BillMurphy

The Maestros Open Beta is now under way, and the guys at Systence Games are giving out roughly 5,000 keys to try the competitive action RTS before it launches next week.

This week's MMOFTW is all about the upcoming bit Battle for Azeroth content update, Neverwinter's crafting overhaul, Lineage II's classic servers, Wargaming's new MMO and more. Watch and learn!

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was one of 2017’s best Nintendo Switch RPGs, and today marks the launch of its first big “DLC”. I put that in quotes, because this sucker is basically a whole new prequel game to Xenoblade Chronicles 2. It’s got dozens of hours of story filling in the history of the game, with familiar characters, and a refined battle and crafting system to boot. If you liked any of the Xenoblade games so far, you’re in for a treat.

This week's MMOFTW is a ton of huge news - from Breach's first testing phases to the shut down of WildStar, and the selling of CCP to BDO's maker, it's been a busy week. Take it in and learn!

Neverwinter’s next module is going to be a bit different than the norm. The Heart of Fire is created in collaboration with Penny Arcade's Acquisitions Incorporated D&D campaign. It has stories and voice over from Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins plus Amy Falcone, it’s a more lighthearted journey through famous locales across the Forgotten Realms. We had a chance to play the campaign’s opening mission at PAX West.

At PAX West this year, we had the chance to be among the first people in the world to play Breach, the ambitious new genre-brending ARPG from QC Games. Breach is a combination of mechanics and genres that make for something pretty unique in the F2P space, and we’re lucky enough to say that it also plays pretty dang well to boot.

Battle for Azeroth is World of Warcraft’s 7th expansion. It’s been nearly a decade and a half since we all first walked through the gates of Ironforge or Orgrimmar, and the big question is: does WoW still have that magic? It’s an argument as old as the game itself at this point, but if the 3.4 million first day sales are any indication, the answer may be yes. This is our World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth review.

We're back! Hopefully for good! This week's new MMOFTW (like, OMG, finally) is all about Just Survive's death, WoW's dominance, Bless Unleashed, Torchlight Frontiers, and Maplestory 2!

Let me preface this: Battle for Azeroth may very well be the pinnacle of story and zone design in World of Warcraft’s 14-year history. I’ve loved almost every bit of questing and dungeon content, and I’m actually reading the quests for the first time in years. But there’s a big glaring issue that’s increasingly clear the more I play – it never feels like your character is growing or making progress in this expansion.

What seems forever ago, we talked with Max Schaefer and Runic Games upon the announcement of Torchlight 1, and how the IP’s ultimate goal was to evolve into an MMO. That had always been the goal with the ill-fated Flagship side-project Mythos, but we all know that Flagship never could get Mythos where it wanted to go. Runic wanted to make Hob, and Max still wanted to make that ARPG MMO he’d been dreaming of for years. Enter, Echtra Games.

Fourteen years young and WoW is back with another expansion. Can Battle for Azeroth repeat the overall success of Legion? By all accounts so far, there’s a lot of what made Legion work present in Blizzard’s latest, and if the early hours of play are any indication, more of the same might not be so bad.

Eyeglasses for gamers are often tacky in style, but incredibly useful to the point where you put up with their faux “edgy” looks. Thankfully, Felix Gray has stepped into the PC gaming eyewear arena to help make glasses for people who like a more muted style but still want help warding off the screen-driven eye pain of daily PC gaming and browsing.

Rend is an interesting game any way you slice it. It’s not entirely an MMORPG, as it’s still limited to the smaller numbers of players like Conan Exiles, ARK, and so forth. And yet, the developers at Frostkeep so clearly want to make it very much like the classic three-faction game, Dark Age of Camelot - if DAOC had a baby with the survival genre. And that, it turns out, may just be creating some magic.

It’s not been a good year for brand spanking new games in the MMORPG realm. Heck, when was the last time it was? But that doesn’t mean the games we already have haven’t been making a strong showing. In fact, some of the most popular games in the world right now are those that have been out for years already. Here is our list of the Best MMOs of 2018 So Far (in no particular order).

The online Survival RPG that wants to be less sucky than the rest is due to hit Steam's Early Access in just 20 days on July 31st. Check out the release date trailer and more past the break.