Your Weekly Byte Of MMORPG News: Bless Online, MapleStory 2 CBT Keys, Fallout 76, BDO Console

Welcome back to another Weekly Byte of MMORPG News!
We missed last week since there wasn’t much to talk about outside of Bless Online and all the issues surrounding its first week.
While we’ll talk a little more on Bless in this video, we have quite a bit more to talk about, especially with E3 having hit us with some nice goodies this year.

Let’s kick this off with what is probably the largest MMORPG announcement since TERA announced they were porting their game to consoles.. and that is that Microsoft revealed that Black Desert Online will begin beta testing on Xbox One come Fall, 2018.
The game was initially planned to release during the first quarter of 2018, with Pearl Abyss, the publishers behind BDO stating that it will release “at the start of this year”.
The Xbox One port will also support 4K resolutions. Players are able to sign up for the beta test on the official Black Desert Xbox site – so if you want the chance to play it first, make sure you visit the website! Don’t miss out on the chance to play Black Desert on consoles!

Next up is the crowdfunded MMORPG Life Is Feudal: MMO. The game launched earlier this year to quite a bit of criticism, and has since been running on fumes.
With their first major content update, they have plans to bring a plethora of new features such as the unification of game worlds, the clergy, guild rankings, slavery, additional outposts, and 20-player PvP arenas.
While possibly not enough to save the game, it’s a step in the right direction.

Nexon have recently announced a secondary round of closed beta testing for MapleStory 2. Their goal with the second closed beta is to stress test their servers – something Bless Online should’ve done before launching, honestly.
They have plans to allow twice as many players to participate this time, and we’ve been contacted by Nexon directly to give out free closed beta keys to our viewers. Once we’re told exactly how many we have, we’ll be doing a giveaway live. To register for the second closed beta event, follow this link to their website and sign up.

Despite players abusing the duplication bugs, the servers repeatedly being down, constant maintenance, being unable to play with friends, poor balance patches, and.. well, just.. so much more, the Bless Team is nevertheless making an active effort to fix their game.
As of right now, the Bless Team is hiring new temporary staff in acknowledgement that their localization is dirt-poor.
They went on to list that their “top priority right now is to increase the quality of their English translations, eliminating player confusion caused by poorly translated text.”
You might hate the game, their concurrent-player numbers might be struggling to remain above 15,000 players at peak times, and the team might be full of incompetent devs, but.. you gotta give them credit for listening to player feedback.
Even if with every patch they break something else.

Gameforge announced earlier this week that the game has finally received the Housing update, bring with it the ability for players to fully customize their abodes while relaxing from a hard day’s.. monster slaying.
Accompanying the housing update is a new Sprint! event, rewarding players for completing quests associated with the event with decorative items and furniture for their stylish new bachelor pad.

Man, I haven’t done an article, let alone a video on ArcheAge in forever.. Well, that changes now, with the third phase of their Legends Return fresh start servers receiving a large new Conquer update.
The update allows players to claim land in the Golden Ruins, challenge the Serpentis raid, prove themselves in the Sea of Drowned Love, and tackle Meina and Glenn in Auroria.
New content will continue to be unlocked on the Legends Return servers over the year – including two new large content patches referred to as Reign and Ascend.

After continued promises to release the Dev Kit to players, the team behind Dark and Light finally delivered.
Earlier this week on June 5th the Dev Kit became downloadable from the Epic Games Launcher, offering players the ability to contribute their designs and creations with friends and even the community.
Included in the Dev Kit is the ability to modify individual AI behavior, interchangeably replace existing in-game models with your own art, change monster and NPC spawn volume, edit lighting and various other texture-related visual elements, and more.

Although not an MMORPG, the fact is that the game is a multiplayer online role playing game.
So in essence.. an MORPG. The game will be arriving on November 14th 2018, with closed beta testing earlier in the year.
Judging by what we see, the game seems a lot more PvP oriented than any other game Bethesda have pushed out, stating that “a core component of the experience will involve building a base with friends, cooperating to take down large monsters, and working together to fend off hostile enemy players.”
While I’m on the fence about the latest game in the Fallout franchise, it seems like Bethesda wants to jump on the battle royale phase gamers are going through right now just like they wanted to do with The Elder Scrolls Online and the MMORPG genre.

En Masse Entertainment, the team behind Closers Online have made their intentions clear – releasing a roadmap listing new content, updates, and furthermore, characters, that are expected to hit the live servers by the end of this year.
During the third quarter of this year, players can expect to play as both the blue-haired sword-wielding Valkyrie, Violet, and Wolfgang Schneider. Soma and Luna are expected to be playable during the fourth quarter.
This is quite impressive and a relief to see that En Masse Entertainment are still so hard at work bringing players new content – something other MMOs could learn a thing or two from.