MMORPG News: Blue Protocol, Lost Ark, Genshin Impact, Tower of Fantasy, Project Ragnarok, ODIN: Valhalla Rising

This will be the final week you guys see this apartment in the background. As of July 8th, Mrs Stix and I are moving into our first house together, and that’s thanks to all of you amazing people.
Without you, I’d still be living in a tiny apartment back in Australia, as opposed to living with my wife together in a beautiful neighborhood.

Otherwise, we have another week filled with MMORPG News for all of you today. And there’s a ton of new games we need to talk about, so welcome to this week’s Weekly Byte of MMORPG News. Let’s jump right in.

Let’s start this off with Pantheon. I actually don’t recall the last time I did a video on Pantheon, or, heck, even included it in a news segment, but here we are. The game is currently in Pre-Alpha testing still, but showing progress little by little.
According to the teams latest livestream, they’ve been hard at work on introducing new features, new idle and combat animations, shaders, and – well, interestingly, they wanted to to showcase how players can interact with their environment in the form of scaling walls.
I’m not sure specifically what purpose this will serve considering the game is supposedly a PvE-oriented game. Regardless, the game does not have an expected release date as of July 2020, or a Beta test date, but they’re continuing to make progress towards a playable state, unlike Chronicles of Elyria.

Speaking of Chronicles of Elyria.. I’m sure you’re all well aware at this point of the state the game is in: The CEO of the studio behind the game announced the game was dead and effectively shut down and let the entire development team go.
After a lot of complaints from the community, he then changed his story, stating that he’s still working on the game and there was no need to refund the.. $8 million dollars worth of money invested into the game.
Players have been repeatedly trying to get a refund regardless, however they’re not fairing very well. Yup.. kinda crappy, honestly.

But that’s where the bad news ends. Let’s liven things up by talking about Tower of Fantasy, an upcoming cross-platform Anime MMORPG that looks pretty sick, actually. The game has a scifi-fantasy setting and will feature complete action combat.
They showcased some gameplay, but had the UI disabled so we couldn’t get an accurate gauge of how the game would ultimately look and play. There will be no classes in-game, with “weapons” essentially functioning much like a class would but allowing players to swap playstyles whenever and wherever they feel.
This could be a competitor to PSO2, although my main concern is that it’s being developed in China and we all know how long those games take to release over in the West.

Next up is another brand new upcoming MMORPG – Project Ragnarok. I just did a video on this a couple days ago, actually, but according to the developer it’s going to be a full-fledged, “AAA-budget MMORPG” launching cross-platform between PC, console and mobile devices.
Yup – an MMO that is cross-play compatible between every major platform, interestingly enough. Not much was shown thus far, but we do know that the game is going to be completely action-oriented and be set in a world based on Norse mythology.
Project Ragnarok is being developed by NetEase and honestly, even though it’s Chinese, and all we got to see was a small trailer rendered mostly in the cinematic engine, I have high hopes as I’ve an interest in Norse mythology so this could be a treat for me.

The last time I discussed Mortal Online 2 was when we were talking about their combat trailer. Since then, the devs have been hard at work and they have yet another trailer to show for it, this time, in the form of a town-trailer.
Granted, it’s just.. a town, which really doesn’t serve much purpose but we do get to get a glimpse of what the game-world we’re going to occupy will look like and that’s pretty cool.

I’ve reported on Lost Ark Korea’s 2 upcoming classes, but at the time they were undisclosed. Nobody had any idea what they were going to be, until now. Turns out that with the game’s new upcoming second season, players will have access to the brand new Scouter class.
Interestingly, the Scouter is going to wield a sub-machine gun and shoot lasers.. which to my knowledge is the first class of that type up to this point.
Mrs Stix and I are currently streaming Lost Ark over on Twitch every week and we have yet to reach a point where the game features any kind of futuristic tech so this will be an interesting addition.

In news I never knew I’d cover, it seems as though Bless Unleashed, the Xbox exclusive, is actually coming to PC. I’m not joking, so you can stop laughing.
The game is going to be launching onto PC “early 2021” and will likely feature ridiculous Founder’s Packs to attempt to milk as much money as they possibly can out of the game.
Interestingly enough, Bandai Namco who publish the game on Xbox consoles have made it abundantly clear that will not have anything at all to do with the PC release, stating “BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment America is working closely with Neowiz to build and deliver the best Bless Unleashed experience possible for the Xbox One.
In addition to continued support and growth of Bless Unleashed on Xbox One, Neowiz intends to independently publish Bless Unleashed on PC. BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment will not be publishing or supporting the PC version. There will be no cross-platform play between the versions.”
Yup, Bamco are distancing themselves from the disastrous PC launch of Bless Unleashed.

Like Tower of Fantasy and Project Ragnarok, TALION is a cross-platform MMORPG that just launched on to PC recently.
However, where the 2 aforementioned titles are actually being built fully cross-platform, TALION is a mobile MMO that has been ported over to PC, retaining much of the look and feel of the mobile iteration of the game.
Now, I’m not terribly against mobile MMOs, I know there are actually a couple solid titles out there like Rangers of Oblivion and Sky: Children of the Light, but TALION is a poor attempt at milking a dying title on mobile devices by attempting to fill a game with gullible players looking for a new MMO to play.
And trust me – before downloading and playing TALION.. you might be convinced to play purely off of how good the game is advertised to look.

The Final Closed Beta test for Genshin Impact is currently going on right now. Mrs Stix is streaming footage for the game over on Twitch as we speak, and we’ll be doing a dedicated video on the game as soon as she’s acquired enough footage of the game.
There’s still no ETA on when the game will fully launch, but from what we can tell miHoYo are still planning on releasing this year, probably in the final quarter.
Currently, the beta test will support cross-play between PC, PS4 and Mobile devices.

I did a dedicated video on Diablo 4 last week, but I know this is worth including here as well.
Blizzard and the Diablo 4 team have been hard at work developing Diablo 4 and recently made a blog post over on the official Diablo 4 website, detailing various aspects of the game they’ve been hard at work on: Monsters, environments, areas, and even the combat itself.
I’d recommend going on and watching that video as there’s a lot to cover, but suffice it to say, it’s going to be quite a bit different to Diablo 3.
The story will play out differently, interactions will be made differently, the unique open-world system is going to take the game in a very different direction.. all in all I was a little surprised by how it’s looking.

Players have been wondering when Final Fantasy XIV would release its brand new 5.3 patch, Mrs Stix and myself included.
There’s been a bit of a content drought recently, especially considering the next patch was supposed to launch back in.. June, if I recall, ultimately meaning this drought will have gone on 2 months longer than they’d anticipated.
Regardless, there’s an exact date planned for 5.3, August 11th. Yes, unfortunately we still have a little over a month left to wait before we gain a continuation of the story, the new 24-player NieR raid and other content associated with the patch.
Mrs Stix and her static have almost cleared Shiva Savage though, so I’m proud of her for that!

If Project Ragnarok wasn’t enough to get you excited for a Norse-themed MMORPG, then allow me to introduce you to ODIN: Valhalla Rising. I did a dedicated video on this a little while ago so if you want specifics, I recommend checking that out.
Regardless, ODIN is a brand new upcoming MMO that looks like it took the graphical style of Black Desert – and, unfortunately, left behind the combat system, but you can definitely see the inspiration they took from the title.
Combat is action, as can be seen within the trailer, and the game will actually be launching this year – in 2020 – something I didn’t expect to hear. Honestly, the game is a South Korean MMO though so expect.. what we’d expect from South Korean MMOs!

Codename SYN is a brand new upcoming.. Online FPS? If the trailer is anything to go off of.
The trailer for this game didn’t really elaborate on the title all that much but what it did show us was a new game with 3 different factions, being built cross-platform for PC and consoles only, as opposed to mobile devices, which is something I never expected to see in a game coming out of China.
Little is known about the game, we don’t even know if SYN is coming out in 2021 or not, but from what we’ve seen thus far this game looks quite a bit like the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 game.

I covered Ashes of Creation last month with their latest developer stream and the progress they’d made, and it turns out a couple days ago they did another dev stream showcasing the player housing system.
This is one of the features I was interested in since they showed it in an incomplete, very basic form last month. I urge you to go check out the stream yourselves for a comprehensive look at the system, but from what I can tell, it’s coming along nicely.
The devs may have repeatedly shown that they’re incompetent and that their priorities laid with the Apocalypse Battle Royale as opposed to the MMO, but they seem to be back on track.. after a couple years.

This is a title that I’m actually kind of against. V4 is a new-ish mobile MMO that really didn’t do too well ’cause.. well, you know, Nexon is Nexon. However, it is what it is. A mobile MMO failing? Not really an issue for us PC MMO players.
However, it turns out Nexon are actually porting V4 over to PC as well, claiming the game is a “cross-platform MMORPG” when in reality, the game is going to be a mobile game you can play on your PC.
Where the other cross-platform titles are being built for each platform in mind, this is a mobile game through and through. It looks like a mobile title, plays like a mobile title and other than not requiring an emulator, this is a mobile MMO.
It’s worth noting that if you ever wanted to play the game on PC, this is your chance, otherwise I’d steer clear.

I know a lotta you guys, much like myself, are eagerly awaiting any and all new additions to the Temtem MMO. So you’ll be happy to learn that the upcoming update is going to include guilds – effectively referred to as clubs, allowing for you to get together with 49 other members and build up your very own team of misfits.
Unfortunately the club system is going to be released in a basic iteration, meaning that outside of existing as an additional means for players to converse, there won’t be any other purpose to it. They plan on remedying that in the future with additional updates, though!

I have to include this here because it looks so damn good. I know a lotta you guys enjoy, or at least enjoyed Dragon Raja for however long you invested into it. The video I did went on to garner over 60,000 views and had a 95% like ratio, and this is from the very same team that developed Dragon Raja.
Noah’s Heart is a steampunk fantasy MMORPG set in a large open-world, but unfortunately, outside of the trailer footage, we don’t really know what the game is about, nor what it’s going to feature, other than a seamless open world and the ability to woo various NPCs.

Finally, I actually just saw on the official Blue Protocol Twitter that a small announcement has been made.
According to the Twitter, the Blue Protocol team are going to be focused on development for a while now to make sure that the feedback players submitted can be effectively and accurately reflected within the game itself.
They further went on to note that they will continue to give status updates via Twitter, however it will be at irregular intervals for the time being.
They then showed several new pictures of a brand new outfit, along with.. quite a thicc looking succubus character, which I can assure you guys now Mrs Stix will definitely be attempting to create.