MMO Week in Review: Dawntrail and Path of Exile 2

It’s been a hell of a weekend for Final Fantasy XIV and Path of Exile fans thanks to Fanfest and ExileCon. CBU3 took the wraps off FFXIV’s next expansion – Dawntrail – as well as the game’s more immediate patches, while Grinding Gear Games stunned MMOARPG fans by announcing that the long-awaited Path of Exile 2, which will hit beta next summer, will be split off into a proper standalone game after all.

Read on to catch up with the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions today as every Sunday (since 2010!) in Massively Overpowered’s Week in Review!

THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES

Final Fantasy XIV’s next expansion is called Dawntrail – The fan festival has just revealed that the next expansion for Final Fantasy XIV is titled Dawntrail and will release in summer of 2024. We’ll have more details for you…

Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival Las Vegas: Keynote takeaways, Dawntrail, and Xbox X|S – The Final Fantasy XIV fan festival is upon us yet again, and as we all expected, we now know the name of the next expansion: Dawntrail, with a projected release…

Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival Las Vegas: All the big news from the patch 6.5 live letter – Let’s not mince words: Final Fantasy XIV has every fan hyped up for the next expansion coming in about a year. But there’s more coming for the game before then,…

ExileCon 2023: Previewing Path of Exile 2’s Monk and Sorceress skills – During the sneak peek press preview ahead of ExileCon 2023, Game Director Jonathan Rogers highlighted many different things. So. Many. Things. But in this recap, we want to focus on…

ExileCon 2023: Path of Exile 2 introduces dodge rolling and instant weapon/skill swapping – If there is one thing that Grinding Gear Games excels at, it is the meaty info dump! The studio is really great at other things too, but every time I…

ExileCon 2023: Path of Exile 2 is now a true sequel with a closed beta June 7, 2024 – ExileCon 2023 kicked off this evening as Path of Exile fans have gathered both live in New Zealand and in front of screens all around the world to watch events…

Path of Exile heralds August’s Trial of the Ancestor league while smirking at Diablo IV – While visions of next year’s Path of Exile 2 are swimming in the heads of fans, Grinding Gear Games hopes that they’ll spare some attention and energy for something far…

Ashes of Creation takes a closer look at Alpha Two’s updated Cleric class – When it comes to healer archetypes, one of the more interesting to many MMORPG players is the Cleric, and it looks as if that class in Ashes of Creation is…

Diablo IV devs discuss updates coming to classes, items, and monster density in August’s 1.1.1 patch – The most recent Campfire Chat video from Diablo IV might have some good news for players of the ARPG, as it mostly zeroes in on a host of updates due…

LOTRO Legendarium: Is LOTRO on the cusp of a crafting renaissance? – There are a lot of big and interesting projects in the works for Lord of the Rings Online’s Updates 37 and 38 — too many to cover in a single…

Wow Factor: The future of Blizzard is bleak – So yesterday our Massively Overthinking roundtable asked everyone to sound off on the future of Blizzard because… well, the studio had a plan to weather all of its controversies and…

Blade and Soul lures players into its Chaos Avalanche Den – My mama always said that friends who try to lure you into their Chaos Avalanche Dens aren’t really friends at all but probably serial killers in the making. But now…

Tarisland vows to boost endgame PvP, crafting, and exploration following beta feedback – Tencent’s Tarisland devs have descended on Discord again, this time to discuss player beta feedback on the don’t-call-it-a-WoW-clone’s endgame. The studio says that it ran a poll – of its…

Massively Overthinking: What’s Blizzard’s next move? – Gamers and pundits talked a big talk about Blizzard’s prospects over the last few years. Don’t worry about the weak revenues and plunging MAUs, they said. Don’t react to the…

Obituary: Former Lord of the Rings Online lore-master Berephon has passed away – Old school Lord of the Rings Online players may remember a developer by the name of Jonathan Rudder — or as he was called on the forums, “Berephon.” Sadly, the…

Niantic’s Monster Hunter Now MMOARG opens prereg ahead of September 14 launch – Don’t look now, but Niantic is spinning up a few more plates and hoping they don’t come crashing to the ground: As previously announced, the MMOARG company partnered with Capcom…

Kickstarted VR MMORPG Ilysia announces beta 1 starting tomorrow – Readers might recall that Kickstarted VR MMORPG Ilysia has been in alpha since 2021, when it picked up a chunk of investor funding, but its beta has been delayed twice…

Vague Patch Notes: Culture doesn’t excuse poor design choices in MMOs – So Tarisland has heard that people don’t like gender-locked classes. This is the correct feedback because gender-locked classes blow, and every game that has them would be better without them.…

Glorbo lives on thanks to the mischievous scamps in the Destiny 2 community – Here’s a copycat we’re more than happy to see: The Destiny 2 fanbase now has a Glorbo of its own, doing good works in the world. Last week, the World…

Guild Wars 2 talks up the return of Zojja and voice actor Felicia Day – With all of the things coming to Guild Wars 2 when Secrets of the Obscure launches, one of the more exciting pieces for long-time fans is the return of Zojja…

Lord of the Rings Online starts testing River-hobbits but delays (part of) the stat squish – River-hobbits are back on the menu in Lord of the Rings Online, as the much-anticipated new racial variant was put on the test server this week for the first time.…

Old School RuneScape releases its newest quest line Desert Treasure II The Fallen Empire – It’s been nearly 20 years since Old School RuneScape players visited the Mahjarrat and its mysterious people in the Desert Treasure quest. At long last the sequel is upon us,…

SSG opens preorders for Dungeons & Dragons Online’s Vecna Unleashed – Dungeons and Dragons Online’s update 60 has launched today, but never mind all that: Buy Vecna Unleashed! You think I’m kidding, but that’s pretty much how today’s official announcement reads,…

Massively on the Go: Niantic’s Pokemon Go Plus+ debacle illuminates a big metaverse pitfall – Don’t let that title fool you, dear readers; we’re not really talking about NFTs, blockchain, or the metaverse itself. Instead, we’re addressing the oft-repeated lie that NFTs and blockchain games…

Perfect Ten: We’ll always have Glorbo – Yes, folks, you’ve all heard the news by now about how Glorbo is finally being added into World of Warcraft. You may, of course, think that this is all just…

NetEase’s post-apoc MMO Ashfall plans NA PC closed beta August 3rd – When last we checked in on NetEase’s post-apoc MMO shooter Ashfall, it was running a spring closed beta – and delaying its launch to summer of 2024, after originally expecting…

Sea of Thieves apologizes for delaying season 10 to October 19 as season 9 drags on – Bad news for the Sea of Thieves fanbase today, as Rare has delayed the game’s 10th season rather significantly. Rare hadn’t technically announced a date for the season, but players…

Kakao partially denies report that ArcheAge will sunset following XLGAMES restructure – [We’re updating at the end with Kakao’s statements.][spacer] Korea’s Money Today News has a disturbing scoop on turmoil at XLGAMES that appears to mean layoffs inside the studio – and…

World of Warcraft introduces new charity pets to support BlueCheck Ukraine – If you want to support Ukraine in its continued crisis defending itself against a Russian invasion that has done immense damage to the country, That’s a good thing. If you’re…

Mobile MMO Dragon Nest 2 makes its global launch with a music video and a sea serpent in tow – Back in 2019 we first reported on Dragon Nest 2, a mobile MMO that takes the Dragon Nest IP and applies its more MMORPG sensibilities to the platform, as opposed…

Fight or Kite: Harry Potter Magic Awakened brings the familiarity of the Wizarding World to an MMO – The time is here at last: Not only can I play Harry Potter: Magic Awakened, but I can finally write about it too. I’ve been anticipating this game since it…

Choose My Adventure: What Warhammer Return of Reckoning taught me about my competitive nature – I used to believe that I wasn’t a very competitive person. Sure, I could consider myself stubborn and driven to excel, and I most assuredly know that I’m given to…

Diablo Immortal’s 16th season includes China-only content and battleground leeching penalties – Will Diablo Immortal’s update this week share the same fate as Diablo IV’s last week? Unlikely, as the one-year-old mobile-friendly NetEase/Blizzard collaboration launches the content patch that lays the foundation…

The Soapbox: Why Cryptic’s MMOs are the epitome of comfort gaming – They say you never forget your first kiss. I honestly can’t recall much about mine, but I do vividly remember the day that I ran to the store before work…

Tarisland might be reconsidering gender-locked classes following beta feedback – Tarisland dropped a big dev burst early this morning buried in its Discord, addressing three key bits of feedback from the recent beta test: class balance, equipment appearance, and gender…

Blue Protocol’s western version finally drops a new trailer filled with frenetic combat – Still sad about the fact that Blue Protocol is out in Japan already while we’re stuck waiting until next year? Well, the silver lining is that Amazon and Bandai Namco…

Erenshor is a game that seeks to condense the MMORPG experience into a fully single-player title – Being able to enjoy some solo MMORPG content is never a bad option to have, but what if the entire MMO gaming experience was made into a full single-player RPG?…

Wisdom of Nym: Reviewing Final Fantasy XIV patch 6.45, from Blue Mage to Rokkon – Look, I know what the title says, but this review is not actually going to be any shorter than normal. If you were worried about that, don’t be. (You probably…

MMO and gaming companies enjoy some fun ribbing Twitter’s needless X rebranding stunt – If you woke up today and saw your little blue bird logo on Twitter replaced with what is reportedly a letter X from the public domain, you might have also…

THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS

Every week, get caught up on the MMO genre’s latest news and Massively OP’s best content in our MMO Week in Review! Want more roundups of content? Try Friday’s Betawatch for MMO testing highlights, Saturday’s Make My MMO for MMO crowdfunding updates, and Sunday’s The MOP Up, which mops up all the bits of news we didn’t cover anywhere else.

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