Summer’s here in earnest, bringing with it expansion and content patch launches as well as news about brand new MMOs. In this month's MMOCO we take a look at ESO’s Morrowind expansion launch, the implementation of Prime Raids for Wildstar, and details about the upcoming Magic: the Gathering MMO.
ESO: Morrowind Now Launched
Last week, the highly anticipated Morrowind expansion launched for Elder Scrolls Online (ESO). Back in February we reported about how it would add a new class (the Warden), a new PvP mode (Battlegrounds), and a large new area to explore and quest in (Vvardenfell). The expansion is available on PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Mac and requires the core game to play. To celebrate its release, Zenimax Online put together an official launch trailer.
Game Director Matt Firor wrote a brief letter welcoming players to Morrowind as well as thanking fans who have made the expansion’s launch possible. He also gave a brief mention of the future plans of the dev team: to continue working on new content, quality of life improvements, balance updates, and DLC packs. He hinted that we may see some more concrete details about some of these at E3.
Prime Raids Now Live in Wildstar
Last week, Patch 1.7.2 dropped for Wildstar, bringing Prime Raids with it. “Prime” is a new level of difficulty for pre-existing raids, which scales the health and damage of raid enemies by a certain percentage. Level 1 is the easiest Prime level, though still intended for raiding groups that have already completed all previous raids. Carbine plans to eventually give all raids Prime Level 1 (with all of them being roughly equivalent in difficulty) before moving onto Prime Level 2 (which will be a step up from all previous Level 1s). They started off with Y-83, which is currently the only dungeon to have a Prime difficulty setting.
In addition, Prime difficulty is completely separate from the pre-existing “Hard Mode” (which adds encounter mechanics), so raiders can choose whether they want to attempt Prime Level 1 or Prime Level 1 Hard Mode. Accordingly, there are two different lock-out timers, meaning that raiding groups can complete Y-83 on Normal or Hard Mode as well as Y-83 Prime Level 1 on Normal or Hard Mode between raid lockout resets.
Magic: the Gathering MMO in the Works
In a move that likely few saw coming, Perfect World Entertainment (PWE) and Cryptic Studios announced that they in the midst of developing a Triple-A MMO for Magic: the Gathering. Wizards of the Coast commented that this MMO is part of their Magic Digital Next Initiative, which seeks to expand the universe beyond its massively popular tabletop roots.
The game is currently in development for PC and consoles (they haven’t mentioned which specific consoles), though other than that, details are extremely sparse. Cryptic Studios has a very long history of creating MMOs (such as City of Heroes, Star Trek Online, and Neverwinter). Given their most recent games as well as the partnership with PWE, I’d expect the Magic: the Gathering MMO to be free-to-play, but that’s purely speculation on my part.
That wraps it up for this month. Are you delving into ESO's Morrowind expansion or Wildstar's Prime Raids? Are you excited about the Magic: the Gathering MMO?