This has been an interesting couple weeks. We’ve had some new MMOs announced, we’ve had some entire publisher studios shut down, and gotten some announcements we’ve been actively waiting on for.. years now.
So you guys should be excited! We’ve got quite a bit to talk about in this week’s Weekly Byte of MMORPG News video.

miHoYo, the developers behind the upcoming Genshin Impact game have announced that they’re going to be launching on September 28th – globally, on the PC, PS4 and mobile devices.
Yes, the PS4 release was expected to be delayed due to the beta test period being extended well beyond the PC and mobile test periods, but apparently they pushed through and will now have a simultaneous release across all platforms.
I’ve talked about Genshin Impact quite extensively over the course of the last year, and I’m happy to say that it’s finally almost time for everyone to get in-game and play.
Together, with other players if you want to – Mrs Stix and I – or at least Mrs Stix is definitely going to be playing as I think the multiplayer experience is utter garbage, but disregarding the multiplayer aspect the game is truly an incredible game.. well that and the Gacha system is terrible.
PS4 pre-registration is also available right now for players that want to register for the PS4 launch – or at least it was when I wrote this up.

I was directed to an article on MMOCulture this morning where I learned that Nexon are in the process of developing a brand new PC MMORPG that they’re calling a “AAA-class masterpiece game that can satisfy users in all aspects such as content and visuals.”
I know, guys, Nexon has disappointed us with every single release in the history of their studio, but maybe they can change. Maybe they- okay, I can’t continue that sentence with a straight face.
While the project has a currently unnamed title, they did go on to announce what they’re creating: A medieval fantasy MMORPG based on a completely new IP with a seamless, open world that features no loading screens, has guild content, will be cross-platform between PC and mobile devices like Genshin Impact or Tower of Fantasy and – if I read correctly.. might be an isometric MMO like Diablo or Path of Exile?
They’re also developing another project, “Project HP” but little is known about that thus far other than it’ll be another medieval game with magic.

For those of you waiting on any news pertaining to Project TL.. here you go, finally! NCSoft confirmed that the game is going to be undergoing a test phase from the 31st of August through the 4th of September, with an upcoming Closed Beta scheduled for later this year.
I had reported on this earlier this year, where I mentioned that both Project TL and Project BBQ were both going into some form of testing this year, but this confirms things – at least for Project TL.
NCSoft also just registered the “TL” and “TL: Origin” trademarks as well, which leads us to believe it’s close to releasing – with them promising it’ll launch by 2021!
They went on to elaborate that they have every intention of launching globally, with “Project TL being developed for the global audience with technologies and visuals they are familiar with,” further going on to state that this is supposed to be the “start of a new universe.”

En Masse Entertainment, the publisher behind both TERA and Closers announced last week that they were actually shutting down.
Meaning all of their staff members – people that have worked on their games for almost a decade now, or over a decade, actually, since I believe they started 11 years ago, are now jobless – a terrible situation for any person.
While it’s always sad to see a publisher shut down, or MMOs go offline, it’s worth noting that Naddic Games, the developers behind Closers have several updates for the game planned, including continuing to publish the game in the regions it’s currently available in.
We’ve heard nothing pertaining to TERA’s fate currently though, but it’s a safe bet to assume Gameforge will likely publish it since they recently attained South East Asian publishing rights for the game on top of their European publishing rights.

Amazon Game Studios, you know, the very same people behind Crucible and New World, have announced that they entered into a publishing agreement with Smilegate RPG, the developers of Lost Ark.
This sparked a wave of interest, as they went on to confirm that “Amazon Games is committed to bringing our customers the most engaging game experiences, both through our own internal development teams and from the very best external development studios around the world.”
This is confirmation that they are open to working with other developers around the world to bring foreign MMOs to the global market. MMOs that would have otherwise been completely ignored, self-published, or published by companies like Gameforge or MY.GAMES – something none of us want.
They went on to note that Smilegate has a “strong track record of creating big games that players love, built to offer years of enjoyment.”
Currently, Smilgate has developed and publishes 3 PC games within South Korea: Soul Worker, Tales Runner and Lost Ark. Since Soul Worker is published by Gameforge, and Tales Runner is in no way a AAA budget PC title, it’s all but confirmed we’ll be getting Lost Ark.
Next year, actually, since they confirmed the game will be launching “some time during 2021,” with specific details being revealed at “a later date.”

ArenaNet made 2 large announcements concerning Guild Wars 2 earlier this week: The first is that the game is going to receive a much needed boost in population when it launches on to Steam in November 2020 – yup, players will finally be able to connect the game to their steam accounts.
This is something that players have wanted for a long time. But one issue with that reveal is that you’re going to be required to make a brand new account as unlike Star Wars The Old Republic and PSO2, ArenaNet will not be supporting account migration options.
What this means is that if you have an account on ArenaNet, you’re stuck there. You can’t connect your account to Steam, instead, you’re required to make a brand new account via the Steam client – something I know has caused a lot of upset in the community as it just seems ridiculous.
Second, they announced that their next expansion, which is taking us back to Cantha, is actually titled “End of Dragons,” although not much was really shown or detailed during the reveal, including an expected release date.

So New World is having a Preview event held until September 4th, allowing players to log in if they’re pre-ordered the game at some point in the past and test the game completely.
I actually just did a video on this yesterday, where I went over my experience within the game and while I was definitely disappointed – I feel like Amazon have plenty of time to fix issues both Mrs Stix and I had with the game.
This definitely has a target audience that will enjoy the game, as it’s not in any way a bad game, but that audience is definitely not the MMORPG niche as it felt like a survival crafter more than anything else.
If you’re interested, I urge you to head on over and watch my New World video to decide for yourself.

Last week Intrepid Studios, the team behind the upcoming Ashes of Creation MMORPG announced that they were breaking off their partnership with MY.GAMES, who was in charge of publishing the game within Europe.
Intrepid instead have opted to open their own publishing studio within Europe to handle publishing within the region, which while I’m glad to see – as MY.GAMES are terrible, look at Revelation Online and Skyforge, I don’t know how well this will turn out considering this is a smaller indie dev studio we’re talking about here.
Ashes of Creation is still a very, very long way off releasing, as is the way of the indie MMO scene.

This is coming earlier than I’d anticipated. People were assuming “end of December” for the Shadowlands release, but apparently Blizzard just announced yesterday – or, a couple days ago as of this going live, that Shadowlands would be going live on October 27th, 2020.
This means that the pre-patch is going to be hitting the live servers very soon, like it always does ahead of a new expansion.
It’s been a while since we’ve gotten new content, so it’s nice to see that it’s only a short wait between now and then, and both Mrs Stix and I are incredibly excited, so much so that not only will we be starting brand new characters once the pre-patch hits, but we’ll also be leveling those characters on stream. And you guys are more than welcome to join us in-stream and in our new guild as well! We play on Stormrage, FYI.

By now you’re all well aware that Bless Unleashed is also releasing on PS4 under Bandai Namco – which if it’s anything like the Xbox release handled by Bamco won’t really be bad, but also that Neowiz is self-publishing the PC version of the game on Steam.
And that version probably will be, as Bamco actually distanced themselves from the PC release claiming they have “nothing to do with it.” But I digress.
The PC iteration of Bless Unleashed is going into Closed Beta testing next month, and there’s a pre-registration form for players that are interested in testing the game out on PC.
The PC Beta will run for 12 hours on September 26th, and there won’t be any restrictions preventing players from across the glove from participating. Yup – this and likely the full release of the game will feature a full global release.

I did a video covering this a couple days ago, but apparently Jandisoft, the developer behind the upcoming Grim-dark MMORPG Mad World have stated that after being mostly silent throughout the year, they still have an expected release date of 2020.
The game was initially expected to release back in 2018 but suffered quite a few setbacks that ultimately resulted in the game being delayed as long as it has been. There have been a few small updates made over the course of the year, but otherwise I find it interesting that they still expect to release in the next couple months.

Who would’ve thought that Grand Fantasia would continue to receive updates? Because I got some good news for players still active within the game – Gamigo has rolled out a large update that allows players to tackle a brand new dungeon with new bosses, new items and more.
I wasn’t aware that the game was still – well, can we say “actively updated?” Because let’s be honest, yes this is an update, but it’s in no way being “actively updated,” right?

One might consider me a little “mad” to have waited this long to do a video on Mad World, but you know what? I’ve been busy. And I forgot about it – with good reasoning. There’s been hardly any news on the game all year, with the team behind the upcoming MMORPG being pretty much silent for the vast majority of it.
But last week they finally came out and released an update regarding the game’s release schedule – and that it’s still slated to come out this year, 2020. With this in mind, I wanted to go ahead and cover the game as this is the perfect opportunity to.
Mad World is an upcoming MMO coming out before the year ends after all and I bet you guys are looking for a new game as much as any of us!

So what is Mad World? An upcoming MMORPG that boasts a unique, completely hand-drawn, dark, gritty art style presented in a 2D isometric perspective, much like you’d find in games like Lost Ark, Project TL or even Path of Exile.
This art style is used to illustrate a grim-dark post-apocalyptic world filled with grotesque creatures, mutated Humans and a lack of any form of society.
Mad World offers competitive PvP environments for players to partake of if they’re interested in that aspect of the game, and various PvE-related elements as well, such as dynamic boss encounters out within the world, raiding for players that would rather competitive PvE and a story that encompasses the bleak world you’re now a part of.

Speaking of PvE and PvP though, the combat from what I’ve seen actually looks pretty solid. I’ve seen large-scale battles, both mounted and on foot and the combat, which is an isometric action type of combat looks pretty damn good.
This is a game that utilizes a very unique, very specific graphical style, so you can’t expect combat or abilities akin to something out of Blade & Soul or Black Desert, but the effects mesh brilliantly with the world they’ve built and fit the game style perfectly.
Naturally, considering this is an MMO, you’d expect a broad selection of classes to be found. However classes are interestingly absent.
Instead, players’ – I’m gonna go ahead and say “play style” here as opposed to “class” is dependent on what weapon they have equipped, with every weapon allowing for a completely separate combat style including abilities specific to the weapon type.
Players will have to choose the style they want to play as and farm weapons of that type exclusively, but also learn to adapt to other styles of play in the chance they find a much better weapon than what they have equipped.
At the same time this means that every player will serve a purpose, and be capable of providing and filling a role that is necessary for the team. It’s as simple as swapping weapons after all.
While there will no doubt be large dynamic boss encounters spread throughout the world, there are other types of non-combat related activities to engage in.
You can farm, you can hunt, there are, obviously, quest available to take and complete – but that’s all that’s been expanded on thus far.

Mad World is going to feature a large world to explore, but it’ll be explorable much like Guild Wars 2 or Final Fantasy XIV: You’ll be able to traverse between large, segregated zones that are split off from one another by a small loading screen.
This doesn’t mean the game is instanced though as you’ll find hundreds of other players around the world actively participating in world boss fights, quests and generally farming for.. er, stuff.
I just hope that there’s enough to actually warrant going out into the world and doing other than “fighting world bosses,” and it’s a little disconcerting that I don’t see much in the way of info pertaining to dungeons or raids other than “they’ll be there.”

This is an MMO that is being built on HTML5, which means that not only can you play on your PC, but you can play on a browser without the need for installation, including mobile devices, console platforms and anything else that has browser support.
Not only will it feature large-scale cross-platform compatibility – and before you guys say anything, yes, this game is being built first and foremost for PC, every other platform will merely be “compatible,” but it’ll also be completely free-to-play.
Yes, the upcoming Mad World MMO is going to adopt a free-to-play business model with microtransactions. I know, I know. “But Stix, that means the game will be pay-to-win,” and you know what? That’s definitely plausible. Most free MMOs are pay-to-win in some capacity.
We’ll have to wait and see what happens with Mad World though. Maybe they’ll surprise us, who knows.

Regardless, I’ve been excited to see how this turns out for a while now. And knowing that it’s supposedly right around the corner in terms of releasing is promising news!

The upcoming MMORPG Mad World is holding what is being referred to as a “Real, traditional alpha test” – Yup, there will be no founder packs or anything of that nature to guarantee you get into future Alpha tests.
Jandisoft, the team behind the game went on to state that “This test is not indicative of the final product. There will be glitches, errors and significant development changes. Your progress will be wiped.”
The Alpha will also be under an NDA, meaning you won’t be able to record or stream footage of the game.

Apply for Closed Alpha Test coming this April. We are looking for a few dedicated players. Click the link below to apply. Eng: https://t.co/4FFJkGvy15 한글: https://t.co/CVEpXgYhm1 pic.twitter.com/UC9wK84mos

— MAD WORLD MMO (@jandisoft) March 5, 2019

For players wanting to sign up to the new Mad World MMO, you can go right ahead and use this form to be redirected to their Alpha registration. May the odds be ever in your favor, young Padawan.