MMORPG News: Blue Protocol Customization, Genshin Impact Drama, New MMOs Naïca, TitanReach, Wagadu Chronicles

New week, new.. uh, news! Okay, that intro probably could’ve gone over a little smoother, but it’s in the past now.
Either way, we have another exciting week this week! We’ve had new MMOs announced, new games launching this week, and lots to talk about! I hope you guys have prepared yourselves for this!

Otherwise, we have plenty to talk about so let’s jump right into this week’s Weekly Byte of MMORPG News!

Let’s start this off with something big first, yeah?
So, a brand new Kickstarter backed MMORPG is in development: Wagadu Chronicles. But before you instantly shut this down, I want to clarify that while they’ve already met their goal of $116,000, they’re not using Kickstarter as the only means with which to fund the development of the game.
Yup, they’re actually also being supported financially by Riot Games, the very same company behind League of Legends and Valorant. This is actually very reassuring news as the Kickstarter isn’t really necessary and won’t likely affect much of the development of the game.
While it’s currently in a pre-Alpha state, they’ve already completed quite a bit of the game. They’re planning to have quite a few features: Housing, farming, crafting and combat with an emphasis on traditional African lore – something I’ve never seen done before.
Yup, color me impressed and excited to see where this goes. I’ll have a much more dedicated look at the game sometime next week for those of you interested in something new and actually a little different to what we’re used to.

For those of you that weren’t aware, the upcoming game launches tomorrow. Yeah, you can go ahead and pre-download the game in advance, and begin playing as soon as it becomes available.
I know, I know. “We’re actually getting a game for once?” Yeah, we really are. And it’s about damn time, too. But with that news comes some.. worse news as well.
If you haven’t already, then I did a dedicated video talking about the current ongoing mass bans within China and how it might also carry over and impact the international release of the game as well.
But the TL;DR of that is in essence that if you have a 5* account and you don’t play after 24 hours, or access the game via another IP or device, you run the risk of getting banned. While it isn’t a guarantee, obviously, those actions trigger a flag of their system that could result in the banning of your account.
Again, this is for China specifically and the international version might be different but it’s also worth noting that it might be exactly the same, so proceed with caution.

Would you believe it if I told you that Astellia Online was still actually alive and kicking? ’cause apparently it is.
It’s been around for an entire year thus far and they’re celebrating that with login rewards for players that opt to remain logged in over the period of the day in addition to a birthday buff that increases Zender gains and allows for free teleportation and resurrection.
Otherwise.. there isn’t any new content or things to do at endgame which is disappointing for loyal players that remain active, sorry!
But for everyone else? Now’s a solid time to try it out!

I know you’re all anticipating playing Lost Ark now that Amazon Game Studios have all but confirmed its 2021 release. Unfortunately this isn’t pertaining to the international release specifically, but rather to the new Reaper class that’s coming.
It was confirmed earlier this week that the brand new class will hit the live servers on Tuesday, September 29th. You can learn more about the class over on the official website, but it’s worth noting that the Reaper isn’t the only form of new content coming.
The Reaper is only a part of the Season 2 content slated for release, which I’ve already covered in a detailed, dedicated video last month? I think. With the recent launch in Japan on the 23rd, we’re so close to getting the game over here in North America and Europe as well!

I’m well aware that the livestream for New Genesis was held last night but I’m doing this Friday morning, not even half a day after the stream happened without enough time to accurately compile information – so you guys will have to wait until next week for a dedicated video on that.
However, at the same time the older PSO2 game – the one that everyone’s actually playing currently announced last week that they have an official date scheduled for Episode 5: Next week on September 30th.
Episode 5 brings with it a plethora of new content, as every Episode tends to, with an expanded level cap, new story, new enemies, missions, rewards and more.
If you’ve been holding off on playing, much like Mrs Stix and I have been, this is the perfect opportunity to jump into – or back into the game.
We’ll have Episode 6 to play through shortly after Episode 5 as well, so might as well start now so you don’t have to play catch-up!

Echo of Soul is… wait, shutting down again? Didn’t it just launch on to Steam recently under a separate publisher to Gamigo, even though Gamigo publishes the MMO? Well this is confusing.
Either way, the non-Gamigo version of Echo of Soul is shutting down, once again, after attempting to and potentially even successfully scamming money out of players that bought into the Steam version of the game, and now Gamigo are going to take over.
But can I just ask.. can we stop? Honestly, can we stop buying into these re-re-released MMOs that were free-to-play but convert to buy-to-play business models? I’m confused as to how they even had any active players.

11 years is, admittedly, quite the feat. I’m not gonna lie. Aion has been online for 11 years now, and it doesn’t feel like it’s been a day over 8! In celebration of 11 years, much like their celebration of 10 years, 9 years and.. so on, they’re holding an event!
The event will have tons of things to do that will offer a variety of rewards like transformation potions – which are always fun – and items to help with leveling and progressing. There are returning dungeons for players to run as well if those are of more interest to you.
Happy Birthday Aion! Here’s to another 11! I’d love to be playing Aion when I’m 40. Hell yeah. Or.. the mobile version of it since you know it’ll happen! .. ahhh, I kid. Kinda.

In shocking news I never saw coming – partly because I don’t keep too up-to-date with RuneScape and partly because… I’d saw no mention of it anywhere, RuneScape and Old School RuneScape are actually launching onto Steam on Wednesday, October 14th.
Well, RuneScape will be, Old School RuneScape will actually be delayed a little into next year, but it’s still coming!
And with their expansion onto the new platform will come even more players. This comes after the successful launch of RuneScape onto mobile devices, providing substantial growth for the game.

Yeah, no kidding, there were a ton of brand new MMO announcements made in the last couple weeks. But here’s another one: TitanReach. TitanReach is a full-loot adventure fantasy MMORPG set in a large, open world.
Yes, I did say full-loot meaning that if you’re killed out in the world, you drop your gear, your items. Maybe your money, and other players can come along, loot your now dead body. But if full-loot MMOs are your thing, then you’ll be happy to learn that TitanReach actually has a fully playable demo that you can try out!
They have plans to take the game in a different direction to most current-gen MMOs but at the same time.. we’ve heard “our game will be unique, gais!!!” at least every other day, right?

And now, for potentially the most important news of the entire news video – don’t worry, though, this isn’t the end of the video, we got plenty more to talk about, but I give you.. Bless Unleashed’s PS4 launch date!
Yup, if being an Xbox exclusive wasn’t enough, now we get this masterpiece on the PS4 as well! Okay, jokes aside, as I’ve noted in the past, the 2 console ports of the game from Bandai Namco aren’t actually as bad as people make them out to be.
The PC port of Unleashed by Neowiz will probably end up being terrible though, but I figured it was worth noting that Bless Unleashed is actually launching onto PS4 next month – October 22nd specifically. So for those of you that don’t own an XBox and wanted to play – this is definitely your opportunity to.
Trust me, it’ll be far more worth it than the PC version by Neowiz or the Bless Eternal mobile MMO.

I’d never heard about this until it was actually sent to me, but there’s apparently a brand new upcoming pixel-art MMORPG called “Naïca” and it actually looks kinda cool.
It has a very unique aesthetic look and feel to it – something that you just don’t really see done in today’s age of gaming. Especially with regards to PC MMOs.
For players interested, the game is going into complete Open Beta on November 10th, 2020, so players will be able to jump into the game and take it for a test-run. See how it fares. If it’s worth looking at or it’s just another crappy cross-platform MMO.
I’ll be keeping an eye on it and might go as far as actually doing a dedicated video on it as well if I like how it looks.

Mrs Stix actually made a Tweet about this earlier this week, but the brand new update for Blade & Soul: Cosmic Horizon went live a couple days ago, and with it came a brand new class: The Astromancer.
I didn’t know this was coming – I haven’t really been keeping up-to-date with Blade & Soul but unfortunately, the class is exclusive to the Lyn race, which I fear is already one of the lesser played races in the game.
The update brings a lot more with it, though! New story, new harder difficulties of dungeons, items, alterations to already existing items. About what you’d expect from an update.

I tend to, for the most part, keep mobile games out of the news videos because they’re not really worth mentioning, and I do a dedicated monthly news segment over on MMOByte Mobile anyway, but I felt the need to let you guys know that Icarus M, the mobile port of Riders of Icarus actually just came out earlier this week.
Last week? This month. It came out this month. And.. I mean it looked good, graphically, but turned out to be more or less what you’d expect out of the game. But for those of you that have been waiting on this, now’s your chance to jump on in!

And finally, Blue Protocol. I know there are thousands of you that look forward to this segment each week so here I am, ready to provide you with your monthly dose of Blue Protocol related news!
The Bandai Namco Blue Protocol team recently held a wave of interviews with Japanese news outlets, and they covered quite a few different topics. I had a dedicated video done on that last week, if you wanna go ahead and check that out.
But this is new news – news that nobody has really covered yet. And that is a further extension to the character customization system. The official Blue Protocol Twitter account released video footage of the new gradient hair colors – new options to customize the look of your character, and they look pretty damn good.
Unfortunately, other than the new customization options, and the interviews, we don’t have anything else to talk about.