this will actually lead to more DDoS attacks, : "Horrible call, just encourages more of these to happen so they can 🌱get their moments of fame. OnlyFangs from the get go was a bad idea, too many big wigs for trolls to go for."

What do you think?

If you want to give WoW a break until the DDoS attack is over, check out the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best online games you can play with your friends instead.

"The key things that you need to know about Dune: Awakening’s launch are that it will not launch in early access, and it will not have a monthly subscription," creative director Joel Bylos says in breaking down the game's business model. "It will receive regular free updates, including new content, new features, and quality of life improvements. And in addition to these free♑ updates, we will offer optional DLC."

Major free updates will expand the story while๊ "adding new content and features," and each of these updates will also be accompanied by a paid DLC pack. Prices on those haven't been confirmed yet, but the Dune: Awakening Deluxe Edition, which includes a season pass promising four DLC packs alongside some other bonuses, is priced at $70, or $20 more than the base game.

Both the Deluxe and Ultimate Edition include early access to the game – you know, the other kind of early access, where you get to play the game five days early. Bylos notes that this "also helps us to maᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚke sure that we can balance the server load as people come into the game through launch for the best possible experience."

Funcom's previous survival game, Conan Exiles, spent a year in proper early access before its launch in 2018, but Dune: Awakening won't be following that pattern. However, in a , Funcom brings up Exiles to note that it's "still in 🐟active development and being updated after eight years of DLCs, expansions, and countless free updates," and says "Dune: Awakening will be no different."

I know next to nothing about survival MMO Dune: Awakening, but I just spent 40 minutes in its Steam Next Fest demo character creator, so I guess I have to play it now.

Since the introduction of hardcore servers back in 2023, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:WoW Classܫic has exploded in popularity. Part of that ascent in attention comes from the many streamers who have been playing the MMO's unforgiving servers since launch. You see, WoW Classic's Hardcore servers are unique in that your character's death really is the end – no revives here. It's the sort of gameplay pitch that has already led to 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:numerous viral moments, making the MMO 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:all the more streamable.

When it comes to streamers playing WoW Classic's Hardcore servers, few grab more eyes than those who are part of the 'OnlyFangs' guild. A m𒁏ix of World of Warcraft veterans are newcomers trying the MMO for the first time, plenty enjoy watching their highs and lows.

Sadly, though, time has temporarily been called on the guild. Over the past few days, 🔥the guild has been attempting to clear the Blackwing Lair and had been making some decent progress, with one being a near-death moment where a raider nearly lost their character. Alas, 🐠server instability brought about by made things shaky enough that OnlyFangs for one day.

Here's the thing. The raid clear didn't go better the n✅ext day, either. The server instability ramped back up as the guild got to work bringing down Flamegor, leading plenty of raiders to disco𝓰nnect. While some returned without losing their characters, others weren't so lucky.

What happens next for On꧟lyFangs is uncertain, but it likely won't happen anytime soon. World of Warcraft is no stranger to DDoS attempts, with the latest coming as raiders raced to complete the Liberation of Undermine Race to World First only recently. The fact that the server attacks have continued past the raid's completion and into OnlyFangs' attempt to clear a to🍨tally different raid, Blackwing Lair, has left some to wonder if all of this is more targeted.

"If this is just how it is, then yeah, that's the end," guild leader and streamer Sodapoppin says after sharing on stream that he plans to reach out to Bl🍰izzard to see what can be done. "I'm not going to have people prepare and get ready just to die to a DC."

Maybe Blizzard intervenes to return the guild's lost characters; maybe they don't. Regardless, it's annoying to lose such a time commitment. Disconnects can 🃏be irritating in typical World of Warcraft as you might lose a bit of time, but in WoW Classic Hardcore? That's potꦗentially an entire character and an even more significant loss of grind. Until we learn more, OnlyFangs is sitting WoW Classic's Hardcore servers out for now and, perhaps, indefinitely.

My newest MMO hero is World of Warcraft Priest 'Chimneytime,' who got an official "warning" from Blizzard for making too many people get trapped inside chimneys.

La🅘st week, Natlikesbatslivrary uploaded a video to TikTok showing a handful of World of Warcraft players attempting to jump out of a piece of geometry they'd all become stuck in. That geometry? The chimney on top of a house. And the reason? A neaꦦrby Priest, suspiciously named 'Chimneytime'.

The Tiktok explains that Chimneytime was ambushing players arriving in the area via a popular flight path. Using the Priest class' Mind Control spell, they could take control of those players for eight seconds, using that sliver of time to jump onto a roof an💙d down a nearby chimney. Once the spell wore off, however, those same players wouldn'ꦡt be able to jump high enough to get out of the hole they were stuck down.

Eventually, Chimneytime's karma caught up 🐓to him, and he was killed by another player. Sadly for those stuck down the chimney, however, their captor's demise didn't give them any extra jumping power, so they were still unable to get free. Of course, anyone stuck could simply Hearthstone out, but that's an easy option that still leaves you with the faff🅘 of getting back to wherever it was you were going.

Unfortunately for Chimneytime, karma was not yet done with them. A💖nother player, professing to be on🐲e of their guildmates, what they claim to be a warning from Blizzard. That note reads that "we've received several reports [of] you using 'clever use of gameplay mechanics' to trap other players in chimneys'."

Blizzard says it's not going to take action this time, but warns Chimneytime that "we do not stand for ruining other players' experiences." The message also reads, "I would like to prevent this from becoming a common thing you do to other players before it gets out of hand, which, based on your character name, I have concerns about. Please note, if you come back onto our radar for this kind of behavior, chimney-related or no𓂃t, we will take harsher actions."

Chimneytime, however,🎐 doesn't seem too concerned about that apparent threat. A link to shows both a bio that reads, "I find absurd game-breaking exploits to terrorize other players" and a video captioned "chimney is over - it's boat time now," which appears to show a similar tactic being u𒊎sed to trap players in some rigging near The Merchant Coast.

The community response is also pretty interesting. Most players seem to think this is little more than some harmless fun, and that Blizzard should leave Chimneytime alone - after all, any victims can simply Hearth to safety, and this kind of emergent behavior is wh🤡at made World of Warcraft so popular in the first place. For a few others, however, the reaction is simply shock that anyone might have managed to get any kind of moderation response actually written by a human being.

In case you were wondering, my previous MMO hero was the Runescape player who poured hot coffee on his butthole after losing a 1-in-10000 bet.

Developer Neople hopes the massive update will breathe new life into the online beat 'em up gam𒈔e, whose worldwide release happened almost ten years 🍌ago in May 2015.

We had the chance to💜 catch up with Dungeon Fighter Online lead game designer Hyun Woo Kim, and he explained the studio's intention behind the update and the significance of its timing:

"The main focus of this update is to emphasize the core RPG experience — the fun of farming," said Kim. "We determined that now was the right timing at which we would be able to deliver this content with the highest level of polish possible. Additionally, with the 10th anni൩vꦡersary of DFO’s global service, this update holds special significance both for us and our users. We thought that this new season update is the most exciting experience we can offer to our players at this time, sort of like an anniversary gift."

Since the last level cap expansion in July 2022, Dungeon Fighter Online has released smaller updates to various equipment, systems, and gameplay including Legions and Raids, but the global releases tend to lag behind the Korean versions b🔜y several months. To address this, the team at Neople has been "gradually expanded" as part of a "Fast Track” initiative that has reduced the gap between the Korean and global updates from 4–6 months to 2–3 months.

"Moving forward, we will continue to deliver faster and more polished updates," Kim said. "While there is always a possibility that update intervals could change depending on development circumstances, we will always try our best to provide a more satisfying ex𝓡perience for players through continuous improvements."

For everything th🧔at's included in the Sunken Depths update, you can check out the complete patch ಌnotes .

Otherwise, check out our definitive round-up of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best MMOs to play right now.

Since the very early days of World of Warcraft, there have been whispers that players could take ownership of a powerful sword originally wielded by a legendary warrior. No, not the 'Sword of a Thousand Truths' from the South Park episode; that's already in the game (albeit as 'Slayer of the Lifeless'). Highlord Tirion Fordring's blade, Ashbringer, has been a weapon players have been dying to get their hands on since 2004, but it never arrived in the game despite datamined files and hints. That is, except for 🐷a Paladin-exclusive artifact that arrived and left Legion and a corrupted version of the weapon that didn't exactly have the same aura.

However, has noticed that clues are pointing to the sword finally becoming attainable in the near future in World of Warcraft Cla🏅ssic. A number of items were ahead of the upcoming Season of Discovery Phase 8, which, no big deal, we've had the sword datamined before and nothing came of it. However, a about the new phase included a part about a 'Legendary Weapon Questli𝓰ne' that inspired some intrigue.

The post reads, "Warriors, Hunters, and Paladins can undertake an epic quest to restore a fallen weapon to its former glory. Will you succeed, or will this storied weapon remain shrouded in darkness? The future is uncertain." This – alongside the fact that this Season of Discovery deals with the Scarlet Crusade – seems to be pointing to the Ashbringer coming out of its 20-year-long stint in hiding. Or we could all just be falling for it again.

This weapon's appearance is sure to cheer fans up, especially after the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:latest raid race was pretty lackluster.

Season 2 of The War Within kicked off on March 4, opening the race to World First for the Mythic tier of the Liberation of Undermine raid. Over the course of the weeks that followed, a number of differentꦐ teams got World First clears of the raid's various parts – Melee Mechanics, Bound, Instant Dollars, and Echo all claimed early cleꦆars – but it was Team Liquid that claimed the lead in the end.

After hard-fought victor🐻ies against many of the early bosses in the raid, Team Liquid claimed ultimate victory against Chrome King Gallywix after just 100 attempts. The clear was particularly confounding because Liquid previous be🅘st attempt had only gotten the boss down to 14% health, and everyone was waiting for some final twist – new mechanics or an additional secret phase – to up the challenge for the last stage of the fight.

But there was no such twist. Various VODs of the clear showing much of the 🌠raid team popping off at claiming the World First win, but several Liquid members were equally confused in the moment. You team GM Maximum throwing his hands up and shaking his head. You imexile throwing his hands up and asking "that's the boss?" You Thdlock throwing his hands up and asking, simply, "what?!"

Blizzard boss says keeping World of Warcraft players happy for 20 years is so hard because the MMO is filled with "different demographics that only have so much time in their day."

However, Old School RuneScape itself has ෴grown into its own beast, with additions that weren't present in the golden days being added. However, even though RuneScape first arrived back in 2001, the Old School version is based on the August 2007 build of RuneScape, and members of the community want to go even deeper. Fans of the game have launched the in order to preserve every version of the game from 2001 until 2012, which have otherwise been lost to time. And to show how dedicated, the team has put a $500 bounty on old versions.

In a , RuneScape Archive Project member Hlwys let players know that🃏, as it turns out, old versions of RuneScape were downloaded to players' computers and hidden on their hard drives. So in theory, someone could be sitting on literally every versi🌃on of the game and not even know it. In the same post, they announced that the team is offering $500 to anyone who can find a version of the game from 2001-2004 (or $250 for an incomplete version). In a , it's shown that later years are far more complete (with 2009 having a 90% preservation rate), but the earlier years of the game's life need a lot more work (with the late 2003/early 2004 section only being 5.88% complete).

So if you played a ton of RuneScape and happen to have an old computer from 20 years ago hanging about, or even just the hard drive, you could possibly be in the money and help preserve a claಌs♊sic MMO in the process.

Speaking of classic RPGs, did you know you can grab 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Chrono Trigger for $4 on Steam right now?

WalkScape views game-ified exercise through 🔜an old-school MMO lens. Walking in real life progresses skills in-game, strengthening your character and propelling you toward new unlocks.

It started as a college hobby for Schamppu in 2022 but has developed into a two-man job with two added freelancers rounding out a team of four for Finnish studio Not A Cult. Schamppu wanted something exerci💎se-related that felt motﷺivational or aspirational and would click with his ADHD, but he wasn't thrilled with the selection of apps and games he saw.

"All the games I tried had some key flaws, like requiring a constant GPS connection, draining the phone battery or requiring constant attention while actually trying to exercise," he says. "Being an o𓃲ld RuneScape fan, I thought, how hard could it be to make a game that's just RuneScape hooked up to a pedometer?"

Simplicity is part of the pitch. "What gets a person up and moving is always dependent on the person themselves," Schamppu reckons. "Some don't need external motivators, many others do. WalkScape is just one way to motivate someone to walk more and it works for some, and doesn't f⭕or others. Players who find WalkScape helpful usually appreciate the fact🎀 that it doesn't get in the way of their 'normal' lives."

T💝he obvious challenge here is that MMO gaming is a pretty sedentary hobby. To be fair, there are actually quite a few fitness buffs among the Old School RuneScape community, as well as other MMO communities. (Schamppu says the support and feedback from OSRS players has been great so far). But the question remains: how do you get gamers to get up and move? Or really, is this a game for MMO fans to begin with, or more for fans of GPS games like Pokemo🍸n Go?

"Currently we have players from both demographics," Schamppu says. "Our target audience is mostly working age people who care about their physical well-being and screentime. For Pokémon Go🎉 players we offer a more hands-off experience, which doesn't require as much of your personal time, while rewarding you for just walking around anywhere. In fact, WalkScape works perfectly well in combination with Pokémon Go!

"For MMO players we offer that fix of traveling in a fantasy world, hꦛunting for legendary gear and leveling up your character in a൲ package that actually increases your health and wellness. It's the perfect game for those who no longer have the time to spend grinding away in traditional MMOs, since in WalkScape you can play more by spending less time on the phone."

Beyond moving away from GPS data – which can be b🌄attery-intensive, highly sensitive, and prone to huge swings in content based on your location, as Schamppu puts it – WalkScape streamlines the experience further by actively avoiding any intrusive monetization – or, really, any monetization at all.

"Staying MTX and advertisement free is absolutely key for WalkScape," 🌄Schamppu says. "MTX and advertisement revenu꧟e correlates heavily with how much time the player spends actively engaged with the game. That's why so many other fitness games want to hog as much of the player's attention as possible. We consider this type of design to be contradictory to the goal of actually enhancing the players' physical well-being."

Instead, WalkScape is "100% community funded" : "Players can skip the waiting list and ensure access during the next invite wave, although many players🔜 decid𒉰e to keep contributing even after gaining access."

WalkScape is still in development, but it's already in a "fully playable state" with "tens of thousands of players" providing feedback that informs 🐭updates. Feature♐s like combat, trading, quests, and device support will be added and expanded in future patches.

"Once those are done, we will transition into open beta and keep adding content to fill out the game world until the game is ready for full launch," Schampp🌱u say💦s. "We are aiming to transition into the open beta early 2026 and full launch during 2027."

"The main goal is to encou👍rage people to use their legs more," he adds. "Whether this means buying a standing desk and treadmill for your work from home office or just walking two blocks instead of going by car or bus – it all counts. If you're already active, we don't require you to change anything about your daily life. Instead, we just reward you for the good work you do!"

Pokemon Go developer Niantic is being bought for $3.5 billion, CEO says it'll help its games be "'forever games' that will endure for future generations."

"You want to retain the players who have been wi🍸th you going on 20 years in some cases," Fries says in an interview with after her first year on the job. "They have a certain set of expectations. Taking World of Warcraft as an example, you can't have every expansion being such a 'zag' that it feels totally unfamiliar to your core fanbase."

At the same time, Fries acknowledges the very tough reality that Blizzard still needs to expand the game's scope while appeasing the "core" player base that's been grinding World of Warcraft since 2004. A seemingly impossible task that World of Warcraft's very existenc♊e proves is possible, in ♈fact.

"It's a never-ending chase to strike the right balance," Fries continues to explain. "There are different demographics that ꦡonly ha🌳ve so much time in their day. Creators have a certain expectation too, even before we get to commercialization of the content."

Even to this day, World of Warcraft is introducing features to keep its younger, fresher competitors on their toes. The WoW team basically 🌊called out Final Fantasy 14's house lott🧔ery nightmare last month as the team detailed its own player housing system. That's without even mentioning 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:the 38,000(!) or so quests available in-game.

WoW Hardcore streamer receives $7k donation on one condition: he has to delete everything he owns

Speaking in a recent interview with (translated into English us🌸ing both Google and DeepL), Yoshi-P discusses some of the new content that's set to drop with patch 7.2 and says he's looking forward to it. The lead first describes the crafting-oriented Cosmic Exploration and then the Occult Crescent, the update's Eureka and Bozjan Southern Front-esque instance, which features large-scale boss battles, Phantom Jobs, and 48-player raids.

Yoshi-P continues, diving into a bit of a behi♊nd-the-scenes look at MMORPG development – and how it, unsurprisingly, differs from the way players experience games like Final Fantasy 14 on a d♏ay-to-day basis. Developing content post-Dawntrail isn't quite the same as working on 6.0 and onward was, either, when Square Enix had set a goal of "widening the scope" of the game. With patches post-7.0, developers' focus has shifted.

Production was no longer about players being able to enjoy the game alone, but rather with others – the core of the MMO genre. According to Yoshi-P, multiplayer content is largely what Square Enix has its sights set on now, and patches like 7.2 should reflect as much. The soon-to-r꧑elease update is especially exciting as it's apparently the "largest ever" – and that means it's seriously large, considering past behemoth post-expansion patches like 6.2.

Seekers of Eternity, as patch 7.2 is titled, sounds like it'll be one of the most impressive in a while, if not the most overall. There's not long left to wait now until the update arrives later this month, bringing everything from main scenario quests and instances like the Occult Crescent 🌃to higher-end challenging content such as The Arcadion: Cruiserweight Tier, with four new Normal raids and Savage variants, and the Recollection trial.

World of Warcraft's new housing system lets you decorate without the floating hacks I've been using in Final Fantasy 14 for 11 years, and I weep

Just one month ago, World of Warcraft had Final Fantasy 14 players (it's me, I'm players) in a chokehold with its revolutionary housing system – in other words, a housing system that has 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:no pesky lottery or high costs, and one that doesn't rip your home from you if you don't play for 45 days or unsubscribe temporarily. As a longtime superfan of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Square Enix's MMO myself, it sounds like an out-of-reach dr🦩eam – even more sꦫo now.

A new from Blizzard detailing interior design for World of Warc♋raft's upcoming housing system highlights features I, and man🌌y other Final Fantasy 14 stans, have wanted for years – about 11, to be precise, since patch 2.1 first introduced housing. Decorating in World of Warcraft sounds accessible and fun, with an optional grid system, free object placement, a functional X-Y axis, various dye toggles for furniture, and more.

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😼Customization is core to housing in World of Warcraft, it seems, and I'm not the only Final Fantasy 14 player drooling over Blizzard's fleshed-out 𝄹system. A recent thread proves as much, with its original poster aptly dubbing their thoughts "WoW Housing Bodied FFXIV Again." Comments see hopeful fans expressing that Blizzard might give Square Enix "a push to add some stuff which we need built in game like the axis movement."

Other fans similarly tired of using floating hacks and mods to decorate to their heart's content in Final Fantasy 14 admit that World of Warcraft has something the former MMO doesn't – time, and the ability to look at fellow genre gems to see what players want out of a housing system: "One is being created in 2025." Meanwhile, I'm personally holding out hope that the community's reaction inspires a more user-friendly approach to housing in Final Fantasy 14.

Looking for another MMO to try? Here are some of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best MMORPGs to play right now.

The tie-in TV show was canceled in 2015 after three seasons, but the game's servers kept on trucking until 2021, so it's only been gone for four years. "After many 🃏heartfelt discussions on forums like and watching enthusiastic video reviews on YouTube together with the comments, we realized that the spirit of Defiance still burns bright," Fawk💫es writes .

You don't have to wait long to jump back in or try Defiance for the first time, as servers will go live in April. It will be the original 2013 versio💖n of the game coming back, not the 2018 version, Defiance 2050, which is set four years after the original events.

It's just the PC versi♌on returning for now, too, with console versions to follow "if our ♈community embraces the revival."

I'm keen to try the game, but I'm even more interested in the TV show. I live for that kind ౠof sci-fi. One of my favorite shows that only got one season is Terra Nova, which tells the story of a group of humans who travel back in time to an alternate past infested with dinosaurs to escape the barely breathable air of the present. It was one of Naomi Scott's first acting roles and ended on a suspenseful cliffhanger.

If you're keen to check out some other games you might have missed, read our list of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best online games you can play right now.

As reported by our friends over at , RAoV Quality Assurance beat the new Mythic difficulty raid using the lowest-level gear, an impossible feat. RAoV stands for random acts of violation, and they certainly live up to their namesake, as WoW community manager Kaivax : "We immediately began an investigation into these unusual kills, and we detected a group of new accounts using an exploit to cast an internal spell to kill Mythic raid bosses, including Chrome King Gallywix. Our security engineers quickly moved to put a stop to the cheat and take action☂ against the accounts involved, and we have cleared the Hall of Fame to await the rightful winner of the RFW [race to world first]. Thank you to everyone who reported this."

It doesn't stop there, though. Despite writing, "We will continue to employ the utmost vigilance about fair play in World of Warcraft," the guild simply reversed their name to ecnarussAeR ytilauQ V꧒oAR and did it again. They added a 'Re' to show this is the second attempt. WoW players have already congratulated the guild on the game's subreddit, , "Congratulations RAoV Quality Assurance🐠 on world SECOND Gallywix!"

What makes this all especially funny is that PC Gamer also notes t🏅hat the RAoV moniker references a different exploit group that♓ was .

I know cheating in multiplayer games is bad, and maybe I'd be more annoyed if I were a serious WoW player, but sometimes you have to take a step back and appreciate the work of fine trolls. As we 💯can see by the congratulations on Reddit and the funny comments, many fans clearly just find this funny.

If you want to play something else once you're done with the race to world first, check out our list of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best online games you can play right now.

As we reported during 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:last year's Steam Next Fest, Erenshor has the aesthetic of old school 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:RuneScape, c🎃omplete with yellow usernames above everyone's head, but they're all NPCs made to emulate real players. The game's describes it as a "single player nod to the MMORPGs of the past."

The reason for the single-player approaꦕch is so you can enjoy it "on your own schedule and without the time commitments" and partake in the "thousands of items, quests, raids, and secrets" Erenshor has to offer.

A press release reveals that there will be 35 zones, four classes, and more than 1,000 items to collect and craft when the game launches into early 🌌acc꧙ess next month. It's in the top 800 most-wishlisted games on Steam, so even though you'll be surrounded by NPCs, know if you do play it, there will be plenty of others elsewhere.

You'll still be able to do group activities like raids and take on dungeons in a party, you'll just be playing with simulated players instead of real ones. The NPCs🥃 in the trailer do really seem to act like actual players. It's uncanny the way they 🌜all crowd around quest-giving NPCs.

These faux players will also evolve alongside y♒ou, leveling up and finding new gear as you play and explore. Maybe you'll grow as attached to them as you do the real players you play MMOs with.

This is a fascinating idea because it's become harder to organize my friends as I've gotten older. Getting a squad of three or four people together to tackle quests isn't easy, and Erenshor allows you to skip the planning stage entirely and just go at your own pace. It's also cool that it's made by a solo dev. It's not enough to🌠 work alone, people must play alone too.

While you wait for Erenshore to come out April 14, check out some of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best single-player games you can play right now.

Ultima Online is uniformly considered an early pioneer of the MMO space, releasing back in 1997 and becoming big enough that it's widely credited with popularizing the genre before World of Warcraft became the standard-beare▨r according to Koster. Point is, if the⭕re's one person to ask about how to make a long-lasting MMO, it's Koster, so we did exactly th♊at. The answer? The friends we made along the way.

"The number one predictor of people ❀staying in an MMO is the friends they make, and whether their friends are there - it's the biggest thing that makes a difference," Koster says. "And if you don't design towards having social development and community in your game, it will suffer over time. Content does not last forever, right?

"People go back to the same public park not because there's more park to see, buඣt because they want to enjoy it with their friends. And it's the same thing for a great MMO. You might have been there and done that onꩵ all the content in there, but you go back because it's a place to enjoy with friends, right? So that means you have to do an awful lot of design work around enabling and supporting that."

As someone who's made lifelong friends in Ultima Online specifically and pretty much stopped playing when they stopped pܫlaying, I am uniquely unqualified to argue with Koster here. I still go back from time to time to mine some of that sweet, sweet nostalgia, but yeah, it feels🔜 kind of empty.

Koster's new studio, Playab🥀le Worlds, is working on a new sci-fi game called Stars Reach, which he's hoping will modernize the MMO genre. Koster and fellow RPG veteran Eric Goldberg bill the game as a "sandbox science-fantasy MMO where you explore deeply simulated living worlds in a shardless galaxy", with "a fully player-driven economy full of peaceful ways to play." I'm definitely getting modern spacey Ultima Online vibes from it, which sounds great.

Former Ultima Online lead wants his new MMO to satisfy the "huge, huge appetite" for "a more immersive parallel world" like the ones in Sword Art Online and Animal Crossing.

"The Online Safety Act comes into force later this month, applying to all social and gaming websites where users interact, and especially those without strong age restrictions," Davis writes in the . "With the possibility of heavy corporate-sized fines even for solo❀ web projects like this one, I've reluctantly concluded that it doesn't look feasible for Ur𓆏ban Dead to be able to continue operating."

This legislation is billed as a way of protecting individuals - especially children - from harmful content on social media platforms, requiring🐻 content providers to "take robust action against illegal content and activity." The effort has been not just by the major tech companies that it would most directly affect, but by security experts who feel that the proposed efforts would undermine privacy.

Nonetheless, the for the Online Safety Act is continuing to progress. "So a full 19 years, 8 months and 11 days after its quarantine began, Urban Dead will be shut dowཧn," Davis writes. "No grand finale. No final catastrophe. No helicopter evac. Make your peace or your final stand in whichever part of Malton you called home, and the game will be switched off at noon UTC on 14 March."

If you want to play Urban Dead ahead of its shutdown later this month, the is still online. The game puts you in the role of a survivor of a zombie outbreak or one of the shambling undead, working to eith𓆏er keep yourself alive or chow down on some brains. Through a text-based interface, you explore the city of Malton, choosing as you go wheﷺther to ally with or work against other players. You get a limited number of action points every real-life day, so you have to make the most of your resources every time you play.

Urban Dead largely seems to be remembered by nostalgic fans who played it in the late '00s, but it still has active players online to this 𒊎day. Here's hoping those players can make the most of the game's final weeks.

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Original Story:
Final Fantasy𒀰 14 director Naoki Yoshida, also known fondly as Yoshi-P, seems to have been removed from Square Enix's board of directors, on which he's served since 2018, and demoted to executive officer.

But don't cry for him – Yoshida has been wanting out of the board almost as soon as he'd been let in. Rece꧂ntly , and initially noticed by , Yoshida told the in 2023 that he'd "recently tri🎃ed to quit that work, but the company didn’t agree with it."

"I don’t want to be on the board," Yoshida ಞcontinued plainly, "it’s much more fun to just make game🃏s."

Now, following structural changes Square Enix plans to implement in April, Yoshida finally gets 🦄to run wild… or, with as much uninhibition as one can muster while still weariꦏng a pressed suit.

In a , Square Enix explains that its proposed changes – which could see its board of directors culled from eight members to four – arrive "in the midst of dramatic changes to both the entertainment business and the Company’s business environment." But its new execu൲tive management committee would operate under representative director Takashi Kiryu anyway, and it includes Yoshida in the executive officer position he 🥂held prior to his board appointment.

GamesRadar+ has reached out to Square Enix for comment. At this point, though, it seems like Square Enix is more just juggling its suite of officials rather than seriously upsetting its status quo. In any cas𝐆e, it all seems a lot more boring than designing another marshmallowy Moogle – Yoshi-P is right about that.

Final Fantasy creator says the original JRPG's programmer was "like a god" to him: "I still strongly feel that the core program itself is the 'life' of a game."

I've been nervous to see how Sailing is incorporated. Old School RuneScape has taken on a life of its own since starting out as a faithful version of RuneScape as it was in 2007, but Sailing will𒀰 be the biggest change to the game we've ever seen. Jagex's stewardship of those old-school vibes will be fundamentally tested – but from trying Sailing out for myself at RuneFest over the weekend, I'm feeling very good about how it'll slot in.

This blue part here is land

Sailing – as in, literally making your boat move – is simple. You can jump into your vessel from a dock, and once at sea, unfurl you⛦r sails and click to navigate. It's as basic as walking anywhere on land, though you'll be rewarded with XP and a speed boost if you pay attention to wind picking up and tying your sails to catch it. You can see other players' boats, making shores nice and lively, though you don't have to faff around with unit collisions – the mere fact that your ship takes up space isn't the same issue it is in the likes of Sea of Thieves or Assassin's Creeds seafaring stints in Odyssey or Black Flag.

Just as most skills in RuneScape have m❀ultiple ways to train them, Sailing doesn't fit neatly into one course of action. As I learn the ropes in a tutorial quest, sailing from Port Sarim with Sea Shanty 2 at my back, two NPC crewmates teach me how to salvage. It boils down to lowering a hook into the sea and waiting to see what it turns up, and feels like a low-intensity training method akin to fishing and ꦯwoodcutting. I don't get to try it for very long – the second I hoist up a strange medallion, my tutors decide I'm no longer needed and chuck me overboard.

Fast-forward after washing up at newly-added pirate port Pandemonium, and I'm back at sea minus one flashy sailboat and two less-flashy🌊 mutineers. I'm sailing on my lonesome with a beat-up raft, which I'm paying off by picking up goods from Port Sarim and bringing back to Pandemonium. I've got to use Construction to build a cargo hold (see: a single rickety chest) which suggests there'll be at least some overlap𝓡 with RuneScape's other skills, but for this particular demo Sailing largely stands as its own entity.

King of the pirates

It's during my round voyage from Pandemonium to Port Sarim that Sailing really clicks. Captaining a boat – though calling my raft that is a stretch – is far less click-intensive than the likes of Mining and Agility, and Gielinor's seas have been significantly fleshed-out. Once-blank stretches of ocean now have names for particular coasts and straits, while a significant amount of new islands have been sprinkled all over. There's a real, palpable sense of adventure – the strongest♎ I've felt since arriving in Lumbridge in 2007, or unlocking Isafdar for the first time after Underground Pass. Being so bright-eyed about everything whilst cruising past the shores of Tutorial Island feels extra-poignant, and I'm looking forward to seeing if and how existing areas of the game evolve to slot in with Sailing.

I spend the rest of my time leveling Sailing by taking work from a billboard, which at my low level means ferrying goods back and forth from Port Sarim. There are a few things I don't get to try, but will be a part of Sailing when it arrives in full – like bounties to claim by fighting at sea, Barracuda Trials (which involve navigating trickier waters and completing set objectives as quickly as possible), and more in-depth customization options for ships. There are also certain area🐟s which are outright too dangerous to sail through without a high enough Sailing level, and yes, I once again found myself swimming back to shore after thinking I could cut through a storm.

Though that leaves plenty to be seen, what's here is already impressive. I worried Sailing would feel more like a minigame than a traditional🍌 skill – I didn't click with RuneScape's Dungeoneering for that reason – but its training methods seem to cover all bases depending on how engaging you li꧅ke your grind. The task-based work I took reminded me of my favorite skill, Slayer, which similarly bounces you between locations before any one dungeon gets stale. Unless you're one of the Gielinor's many sailors who make their living fleecing players for passage between ports, there's a look to look forward to – and if all goes well following another alpha test this month, we'll be taking to the seas later this year.

Here are the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best MMORPGs to tide (ha) you over until Sailing

Ralph Koster, whose expansive MMO resume spans senior work on Ultimat Online, Star Wars Galaxies and, now, the upcoming Stars Reach, chimed in on where the genre is at right now: the same place as where it's been since 2004, he says in 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:an interview with GamesRadar+.

"I think they've been in a rut for a long time," Koster explains. "We haven't seen a lot of innovation in the space. There haven't been ꦐthat many major titles over the last decade or two. The template set by World of Warcraft continues to kind of dominate, and it's narrowed down what used to be a much more diverse genre." Koster acknowledges that some genres, like survival sandbox sims, take advantage of features that aren't seen much in MMOs these days, but it's so-called cozy games that are really an "offshoot of sandbox MMOs."

Koster explains that non-violent features aren't as prominent in the genre as they used to be, specifically pointing to things like 🎃player housing, player-driven economies, business management, tools for creativity, and social activities. These all happen to be things that "we've seen people want to do in Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley and all these other kind of cozy games which are also an offshoo꧑t of sandbox MMOs, so all of those kinds of things are mostly absent these days from theme park MMOs."

Now serving as CEO of developer Playable Worlds, Koster says his new game Stars Reach is aiming to modernize those older-school ܫidea and bring them back, "not the wayꦛ that they were 20 years ago."

Former Ultima Online lead wants his new MMO to satisfy the "huge, huge appetite" for "a more immersive parallel world" like the ones in Sword Art Online and Animal Crossing

After loading up , I'm invited to a tutorial that offers the familiar. You play as one of the demo's two tank characters as you learn to juggle ability cooldowns, draw aggro, and interrupt nastier foes from unleashing nastier abilities. The joy of Fellowship, though, is that there's little to do before you can tackle more dungeons. There are no subscrip𒀰tion fees on the horizon, additiona⛦l character leveling, or unlocking jobs.

Anyone who has done any dungeon content in an MMO will likely ღfeel right at home – you've got a party set up of one tank, two healers, and two damage dealers. The current heroes also fall into classic fantasy archetypes, from frosty mages to stoic paladins. Comparisons to World of Warcraft's Mythic+ dungeons are tempting, too. You have a set amount of time to slay bosses and a certain percentage of enemies, and better loot is available to those willing to tackle harsher difficulties with additional modifiers. If you like hanging out, there's plenty of that too. A social space provides everything you need, from training dummies to party boards and much more.

Of course, this isn't just WoW's Mythic+ spun out into a new game. The dungeon-lite does away with outdated UI elements and doesn't require player-made plug-ins for features like a det🥃ailed map. Other elements are simplified, too, like being able to select a particular hero if you want to play their role. It's not as personal as making your own character,ꦺ but you don't have to worry about the leveling process. When it comes to launch, you can dive right in without clearing content before unlocking dungeons.

Questions linger over whether there is a need for a game like Fellowship, but I'm glad it exists. MMOs are impossible to topple as players have built so much history within them that it's hard to shift them elsewhere – why clear dungeons here when I can load up Final Fantasy 14 and do the same with a character I've put years into shaping? What Fellowship does do, though, is open up the joy of dungeon content for those who find the likes of World of Warcraft confusing or simply don't have the time to sink into a full-fat MMO. And for that, this 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Steam Next Fest demo is well worth trying.

An apparent ex-FromSoftware dev has a janky action RPG in Steam Next Fest, so obviously I had to play it – and yep, the opening shot is straight out of Dark Souls.

Developed by Playable Worlds, Stars Reach is shaping up to offer players what's essentially a "parallel world" with thousands of planets to explore, which they can have a real, permanent impact on thanks to the fact that "we simulate everything," 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Koster previously told us in an interview. From being able to alter a planet's ecosystem after driving creatures to🐽 extinction to irrigating deserts or rerouting rivers, the level🐻 of freedom sounds enormous – and that's not mentioning the aliens you can fight, settlements you can build, leadership roles you can develop, and much more. With all that on top of the fact that it's meant to be a there's a lot to be excited about.

Until recently, Stars Reach had been funded by investors, but last month, it was announced that a would be launched too, because, as Koster explained at the time, "the climate for games investment is terrible." Thankfully, the campaign has very quickly managed to acܫcumulate all the extra funding Playable Worlds needed and more, as the devs confirm it smashed its $200,000 goal in under an hour.

"We're ♈deeply humbled and grateful for this outpouring of support," Playable Worlds says in a statement. "This is your victory as much as ours, and we can't wait to take this journey together."

Even after hitting the main goal, support doesn't seem to be slowing down. With 28 days left to go on the campaign and over $364,000 raised at the time of writing, the MMO seems to be well on track to raise double its original target. In the statement🍌, the devs add that "the more we raise the faster we can bring this game to market. And the better the game will be." Its first stretch goal – which will see the team add the "Hansian species" to the game – was hit at $350k, but there's still "crafting appearance customization" listed, although the page doesn't confirm what target fans have to hit to unlock that one.

We'll just have to watch this space to see how much more Stars Reach can raise – the fact that t𓆏he MMO is already "very far along in development" after being in the works for the last five years is bound to be encouraging for many, too.

Former Ultima Online lead wants his new MMO to satisfy the "huge, huge appetite" for "a more immersive parallel world" like the ones in Sword Art Online and Animal Crossing.

While Dune: Awakening's creator doesn't offer as much heavenly minutiae as the designers in games like 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Dragon Age: The Veilguard or 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Cyberpunk 2077, it does provide a reasonable balance between🐓 customization and pre-made, hot-and-ready characters.

Sliders for things like lips, thighs, and eyeballs all go up to a value of nine, allowing enough room for personal flourishes without getting too twiddly. That said, I do wish Dune: Awakening had more variation in its array of tan or dark skin tones, which is a 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:historical issue in video games, but the surv🉐ival MMO's creator at lea💜st offers enough flexibility for me to, basically, be happy.

Part of me is even impressed with the Dune: Awakening creator. I understood the game's origin and class options as poorly a🎶s a butterfly survives the rain – I ultimately took up the Reverend Mother's call t♚o go to Arrakis as a Bene Gesserit Acolyte from Chusuk, because it sounded yummy. But I know for a fact that Dune: Awakening has made some innovations in nose science. It might be the only video game to allow me to nearly perfectly replicate my big, wide, curved nose, the product of a Bulgarian mother and Bengali father who I'm sure meant well.

That's a big deal for me. I've been searching long and hard. I may not be able to tell my sandworms from my tapeworm, but I'm intimately familiar with the dark magic of character creation; I've spent at least a gazillion million hours on carefully designing my gorgeous protagonists in💃 games like Bloodborne, Bloodborne in my second playthrough, Bloodborne in my third playthrough, and so on.

When I'm at my most sick – meaning, if I don't plop an ingeniously placed beauty mark on goth drow in 50 seconds, I will go anaphylactic – I've even picked up great games solely for their character creators and then dropped them immediately after finalizing the last butt slider. May my abandoned children in Monster Hunter World, Final Fantasy 14, and 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Baldur's Gate 3 forge their own paths in life.

With this in mind, I recognize that it's possible that my 40 minutes in Dune: Awakening's comprehensive character creator might mean nothing, just another afternoon of exchanging sweet nothings with a hair color picker, but I'd like to believe I've changed. Because, really, I haven't been creating and crushing all these warriors, magicians, peasants, and princesses, out of some crowlike desperation for shiny things. I've been chasing a nose.

Dune: Awakening is so much more than a survival game or an MMO – it's a unique sci-fi experience shaped by Frank Herbert's 60-year-old lore and all that came after it.