William Murphy

In our third and final Player's Choice Award for 2016, we're asking you to pick your top overall MMO of the year. Read on, add your vote, and prepare to argue!

The biggest systems update ever for Marvel Heroes 2016 is about to land on the live servers this coming Thursday. The culmination of seven months of rigorous work, every single hero (of the 50+ in the game) is receiving a skills pass. The Omega system for end-game progression is being replaced by the Infinity system. Talents are coming to the game along with traits for each hero.

In a surprising move, we've learned via MMOGames that Repopulation's developer Above and Beyond Technologies has sold the entirety of The Repopulation to HERO Engine developer Idea Fabrik. The Repopulation will be re-opened and development will begin again soon, while Above and Beyond focuses on Fractured as their main project.

It's time to vote for another award, folks. This time, we've compiled a list of the MMOs that launched in 2016, and we want you all to pick which one is the best of the bunch.

We’ll be running a series of brief interviews over the next few weeks focused on the games and companies of the MMO world, and what 2017 will bring. We’ve reached out to many, and the first one back to us with their answers was Black Desert Online and Kakao Games’ Rick Van Beem. Read on to see what they team learned from 2016, and what’s in store for 2017.

Yakuza 0 is the long-awaited English release of the prequel to SEGA’s venerable open world franchise. It originally launched in Japan back in 2015, and in just a couple of weeks the English-speaking world gets their hands on the title that lets them play as Kiryu before he was a bigshot, as well as the one-eyed badass Goro Majima. We’ve been dabbling in the PS4 release for a week now and have some initial thoughts to share.

Ship of Heroes is a new, but quickly progressing indie MMO from Heroic Games, a studio founded on the idea that City of Heroes needs a true successor to fill its void in the MMORPG market. We spoke with CEO Casey McGeever about Ship of Heroes, what it's all about, and how progress on development is being made.

Homestead for Elder Scrolls Online, just hit the Public Test Server and we dove in eagerly to view a few of the more luxurious spaces and see how the decorating works. Alongside all the new homely goodness, ESO is also adding furniture crafting, overhauling a ton of class and weapon skills for balance, and tweaking loads of other aspects to the game.

Homestead, the forthcoming mega housing patch for Elder Scrolls Online, just hit the Public Test Server and we dove in eagerly to view a few of the more luxurious spaces and see how the decorating works. Alongside all the new homely goodness, ESO is also adding furniture crafting, overhauling a ton of class and weapon skills for balance, and tweaking loads of other aspects to the game.

A New Year brings new hope and new hype. And that means it's time to set our sights on the games of 2017 and for us to ask you all to vote for your most wanted MMO of the next 12 months.

2016 is in the bag folks, and after 52 weeks of MMO news, you’ll be surprised (or maybe) not to see what the most viewed stories on MMORPG.com were over the course of the year. Some of you will probably see why Black Desert gets a lot of reporting too, both here and across the web. Read on for our top 20 stories of 2016!

2016 was a rough year. The long-standing MMOs we’ve come to love carried along quite well, but for new titles the selection was pretty limited. And so, as we’re fond to do at year’s end, we look forward to 2017 and the titles we expect to launch (even if in early access, which we pretty much consider launched but ‘half-baked’). Here’s to the next twelve months and the many hours of gaming goodness we hope it brings.

With the recent worry that Bless Online was not going to be making its way to NA and EU markets, we reached out to Aeria Games for a quick chat with Jérôme Nguyen Van Long, the Director of Game Launches at the Berlin-based company. Rest assured, Bless is indeed still coming to the NA and EU territories and progress is steadily being made. Read on for our exclusive interview with Aeria Games about the status of Bless Online.

I’ve been dabbling in Skyforge lately, due to the overwhelming amount of changes we’ve seen made to the game in recent months. Curiosity got the best me, and I’m glad I made the return. While the recent overhaul to the campaign and removal of the Atlas have made waves of positive and negative in the community, the Skyforge I find today is a game that’s altogether more palatable and less confusing than before.

It’s the end of the year as we know it, and that means it’s time for us here at MMORPG.com to gather around and salute our picks for the best MMOs and RPGs of 2016, plus the ones we’re most anxious for in 2017. Read on for our Best of 2016 Awards!