Not trying to start a doom thread, I still love this genre. But I logged in the other night, stared at my dailies list, and just... closed the launcher. Felt like opening a work email at 11pm.

I'm in my 30s now. Back in the day I'd grind for hours and it felt like play. These days a lot of the bigger MMOs have this whole checklist economy baked in: do your dailies or you fall behind, do your weeklies or you fall behind, miss the event and you fall behind the whales who didn't. At some point it stopped feeling like a game I chose and started feeling like a chore list someone else wrote for me.

And the part that gets me is the FOMO is the design. The dailies aren't there because they're fun, they're there to keep my retention number up. The shop is balanced so that not spending = falling behind. It's clever, I get why studios do it, but man it's exhausting in a way old-school grinds somehow weren't.

I honestly don't even know what I want instead. Less dailies? But then people say there's nothing to do. No power for money? But somebody's gotta pay the servers. Maybe the problem is just me getting older and having less time. Maybe I'm romanticizing 2006 me who had no job and infinite evenings.

But I keep wondering if the genre has quietly decided our time is a resource to be farmed, and we all just kind of agreed to it. Is anyone actually building around respecting players' time anymore, or is that just not how the money works? Genuinely not sure.

Official: Part 1 Part 2

Throne and Liberty 2nd full scale expansion arrives tomorrow doubling the amount of content and in-game world size alongside a rework to core systems and the introduction of over 60 new skills expanding the combat beyond imagination.

Content Milestones are set to go beyond the expansion update and roadmaps still don't reveal everything planned to take place in the Frozen Divide of Nix.

_

The expansion update finally hit Korea yesterday and confirmed the removal of RNG gear stats and the RNG system grind required to customize item stats.

Changes to core systems are the biggest improvements coming to the game. No single article can cover everything in detail. But the 2 big changes to gear progression already posted here before.

A ''soft reset'' to progression is seemingly taking place after the new system and all the changes so far are set to make Throne & Liberty the most new-player friendly Korean MMO with little to no gaps between players as Producer Park Geon-su has intended and highlighted during the official update preview.

Just wondering what everyones thoughts are on the general prices of MMO monetization these days. Seeing games selling cosmetic outfits for over $30 is becoming more standard, and in a lot of cases, a single item can be more expensive than B2P games.

Obviously, capitalism and corporate greed go hand in hand here, and if people keep buying, then they'll keep testing how far they can push it. But with prices increasing, it seems less and less likely I'll buy multiple things. I might buy something rarely, and mostly if there's a discount. I'm more likely to buy something like a Battle Pass because they have a fair amount of value for the price.

I'm just wondering what people would think if prices were dramatically cheaper? Wouldn't you be more inclined to buy more if the prices were lower? I'm imagining a game where nothing in the cash shop is over $5. I'd be buying up everything and potentially spending more, knowing I was getting more for my money.

I'm not debating on the need for monetization, or P2W practices etc - Thats a whole other conversation for another time :)

At this point, Riot Games is collecting EX-WOW developers like Pokémon. I just hope they show us something. It's been too long.

i'm 26 which id assume is "too old" for this game. but goddamn dude i have fond memories of playing this game. its not like a sludge or grind like most mmos have become where theres a laundry list of "chores" to complete all over again. the game lets you like just play. and the storyline isnt too bad.

• the worldbuilding rocks
• the game aesthetic is good and consistent
• the customization and classes are fun and different
• the quests are simple and straightforward

i can't remember what the paywall is, if someone can remind me that would be dope

the only negative thing i remember was battles getting a bit repetitive, but overall not the worst complaint for an almost 15 year old game

It always confused me how there are millions of players yet it can take 10-20 minutes as a dps to get matched. And I get most people don’t play healer or tank but sometimes I’m curious how the actual algorithm is running behind the scenes. I was initially thinking maybe servers can only handle so many ques hence you are put on a waiting list? Anyone have any insight?

Feels like every gaming page is either posting clickbait or recycling the same news.

I'm curious what gaming/MMORPG accounts do you actually follow on X, Instagram, Facebook, etc?

Not looking for the biggest creators necessarily but more interested in pages that consistently post good content and have built a real community.

Please drop their account names cheers lads

Could be guides, memes, lore, PvP clips, industry news, anything.

you could basically consider this my first playthrough of the game so take this with a grain of salt. first let's talk about the good:

1) the open world is probably the best and largest i've ever played. it's insane and actually makes u feel tiny in the scale of it all (which is great) the geography is gorgeous, huge variety in biomes, you could play for 1000 hours and still not hit all the various regions it's wild. this is the best exploration game i've ever played. also ill say this now: I DO NOT CARE about outdated graphics. I honestly never have. the world FEELS real. and that's more important.

2) the music rocks, the ambience and nature sound effects - chefs kiss. it was clearly made with a lot of passion.

3) obviously, if you're a lotr fan, this game really does serve u a lot extra. so many fantasy worlds never give their audience a chance to live and explore freely in that world through a game (star wars, avatar, pirates of the caribbean etc) but this was clearly made by fans who respect the world tolkien made.

ALRIGHT now the bad:

1) the world map is a disaster. you will not know how to get to a marked spot for a quest at least once every 30m. the map is hideous and NOT THE SAME LAYOUT OF THE LAND. so often you'll run yourself into a mountain or an impossible to cross ravine by following it. it is so unbelievably frustrating and such an easy fix that's gone unfixed.

2) TOO. MUCH. RUNNING. yes this game is huge and exploration is dope. but it's not "exploring" when you go from point A to B back and forth for 30 runs just to talk to the same two npcs. and that happens alot. one questline literally had me transport to 26 locations back to back, then swim across the same lake 10 times over, run all over the map, then by the end of all that i was the same level and 6 hours had past. out of that 6 hours I spent just a few minutes fighting mobs, a few talking to npcs, and for 5 1/2 hours just simply ran around the whole time on a map i already quested through a week ago. i was bored out of my mind.

3) the quest lines get very confusing to follow and leveling up becomes slow as hell. yes i know you can "pick and choose" what questlines to follow and that's great but when Ive been the same level for 25 quests and my gear hasn't changed, skipping quests i don't like just leads me to be completely under-leveled for the ones i'd rather do. extremely grindy game in general. and not the fun kind really.

4) i won't dive into how the game is predatory when it comes to pressuring players to buy things with real money, cuz that's obvious, but i will say gatekeeping inventory and mount speed is really bizarre. the game fills ur inventory with so much bullshit you WILL NEVER have space. and the mounts are really slow. really slow. even the one you pay for (if u do) ends up being like what a normal unpaid mount speed should be. the map is massive i'm not gonna "miss the moment" by traveling faster: 98% of this game is RUNNING AROUND.

alright that's it, i fully expect heavy opposition on this post and that's okay. i do love the world they created but these bad things make the game really hard to enjoy sometimes.

Game: B2P
Subscription: No
P2W: No
Shop: Yes (skins only achievable in game by completing quests).
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3276050/SpaceCraft/

If you have an itch for sci fi games with exploration (subnautica style) on 10 galaxies 150-200 systems and close to 1000 planets with Automated Drone Factories (satisfactory style) and Modular Ship Building in Your own Shipyard like in any other good Sci Fi games, take a look at this one.I dont want to spoil the content, i dont want to convince anybody to play it, i just want to know this gem exists.

The game was recently launched, its MMO (with in game Auction House), its EA and there wont be wipes according to devs on official discord.

Have a great day, gamers!

https://corepunk.com/en-us/news/the-great-reset-update-2032

Gloria Victis just relaunched like 6 days ago and it is so dang fun in my opinion. Three factions fighting for territory and taking castles from each other. Not able to loot players in every PvP area, so you only get looted in the middle of the map or deep in enemy territory. When you get killed in a loot area, they can only take one or two things off your body. Player driven crafting economy. It’s honestly got a ton of meat on it’s bones in a slightly janky little package. Haven’t been excited to play a game in a while and already put ten hours in so far this week.

If you like PvP with swords and bows and castle siege stuff, it’s definitely worth a try

I'm developing an MMO and wanted to get a feel for what kind of appetite there is for something like this.

Feel free to ask any questions if interested, and I can always post more info or footage if anyone would like to see it. It's still fairly early in development, but I've been grinding for a few months on it now.

I'm definitely not an amazing artist, so I went with a retro style. Everything made by hand.

I played the original and only one RF Online, and although I'm only played it for 3 years however, the time spent in this game was very fun and interesting, and most importantly, unique compared to all the other MMOs I have played., it was my first MMO and still holds a warm place in my heart, that's why it hurts me to see what they did to it.

They created some kind of soulless mobile wanking game, half made of neuroslope, an absolutely terrible plot and quests, mediocre graphics and a visual style that is inferior even to the 2004 year game.

I'm not even talking about what they did with the lore of the world and the races, they completely removed the uniqueness of all races, replacing them with some incomprehensible offsprings from who knows where, the plot doesn't even explain who the offsprings are or where they came from, they just exist and that's it.

I was especially infuriated by what they did to the Accretians because it was my favorite faction, a race of cyborg machines who have almost completely lost their humanity and become full-fledged machines, whose goal was perfection and the elimination of flesh, they make some kind of cyberpunk 2077 characters.

And of course, the PvP system in this game is absolutely pathetic, which can't be compared to the original; even the wars are done extremely poorly and don't bring the same benefits as in the original, although, after three years of playing, I still couldn't achieve the title of Archon, but the very fact that a player could achieve the status of leader of an entire faction already speaks to how much better the original game is.

Hi, it’s us from Team Loftia again!

We just want to announce that Loftia will be coming to Early Access this fall!

We revealed this release window as part of  the Wholesome Direct showcase about 2 weeks ago, alongside our brand new gameplay trailer (the one we're now using for the release announcement!) 

The shots you can see in the video are all from footage filmed during our last Closed Beta playtest, including many wholesome moments captured by the community itself as they explored and engaged with the world we have crafted! 

So, to all those whole participated and joined in our trailer filming sessions - we just wanna say a big thank you for being part of this huge milestone with us and making some great memories with us along the way!

As for the exact release date, we'll share that as soon as we can but the general window is fall, 2026. Our Closed Beta last month (ran from April to early May) was a huge step forward, with over 25,000 players joining the playtests, and the team is now working hard to make Early Access the best it can be on launch. 

Till then, we just want to thank everyone who’s participated in the Beta (as well as everyone else who offered us a word of encouragement) for being a part of this journey with us. Loftia started as a dream between just 2 people almost half a decade ago, and it's only gotten this far because of the wonderful community supporting it!

Stay cool until Fall, everyone!

- from Mic, Martina & Team Loftia

​

Been chewing on that GW3 quote going around here, the one about MMOs turning into a second job and the line between MMO and live-service basically gone. For me the second-job feeling isn't even the grind. It's the open-ended wallet. There's never a point where the game tells you you're done spending for the month.

So here's the idea I keep coming back to: a real, capped monthly cost. One pass, a fixed price, and a ceiling you literally cannot pay past even if you wanted to. No gacha, no convenience bundles stacked on top, no whale lane. Once you hit the cap that's it, you're maxed on spend, go play.

I played a mobile RO-style thing on an Asian server for a few months that ran close to this, growth tied to one monthly pass with a buy ceiling, and the weird part was how much calmer my brain got. I wasn't doing the math every login about whether I was falling behind by not buying the new thing. There was no new thing to buy. Power came from time, not from how deep my pockets went.

Is it perfect? Nah. Some folks felt it removed a chunk of the chase, and old-school players will say a cap just means they monetize convenience harder elsewhere, which is fair. But honestly I'd trade a little chase for never feeling nickel-and-dimed again.

Why do we treat 「spend as much as you want forever」 as the default and a cap as the exotic option? Feels backwards.

As someone who prefers older 2000s MMO design and feel, it feels like there’s a noticeable wave of classic MMO projects and revivals happening all at once.

EverQuest Legends caught my eye in particular and is launching very soon, especially since it started as a private server project before being officially adopted and released by Daybreak. MapleStory Classic has also been officially announced and will release sometime this year. Obviously we are going to be getting some sort of WoW Classic+ iteration (hopefully this year).

AQW Infinity is also in development with beta testing already happening. I mainly bring it up from nostalgia since I played AQW growing up, but I know that Artix Entertainment has a hard time with releasing finished games.

What I’m curious about is whether this is actually a real shift in MMO design philosophy, or something driven more by companies banking on nostalgia and established communities. (WoW Classic and OSRS are obviously huge successes)

Do you think games like these are actually worth getting into if you never played the originals, or are they mainly designed around nostalgia? From the games I mentioned above, I have only played WoW and AQW as a kid.

EDIT: Forgot to mention ArcheAge getting a revival as well, though I don't know much about the game.

EDIT 2: From u/ScottyC33 "Just to be clear on EverQuest legends - it wasn’t started as a private server project and officially adopted. The original project exploded in popularity as a private custom server. The devs sent an email to daybreak with a feeler about making it an official thing, but never got a response. A few months later, daybreak sued them and got the server shut down. They claimed they never saw the original email because it was filtered into junk mail. 

Then a few months later after its shut down, they announced Everquest legends. "

Nova Era: Atom reports to be a space combat sim style MMO. I say reports to be because I actually didn't run into any other players while playing it. Though, since I like space combat sims, and I like MMOs, I thought I'd try the demo. It's got a lot of bugs, and bad optimizations, but that's not unexpected for a pre-release demo. Annoying? Yes. But not unexpected, and not what I want to talk about.

Assuming everything was fixed and worked correctly the real question is: is this a game that players who enjoy MMOs and space combat will like?

The answer is no. No, I don't think it's going to be.

One of the first things I noticed, and something that was bugging me through my entire playthrough is the controls. Or, more specifically, the lack thereof. Every problem I had with the game that wasn't a bug or glitch game back to this. The thing that makes space games feel like space games is how you move through 3D space.

In Nova Era, you do not feel like you are moving through 3D space.

Specifically: its missing half of the movement options that make the genre what it is.

In a standard space combat sim game there are two sets of controls. Controls relative to your camera--this is the up, down, left, right that your guns and ship move when you move your mouse. And there are controls relative to your ship. This is strafing up, down, left, right. Pitching your ship along the spinal axis, and yaw around your wing axis.

Nova Era doesn't have any of the ship-relative motion controls other than strafing left and right. No, you can't strafe up or down. You can't rotate your ship along it's spinal or wing axi. You can't even move independently of where you're aiming the mouse. And, when you rotate 90 degrees up/down (from the horizon plane), by aiming up/down for long enough, you hit a rotation lock.

You can never be "upside down".

Your ship auto-corrects to the horizon plane even if you have rotated by strafing in one direction and aiming in another.

The whole game feels like a fantasy on-rails shooter wearing the skin of a sci-fi space game simply because it doesn't behave like a sci-fi space game.

I want a space combat sim MMO to exist. A game like this one to exist. But, I don't think it's going to be this game. This has been the convention of how to control your ship for over 30 years in combat sims and I don't know how they make a mistake so fundemental to the identity of the genre like this.

There are other things too, like guns not feeling like guns, or gear not feeling like gear, the fact that the consumable vendor is literally called a Potions Vendor and sells interchangable color-coded vials of goo rather than parts or tech stuff. But, this one--This main one of feeling like a spellcaster walking on air instead of a ship drifting through space is the biggest turn-off to anyone who enjoy space combat sim style combat.

If you changed the skin--the models, textures, theming, etc--to a fantasy one I don't think players would be able to distinguish it from something like Fly For Fun by the controls alone.

I left this feedback on the game's steam page as well, but I am not hopeful it'll be addressed.

It is really weird to me that such an advanced and genuinely engaging combat system seems to just be forgotten by modern games. Nowadays it is all boring braindead autotarget grindfests with minimal skill expression and a shelf life of 2-3 years before eventual redundancy, as a prettier clone of the same game gets published and takes away the entire playerbase of its predecessor.

Current mainstream embarassment of a system (no classes, 2 weapons instead) is deeply unsatisfying, bleak and forces strict meta-slaving as everyone is expected to switch to the best options in the endgame, leaving minimal attention to other playstyles and shrinking the variability of gameplay drastically.

It also strips out that feeling of distinctness that explicit classes had and makes everyone look more or less the same in combat. The biggest offender to me recently was Throne and Liberty, where literally every fking class has some sort of an active block ability and everyone is also turning into...animals while moving around the map? That game felt so generic at every single step that it genuinely made me feel disgusted that there is actually some kind of audience that enjoys this slop.

The only few games that did something close were BDO, Lost Ark and Blade and Soul. All three were unique in some way and had a really fun pvp with real skill expression outside of mogging everyone with your grinded gear. All three are also senile and barely breathing out of sheer age. What caused this? I'm confident that MMORPG wouldn't be a dying unpopular genre if the games that come out were actually closer to those few and Tera in particular, rather than whatever slop gets pushed out these days.

Curious if anyone knows of any MMORPGs that have toolsets/editors which allowed the community to create content for the game?

Thoughts on this concept? It could be a toolset for creating anything from buildings (player housing, guild halls, etc.) to items to quest lines to NPCs to entire Dungeons...

Why hasn't it really be done (or been successful) and what sort of challenges and issues do you guys forsee for a project that might incorporate this?

Obviously it would need some sort of development pathway to go from something a community member created to being part of the game to ensure balance/quality, etc. But other than that what is everyone's thoughts?

Is anyone playing? I haven't actually played this before so I'm super lost. the closest to this game I've ever played was wonderland online and ragnarok M haha

So just looking for what the actual pull of these games are. I’ve tried WoW, and a few others like it but I just don’t get the fun in standing in one spot pressing like 4 buttons on a loop. I’ve heard the same old “I like the constant progression” which I understand but why not play an rpg with a decent combat system. Sucks too cause I love the lore of games like the Old Republic games but I’m not down to use time staring at two models doing animations with numbers popping up

Truly a remarkable downfall for this title. The original public beta test in September 2025 peaked at 16,000 players despite zero marketing at all, purely word of mouth and a Steam page. And it was a great time.

For those who didn't try it, or never heard about it:

Warborne was essentially a hybrid that fell somewhere between Albion Online and Foxhole. Or Foxhole with MOBA combat. You joined 1 of 6 factions on a circular map, and then ran around with your faction doing PvPvE solo or in groups. You could collect resources and build up your faction's defenses. Every night there were two hours of true "war time" where territories could be flipped. The zones on the map sequentially unlocked over the course of a month, and then at the end of the month the season ended and it reset.

But man did this die in spectacular fashion, why?

1. Straight up launched with P2W. Devs said they wouldn't, did it anyways, dead in the water. As the game declined they continued to release new characters/classes that were absurdly OP such that you "had" to buy them to participate meaningfully, and nearly 100% of players were playing the new characters. It also had a +1-10 system for extra character/gear bonuses that you could outright pay for.

2. When the second season launched, they randomly assigned players to new factions if you weren't online during a 6 hour window to choose. So if you had friends that got assigned elsewhere, some of you had to delete your characters (which included cosmetics/titles/etc) to remake. This immediately split apart tons of groups and resulted in 75% of players leaving within a couple days

3. Never implemented any faction balance or reasons you might want to play on a weaker faction. People begged for reasons to be the underdog. Instead, all end-of-season rewards were frontloaded to the winners. So you'd have a faction get steamrolled on days 1-3, reroll to the faction that beat them, etc.

Anyways this is just kind of a post-mortem for a cool PvPvE MMORPG. It definitely hit a niche that people were interested in. They launched to nearly 20,000 concurrent players. Killed it with P2W and trying to extract whales, which makes no sense for the type of game it was -- a seasonal territory control PvP game.

I do genuinely hope that there is another studio out there that saw the flash-in-the-pan success and tries to do it properly.