The famous Jimothy from Seattle has accepted yet another brand deal. The wild raccoon seemingly suffering from a spinal deformity is being added to Guild Wars 2, in part because the woman who turned the poor creature into a viral sensation named Jimothy is married to an ArenaNet developer.

Kiana Hall posted the hairy dumpling on Instagram two weeks ago, writing in her caption that she and her spouse were "graced with the presence of Jimothy" as he galloped in front of them with the graceless abandon of a bowling ball, proud and round in his toddling. Since then, young Jimothy – his neighbors in Seattle determine him to be around a year old, and I'm guessing maybe a Pisces – has appeared in Skyrim and Stardew Valley mods, and he received an official stat block in Dungeons & Dragons.

Now, ArenaNet shares in a press release, Jimothy will make a sanctioned visit to Guild Wars 2 in August. The developer explains, "An ArenaNet developer's spouse recorded and uploaded a video of an oddly-shaped raccoon in their Seattle backyard. Now, after capturing the world's attention, it's scurrying into Guild Wars 2."

ArenaNet explains in more depth on LinkedIn that, "Bringing a little piece of Jimothy into Tyria felt like a fitting way to honor a story that connected so many people. Starting Aug. 11, track him down in Guild Wars 2 to unlock a Jimothy mini of your own."

"And while we love Jimothy's real-world origin story," the developer says responsibly, "we'd also like to remind everyone that wildlife is best appreciated from a safe and respectful distance. If you're looking to get up close to Jimothy, the in-game version is definitely the safer option." I'm in the mood for a little spaghetti and raccoon meatball, so don't mind if I do.

Guild Wars 3 may have cracked the MMO code for tired millennials.

It's a very risky time to release a multiplayer video game. The 'live service' scene has become inundated with hundreds of titles trying to replicate the success that a select few established games have found. The likes of Fortnite and Call of Duty still dominate the scene, making it seem impossible for newcomers like Concord or Highguard to break in. That's not to mention the number of legacy games that simply can't sustain themselves with the rising costs of development, including Destiny 2, which received its final update earlier this year.

So much of the video game industry is increasingly dangerous and volatile, but one genre has flourished for decades – MMORPGs. As live service games try to hold onto their share of committed players for longer, the developers of the best MMORPGs have had to find new ways to evolve.

To better understand how, I spoke to the leads of three of the longest-running modern MMOs – Final Fantasy 14, Elder Scrolls Online, and Warframe – to unpack how the genre has changed amidst the landscape of multiplayer games.

Building a world

The MMORPG genre began its rise to prominence in the '90s and many developers have tried to play in the massively multiplayer online space since, but precious few have had any real staying power. It's the games which cleanly carve out a niches, and then double down on serving that fanbases, which have any chance at survival. It's a challenge that Nick Giacomini, game director of The Elder Scrolls Online, is well acquainted with.

"The MMORPG genre isn't going away any time soon. MMORPGs are homes for players in a way that most genres just aren't. It's right there in the name: they're massive. The sheer scale of these games gives you a space to truly inhabit, while the community makes it feel alive," says Giacomini.

"That said, the genre is challenging right now, particularly for new games. Creating an MMORPG is a monumental undertaking, and few new MMOs have been able to break through. And on the one hand, the rise of live-service games has made this more challenging. There are so many incredible games to choose from right now, so why should players choose your game when they have so many amazing options?"

That's a sentiment echoed by Warframe creative director Rebecca Ford, who feels there is a new window of opportunity for MMOs. First launched in 2013, Warframe's slow and steady growth has proven it as one of the juggernauts of the genre, able to carry on where others haven't. It might simply be good timing, but the idea of a game that players can "regularly" come back to, as a sort of daily, weekly, or monthly habit, has become more and more attractive in recent years – especially as the cost of everything goes up.

"There's really no place for confidence in the current ecosystem; nothing is guaranteed. The younger generations of gamers have not been exposed to the dominant MMO era, yet the strongest MMOs still stand. 'Interest' in genres comes and goes, but typically, the interest cycles happen much faster because games and hardware were iterated on more quickly," says Ford.

"This means people stick with their comfort games for longer, and devs can work on the same IPs longer. In another life, Warframe would already be on 'Warframe 4', but the conditions of our evolution mean we did not need to sprout gills, so to speak, to evolve. Other genres have certainly impacted interest, as have development costs."

Legacy MMOs like Final Fantasy 14, Guild Wars, Runescape, World of Warcraft are now ingrained into the fabric of online gaming culture and have established, loyal fan bases. The sheer size and nature of the time commitment MMOs have may, in turn, be the secret to their success. Players have to commit to an MMO to some degree, after all.

"MMOs still have several characteristics that could contribute to longer lifespans. For example, unlike games that run on peer-to-peer connections, MMOs have massive servers containing a tremendous number of assets – not just item and character data, but also game systems like player housing and friend lists," says Final Fantasy 14 producer and director Naoki Yoshida.

"When an MMO becomes a hit success, that boosts the number of long-term players and helps stabilize operations, so I can see how those factors often lead to MMOs having longer lifespans. That said, there are still countless MMOs that rose and fell. In the end, all online services have a common principle: they need to have long-term stability and an entertaining experience in order to endure."

It's no coincidence that Final Fantasy 14, The Elder Scrolls Online, and Warframe are undergoing massive shifts in gameplay or ideas at the moment. In accordance, all three of these developers see some kind of symbiotic relationship with live-service titles. Giacomini notes that live service games are helping the MMO genre by "expanding and normalizing the space," while Yoshida says the "boundaries" between MMOs and other genres are becoming more "ambiguous." The influence live-service games have had may not be obvious or tangible, but it's there nonetheless.

"Today, live service games are mainstream. They've normalized the idea of games as a hobby, a place to hang out with friends, and a world that evolves over time. They've introduced MMO-lite concepts to millions of people who may have never considered themselves MMO players," notes Giacomini.

But the other crucial piece of success to the future of MMOs, stressed by all three of these developers, is a passionate community – but more importantly a community that the dev teams themselves can sort of "work" with. The studios behind Warframe, ESO, and FF14 have all opted for transparency, keeping very little to the chest in favour of constant communication with the playerbase, and an open dialogue on what said players want.

"Our players know exactly what they want. They are our 'boss' at the end of the day, and our game is only ever as good as our last update. From the very beginning, we've been transparent and flexible with them, almost every month for nearly 200 announcement-filled Devstreams," says Ford.

She adds: "If we announce a feature and players hate it, we are prepared to scrap it or work collaboratively with them to find the Goldilocks version that feels right for Warframe. We as creatives will always try to take big swings with new things and cross our fingers that they land well. But if we miss the mark, we are always willing to hear our players out and iterate on the idea into something we all love, as devs and players."

"A balancing act"

There's a fine line to tread between retaining the experience players love, but still being experimental and ambitious enough to try new ideas. With a lack of growth, even a successful MMO can grow stagnant, or fail to attract new players. Change is often a scary word in the realm of tech and games, something that connotes that you're losing something, especially daunting when it's a game you've sunk days, if not weeks and months, of your life into.

But a particular, and noticeable, shift in MMOs has been to accommodate a wider variety of players. But a particularly fascinating part of this is these long-running games having to essentially "age up" with their players. Giacomini assets that, as live-service and multiplayer games continue to appeal to young audiences and new players, longstanding MMOs have had to adjust for players whose lives have quintessentially changed across a decade or two.

"If your design ethos doesn't change over ten years, you're going to get left behind," he explains. "Players who started playing with us a decade ago are at a different stage in their lives now, and we have to evolve to provide them with what they're looking for today. Player expectations have also shifted based on what successful new games are bringing to the table. Trying to make sure that every moment players spend in our world feels worthwhile requires change."

"It's definitely a balancing act. If you push too much unwanted change, the game becomes unrecognizable, and you risk alienating your core players. But if you don't change enough, you become formulaic and risk boring them. MMORPGs feel very different today than when I first started playing over 20 years ago. They're recognizable but fundamentally evolved. And I think that kind of continuous evolution is what innovation is going to look like for successful games in the genre."

Speaking to these key creatives, they've all reached similar philosophies in different ways. Both Ford and Yoshida note that the support and deep involvement of their respective communities is the key piece that keeps these games moving. All three stress the need for 'rewarding' experiences, ensuring the time players invest in their game feels well-spent. The development of each of these games revolves around player feedback, but trying to integrate that with the idea of experimenting and finding things that will surprise even players who have spent 10 years on a game.

Ford points to FF14 as a prime example of a game that's adapting to the needs of players, saying it's great to "see them [the FF14 dev team] focus on what they're good at, like Raids, at large scale." But she also stresses the need for integral change. Ford says there's one crucial way MMOs need to keep experimenting.

"Get weird! Go left instead of right, but always, always be ready to work with your community, not for or against them. Nothing is ever set in stone. Game design trends will always be in flux, whether that be due to advancements in technology or changes to player habits due to things happening in the world or their personal lives," Ford says. "We kind of joke about this. You don't want to see the current Warframe leads – me and Pablo Alonso, our design director – try and make a PVP mode again. Even if players think they want it, we simply aren't good at it, so we can't innovate with hero shooter genre appeal, so we have to try other things!"

FF14 is in the midst of one of those moments, with upcoming expansion Evercold making some of the biggest, most sweeping changes the MMO has seen since its relaunch as A Realm Reborn in 2013. And while Yoshida notes that his approach to developing FF14 has undoubtedly changed over the past decade, in a way, that's secondary to how the studio tweaks the game as a whole. Because the community has become such an ingrained part of FF14's identity, it's more about knowing when to hold off on major changes, and when to push forward.

"For our upcoming expansion, Evercold, I chose to steer FF14 towards 'change' in pursuit of creating even more enjoyment and evolving further. I felt that, in terms of mindset and time, we were prepared to update the gaming experience to be more enjoyable and comfortable for our players and their lifestyles," Yoshida says. "Our lifestyle routines are constantly changing, and the rate of change only keeps accelerating. But making sudden changes to try and keep up with that pace can be harmful to our operations, like how making sharp turns while driving fast tends to lead to accidents. Making these judgment calls is a constant part of overseeing FF14."

However, Yoshida says his approach might be completely different if he was making something from scratch, adding, "Incidentally, if I were to develop a new online live service title from scratch, I'd be challenging myself to tackle completely new game designs and values."

But cutting through all the noise, there seems to be one universal truth to the success of MMOs – something that none of these teams have forgotten even as they try to shift and adjust to changing player expectations. And it's especially attractive in light of so many multiplayer games that lean into short bursts of excitement, battle passes, and an ever-changing experience.

"The industry is more crowded now, but the desire for a world you can live in and escape to is stronger than ever," says Giacomini. "And if MMORPGs can evolve to meet players where they are and ensure the time they invest here feels worthwhile, the genre will thrive for decades."

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A World of Warcraft game master has been fired from Blizzard Entertainment after the community caught them using "development-only spells" to help their friends breeze through a dungeon and instantly wipe two bosses. Essentially, they were caught helping some mates cheat.

The cheating scandal first came to light earlier this week when a couple of Reddit users shared evidence that a game master had used insta-kill abilities usually reserved for Blizzard employees to demolish at least two bosses. A player from the group all but spelled out the situation in a stream with Yumytv, too: "I go to my GM friend and I'm like bro please can you do me a solid? This thing has 20 million [health] bro, can you please just one-shot it?"

Things sort of escalated from there, with the community wondering how commonplace incidents like this were. "Now you know it exists, therefore the pandora's box is wide open," one Redditor writes. "Which make you question a lot of stuff." Were secret GMs all around, helping their pals achieve titles and record runs?

As PC Gamer reports, Blizzard has now investigated the incident, fired the employee responsible, and assured folks that GMs aren't regularly manipulating games in secret.

"As we mentioned, we internally monitored and confirmed a recent incident in which a World of Warcraft group gained an unfair advantage by abuse of access to development-only spells on a live realm," community manager Randy 'Kaivax' Jordan writes in a recent forum post. "Our tools confirmed what was also surfaced in community discussions, and we have investigated the incident carefully. We can confirm that this was the action of a single Blizzard employee, in violation of our Code of Conduct. This employee is no longer with the company effective immediately. We are also taking action against the player accounts that were complicit in this violation.

"It has always been the case that a small number of Blizzard employees can use developer tools and spells on live servers: this lets us test and make urgent fixes to the live game when they’re needed," Kaivax explains. "Every use of these internal spells and commands on live realms is logged and shared with our Platform Security team to help ensure that the occasional use of this access is warranted. The use of development tools for anything other than development work is against company policy. It's because of the process we have in place around use of these tools that we're confident this incident was isolated to one individual."

The community manager than thanks everyone who brought the information to light, alongside community-led sites. "When your findings line up with ours, it helps confirm that our own tools are catching what they should, and we're grateful for the way we work alongside you all to protect the game and each other."

"You'll never get another World of Warcraft or Morrowind in the current climate," id Software producer says as constant layoffs batter the industry.

Until I played Warframe, the MMO had always been a hard sell for me. The constant updates and endless narrative expansions as seen in World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14 intimidate like nothing else in the video game world. I almost always crave the comfort of knowing I'm progressing towards a logical end point – at least when it comes to story-driven games – and the best MMOs, as a rule, seek to go on for eternity.

So despite my efforts, games like Black Desert Online, Fallout 76, and Genshin Impact lose me soon after I start, simply because I can't accept the potentially limitless experiences on offer. How am I supposed to feel satisfied with my progress if there's no end destination? Well, one game recently changed my mind.

Never too late to try again

I first tried Warframe over a decade ago on Xbox One but quickly bounced off it. This was a different time in my life, before I could appreciate single-player live service games like Diablo 4 and arguably Fortnite. Even the original Destiny didn't hold my attention, so maybe it was a sci-fi thing? No, that wasn't it – what futuristic FPS could compare to Titanfall back in the day? Or now, for that matter?

But when I went to TennoCon earlier this month, I saw Digital Extremes' long-running epic in a whole new light. The game's community is held in high regard, and it was almost immediately clear as to why. The fans attending the convention were enthusiastic, friendly and generous, praising cosplays and handing out stickers in the name of Warframe and Soulframe, the latter being Digital Extremes' latest work currently in early access on PC only.

As I breathed in the atmosphere, I knew I had to try Warframe again – so I installed the free-to-play title on my Xbox Series X when I got home and jumped in. I chose my first playable biomech warframe (Volt, if you're curious), and began exploring the numerous planets, enemies and loot all crying out for my undivided attention.

(War)frame of Mind

Unlike many of the new games I've been playing in recent years, Warframe is 100% a power fantasy. Right out of the gate, I was blasting foes to bits with firearms, cleaving through them with blades, and electrocuting them with my warframe's unique abilities.

It all felt wonderful. There was no immediate challenge like Elden Ring, or intrinsic sense of vulnerability like Resident Evil Requiem (the Grace sections, anyway). This isn't to say I don't enjoy FromSoftware and Capcom games – because I do – but the change of pace is refreshing in 2026.

As for the all-important narrative element that usually leaves me frustrated in an MMO, I was saved from my usual despair by simply not knowing what was happening. This tracked with what creative director Rebb Ford told GamesRadar+ when we interviewed her recently: "You will have no idea what's going on, and that's okay," she said with a smile, and she was right on the money. Luckily for me, the old adage of 'ignorance is bliss' rang true, because I was having too much fun dishing out damage to care who or what a Tenno was.

So why couldn't I stop worrying and learn how to love the MMO before? In truth, I don't entirely know, but the satisfyingly slick combat and traversal of Warframe certainly plays a part. Each time I begin a mission, I hurl my warframe head-first into the mayhem, shooting, slicing and ability-ing my way through the enemy hordes without a care for why I'm doing it. Yes, I have the guiding voice of Lotus, the game's matriarchal figure (and voiced by Rebb Ford), for support, but I don't pay too much mind to the why, merely the what..

And yet, my mind wanders from time to time. I think about Lotus, Teshin, and the other NPCs I've made contact with in Digital Extremes' universe, and I want to know their histories, motivations, hopes, and everything else about them. The thing is, I'm in no rush. Warframe has enough content to keep players occupied for a long time – between 114 and 1,556 hours according to How Long to Beat – so I'll find the answers when I'm ready.

My newfound appreciation for Warframe has doubled my excitement for action-RPG Soulframe, which I had the pleasure of dabbling in a few years back as part of an Alpha test. Now knowing what the developer is capable of in terms of gameplay and longevity, I can't wait to see it grow over (hopefully) a similar timeframe – only now, I intend to be there from launch day. And if I do end up taking a decade to fully commit to Soulframe, its predecessor (and creative director) has reassured me that it's okay to be late to the sci-fi party after all.

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The lead designer behind pioneering MMO Ultima Online says the genre has finally broken free from the shackles of World of Warcraft.

Speaking to 80LV, Raph Koster, whose MMO resumé also includes a suite of early 2000s titles including EverQuest and its sequel, as well as Star Wars: Galaxies, says that he is finally returning to the genre after several decades, in part because it no longer has to chase World of Warcraft.

After Blizzard began what has proven to be an almost uninterrupted stint at the top in 2004, there was a rush to create 'the WoW killer' - a feat Koster suggests was a fool's errand.

In returning to MMOs with Stars Reach, Koster says he was encouraged by the feeling that "MMOs were finally free of the fever dream of imitating World of Warcraft." That's partly because of "the rise of sandboxy gameplay in multiple genres at once." Citing the broader multiplayer options of games like Minecraft, Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, Valheim, and No Man's Sky, Koster says that "it's clear that there's interest and demand for more than killing orcs over and over."

Whether that's a fair criticism of World of Warcraft in 2026 is a debate I'm not qualified to have, but it's undeniable that multiplayer gaming has gained a lot of depth in the last decade. Fortnite and Roblox are other key examples, showing off a world in which the desire to simply spend time together is just as important as having a dedicated goal. The rise of 'friendslop' titles like Peak are other examples, even if they're not 'massively' multiplayer sandboxes.

For Koster, "the unique thing" that MMOs offer is a persistent world and large numbers of players. Most of those games listed above offer that persistence, albeit with smaller populations, and their popularity meant Koster thought "the time was ripe" to make his return to the genre.

A World of Warcraft game master has been accused of helping a Twitch streamer's Mythic group cheat a high-level dungeon by using their GM powers to insta-kill an enemy, and Blizzard says it's actively investigating the situation as evidence piles up.

This began with a July 21 Reddit post from user Acrobatic_Pianist688, who claimed to have seen a "Blizzard GM death touching mobs in M+23 for their favorite streamer." Of course, we don't actually know if anyone's "favorite" streamer was involved, but Acrobatic_Pianist did link to a Warcraft Log record showing an abrupt end to a Mythic+23 fight in the Nexus-Point Xenas dungeon, caused by an "instakill" and "Area Death (TEST)" effect from user Daijosai, believed to be the GM in question.

Game masters are Blizzard employees with World of Warcraft privileges and permissions that enable them to resolve in-game disputes and support requests.

The incident caught fire online, and chatter only intensified after this Warcraft log was highlighted in a stream from WoW content creator yumytv during a conversation with Yiesus, a small Twitch streamer and one of the apparent teammates in this dungeon run, who's described by yumy as "witness testimony."

The moment was clipped and shared, the Twitch chat filled with accusations of "cheater," after Yiesus openly said, "I go to my GM friend, I'm like, bro, please can you do me a solid? This thing has 20 mil bro, can you please just one-shot? One time for the one time. I meant no harm from it. If Blizzard wants to revoke that key or revoke my title, whatever they see fit, I don't care. Personally, I think it was harmless. I didn't expect him to do it. In hindsight he shouldn't have done it. He was just doing me a solid."

One of the other streamers in this dungeon run, YaraByte, shared the same clip on her Twitter.

This mess quickly reached the official Blizzard forums, with players calling for the GM to be punished and the clear to be revoked, prompting a response from Blizzard. Late Tuesday night, community manager Randy 'Kaivax' Jordan replied, both in the forum thread and to the original Reddit post.

"Thank you to those who flagged this," Jordan says. "We are reviewing and will take action as appropriate. A fair and competitive playing field is essential to our games, and we won’t tolerate cheating."

Blizzard continues taking action against World of Warcraft private servers as it pushes on with a lawsuit citing "large-scale, egregious, and ongoing infringement" of its MMO.

I blinked and a holy war kicked off. Over the weekend, a battalion of Old School RuneScape players gathered together to spread the good word of Saradomin, a pillar of the game's theology, on a pilgrimage through the MMO's PvP-enabled Wilderness zone. One thing led to another, and, well, a second pilgrimage is now planned for July 25, this time targeting a home base of the opposing Zamorak faction that has rallied in response to this all godly do-goodery.

On July 18, seemingly hundreds of OSRS players assembled at the monastery in the town of Edgeville sporting monk robes, holy symbols, white staves, and pockets full of lobsters (for healing, obviously).

Their plan, as Reddit user jan7283 explained, was to march to the PvP-heavy Revenant Caves as "one enormous, deeply underprepared religious group" with "absolutely no plan" beyond admonishing anyone found guilty of attacking other players.

In OSRS, PvP aggressors have a temporary skull icon placed over their heads, you see, making them a target for the chanting of these followers of Saradomin: "Brother, your skull concerns us."

Absolutely nobody in the pilgrimage dabbled in, or specifically brought weapons for, killing other players, and anyone telling you otherwise is a Zamorakian traitor.

The cause was so noble that a true demon – not a player in a mask, another Zamorakian lie – even joined the pilgrimage. "I've changed my ways, but due to prejudice, some will say I can't wear these robes," says pious Reddit user gomy1020. In the end, they were accepted by some, with fellow monk Even-Stranger5764 reasoning, "Doesn't matter how you pray to Saradomin, as long as you're praying brother."

We Are The Chosen Ones from r/2007scape

The so-called "Brothers of the Monastery" successfully purified the Wilderness, as footage from Redditor Miro_Game shows.

"Really channeling the essence of the 2006 to 2008 era shenanigans with a 480p recording," replies user Cold-Sigma-770. "Well done OP. A thematic masterpiece. Just needed the Unregistered Hypercam 2 watermark for the finishing touches."

The pilgrimage went so well that, on July 19, de facto leader jan7283 announced the Brothers' next mission. This time, on July 25, they will storm the Chaos Altar which is home to many Zamorak devotees. "They can kill some of us. They can kill most of us. But they can’t kill all of us," jan asserts.

But the wicked were not quiet. The same day, scion of Zamorak (and Reddit user) suresh declared, flanked by an army of demons and dark wizards, that "THE ALTAR WILL NOT BE TAKEN."

"The servants of Saradomin intend to march upon the Chaos Altar, draped in monk robes and calling their invasion a 'holy pilgrimage.' Let them come," preaches suresh. "We will meet them in the Wilderness and remind them whose ground they trespass upon.

"Bring your finest robes of Zamorak, your weapons, your runes, and enough food to survive the march. Scouts, mages, rangers, warriors, and any loyal soul willing to defend the altar are called to arms.

"They preach order. We answer with freedom. They bring light. We shall show them fire. They claim we cannot kill them all. We accept the challenge. For chaos. For strength. For Zamorak." I have to admit, they are persuasive.

The discussion in the lead-up to this July 25 conflict has been heated. "Brother, your plan concerns us," remarks one Saradomin follower. "Hold fast, brother. Do not let evil strike fear into your heart. In Saradomin's light there is no dark," assures another.

"Are we just recreating God Wars now?" asks Tzazon, perhaps the most sensible person in the room, in a reference to the deity-on-deity combat at the heart of some of RuneScape's juiciest lore.

So, here we are, watching the mortal armies of the RuneScape gods try to outwit one another in a genuinely powerful demonstration of what makes MMO communities so great. There are even fliers for the coming march: Saturday, July 25, at 12pm ET / 5pm BT / 6pm CT. The Brothers will meet at the Varrock Chapel and then meet the followers of Zamorak at the Chaos Altar. It's sure to be a sight to see.

"I remember with a load of friends back in the day we all dressed up as LOTR characters and was seeing how far we could get into the wild and stay there without dying," says one delighted player. "One of my fondest memories, love shit like this."

"This is what makes a MMO truly special," agrees another. "Love to see it. Hail Zamorak!"

After 6 years living as a monk and a total of 19 years later, MMO player returns to Old School RuneScape and proves the classic phrase: you don't quit, you take breaks.

Being the second-biggest game in any given corner of the medium is nothing to sniff at. It's a competitive industry, and having enough players to stay afloat is a luxury many never manage. RuneScape studio Jagex isn't exactly dissatisfied with silver medals at the minute, but the aspiration is to take the top spot someday.

The studio's CEO, Jon Bellamy, made as much extremely clear to The Game Business. "The dream is that we're not the number two biggest MMO brand in the world, we’re number one," he says.

"There's a big old gap between us and number one," he continues. "But if we get it right, we know we can make headway."

The top spot belongs to World of Warcraft, still the definitive MMORPG. We could split hairs for hours over what constitutes an MMO here and by what values we're ranking them (Final Fantasy 14 players would surely like a word), but RuneScape and WoW are both online fantasy RPGs, making them fairly direct competition even if they play very differently.

RuneScape's got a strong foothold at this point, since the original version predates our first quests around Azeroth by a few years. However, World of Warcraft's been impossible to overtake since soon after launch, with greater production values than practically anything else available at the time, and a business model that toed the line between affordable and sustainable.

But Jagex has hung in there over the last 25 years, providing a worthy alternative to anyone who doesn't enjoy WoW or sickos who want another grind on their second monitor. Bellamy knows how it sounds having the giant in his sights, but argues, what's the point of goals if they don't scare you a little?

"It's lofty and ambitious, but if you're going to set lofty and ambitious goals, why not swing for the top?" he adds. "So, that's the number one goal."

Honestly, I wouldn't count out the classic MMO. RuneScape's maintained relevance without abandoning the aesthetic and (very literal) old-school ideas that made it what it is. We'll see what the next decade has to offer.

RuneScape creators asked their mom to help design the MMO's first enemies: "Only much later did they even consider actually hiring people"

Ex-The Elder Scrolls Online senior encounter designer Morgan Goin was one of the devs let go from Zenimax Online Studios and says she can't see how the studio can maintain the same cadence of updates going forward.

Microsoft kicked off its fifth batch of layoffs since spending $75 billion on acquiring Activision Blizzard in 2023. Since then Microsoft has effectively had yearly layoffs each July, with Zenimax Online Studios – which was hit in a major way last year's layoffs, resulting in the cancellation of Project Blackbird and several high-profile departures from the company – being one of the biggest hits for of this year's wave alongside Doom developer id Software, as up to half of the devs behind Bethesda's MMO have reportedly lost their jobs.

While Bethesda did try to damage control this somewhat with a statement saying its team is the same size as in 2015, devs are painting a different story. Speaking to BBC News, Goin says she was "blindsided" by the sheer number of cuts and estimates that some disciplines at the studio have been reduced to a quarter of their pre-layoffs size. Goin adds, "We're not going to be able to put out the amount of content at the speed that we were… or anything approaching that."

Andrew Young, a senior content designer on Elder Scrolls Online from 2012 until 2024, said the MMO "basically funded other failing projects." While nothing specific was mentioned, The Elder Scrolls Blades and Legends didn't exactly light the world on fire, but it could be in reference to any number of underperforming Zenimax titles (two bad Wolfenstein spinoffs releasing on the same day, anyone?).

Like with last year's layoffs, Zenimax Online Studios is losing several high-profile staff as a result of this year's cuts, with studio head Joseph Burba, Elder Scrolls Online executive producer Susan Kath, studio game director Rich Lambert, and production director Ala Diaz all reportedly leaving the company.

Making Fallout and Elder Scrolls games will "be harder than ever now" following Xbox cuts, say laid-off Bethesda devs calling loss of institutional knowledge "staggering"

Bethesda Game Studios – and, in particular, ZeniMax Online Studios – have felt the impact of Microsoft's recent plan to cut over 3,200 employees at Xbox, with the company's union representatives reporting a loss of "dozens of programmers, artists, designers and testers."

It's no secret that the layoffs have torn through Bethesda and its Elder Scrolls Online studio, which has been hit particularly hard.

An MMO team that grew over time to quite mind-boggling figures has now been reduced to the same size it boasted over a decade ago, leaving remaining developers – and fans – concerned about the future. Those affected didn't just include devs, however… leadership has faced the chopping block, too, apparently.

We learn as much from Game File, which reportedly obtained a copy of the official notice from ZeniMax Online Studios regarding its plans to "transition" to new leadership "over the next few months" – leadership that consists of company veterans.

Leads departing include studio head Joseph Burba (who has a 14-year history at the company and was just appointed to his role last July), Elder Scrolls Online executive producer Susan Kath, studio game director Rich Lambert, and production director Ala Diaz.

They "will remain in place during the transition period to help ensure a smooth handoff," however.

As for who will step in to take the helm, head of business operations Joshua Henderson will run ZeniMax Online Studios alongside Nick Giacomini, who was just promoted to Elder Scrolls Online game director last August.

In their statement, the former leaders note that they predict "growth" for the MMO.

"We have tremendous confidence in Josh and Nick," they write, "the future of this studio, and the continued growth of ESO. With exciting experiences still ahead for our players as we wrap up work for Update 51 and beyond, we believe that your passion, creativity, and commitment to each other and the community will continue serving as the heartbeat of ESO."

It's bittersweet – especially after some 200+ losses at the studio.

Here's hoping that the affected developers are able to land on their feet, and ZeniMax Online Studios can pick up the pieces somehow – these certainly aren't easy times in the industry, and the impact is more evident than ever.

Making Fallout and Elder Scrolls games will "be harder than ever now" following Xbox cuts, say laid-off Bethesda devs calling loss of institutional knowledge "staggering"

The past couple of weeks have been undeniably difficult for the video game industry, with Microsoft's plan to cut 3,200 employees at Xbox affecting various in-progress titles and studios – one of which is id Software, the team behind Doom.

In fact, id Software producer Andrew Willis has spoken at length about the layoffs and their impact across the board. A few days ago, he called them "incomprehensible," saying that small worker-owned studios are "the only path forward" from here.

Since then, he's continued to share his thoughts over on LinkedIn, writing, "The games industry must change if it is going to create art and franchises that have long-term sustainable value."

As the producer states, "Right now, it feels like the monopolies that control it are simply trying to extract as much goodwill and value (that took decades to build) as they can with little concern for the diminishing returns it's leading to. This is what happens when the people who control it (most Ivy League MBAs) do not play games, have never shipped a game, and fundamentally do not understand the industry they manage."

Willis then says, "You'll never get another WoW or Morrowind in the current climate" – a statement I can't help but feel rings especially true right now.

It's difficult to imagine such impactful games releasing when so many developers are struggling to mitigate the blow that widespread layoffs are leaving in their wake… and according to the producer, a lot of the issues stem from improper management.

"One thing that drives me nuts while watching the games industry be mismanaged is how everyone is looking for these massive 10x returns but is so focused on short-term growth that they essentially kill the goose before it can start laying eggs," as he explains.

"Disbanding and destroying a team after just one commercial letdown… makes it so you won't ever have a group that learns from their mistakes and perfects their next attempt (see Helldivers 2)."

With such quick trigger-pulling, Willis says studios will "never get that breakout success" they're after.

"These people would've turned down funding for George Lucas, Walt Disney, etc., and they wonder why they can't establish another colossal IP that pays dividends for decades. It's mind-boggling. There is lots wrong with the game industry, but I believe that one of the main things is that the people who manage it today have no idea how it actually works and refuse to learn or listen to the people that do."

The producer cites how wild it is to see spending on hardware and software go up, but layoffs never settling.

"It's really amazing how demand and consumer spending on video games continues to increase year over year, and yet the supply side continues to be extremely volatile for employees," he describes. "The failure to connect these two sides in a way that creates sustainable growth points to a direct failure of executive leadership – the consequences of which are only suffered by workers."

Willis signs off with one final thought: "The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that the executive management class that controls the video game industry is so severely inept that they have somehow failed everyone all at once in every aspect – the shareholders, the consumers, the employees, and anyone who cares about games. They tried to sacrifice quality for profit, and they didn't even manage to generate the latter. Abysmal choices."

I'm inclined to agree with Willis on his point about a "breakout success" in this climate – it feels near impossible. Here's hoping the industry is able to heal a bit over time, and that we see less news regarding mass layoffs, too.

Layoffs might offer "better short-term financial results," late Nintendo president Satoru Iwata admitted in 2013, but "employees who fear that they may be laid off" will never produce the same results

World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14 players can finally earn some cash by playing their beloved respective MMOs and put it towards a real-life degree – but it's not as easy as it may sound.

The University of Silicon Valley in California has quite an offer on the table for a few very lucky select students (10-15 annually, apparently) – the Max Achievement Scholarship, as the educational institution outlines on its official website.

If you've not heard of it before, it gives folks a chance to score up to $15,000 in scholarship money… but it's far simpler said than actually done. It isn't only a matter of playing games, you see.

As the university explains, "The Max Achievement Scholarship recognizes students who have demonstrated extraordinary mastery, persistence, and systems thinking through the completion of rare and demanding achievements in digital gaming environments."

Yes, that means that aspiring players need to get to grindin' in their game of choice. We're talking "ultra-rare accomplishments" for the "Legendary Tier" of awards.

Many of these, as the University of Silicon Valley describes, require "500+ hours of sustained mastery across complex systems (typically <1% global completion rate)." For example, World of Warcraft players need to have Loremaster unlocked, all 13 professions maxed, and 25+ Exalted reputations, plus the Keystone Master achievement.

As for Final Fantasy 14 players, the requirements are higher than the in-game requirements to become a Mentor.

I know, I know, those aren't exactly ridiculously high themselves – but the university's are. Players need all 20 combat jobs and eight crafter/gatherer jobs at level 100 (the game's max level), plus all role quests and "all 12 extreme trials cleared," although it's not specified which ones.

I'm assuming Dawntrail's trials… and then some? The bottom line is that this scholarship money isn't easily obtainable, regardless.

MMOs aren't the only games up for the cash, either – heck, there's everything from Minecraft to Dark Souls (good luck with that one). You can even apply as a general PC, PlayStation 5, or Xbox Series X|S gamer, but you'll need platinums and perfect games galore.

Put simply, there's no quick way to have a go at the Max Achievement Scholarship money. If you think you might qualify, though, the university is accepting submissions now.

Multiple achievements may be submitted, too – but "achievements earned via modded, private, or emulated servers are not eligible." So, if you're a World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy 14 (or insert another game name here) stan, shoot your shot.

Blizzard knows World of Warcraft's removal of raid add-ons is "controversial," but the MMO's lead says its new UI "has been successful so far"

The Elder Scrolls Online team is unfortunately part of Microsoft's ongoing plan to cut 3,200 employees at Xbox, leaving the developers behind the Bethesda MMO far fewer in number than before.

In fact, the team is apparently as small as it was about a decade ago, when the game only really began to take off after its shaky launch – or, at least, that's what prominent community figure Baratron, who helps run the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages and its Discord, reports.

He reveals as much in a new message, explaining that he learned the news from associate design director Jason Barnes and associate director of community management Jessica Folsom.

It came during the past weekend's Elder Scrolls Online Tavern event in Hesse, Germany, where fans and developers gathered to celebrate the MMO.

"This is important," writes Baratron. "According to both Jason Barnes (Associate Design Director) and Jessica Folsom (Associate Director of Community Management), Zenimax Online Studios is now at the same size as it was when they made both Wrothgar and Summerset."

That's shocking, to say the least – but he doesn't seem to think it's a bad thing. After all, "both are highly acclaimed DLCs," as the UESP admin puts it. "So while the layoffs are extremely upsetting for everyone involved (of course including players), this is not necessarily the end of new content or the game going into maintenance mode."

Baratron assures that there's more reason to think the end of Elder Scrolls Online isn't near, too.

"Also Nick Giacomini (Game Director) and Susan Kath (Studio Executive Producer) are specifically not at the ESO Tavern because they're working on the new Roadmap of when content will be released," he states. "It really is not the end yet."

It's a bit of bittersweet, good-and-bad news, all things considered – the layoffs, obviously, are not nice to hear about… but it's reassuring that they don't spell the demise of the MMO.

Here's hoping any and all affected developers are able to land on their feet, and The Elder Scrolls Online proves to have a brighter future than fans expect following the upsetting news circulating recently.

"There's really no one left": Former Elder Scrolls Online dev says the MMO "basically funded other failing projects" as Microsoft guts the studio

Blizzard made waves in the World of Warcraft community after deciding to remove combat mods alongside the release of new expansion Midnight, but director Ion Hazzikostas remains certain that it was the right decision.

Speaking in a new interview with PCGamesN, Hazzikostas first reiterates that raid mechanics were never developed "with the intent that add-ons would be used to solve them." It's an issue that Final Fantasy 14 players will understand well, too – although Blizzard only recently took action against combat plug-ins.

Players were meant to overcome World of Warcraft's greater challenges more organically, hence the removal of such add-ons.

Even though fans themselves have offered a bit of a mixed bag of reactions to the entire debacle, Hazzikostas believes the UI changes accompanying the add-ons' departure have largely been a good thing.

"I know this may be a controversial statement, but I will say that, overall, [the new UI] has been successful so far," he says. "It's not done, it's not perfect; there's more work to go, and we are continuing to undertake that work."

But, Hazzikostas assures us, "By and large, the vast majority of people are completing the same level of content that they were before, and far more are doing it without feeling like they need to seek out external tools."

Blizzard isn't done yet – the devs are "continuing to improve our base interface" while also making things a bit easier for add-on authors. It's about striking a middle ground, not just scrapping everything players used to know.

And, as Blizzard has said time and time again, "All of this has been in service of a more approachable experience and a more level playing field."

Reactions didn't make that easy, as the whole "killing add-ons" rhetoric "led to a very understandable, very negative reaction around that idea because add-ons have been a part of WoW for 20 years." But, they still are – just not in the same way they used to be.

It's nothing like Square Enix's third-party tool policy that those of us invested in Eorzea know very well – and it's evolving.

"While it's certainly been a transition with its challenges, we're excited to have this new baseline and foundation, and things will only continue to get better from here, both as we continue to add functionality to the base UI, and we continue to empower addon authors to add customization options," as Hazzikostas states.

Ultimately, Blizzard wants "to open up new doors and possibilities for players in raids, dungeons, delves, and everything in between" – and that's what Midnight's changes (and future tweaks, too) aim to do.

Blizzard continues taking action against World of Warcraft private servers as it pushes on with a lawsuit citing "large-scale, egregious, and ongoing infringement" of its MMO

While I've drifted away from Guild Wars over the years, it's secured a place in my heart, with the proud title of "Only MMO I've Ever Liked". I like to think it wears a sash that says this. The announcement of Guild Wars 3 has since piqued my interest all the way back up again, particularly as it looks like an MMO that actually respects your time. This was highlighted by ArenaNet's studio head, Collin Johanson, who said in an interview with IGN Live that it would be playable "as much or as little" as the players want.

God above, that's pleasant to hear. Look, I'm all for games that you can immerse yourself in, but I'm also in my early 30s and I don't necessarily want games to be all-consuming entities that, like some eldritch abomination, get their hooks in you and siphon time away with repetitive tasks. Sometimes I just want to be able to jump in, play for a while, then come back a week or so later, without feeling like I've lost out on something.

Rise and grind

Gamers are perennially fascinated with MMOs. When you're first getting into online gaming, the idea that you can share a living, breathing world with thousands of other players is intoxicating. But far too often, MMOs don't live up to their promise.

Take World of Warcraft, one of the biggest games of all time, but one that I bounced off like a rubber ball. I've been around the MMO block a fair few times, from The Secret World to Dune Awakening, but I can't seem to stick with one for very long. Even Eve Online, which has produced so many incredible stories, just doesn't offer gameplay that I personally find entertaining. There is one exception: Guild Wars 2.

I first entered the world of Tyria back in 2013, and fell in love with its structure. The mix of ongoing, large-scale quests, snack-sized daily objectives and larger monthly ones, immediately gave me the structure that I felt MMOs were lacking. I now knew what I had to do, day in, day out, making hopping on for an hour feel less like a chore and more like an opportunity to see what was new in the world of cat men and plant people. Crucially, it was also free, which was great!

For all of its grindiness, that's something that I feel Warframe does really well. When I hop on with a friend, it's easy to spend a couple hours slicing up Grineer then leave it until a week or so later when we're next free. I don't feel that I miss out on anything significant by doing this, and that's fantastic. Games aren't meant to be a second job, and whether that involves filling out a Battlepass or harvesting endless quantities of vampire gallbladders, that's something that MMOs are often guilty, with malice of forethought, of doing.

It's a choice for, say, World of Warcraft, to be oriented around small dopamine hits that keep you grinding away for dopamine. I don't mean to yuck anyone's yums, but it's not for me.

Get the guild back together

With Guild Wars 3, ArenaNet plans to avoid "keeping people hostage", as Johanson says, adding that "the MMO genre is ready for something new". That's the handle, right there.

MMOs have barely changed over the decades, and with live-service games, we can see MMO mechanics spreading like wildfire. Consider something like Call of Duty, which has decided that weapon progression and cosmetics aren't enough to keep people playing, and has implemented a battlepass, which introduces FOMO to keep you playing. If you haven't completed a battlepass, can you truly say that the money you spent to get the premium unlocks was worth it? Probably not, right? So keep playing!

Games across all genres can be deeply predatory. Games that I love, even. Yet the best games don't do this. You play those not to unlock content that you've technically already paid for, but because you're interested in what they do, what they have to say, or enjoy the process. I've recently been playing 1000xResist (it's a banger), and I wouldn't have felt more of a draw to complete it if I'd been offered a new Watcher skin for successfully completing 5 communions. Conversely, I played Assassin's Creed Valhalla a few years ago, had completed a ton of the game, then saw a yawning chasm of 50 more hours stretching ahead of me if I wanted to actually finish it, and felt insulted.

We've all got a limited amount of time on this Earth. I don't have the time anymore to sink endless hours into an MMO, and, as more and more people keep playing video games well into their adult lives, that's true for an ever-increasing number of us. If Guild Wars 3 is capable of staying captivating, without chaining you to your desk in pursuit of that next dopamine hit, it may well be a game that I come to love. Maybe Guild Wars 2 needs to get ready to share that sash.

Here are the best MMOs and MMORPGs to play right now in 2026!

Blizzard is pursuing legal action against private World of Warcraft server Project Ascension – a server that isn't the first to face a lawsuit from the company.

In case you missed the news earlier this year, Blizzard cracked down on private server Turtle WoW with a cease-and-desist order – only to then do the same to Stormforge, another server run by the MMO's players. There was no clear connection at the time, but Blizzard didn't stop with just the two. Most recently, it's gone on to target Project Ascension, a separate private server, with a lengthy lawsuit (thanks, Wowhead).

Project Ascension boasts a classless, free-to-play take on the usual World of Warcraft formula, with various game modes, custom raiding, and much more. It's been around for a good few years, undeniably catching the eye of Blizzard.

The company hadn't taken action against the private server for using its intellectual property until now, dubbing it an "egregious" violation on June 12.

"The defendants … have built an entire business on large-scale, egregious, and ongoing infringement of Blizzard's intellectual property," its initial complaint from earlier this month reads, outlining how Project Ascension stands "among the largest private WoW servers available today" with its million or so players.

A few days ago, Blizzard followed up on this with a summons request – and now, the clock is ticking.

As per the new request, the creators behind Project Ascension have three weeks to respond. "A lawsuit has been filed against you. Within 21 days after service of this summons on you (not counting the day you received it)… you must serve on the plaintiff an answer to the attached complaint or a motion…"

It concludes, "If you fail to respond, judgment by default will be entered against you for the relief demanded in the complaint."

That's not a lot of time, considering the private server's years of service – and, uh, also the fact that its developers are still adding to their project. Heck, 20 hours ago, the official YouTube channel announced a whopping 21 new classes.

All of this begs the question: What's next for Project Ascension, really? Will it face the same fate as Turtle WoW and Stormforge… or somehow dodge it?

Honestly, I can't see the server dodging Blizzard's legal wrath here, no matter how I spin it in my head – but I suppose only time will truly tell.

World of Warcraft Camelot discovery gives the MMO's community its most compelling evidence yet that Blizzard might actually turn a myth into a long-hoped-for reality.

Final Fantasy 14 expansion Evercold is on its way, so it's a great time to take a step back and look at what might just be one of the best raid tiers the MMO has seen to date: the Arcadion.

It's no secret that Dawntrail, as an expansion, left many of us a bit disappointed – I mean, they can't all be Shadowbringers, am I right? It has dipped in and out of a "Mostly Negative" rating on Steam (now sitting at "Mixed" reviews overall). But, still, it didn't go wrong in every delivery.

In fact, its raid series, the Arcadion, is widely regarded as one of the greatest… both for casual players and hardcore fans tackling the Savages.

As a dedicated raider myself, I'm interested to see what Evercold's own raids might bring – and what Square Enix learned from the Arcadion's solid reception. So I ask assistant director Tsuyoshi Yokozawa during a recent interview what the developers are considering carrying over into the next tier.

"Our experience with the Arcadion has served as a firm guideline for our future battle content development," he tells me… which, yeah, makes a lot of sense.

"We would like to strongly carry over the following three points in particular into the next raid series." The first is the "pursuit of unique experiences without fear of risk" – something I'm certainly a fan of.

"What this series has reaffirmed for me is that surprise and novelty are at the very heart of what makes content truly entertaining," Yokozawa explains. This means risk-taking while battle planning and "'prioritizing unprecedented experiences.'"

This might cost more resources, but it's clearly worked with the Arcadion. I don't think I'll soon forget the fight designs from Dawntrail's high-tier raiding, and I'm ready for more of that. I'm also ready for more of the lead's next point – the "creation of boss characters that players can genuinely connect with."

Is he low-key talking about Honey B. Lovely here and how she became a community icon? I'd like to think so.

"Instead of having them exist purely as enemies to defeat, we want to further emphasize portraying their individuality, background, and personality through the battles themselves," continues Yokozawa on raid bosses, "so that they can be appreciated and loved as characters over the long term." This approach is something Square Enix plans "to place even greater importance on" in Evercold.

The third point the assistant director brings up might have a greater effect on us hardcore raiders than anyone else: "designing gameplay that allows for flexible problem-solving."

According to Yokozawa, "Rather than forcing players to utilize a specific strategy, we value leaving in room for players to approach situations in their own way, using their creativity and judgment to overcome challenges." Comparing different statics' clears proves his point, honestly.

Square Enix "will continue to include mechanics where mistakes can lead directly to a full wipe," but the devs "want to be more deliberate about where those moments occur."

They'll do this "by expanding the opportunities for recovery" – think limit breaks, healing, and rezzes. It's all about the feeling "overcoming difficult situations through players' own resourcefulness" gives us as raiders, and I get it.

Just think about how much better a kill feels when you think you've truly contributed to the static's overall ability to get it – it's a feeling I know well as a healer main. It's nice to see devs acknowledge its power.

As Yokozawa concludes, they "always take our players' voices seriously" and are "committed to creating battles that deliver both excitement and a strong sense of accomplishment." The Arcadion serves as proof.

"Of course, we have much to learn from missteps and areas where we reflect and improve – but we take all of that forward as motivation to keep delivering experiences that can only be found in FF14," he admits, before signing off with a heartfelt message: "I look forward to seeing you all on the battlefield in the next challenge. We hope you will continue to look forward to FF14's battle content in the future!"

I know I already am – my fellow static members definitely are, too. All of these points, along with the upcoming job changes, have me at the edge of my seat.

Final Fantasy 14 fans make their own in-game Tinder, with gil-hungry bunny boys and modded cat girls galore.

As the wait for new Final Fantasy 14 expansion Evercold drags on, the MMO's community is finding fresh ways to spice its time in Eorzea up… including via a Tinder-like add-on.

Yes, you read that correctly. We can all try and score our very own Limsa baddies in-game (a girl can dream, right?) thanks to AetherLove – a Dalamud plug-in that adds matchmaking to Final Fantasy 14.

I'm not promoting third-party tools or anything here, but should you be intrigued by the concept, AetherLove apparently functions much like Tinder does… albeit in-game, of course. It's all contained within a convenient mobile (tomestone) window.

All you need to do is set up your profile – you know, include all of the essentials like your favorite music and Final Fantasy character – and et voilà! You can swipe left or right on fellow Warriors of Light, depending on how you feel about their Miqo'tes and what have you.

Do be warned, you'll see a lot of modded outfits (and perhaps more NSFW gpose pictures than you've bargained for). In other words, AetherLove is exactly what it sounds like.

As one might expect, fans are already going wild over the unofficial Final Fantasy 14 Tinder equivalent. It's Lovebringer all over again, except now as a handy add-on – and I can't get enough of the chatter online (and admittedly, in my own Free Company chat) about it.

Heck, just take a peek over at X for AetherLove profile screenshots, ratings, and, of course, drama. It wouldn't be Final Fantasy 14 without some drama, eh?

From the bunny boys looking for sugar mommas to the cat girls seeking their one true love, it's all certainly something to behold. Just how long will it last before Square Enix cracks down on it, Mare Synchronos-style, though?

I do hope it stays up at least a bit longer so that I can continue browsing through the chaos on social media, if I'm honest… but I'm not brave enough to dip my toes into AetherLove's digital dating myself.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have amusing screenshots to share among my FC pals – and various new AetherLove profiles to judge.

Final Fantasy 14 boss Yoshi-P has "many game ideas" tucked away that he'd like to do something with, one being a "game design that combines AI and servers"

A newly discovered version of World of Warcraft, called "World of Warcraft Camelot," once again has the MMO community hoping and theorizing that an enhanced version of WoW Classic is on the way.

This week, a dataminer over at Wowhead came across something called 'World of Warcraft Camelot.' Rather than a new expansion for the retail version of the MMO, though, things are pointing to something else. That's because the new discovery is attached to patch 1.60, which was initially released in July 2006.

And that's not all. The dataminer also uncovered Epic and Heroic versions of World of Warcraft Camelot, which does point to something substantial, but probably not something related to the current trilogy that the main version of World of Warcraft is going through.

That's about it for the latest discovery so far, though it's worth mentioning that it's the latest in a string of circumstances that everyone thinks lead to WoW Classic+. Plenty of eyebrows were raised in the community when several content creators revealed they visited Blizzard to see something, though other teases are even starker. One being executive producer Holly Longdale gearing up to announce what's next for WoW Classic before being comically cut off.

Regardless of what's happening, it's something Blizzard appears happy to tease. Just last year, in fact, the developers released a yearbook that mentioned developers "cooking on the long-term future of WoW Classic."

So what is WoW Classic+? It hasn't actually been confirmed by Blizzard yet, so there's no one way to explain it. Broadly, though, fans are hoping for a new version of World of Warcraft that branches off from the main MMO and resembles something like Old School RuneScape. Naturally, the original WoW Classic was Blizzard's initial take on something new based on something old, but we have been slowly catching up with retail WoW with the release of new expansions, so it's clearly time for something fresh in that space.

Out of everything we've seen so far, the datamine is certainly substantial. It remains to be seen if World of Warcraft Camelot is the WoW Classic+ fans have been hoping for, though it wouldn't be surprising if it is, as Blizzard's future plans for the MMO in its various forms have often been spied early thanks to the efforts of dataminers. With BlizzCon set to take place later this year, we should hopefully find out before too long.

"They will hopefully p*** off": As World of Warcraft players take on the Casino Bots themselves, lead confirms Blizzard has "a few folks looking into ideas" to get rid of them.

If you've been wandering around Azeroth of late, especially in any of the bigger cities, you've likely spotted casino bots – automated advertising for local gambling. They're meant to be against the rules in World of Warcraft, but real-money traders – RMTs – have been using them to get richer, quicker, and as players blow them up, Blizzard's looking into further preventative measures.

These nuisances can be found standing on wooden boxes, dancing away to pull you in for a gamble or give a winner a moment in the limelight. Users have gotten weary of the distraction, and in lieu of developers patching in more constraints for them, they've taken to taking them out.

A compilation on Reddit by user sozbro_ shows several being quite literally exploded. "I can't be online 24/7, and I certainly can't drop infernals on every casino bot myself," they say in the caption of the video. "Fortunately, this isn't a one-warlock problem."

As this is happening, Blizzard is on the case. "The casino thing that's vogue right now. Just to confirm we're aware, it's still against policy to advertise a casino so keep reporting them (or dropping infernals on them)," Tom Ellis, senior game producer on World of Warcraft, says on Twitter (thanks, Wowhead).

After some "digging in," he pins it on RMTs, because it's "an easy way to make gold quickly and cheaply." A blockade is being constructed, but don't expect much fanfare when it happens.

"We have a few folks looking into ideas on how we can make getting these people out of the game much faster so the activity is less lucrative and in turn, they will hopefully piss off," he explains. "Don't expect any sort of big fanfare 'Mission Accomplished!' banner for this one, this is one of the ones that you hopefully don't even notice stopped happening if we get it right."

As one Reddit commenter points out, gambling can be incredibly difficult and problematic for people. The allure of such activities could be triggering, especially if unexpected. Hopefully Blizzard's able to clamp down on this problem sooner rather than later.

"It has been an honor": World of Warcraft fans gather in popular private server Turtle WoW to say goodbye as it ends 8-year run following Blizzard lawsuit.

It's the most wonderful time of the year for gamers as Summer Game Fest rolls around, with plenty of big reveals and sneak peeks at upcoming titles – including the long-awaited Guild Wars threequel... Guild Wars 3.

Yes, the rumors were true – Guild Wars 3 is actually happening, and it looks incredible. ArenaNet unveiled its new MMO during tonight's Summer Game Fest showcase, surprising fans of the iconic 2012 gem that's dominated the genre alongside other greats like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14 since.

It's been a long 14 years, after all, and the community has grown restless.

Thankfully, fans won't have to wait long to dive into Guild Wars 3. ArenaNet has further surprised us with a beta announcement – one that's set to open in the fall of 2027. You can already sign up if you're interested, in fact, over on the game's official website.

Guild Wars 3 sounds like it'll be quite the entry to ArenaNet's MMO lineup, too – the devs say their goal with it "is to push MMORPGs forward, to create an online game world that feels believable, rewarding, responsive, and innovative while at the same time respecting players' time and providing a positive, supportive space to build community and enjoy new stories in our universe."

As for the story, the game is set over a thousand years before the OG Guild Wars, making it a prequel of sorts. Set in the Tyrian region of Orr, there are – unsurprisingly – various guilds fighting over the verdant landscape's resources.

ArenaNet teases "deep character customization" and "skill-building gameplay," too, which I'm personally very excited to hear. I want to look good while dealing damage – who doesn't?

More information will come later this year and in 2027 before Guild Wars 3 enters its beta period – but for now, I'm content just knowing it's actually real.

Searching for something else to wishlist? Here are the best new games coming this year and beyond to look forward to.

Oh, the rumor mill is spinning when it comes to Guild Wars 3. Various reports and false flags for the latent follow-up to Guild Wars 2 have sprung up in recent years, but a domain update spotted by fans may indicate movement on the MMORPG.

A dot-com domain for Guild Wars 3 has been registered since June 2004, presumably as a precaution by NCSoft when the original came out, in case the original game became a successful series. 22 years later, that turned out to be a smart move.

But after over two decades, the site got an update on June 5, 2026, according to online directories for URL information. That's today, at time of writing. Now, there's nothing public - the URL isn't live or anything - but something stirred on the backend somewhere.

The site is tied to Amazon Web Services, a popular contemporary hosting platform, providing another sign of movement, however meager. Assuming this is leading toward a reveal, the timing becomes yet more conspicuous because Summer Game Fest is happening at the moment, and developer ArenaNet's got something to unveil during the main showcase.

A glance through the Summer Game Fest 2026 schedule doesn't yield many other places where Guild Wars 3 may appear, until you get toward the end. The PC Gaming Show, on June 7. Could we see it there, either? Possible, if it's not part of the central event.

Players are taking this all in stride. "Cautiously optimistic. I'll be happy if it happens but I'm not settling myself up for disappointment if it does," says one fan on Reddit. "Are we finally getting a new triple A MMORPG? WE WAITED 10,000 YEARS!" another says.

The latest expansion for Guild Wars 2, Visions of Eternity, arrived in July last year. The central narrative of the RPG actually finished back in 2023, as part of the End of Dragons expansion, setting the stage for another installment. Keep all expectations in check, but we might be learning more soon.

Persona 6 to be announced at Xbox Games Showcase, prominent Switch 2 leaker claims as rumored images circulate

One of the most difficult fights in Final Fantasy 14, an Ultimate raid from Shadowbringers, has just met its match in a static comprised entirely of casters and healers.

If you've ever done The Epic of Alexander (Ultimate) yourself, then you probably know how challenging it can be. I still have nightmares about the wormhole phase to this day, and it's been literal years since my group took on the revamped Heavensward bosses.

That raid – the one that took me a whopping three months or so to finally clear – is apparently easier to some of than others, though… A static has just managed to clear it with no tanks, after all.

Not only did the group clear with no tanks, however – it's a group made up of three healers (in this case, White Mages) and five casters (Black Mages, to be precise). That tank Limit Break during Perfect Alexander? Psh, they evidently don't need it.

You can watch the static tackle TEA over on YouTube, with each member juggling aggro back and forth as there's no Dark Knight, Gunbreaker, Paladin, or Warrior to take it themselves.

It's quite a moment to behold, honestly. This is a nearly 20-minute fight that groups with normal compositions struggle to do… and unsurprisingly, the community is impressed.

"I love when people just clear old content with really silly combos, and here I am, unable to even find a group to start doing it," reads one comment. Another jokes that "tank LB3 is a suggestion, not a requirement." It would seem so, anon. It would seem so.

One person jests that "the BLM parties from FFXI are coming to XIV, I see," referencing Square Enix's previous (and still active) MMO: Final Fantasy 11. My favorite response comes from a tank, though. "As a tank main, I can barely survive the tank buster, and here you are BLM take it like a champ."

I'm a healer myself, but this resonates with me so much. I hate feeling like I'm overhealing in raids, but TEA genuinely felt so tight sometimes.

I suppose that speaks to this group's skill… and I'm sure that as the new Kefka Ultimate – Dancing Mad – becomes "contemporary," we'll see more impressive clears like this.

Final Fantasy 14 legend spends 3 years soloing the MMO's Free Trial in the worst way possible, and now the finish line is in sight after suffering Shadowbringers' last big boss for 3 days straight

Dune: Awakening may be lifting off from PC-only territory and arriving on consoles soon, but you won't be able to explore Arrakis with just anyone. According to developer Funcom, crossplay won't be supported because its focus is on finishing the ports and releasing the single-player mode.

Funcom acknowledged that players might be disappointed to hear it won't have crossplay at launch, but suggested that it might be added in the future in a statement to Eurogamer.

The studio said it will "address it more in an upcoming livestream," but that it's "technically and operationally complex to implement crossplay in Dune: Awakening and would require us to put resources on it that are currently focused on making the console port and the September update the best it can be."

That means PS5 players will be stuck playing with people on the same platform. Xbox Series X players will too, although they will be able to play with anyone on PC who owns the game through the Windows Store.

Ironically, the big September update will add a single-player mode to the early access game. Maybe that's why its director recently said he doesn't consider it an MMO. Dune: Awakening is about to lean into being a survival game first and an MMO second, which sounds a lot like Final Fantasy 14 players describing that game as an RPG with MMO mechanics. It's really up to you to decide how you want to play it.

The update will drop on September 22, giving console players the opportunity to play through the entirety of the game's book one story. New players will see a single-player option before they jump in, but will need to decide if they want to cut themselves off from ever seeing other players, including PvP in the Deep Desert.

Dune: Awakening fans "so disappointed" by no Polar Cap in 1.4, Funcom says it's "a huge amount of work" but the devs "are still very much actively working on the new map"

Emerging from an identity crisis, Dune: Awakening developer Funcom concluded last month that the game is "not an MMO" but rather a "complicated" survival game with online play. The big announcement out of Tuesday's PlayStation State of Play show – not God of War Laufey, the Dune news – leans into this not-an-MMO future, with a single-player mode coming to the game in September.

On September 22, Dune: Awakening will launch on PS5 and Xbox Series X, with single-player coming the same day, and the final act of the book one story dropping as well.

"This will be the best version of Dune: Awakening yet," Funcom insists in a Steam post. "Not just a great Open World Survival game, but the ultimate gateway into one of science fiction’s most iconic worlds." I like to think "Open World Survival" game is in title case to deepen the line in the sand. This ain't no MMO, buddy. This is an OWS.

Single-player will be an option when you first start Dune: Awakening, the devs explain, letting you "finally experience the entire game in single-player mode, across all platforms, and play it entirely at your own pace."

This solo mode will offer three preset difficulty settings as well as "full manual customization" for things like XP, enemy strength, and harvest speed. "All the NPCs are here, but no other players," Funcom adds.

"The Deep Desert is fully available with all its content and challenges, but the map never resets and your buildings are never wiped," the devs say, and I know that will be music to some players' ears. "The Coriolis Storm remains as a weather event but is less destructive. The Landsraad endgame simulates other players engaging with the faction conflict, keeping it competitive and engaging."

How does this new mode fit into the updated Dune ecosystem? "We're putting characters – not servers – at the center of the experience," Funcom says. Single-player characters will "remain exclusive to the single-player mode," but private and self-hosted server characters "can be played on any of these and can even go between private and self-hosted servers."

Characters made on official servers will be able to go between any official server, and can move to private or self-hosted servers, but can't then go back to official servers "to ensure the integrity of official servers."

A lot of true-blue MMOs are playable solo in some capacity, with the clearest example probably being Ironman accounts in Old School RuneScape, which, by design, can't trade or really interact with other players. You can also put your head down and just focus on story quests almost entirely solo in the likes of Final Fantasy 14, which has even made solo play easier by beefing up NPC allies who can streamline multiplayer dungeons and the like.

But the clue's in the name: MMOs aren't single-player experiences, so adding a single-player mode is about as loud a declaration as Dune: Awakening could make. This ain't no MMO, buddy, etc, etc.

"Single-player is one of the most-requested features since launch," Funcom says. "We’re also adding the final chapter of Dune: Awakening’s Book One story, so whether you want to play entirely by yourself, with friends on a private server, or with strangers on a larger multiplayer server, you will now be able to play the story from the start to its dramatic conclusion."

The demand for solo play is interesting on its own. It reflects the muddier definition of what Dune: Awakening really is, and the audience it attracted. People generally don't come to an MMO to play alone, but survival games – that is, the more conventional ones – do have a huge single-player audience. Multiplayer is also baked into a lot of survival games – from Rust to Palworld to Valheim, with the likes of Don't Starve Together and now Subnautica 2 explicitly emphasizing it – but it's not as essential to the genre.

Everything announced at the PlayStation State of Play June 2026.

Final Fantasy 14's most hardcore players have spent the last day or so grappling with patch 7.51 and its newly introduced Kefka-themed Ultimate raid – a raid that takes everything folks know about the MMO's mechanics and throws it into the wind.

In case you weren't around for Stormblood and its Sigmascape line of Savage raids (or Final Fantasy 6, from where the boss originates), Kefka terrorized Final Fantasy 14 fans with his chaotic mechanics and confusing puzzles for quite some time back in 2018 with patch 4.2.

Now, he's back for more clownin' around in the Dancing Mad Ultimate – a fight that fans are amusingly dubbing UMAD thanks to the sheer amount of trolling Kefka does.

The top raiding groups around the globe are currently competing to take down the mad mage, with Chinese static NO CCHH currently in the lead as per FFLogs – although the leaderboard is constantly changing right now as players progress through the fight.

It seems that many of them, however, hit a wall at the end of the second phase… when Kefka tricks them into thinking they've finished the entire fight with a fake chest and "Complete" cutscene.

As one clip over on X shows it as it played out live, Kefka "dies" while in his godlike form, with a small cutscene playing that reads "Complete" – not the game's usual "Duty Complete" message, notably. Then, a massive chest spawns beside the instance exit as it would upon a real completion… only to *poof* and vanish once opened.

The only option a group is left with is to leave and restart the entire fight after trying the chest.

Honestly, it's absolutely hilarious, and it seems to be what fans see should they not resolve all of Kefka's mechanics properly… which, you know, isn't exactly easy to tell, seeing as the whole raid is topsy-turvy when it comes to debuffs and whatnot. Viewers are loving it, though (myself included), judging by the chatter online.

One person comments that it's "absolute cinema," while another chimes in, 'This is the greatest fight ever!"

Others make jokes about the whole "UMAD" title given to the fight – one that, if it had followed the usual acronym standards, would actually be known as "DMU."

As one fan says, "This is why UMAD has to be the name." Agreed – "Kefka is the ultimate troll," after all. He's managing to trick the most elite Final Fantasy 14 players, spurring the greatest memes I think I've ever seen from the community during a world's first race.

My static will be taking Kefka on, too, soon, and honestly… I'm not so sure how I feel about it anymore. Nonetheless, I'll be sure to prepare my Warrior of Light with a clown nose and plenty of Swiftcast saving for quick resurrections.

Final Fantasy 14 legend spends 3 years soloing the MMO's Free Trial in the worst way possible, and now the finish line is in sight after suffering Shadowbringers' last big boss for 3 days straight

Final Fantasy 14 fans, the moment has arrived – Patch 7.51 is here, and with it, we've got a brand-new Kefka-themed Ultimate raid… and a, um, taco-eating emote?

That's right. While we wait for Evercold to arrive in January 2027, our Warriors of Light can enjoy some fresh, hot tacos in-game, much like G'raha Tia did in the ever-iconic Dawntrail trailer back in 2024.

As per the official patch notes from Square Enix, 7.51 brings some new emotes to the MMO – and one of those involves your WoL happily eating a taco, because how else would one eat a taco? It's brilliant, honestly.

In case you're out of the loop on the connection between Final Fantasy 14 and tacos, there's the iconic G'raha Tia moment to look to, and also the amusing misheard lyrics from Ultima.

Ultima is a song you'll know very well if you're a Main Scenario roulette frequenter, or someone who spent far too long farming the Ruby, Emerald, and Diamond Weapon trials – one that sounds as though its singers are chanting "BIG FAT TACOS" over and over again.

7.51 Patch Notes | FINAL FANTASY XIV, The Lodestone from r/ffxiv

Heck, folks have even mashed the two moments together, with G'raha Tia eating his taco to the tune. It's unsurprising, then, that Patch 7.51 and its addition of the taco-eating emote stand out… even amid all of the, you know, arguably more significant changes to come with the update.

Just have a peek over at Reddit, where a post on the patch sees various comments roll in regarding the emote. The top response is literally "taco time."

One fan jokes, "/devourtaco autotranslate is gonna be in so many people's search info" – and, yeah, I think they're right. People are also noting that the emote loops, which means endless taco monching. Sign me up.

Plus, it'll pair nicely with my Warrior of Light's tea-drinking and whatnot. As another commenter puts it, "Ooo taco emote. I have a whole lunch set now in my emotes." What more could a food-loving Au'ra ask for?

It's not the only silly feature to come out of Patch 7.51 that has the community excited, either – just look at the new shovel accessory… and this is why I love Final Fantasy 14.

Final Fantasy 14 fans celebrate a huge win: finally, we can kick Lalafells in the face and send them flying into the void

As the Final Fantasy 14 community prepares for patch 7.51 tomorrow and, of course, the new expansion Evercold arriving in January, Square Enix is updating the Mog Station with emotes – including one that has folks roleplaying all sorts of cartoonish violence.

The Mog Station, home to the MMO's paid online store (in which I have spent far too much money), recently saw the arrival of two new emotes: Blown Away and Overreact. Although both are admittedly silly – and perfect for those of us obsessed with gpose – the former is making for some very humorous RP moments and clips on social media.
What do these show, you may be wondering… and the answer is lots of Lalafell violence.

"Lala, run over and killed," one post so eloquently describes its attached footage. In it, we see Lalafells slapped to the ground dramatically thanks to the Blown Away emote, and, perhaps more literally, blown away by another Lalafell's chonky landing. "What a shockwave," the player behind the clips jokes.

There's more, too. Another fan jokes, "The potential of the new emote is insane," highlighting just how in their own video. We watch an Au'ra casually kick a little Lalafell down to the ground, with 0 regrets in sight.

Elsewhere, a separate thread shows more Lala-on-Lala action, with one popoto-shaped Warrior of Light slapping another silly. Both feature the Blown Away emote as the receiving party's movement of choice, which acts as the cherry on top of the amusing (and violent) cake.

Lalafells aren't the only characters being Blown Away, though.

A different compilation of clips proves as much, with its creator – a Miqo'te – being run over by mounts, fanned off into the wind, and zipped away by parasols… all thanks to the Blown Away emote.

In the best way possible, this is all too reminiscent of the recent obsession with Chort – we can always count on the Final Fantasy 14 community to eat up the most chaotic, hilarious parts of the MMO… and I'm so here for it, personally.

Running Final Fantasy 14 for 16 years means Square Enix knows live service, former exec says, but it's "used to being slow" and has "failed to bring its IP to a new generation

As one of the oldest, biggest, and best-understood MMOs around, Old School RuneScape has long been plagued by bot accounts using scripted actions to generate ill-gotten gold to sell on a gray market. This has led to congestion at popular areas in-game, with real players fighting bots for space and resources, and huge fluctuations in a trade market battered by absurd spikes in supply. But for the first time in a very long time, an extinction-class meteor seems to have hit the bot armies.

Two OSRS experts, SirPugger and FlippingOldSchool, both weighed in this week and came to the same conclusion: bots have been annihilated. This follows several periods of record-high OSRS botting in the past few years.

More pertinently, it comes on the heels of a renewed crackdown on botting and real-world trading by developer Jagex under new CEO Jon Bellamy. Jagex has obviously had anti-bot measures for ages – like every game with cheaters and anti-cheat, it's a never-ending battle – but for a while it seemed to be pretty clearly losing to botters. That's changed dramatically in 2026 thanks to harsher punishments and improved detection tools, seemingly with far more resources put behind them internally.

SirPugger, who has investigated and reported shockingly large bot farms for years, reckons "RuneScape No Longer Has a Bot Problem." Common bot hotspots in OSRS are completely vacant today. "I've never seen the caves so empty and I don't think I found a single bot," he says of one popular area in the Wilderness PvP zone.

Several professional botters have spoken to SirPugger over the years, and a current large botter reportedly believes that the current climate in OSRS is untenable. There are other games to bot, and OSRS is a less appealing target when it's harder to escape account action long enough to reliably generate and transfer gold, especially when you have to spend real money, or gold that you'd rather sell for real money, to get those bots into more lucrative membership areas.

"He told me that, all of the sudden, in January this year, bots in members [worlds] started getting banned in a matter of hours, not days or weeks," SirPugger relays. This trend has seemingly continued through the spring, with another recent blow sparking this discussion around the absence of bots. Updated account security numbers from Jagex show that over 8 trillion gold, roughly two-thirds of the 2026 total, was removed from OSRS in April alone as a result of bans and other account action.

"From what I've seen, the ones who claim they know how to avoid bans right now are the ones selling bot clients and scripts," SirPugger adds.

This is generally good news for the health of the game, but as FlippingOldSchool points out, there is a flipside. On one hand, the value of several heavily botted items – typically, resources that can be passively farmed in large quantities – has skyrocketed, giving players access to more profitable money makers (even if they also have to pay more for those items themselves). It's also a lot easier to find an available world for multiple activities, which is especially good for Ironman players who don't care about the trade economy because they have to get everything themselves anyway.

However, a lack of bots ironically makes botting more appealing because it makes it more profitable. Those higher prices can also benefit the few bots who slip through the net. Whoever can crack the current climate first and establish a reliable bot farm stands to earn considerably more gold and money than they would have even six months ago. And a lot of botters will have entire stables of accounts ready to go if and when the dust clears.

I don't think we'll ever see a true end to the bot wars in RuneScape, but this is by far the biggest blow dealt to botters in recent memory. I've seen countless videos and posts from players lamenting the scourge of bots in recent years, with some major content updates seriously sabotaged by locust-like botters, but the game's really bounced back. A comment on FlippingOldSchool's video sums it up for me: "When green drags are empty, you know things are getting better."

Illegal MMO gold seller earns nearly $500,000, becomes a tax issue, and days later devs announce plans to curb real-world trading.

Games have always been able to make players feel emotions, even make them cry, but subjecting them to such feelings hasn't usually been the medium's goal. Twenty years ago, though, one developer made it their explicit mission to make video games about feelings and emotions, and from that, we got thatgamecompany, the developers behind Flow, Flower, and Journey, a frontrunner and winner of several "Game of the Year" awards when it was released in 2012.

In an interview with Edge Magazine, thatgamecompany's president and creative director, Jenova Chen, recently reflected on the legacy of the studio and how well it has been able to realize these ambitions. According to Chen, the run between Flow and Journey notably changed things in the world of games and built momentum for a larger shift that we're still seeing play out.

He says, "After three games, we thought we had influenced the industry to some extent. We saw triple-A games like God of War and The Last of Us, which started to pick serious, emotional subjects, very personal subjects."

Chen continues, "I think that's a positive influence we had on the industry. And I was feeling pretty happy for the growth of the industry, because that's what the players asked us to do."

Of course, each of the games Chen mentioned went on to garner critical acclaim in the years of their release, especially for their mature and emotional narratives. The reputation of each also now transcends mediums; The Last of Us has an award-winning TV adaptation on HBO that's going into its third season, while Amazon is officially on the hook for at least two seasons of an upcoming show based on 2018's God of War and its sequel Ragnarok.

According to Chen, this outsized and apparent impact was part of the motivating force behind thatgamecompany's next game, the mobile-first and pacifistic MMO Sky: Children of the Light. Just as the studio had done for the console space, it wanted to "do something in the mobile industry to change people's view on games [at a broader scale]."

This meant wrestling with monetization options for about two years, which added up onto Sky's lengthier development time. Journey took thatgamecompany three years to make, while Sky (which featured a bigger team) ultimately took the studio seven years to realize and get out the door.

Even now, as Sky continues into its seventh year of operation as a live-service game, Chen still views the role of thatgamecompany as curators of experiences that center emotions. He says, "But ever since Journey, and continuing with Sky, we're playing with a new dimension. If you compare cinema and games, games have everything cinemas has, but they also have interaction with input and output. With Sky, I'm playing with a second instrument, which is social dynamics."

From the sounds of it, playing that second instrument not only saved thatgamecompany, which has been able to weather much of the games industry's turmoil over the last several years, but allowed Chen and his team to continue defying expectations and charting more emotional paths for games to follow.

World of Warcraft was a "savior" for the creator of Journey, and "beautiful moments" between Horde and Alliance players inspired his own games

Pour one out for our long-suffering Guardians, because Destiny 2 is officially dead. Or at least, that's how it feels; with "active development" ending in June for the nine year-old shooter, we won't be jetting off on any new adventures. And honestly, I'm gutted that it's going out like this. As someone who's been there since day one and has watched the game slowly yet steadily fall apart, it's heartbreaking to watch.

My Guardian – a dapper-looking Exo Warlock that I've used from day one – took their first steps back in 2014 with OG Destiny. I was there for the pre-release beta. I was there for the infamous 'Loot Cave.' I was there for the short-lived Dinklebot, before Nolan North took over from Peter Dinklage as our Ghost companion. With Marathon becoming the only active game developer Bungie has on the docket, and no Destiny 3 on the horizon, I have a horrible feeling I'll soon be saying goodbye to a character I've used for well over a decade.

Final Shapes

On the one hand, I get it. As our own Austin Wood noted when the news broke, "the vibe was that Bungie didn't know what to do with the game anymore, and perhaps it truly didn't." I agree, and think it's clear that Bungie is done with Destiny for the time being. On the other, though, part of the reason this stings so much is because of mismanagement. I don't doubt that the team has tried to do right by this series (no-one sets out to make a bad product), but the promise of Destiny feels squandered. Austin says it best by pointing out that "unpopular systemic changes, wobbling epilogue narratives, and a severe content drought brought Destiny 2 to a crawl in the past year and change."

Looking back at how tantalizing those early days were doesn't help. I didn't just fall in love with Destiny because of its gunplay; that's obviously fabulous, but for me, it pales in comparison to the impossibly rich world Bungie created in 2014. I appreciate that Destiny's dense worldbuilding has become a subject of (sometimes justified) mockery thanks to how near-obnoxiously unintelligible it could be unless you were knee-deep in backstory, but such complexity made it feel real if you were within its nebula. I don't think scoured another game's lore so heavily, piecing together the narrative or coming up with theories on the wider world. There was something deeply chilling about franchise baddie the Darkness when we knew nothing about it, and tracing its path through our enemy's history only added to that menace.

Similarly, the setting was a fascinating blend we hadn't really seen before. A post-apocalyptic sci-fi adventure with overtones of D&D and Saturday morning cartoons is a hell of a mix, one we should have been exploring for years to come. It was a rare beast that repositioned tropes into something familiar yet entirely alien. Destiny 2 built on that foundation: it did the unthinkable by destroying our home, the Last City, and forcing us to start over. It opened up new avenues and questions regarding our patron, the Traveller, and how benevolent it really was. It broadened those horizons.

Sure, I have quibbles about where the story went. I think some questions are best left unanswered to maintain an air of mystery, and much like Stranger Things' final season, Destiny may have tried to fill too many gaps. Not everything needs to be explained – your audience coming to their own conclusions keeps it alive. Yet even that doesn't dampen how thrilling those early years were, or how much potential the series still has.

For me, that's what I miss most - those open horizons, and the intoxicating sense of possibility. I don't know if we'll ever see something like that again… and if we do, it looks as though I'll be leaving my beloved Guardian behind.

Want to drown your sorrows in something new? Here are the best FPS games you can play in 2026.

The original Final Fantasy MMO – none other than Final Fantasy 11 – continues to go from strength to strength, and not even director and producer Yoji Fujito expected to be here.

Over the past year or so, Final Fantasy 11 has had to stop accepting new players to some of its most popular worlds because the servers clearly aren't currently built to handle that level of popularity. A nice problem to have, though not one the developers expected.

Speaking to Famitsu, Fujito reckons the surge in popularity is due to a Final Fantasy 14 crossover, free prize events, and a welcome-back campaign. I'd also float that Final Fantasy 14's less-than-popular Danwalker run might have sent a few grumpy Warriors of Light their way, but I digress.

Still, despite the surge in popularity, Fujito expected it all to calm down eventually. Expect it hasn't.

“Overall, the player count remained stable at a high level, and we never saw the kind of sharp decline we had anticipated, so honestly, the outcome exceeded our expectations and came as a surprise,” Fujito says, as translated by Automaton.

It's all rather nice, isn't it? As we previously reported, Square Enix considered winding down Final Fantasy 11 in 2024, but it's still drawing enough players to convince the powers that be to keep the good times rollin' on.

As for the future, Fujito says Final Fantasy 11 will live on. Major developments like a new world or story expansion, though, will prove tricky. There are technical limitations to overcome, and the team remains short-staffed.

Still, there's a desire on the team to overcome all of that, so Fujito would like you to think of the current moment as a preparatory phase where "we’re continuing to lay the groundwork for that sort of future development."

Final Fantasy 14 Evercold is the MMO's next big expansion, and it's coming early next year.

It's been a wild month for us Final Fantasy 14 stans, with the massive Fan Fest 2026 reveal of expansion Evercold and all of the changes coming with it – including two new jobs. Fast forward to today, and after enough sluething, plenty of fans reckon they've just about figured out what direction the new jobs are going in.

Every Fan Fest, it seems, director Naoki 'Yoshi-P' Yoshida dons a new shirt that teases the jobs Square Enix has in store for its next expansion. The recent event in Anaheim, California, offers no exception, as Yoshi-P drew attention to his top as usual.

After confirming that the two jobs coming with Evercold would be completely new to Final Fantasy 14 – "originals, as opposed to legacy Final Fantasy jobs" – he set the community ablaze with theories. The two new jobs – one tank and one DPS – could be anything, after all.

So, what exactly was on the director's shirt? None other than Rhitahtyn sas Arvina, an antagonist introduced with ye olde A Realm Reborn. The words above him were more curious, though, reading, "Guess who's back?" Presumably, the shirt hints at whatever tank class is underway, and fans have many thoughts.

Over on Reddit, the conversation has been ongoing for weeks.

One fan asks, "The obvious line of thinking is that this new tank will be a gunshield user of some kind, right?" They then go on to theorize it'll actually be the return of 1.0 classes: the Sentinel and the Musketeer. To them, "original" isn't a word we are supposed to take literally.

Comments see folks agreeing with the Sentinel presumption, with one pointing toward the Evercold trailer seemingly utilizing the word "sentinel" as another reason.

That's just one theory, however. A separate thread dives even deeper into Yoshi-P's tee, even tapping into the Norse themes that Evercold is rooted in.

"Yoshi-P wore a shirt featuring Ritahtyn sas Arvina," reads a reply. "You fight him in Cape Westwind. Capes are a garment worn on your back normally, BUT Mr. Ritahtyn has armor shaped to make him look like a Minotaur. And Minotaurs have a bull's head. Now, who fights Bulls and uses a Cape?"

Their conclusion? "New job is Matador." Another – which honestly has me convinced – is the one that touches on the Norse mythology specifically: "Mjolnir. That hammer is what's coming back. That's my random take."

Responses support this idea, with a fan bringing up the fact that Ritahtyn sas Arvina's name supposedly translates to "judge" in the Roegadyn language. "Judges have hammers. Norse expansion. It's coming back."

New Job Speculation from r/ffxivdiscussion

"Hammer has been a popular request," adds another player. "It could definitely happen." An older post regarding the new Evercold jobs and Yoshi-P's shirt features similar theories – the hammer is a popular one, it seems.

"'Ahtyn' is Roegadyn for 'Judge,'" exclaims a fan. "Judges have hammers. The new tank is going to wield a hammer." Phew, all this talk of hammers and tanks… but what of the new DPS job?

"Dumb theory for the DPS job that can go a few ways," somebody ponders. "'Guess who's back?' What comes back when you throw it? Yo-yos. Dude with two shields as a weapon? So, a shield-based weapon that comes back when you throw it?"

That certainly would be interesting – although I'm still personally holding out for a ranged whip class of sorts. I was in the crowd when Yoshi-P was showing off his shirt, so I know I'm not alone there.

As people screamed "whip" and "hammer" and other guesses, Yoshi-P confirmed that there were already correct theories shouted his way – so, who really knows?

Final Fantasy 14 players demand minion of chonky patch 7.5 dungeon boss "immediately," and there's hope as Square Enix joins in: "Chort"

One of your biggest breaks could come from the most unexpected of places. As is the case of a tenured developer at BioWare, who found himself leading the development of successful MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic despite disliking the genre wholesale.

For a number years, James Ohlen was a prominent designer at BioWare, working on the likes of Baldur's Gate, Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect, and the first Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Then, he had a fateful meeting with studio co-founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk about venturing further into a galaxy far, far away, and directing The Old Republic in Austin.

"And I was like, 'I hate massive multiplayer games. But all right, I'll do it,'" Ohlen explains to PCGamer. "It took me a day, I talked to my wife and said, 'It'll be an adventure, we'll only be there for a year.' I'm still here. Maybe I should have known better."

The project was on a scale different to what Ohlen was used to, to say the least. Though exact figures are uncertain, reports place The Old Republic's overall budget at over $200 million, making it one of the priciest games ever made.

Ohlen describes his role on the game as something of a cat wrangler who had to guide the "big ego designers" and make sure they "didn't kill each other." In 2018, seven years after the MMO from a long, long time ago launched, he departed BioWare. By the end, Ohlen says, he was just absorbing a nice salary, describing himself as a "highly paid, completely useless person."

Star Wars: The Old Republic is still running, though now it's supported by Broadsword Online Games. Ohlen was recently working on upcoming sci-fi RPG Exodus at Archetype Entertainment before stepping away from the team in late 2025.

Mass Effect hasn't been great in "a long time," but "D&D in space" RPG Exodus can fill the gap according to Hasbro's CEO.

It's a sad day for the World of Warcraft community, as players say goodbye to a longstanding fan server, Turtle WoW. Following a legal battle against Blizzard itself, the lights are being totally switched off on the custom homestead, prompting players to host their own special goodbye as they await the end.

If you're unaware, Turtle WoW is a collection of custom servers for World of Warcraft that host an old-school version of the beloved MMORPG. The idea is, or was, to provide a way for people to continue playing WoW as if it never evolved much beyond its early years. That means less cosmic battles and grandiose ideas, more fantastical questing. The version is dubbed 'Vanilla+', and the whole platform is a hotbed for modified approaches to Azeroth.

A fan-made expansion eventually emerged, Mysteries of Azeroth, that delved deeper into the mythology through this lens. But after eight years, the whole venture is closing down after Blizzard managed to serve a cease-and-desist order to the group behind it.

"Working on Turtle WoW has been the highlight of our lives," Torta, a member of the Turtle WoW team, says in a forum post. "It has been an honor to build with you and for you. Whether you were exploring new stories, leveling, raiding, PvPing, roleplaying, or just enjoying a quiet moment in the world, seeing how much this game means to you has been our greatest privilege."

This spectre has been looming for some time. There was a legal tussle for the server's existence, and an open letter to Blizzard sits on the Turtle WoW homepage. "Unlike other studios, Blizzard does not yet have a framework that allows projects like ours to operate without risking legal conflict," the team wrote. "With that in mind, we respectfully ask that Blizzard consider establishing a formal ecosystem for licensing fan‑run community servers."

Several points are raised, including how popular games such as GTA 5 and Skyrim have vastly expanded their fanbase thanks to mods. Turtle WoW had a thriving fanbase, and many of them will probably hang around in the game, but this is the kind of thing that pushes players away. Never underestimate the damage resentment can do.

The YouTuber Pespline uploaded a clip of Turtle WoW diehards huddling together on a riverbank for the end of days. Honestly, it's enough to bring a lump to your throat. Godspeed, one and all - I hope you all find each other elsewhere.

World of Warcraft streamers attend top-secret Blizzard event, leaving fans hoping for the version of the MMO they've tried to manifest for years

Amazon might have reportedly killed its second attempt at a The Lord of the Rings MMO, but the publisher says it's still "working closely" with Middle-earth Enterprises on other games set in J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy universe.

Eurogamer reports that The Lord of the Rings MMO is no longer in development at Amazon Game Studios and the developer behind New World, citing sources familiar with the project, as part of an investigation into the publisher's use of generative-AI in games. RPS reported as much last year, too, though Amazon never actually commented on the news.

Amazon's head of games Jeff Grattis didn't exactly confirm the game's cancelation in a new statement made to Eurogamer, but he didn't deny it either, which would be easy to do if The Lord of the Rings MMO was actually being worked on, you'd imagine.

Grattis instead draws attention to how the company "continues to explore a compelling new game experience that does justice to Tolkien's world" and is "working closely with Middle-earth and remain excited about the IP."

Amazon's first stab at a Middle-earth MMO was a collaboration with a Tencent subsidiary that fell into the pools of Mordor back in 2021. This latest project was instead a joint effort with Middle-earth's newest owners, Embracer Group, and Amazon's internal game dev team.

More than 1,000 developers at the studio were reportedly being transitioned off of projects like New World, which is being shut down next year, and onto The Lord of the Rings right before Amazon went through company-wide layoffs that hit its gaming division hard - a factor that likely contributed to the MMO's demise.

Making matter worse, Eurogamer's source claims Amazon announced the project almost as soon as it got a hold of the license and before it had given its developers a heads up. The Lord of the Rings MMO also only had "one or two people working on it as a side project" for several years, it's claimed.

As for what that mysterious new LOTR game might be, recent rumors and reports suggested the developer behind Kingdom Come: Deliverance might be leading a new RPG set in Middle-earth since both were swallowed up by the maws of Embracer Group at around the same time.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 devs won't confirm or deny making a Lord of the Rings game, but are definitely making an "immersive RPG rich with details" that's "hopefully not so buggy"

The World of Warcraft community has always had Classic, a vanilla experience in which fans can enjoy the MMO as it was before all of its expansions, but what about Classic Plus?

If you've not heard of it yourself, World of Warcraft Classic Plus doesn't actually exist – yet, anyway – but has circulated the web for years now as players yearn for a cleaner, modern take on the base Classic release… a version with more modern updates and quality-of-life features, basically. Think Old School RuneScape and the like.

A quick search on Reddit alone shows all of the Classic Plus discussions that have unfolded over time. In other words, it's a very popular idea without any actual grounding in reality – until now, that is… or, well, we'd like to think, anyway.

As per Wowhead, Blizzard recently invited a bunch of WoW Classic content creators – like Xaryu, Esfand, Guzu, Savix, and sodapoppin – to a secret event. Unfortunately, they're all under an NDA, so we've got no idea what was actually happening over at the Blizzard campus in California, where they attended.

The fact that they're all specifically Classic streamers, however, has unsurprisingly left folks excited over a potential Plus release. Just have a peek at Xaryu's recent stream, in which he reveals he's visiting Blizzard's headquarters.

His chat goes wild with "Classic+ confirmed" messages and the like. And, amusingly, one person had to comment about a new mobile game. Here's hoping it's the former rather than the latter, though.

I'd say it's not too far outside of the realm of possibility. Xaryu's little smile feels like a hint in itself when fans start spamming their theories about Classic Plus, along with the fact that players have wanted it to come to fruition for literal years now. Heck, there's even a community-led project to make it happen – so it's evidently on the wishlist of many a hopeful WoW enjoyer. It does all beg the question, when will the NDA lift?

I suppose only time will tell, but I'm sure we'll find out what Blizzard has up its sleeve for Classic players soon enough – fingers crossed it's sooner rather than later.

World of Warcraft "will continue to decline" unless the MMO gets a "reset," says former Blizzard boss.

Old School RuneScape is no stranger to bizarre, self-imposed player challenges or unusual but beneficial bugs, yet the latest intersection of these two has sparked an ugly discussion in the MMO's community, and it all started with a YouTuber whose account was reset by developer Jagex shortly after he finished the kind of grind that I wouldn't wish on people doomed to at least the shallower circles of Hell.

On May 5, OSRS YouTuber Rendi, known for years for finding strange ways to complete content and challenges at perilously low combat levels, celebrated reaching level 99 Slayer on his level 3 skiller account. Slayer is, by design, a skill where you fight monsters and thus train your combat skills, so leveling it, let alone maxing it, on a combat-free level 3 account is arduous and requires unorthodox methods.

Rendi hinted, but had notably not yet fully explained, that he used loopholes in the game's Slayer Partner system, which lets multiple people complete shared Slayer tasks simultaneously, in combination with multi-logging on "many accounts" in order to boost his account's Slayer experience rates to an impressive level – a purported "average" of 45,000 XP per hour.

I would like to have seen more up front about how Rendi managed to pull this off, but depending on stats and gear, normal accounts could definitely get more hourly Slayer XP than this. Though for such a low-level account, it is oddly high.

Apparently, Rendi wasn't the only person involved in this Slayer Partner grind, nor was he the only one to lose an ankle when developer Jagex swung the hammer. On May 6, after three months of grinding and less than one day of glory, Rendi shared that his account had been rolled back to just 78 Slayer – a massive chunk of XP lost due to the way level thresholds scale in OSRS (92 is famously halfway to 99).

What really put this story on my desk was a Twitter response to Rendi from associate OSRS community director Mod Ayiza. Explaining the account rollback, Ayiza says, "During routine checks at the start of this week a number of accounts were flagged for having obtained abnormal amounts of XP. It was investigated further, and today the bug was fixed to prevent it being possible again. Any accounts found to have abused this had their XP removed - not just you."

Ayiza attributed the account action to "decisions on game health," reiterating bug abuse in this method. Pressed on how this allegedly abusive method differs from standard level 3 training approaches which are only moderately slower, Ayiza says, "I think it's mostly down to how the level 3 account interacts with the content, and in this case, the team deemed it as bug abuse, but this isn't the place for me to go into further details on it to be honest."

I was also struck by the OSRS community's reaction to this whole thing. It's far from rare for fans of YouTuber or Twitch content creators to rush to their defense online, nor is the 2007scape subreddit known as an unbreakable bastion of seriousness, but the turnout here really is approaching the level of the riots that this game spawns every so often (frequently over membership price hikes).

The brutal timing of Jagex's harsh response, coupled with the visibility provided by Rendi's posts about it, stoked roughly a zillion critical posts and replies online. It's essentially become an excuse to dig up old grievances about the game, with many players wondering why this warranted such a response when other, more severe and game-impacting issues have not been addressed in the same way.

This is another evergreen problem with living games like MMOs – different priorities between devs and players, and differing understandings of how problems get resolved with what resources – but I can't resist nodding along with some of the complaints. One less level 3 account with 99 Slayer running around has not, you will find, really affected anyone else's experience.

"So with Jagex’s recent stance on unintended bugs being used for skilling methods that clearly weren’t designed, I think it’s great we’re finally taking integrity seriously," argues one player, suggesting many years-old training methods must also warrant account action and rule changes.

"It's funny that they draw the line here but there are so many loophole mechanics in this game that it's impossible to determine whether something is intended or not," reckons a top reply to the main subreddit post about this.

To wit, another player writes, "I have to confess, [I've] been abusing a bug for years upon years," again referring to a staple, Jagex-approved way of exploiting game mechanics – in this case, by way of "prayer flicking" to negate an intended resource loss.

"Your meme is now under review for a routine check," replies one joking player.

Like me after losing a Slay the Spire 2 run to a misclick, this has spiraled a fair bit. But then the Jagex hammer swung again. Today, Ayiza posted a lengthy write-up on the OSRS subreddit explaining the bug and Jagex's response.

"Partner Slayer has a check that requires the player to have killed at least some of the assigned creatures to get the rewards from the task," he explains. "In this instance, this was not working effectively for small tasks, more specifically boss tasks. This allowed players to get rewards without ever interacting with or slaying the creature. Slayer should entail at least some slaying."

The problem is that the bug Jagex was able to reproduce would give Slayer Partners credit for low-quantity Slayer tasks. If you selected a task to kill a boss just three times, you could do nothing but still net a 5,000 XP payout because the 20% contribution rule from Partner Slayer would round to 0.6, "effectively granting them Slayer XP for watching their partner kill bosses and doing no actual Slayer or interaction whatsoever on their own."

Ayiza says "we noticed a Level-3 character had broken into the top 10 for ‘Daily Slayer XP Gains’ across all account types," with the same character not only "averaging around 55,000 XP/hr" but even "breaking the 90,000 XP/hr mark, which is drastically higher than what we’ve seen in the past for limited builds like this, and at times even competing with main player rates." In total, 12 accounts were flagged.

"From there we spotted that the majority of the gains being made were in increments of 5,000 XP at a time, so we began exploring the Boss Task completion bonus as the likely culprit to investigate for reproduction steps," he adds.

After isolating players who'd received XP this way multiple times, a targeted rollback was deployed. However, Ayiza admits that "our approach to actioning against bug-abuse has, as you’ve rightly pointed out, been inconsistent."

With this in mind, the affected accounts will have a "portion" of their lost XP restored "based on expected rates that similar account builds would get if they were interacting with the content based on established metas."

In other words, Rendi et al will get the XP they would have earned without help from this bug, which is perhaps the best resolution anyone could expect. The whole thing is arguably not blameless, but it does feel like it got out of hand due to a lack of information. And we are ultimately talking about 12 people on a corner-case grind in a 500-year-old MMO. But I do love a good rabbit hole.

Jagex concludes: "Looking forward, we want to provide better clarity on what behaviour might result in action being taken against your account, and how we make it clearer to you what we consider bug abuse vs emergent gameplay, or fun ways to push the boundaries of the game."

Old School RuneScape is so old and so big that the devs are about "to run out of" a key tech resource and have to do "a bunch of work to stop the game exploding soon."

Old School RuneScape developer Jagex is fast approaching the kind of technical obstacle that, in some ways, many MMO creators would kill for: the game's apparently been around for so long, and has added so much new content, that it's about to run out of an essential technical resource that risks, in one developer's words, "the game exploding."

This revelation began, as many interesting OSRS facts do, with a joke on the 2007scape subreddit. A fake social media post attributed to beloved developer Mod Ash reads, "I'm afraid the engine has finally reached its limit. We've decided the only way to fix the spaghetti code is to delete the game entirely. We're wiping the servers at midnight. It's been a pleasure, but it's time to go outside."

OSRS is notorious for two things. Well, at least two. Firstly, the game's aforementioned spaghetti code can cause inexplicable and occasionally devastating bugs even in seemingly unrelated updates. More than once, the entire economy has been destroyed out of nowhere. Secondly, "engine work" is semi-regularly used to explain why certain changes or features aren't possible or will take a long time to implement. This Mod Ash joke lampoons both, and it could've ended with that, but Jagex developer Mod Nin replied to the Reddit post with some interesting trivia.

"You joke, but we are imminently going to run out of IDs to assign to models and scenery so we need to do a bunch of work to stop the game exploding soon," Mod Nin says.

It gets better. Apparently this has happened before, and the last time it did, Jagex just sort of kicked it under the bed to deal with it later. And now, well, later has come.

"Yep, around May 2018," Nin adds in a reply. "Either the developer at the time was in a bit of a hurry (likely) or didn't have much faith in the longevity of the game (who knows), as they only doubled the available capacity."

Thousands upon thousands of object and model IDs are logged in resources like the sterling OSRS Wiki and OSRSBox, from lamps to statues to stones. Whenever Jagex adds new stuff to the game, new IDs get used up. And apparently, Jagex's pile of spare IDs is getting low.

The easiest way to check this is to look for newly added items – like objects related to the Sailing skill, the first all-new skill added to OSRS since its release (or resurrection) over a decade ago. Sailing items like the Camphor cargo hold have IDs in the 60000 range. Another new entry, November 2025's Grimstone cave entrance, is 60117. I'm blindly assuming, just going off standard number patterns in code and OSRS history, that 64000 is the brick wall here.

I don't know exactly how you would remedy this – maybe, as some players half-jokingly proposed, you double the ID stash again and kick it back under the bed – but I can see why it would be a problem. If Jagex can't assign IDs, the game and its orbiting tools presumably can't keep up with where and what things are, assuming they can be placed at all. Which sounds like a bad thing, especially for an MMO running so many checks between players and servers. It doesn't sound like it's a big or unexpected issue. Rather, it seems like an interesting side effect of a game this old going on for this long. Maybe it really is engine work sometimes.

RuneScape creators asked their mom to help design the MMO's first enemies: "Only much later did they even consider actually hiring people."

ZeniMax Online Studios founder and former The Elder Scrolls Online director Matt Firor left the company after parent studio Microsoft canceled his MMO Project Blackbird in 2025, but even a year later, he takes it personally when people compare ESO to World of Warcraft.

It "still gets under my skin," Firor tells MinnMax host Ben Hanson in a new interview, when anyone refers to ESO as "a WoW clone" – partly because he flat-out disagrees, and partly because approaching Elder Scrolls Online that way makes the game experience worse for anyone expecting World of Warcraft in Tamriel.

"All of the feedback that we got was, 'This game isn't like WoW enough,'" Firor continues, "and it's like, 'No, it's not a WoW clone. Yes, it's multiplayer fantasy game. So is Dark Age of Camelot, right? Is WoW a Dark Age of Camelot clone? No.'"

Firor is an expert on what MMO is or isn't like another. He served as Dark Age of Camelot's producer in 2001, he has nearly 30 years of credits on some of the most influential massively multiplayer online games in history, including 1997 MMO Silent Death Online, 1998 MMORPG Aliens Online, and more. So when it comes to a relatively more modern game like ESO, he can say confidently, "Every game takes things that the games before them did and mixes them together in a different soup, and it's awesome."

"We had Elder Scrolls, and so we were fantasy," Firor continues, "built to be a multiplayer game – like that was the mandate when I got hired, was make the Elder Scrolls MMO, and I did. But, systems-wise, it is so different from WoW."

It does, at least, seem like most people who still play both games agree. In one popular Reddit thread comparing the two, the top comment summarizes what seems to be the general consensus: play ESO for the story, and WoW for the power progression. Another comment says the mere act of pitting the two against each other is as useless as contrasting "tea and coffee" to "absinthe and Mt. Dew."

Firor expresses similar indifference. "WoW's a fantastic game," he says. "It's probably my second-most played game of all time." It just makes no substantial impact on The Elder Scrolls Online, he insists.

"If you sit down and play it like it's a WoW clone, you're not going to have fun at all," he warns. "If you sit down and play it like an Elder Scrolls game, like Elder Scrolls Online, it's a fantastic game."

Elder Scrolls Online director still secretly plays the MMO, even after he left the studio when Microsoft killed his dream game: "I'm in guilds, and they don't know who I am."

Elder Scrolls Online director Matt Firor has made no secret of the reason he left Zenimax Online Studios, the developer he founded way back in 2007: he wasn't going to stick around if he couldn't keep making his dream MMO, Project Blackbird. He's convinced it could've been a hit, but he understands Microsoft's reasons for cancelling it.

"I think it's a missed opportunity for me, for [Zenimax Online Studios], for Bethesda, for Xbox. I think it would have been a fantastic game," Firor says in an interview with MinnMax. "But I understand the reasoning that went into it. This is why making games is always a heartbreaking business. No matter what happens, you'd be at the best studio in the world, and decisions happen that impact people. I didn't agree with what happened, but I understood the reasoning behind it."

Host Ben Hanson then asks if the decision was influenced by Microsoft's market tests. "I don't even know if it was that deep," Firor responds. "It's more, we're a number on a ledger and if that number is large, it is ripe for 'analysis,' shall we say. That number was always large, and over the years we always explained why we were frontloading a lot of cost and what they were going to get for it."

In other words, Project Blackbird's cancellation wasn't really about the game – it simply didn't look good on a balance sheet to the higher-ups at Microsoft. "Eventually, the industry just got to a point where it looked to the people there, and elsewhere in the industry, that that was just a very large bet and they needed to hedge their large bets," Firor explains. "I think that's what happened."

Project Blackbird was technically in development for seven years, but Firor emphasizes that it was not in full production that entire time. There were initially a handful of developers trying to shake out the game's backbone – what engine it should use, for example – and "then COVID happened" right as the hiring push for the MMO was supposed to get underway, Firor says, suggesting that it wasn't as if seven years of full-scale production had gone by with nothing to show for it.

Around the time that Project Blackbird was cancelled, a report from Bloomberg suggested that then-Xbox boss Phil Spencer loved the game, which made its cancellation all the more incongruous. In this interview, Firor simply acknowledges, with a smile, "Bloomberg did say that." Either way, he doesn't have any hard feelings towards Xbox at large – clearly, since he's still playing ESO in secret these days.

"In general, the people at Xbox were awesome," Firor says. "It's not a personal vendetta or anything. Everyone there was mostly good to interact with on a human level. It's just, big business is big business. It's like Microsoft is Microsoft, right? A giant successful video game on the Microsoft level was frankly not that stimulating to them. They want a business that they can look at that has numbers that go up, reliably, every year by a certain amount. This isn't Xbox – this is all public companies. They want reliable, forecastable business. Entertainment like the video game industry just doesn't work that way sometimes."

Firor compares the Xbox of today to the EA of 2008 or the Activision of 2004 – eras when each publisher had gone on acquisition sprees, only to ultimately turn around and shut down many of the studios and game projects which they'd acquired. "It's a business and it's terrible sometimes," Firor says. "I don't agree with some of the decisions, obviously, but the reasoning behind them makes sense on a ledger somewhere."

"A single-player MMO is almost like cheating": Crimson Desert is "awesome," former Elder Scrolls Online director says, even if "I don't know what the hell I'm doing."

Tragedy follows joy in the Final Fantasy 14 community after Square Enix accidentally gave out a pile of completely free and utterly adorable otter backpacks to players. Unfortunately, the impromptu giveaway was a bug, and the devs will soon be snatching those little accessories away – but hey, you will at least have the chance to acquire them again in the future.

With the release of patch 7.5 earlier this week, many players suddenly found the Senor Otter Pack among their fashion accessories. The apparent gift was a bit weird, but hey, free stuff, right? Unfortunately, Square Enix quickly confirmed that the distribution of the Senor Otter Pack was a bug.

"The internal ID for the Senor Otter Pack was incorrectly configured to the same internal ID as the Black Embroidered Parasol fashion accessory," the studio explains in a list of tracked bugs. "As a result, unlocking the Black Embroidered Parasol currently unlocks the Senor Otter Pack."

So yes, your Senor Otter Pack will be taken away "in an upcoming hotfix," but the adorable little backpack will be released for real "as a future reward." It'll likely be part of the annual Make It Rain event, which should kick off next month. "We hope you will acquire the Senor Otter Pack again when it is released through the intended method," Square Enix says.

I will never forgive SE for this! from r/ffxiv

In the meantime, players are heading to the meme mines to mourn the little guy, evoking Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's gommage, the Thanos snap, and that Brooklyn Nine-Nine quote – you know the one – as they say goodbye to their inanimate otter pal.

Nobody actually seems too broken up about losing their Senor Otter Pack in the comments, but the profiteers are already all over it. The Black Embroidered Parasol, which currently grants bugged access to the new item, previously sold for around 100,000 gil, according to online auction house trackers. That same item now sells for several million gil, depending on what server you're on.

You can, of course, spend your in-game money however you like, but you might wanna hold off on panic-buying anything right now. Yes, the otter is cute, but you're probably gonna be able to get him as a very basic quest reward in just a few weeks' time.

Yoshi-P hoped we wouldn't notice, but Final Fantasy 14 Evercold is indeed inspired by Norse mythology.

Zenimax Online founder and Elder Scrolls Online director Matt Firor left the studio in 2025, confirming months later that his departure was a direct result of Microsoft's cancelling his dream MMO, Project Blackbird. You might think that colors his feelings about ESO, but no – it's apparently still one of his favorite games, and he's continuing to play it to this day, even as his guildmates have no idea who he is.

"I did take two or three months off just to get away mentally, but I started playing again," Firor says in a new interview with MinnMax. He says he's quite enjoying experiencing the game purely as a player rather than a developer, since he no longer needs to jump into Slack to report every bug he sees when playing on live servers.

"I don't have that anymore," Firor says. "and not having that is actually very freeing, because I can actually just concentrate on the game and not on the problems. It's such a different mindset just to jump in. I'm in guilds, and they don't know who I am. So I just play and it's a lot of fun. I'm having the best time since probably 2017 or 2018 in the game right now."

Firor is perfectly willing to acknowledge the irony of hyping up his own game even when he's no longer responsible for it. "I was on a podcast last year where they wanted me to name my five favorite games," Firor says, "and I named ESO. I actually semi-apologized for it in the podcast because it's such a loser move nominating your own game for your favorite game. But it is. It's a really, really good game. And I've spent so much of my life building it and living in it that I appreciate it for what it is even today."

He admits that he still texts the devs who remain at the ESO studio about the game on occasion, "but I do it a lot less than I used to." Even now, he's still seeing some of the fruits of his own labours, since it takes "probably up to 12 to 16 months to make content in ESO. So they're still shipping stuff that I knew about, that I knew was coming and I was involved in the planning with. But they've changed it in subtle ways that I think is fantastic and really smart."

It's easy to understand why Firor feels so strongly about Elder Scrolls Online – after all, he founded Zenimax Online way back in 2007 and spent 18 years with the company, shepherding ESO through its early development and a rocky launch as it eventually became one of the most successful modern MMOs. That's a substantial chunk of a lifetime to devote to one game, and it's clear Firor takes pride in that game's success.

It's also pretty obvious why somebody who takes so much pride in their work might be so distressed about having their dream project killed. "Project Blackbird was the game I had waited my entire career to create," Firor said at the time, "and having it canceled led to my resignation." At least he still has ESO.

Elder Scrolls Online is still one of the best MMOs you can play today.

In case you were in any doubt, Final Fantasy 14 director and producer Naoki 'Yoshi-P' Yoshida has confirmed that the upcoming Evercold expansion does indeed take inspiration from Norse mythology.

As part of the latest Final Fantasy 14 Fan Fest – held in Anaheim, California – a rather impressed Yoshida touches on the fact after being asked about it as part of a question and answer session attended by GamesRadar+.

Yoshida says that the developers "actually tried to obscure that it was Norse-inspired" in the teaser trailer, when asked whether the architecture and a mysterious figure give away what Square Enix is taking notes from.

"That's one of the reasons why we did not list any sort of names or proper nouns in the keynote presentation," he says. "And I think you'll start to realize that as we reveal more information. But yeah, if you would like to look into some of the cultures and the mythologies surrounding this sort of [thing], you might get a better understanding, or, like, enjoy it even deeper."

A quick glance at the Evercold trailer might not reveal all its Norse influences, but upon deeper inspection, it does sort of become obvious. From the serpent-adorned architecture to the decorated armor and frosty settings, it's hard not to notice after spotting everything once – and is that a suspiciously gray-haired, bearded, one-eyed Au'ra three minutes in?

Of course, Final Fantasy 14 Evercold isn't the first slice of the MMO to look toward Norse mythology – Odin is a primal you can fight in the game, and there's plenty of goodness to be found in Heavensward. Looking ahead, though, it's thought-provoking to wonder how Square Enix will use it to give Evercold's world some of its color.

Over the years, Final Fantasy 14 has drawn on various cultures and mythologies to give the MMO a sense of vibrancy and diversity – Stormblood looks to Asian influences, for example, while the more recent Dawntrail draws on Latin America.

Now, if you excuse me, I have some very Norse-looking cat people to study.

After 13 years, Final Fantasy 14 is finally letting healers be healers by removing cast times for attack spells and changing GCD heals: "We want healing to be a healer's main priority."

Final Fantasy 14 had quite the past weekend, between director Naoki "Yoshi-P" Yoshida's big Evercold reveal and everything that's set to come with 8.0 – but I'd argue that one of the most significant announcements is the change to the MMO's two-minute meta.

In case you're out of the loop, Final Fantasy 14 – especially the game's more high-end content like Extremes, Savages, and Ultimates – sees fans often utilizing a two-minute window while executing their job's rotation. Basically, everyone applies their buffs at the same time so that they all align properly.

It's a system of synergy, but it's one that we apparently won't have to worry about anymore come Evercold in January 2027.

Yoshi-P announced as much during Fan Fest 2026 in Anaheim, California, over the weekend, alongside job tweaks and changes to tomestones, roulettes, and item levels.

While discussing the new class modes – Reborn and Evolved – he said, "We want to have something that's unique, and when we try to experiment, then we start running into problems about synergy." You know, like when your two-minute window pops but the boss isn't there?

"That's frustrating. We don't want that happening, so we really wanted to have players have that freedom and make it a very fun fight. After a lot of deliberating, that's when we came to the decision that we should get rid of the synergy actions."

Unsurprisingly, the crowd went wild (me included) at this statement. Square Enix – and the community – wants "something that is more than just the 120-second cycles of attacking and then nothing."

I'll toast to that – and I'm not the only one. Reactions over on Reddit show similarly pleased fans, with one exclaiming, "Two min meta is now officially dead! And nobody will miss it."

Another comments, "Good riddance! Finally. Yoshi-P has it right – the two-min meta not only limits job design, as in everything needs to revolve around two-min timers, but also… limits their [developers'] designing freedom." I certainly agree.

2 Min meta is now officially dead ! from r/ffxivdiscussion

They add that while the Evolved job mode is a "positive," the real thing that has them "truly excited to return" to Final Fantasy 14 is Square Enix axing the two-minute meta in favor of a more player-focused system.

Heck, even folks who don't mind the current window are happy to see the devs spice things up. As one Warrior of Light replies, "I was never a two-min hater, but I'm always down to change things up." Valid, anon. Very valid.

I personally can't wait for 8.0 and all its changes myself, especially as a healer. Final Fantasy 14 is finally letting healers be healers by removing cast times for attack spells and changing GCD heals, so Evercold is going to be massive for me as an Astrologian, y'all.

Yoshi-P teases new Final Fantasy 14 Evercold jobs, says fans have already guessed the weapon for one

Final Fantasy 14 boss Naoki "Yoshi-P" Yoshida is working hard to tease the new jobs for Evercold without actually revealing what they are. We know we're getting a new tank and ranged physical DPS – beyond that, there's little to go on except whatever vague hints exist on Yoshi-P's latest T-shirt. But apparently, the MMO's players have already guessed what one of the new weapons is right in front of Yoshi-P himself, no less.

During a stage Q&A at this past weekend's FF14 Fan Festival, Yoshida turned the tables to ask fans what new weapons they'd like to see added with future jobs. Among the answers shouted out were crossbows, hammers, punches (never mind that we already have the Monk), and morning stars, as well as more exotic options like a dual-wielded gun and sword. Two options drew direct responses from Yoshida: a yo-yo, which would apparently "be easy to make," and a whip, which would be "really challenging to animate."

Amid all the chaotic shouts in the crowd, however, somebody apparently had a bit of foresight. "We heard a lot of different ideas come up" from the crowd, Yoshida teases, "and, you know, we actually heard one that pertains to the new job. But I will not say which one it is."

Personally? My money's on the whip. It'd make sense for a ranged physical DPS job, and it'd be quite a flex for Yoshi-P to say it'd been too hard to animate when, in fact, the team was already doing it. But that's just a wild guess from a lapsed FF14 player, and we won't get real answers until the Berlin edition of the Fan Festival arrives on July 25.

Yoshida also offered some insight into how the team selects new jobs for each expansion. It starts not with the job itself, but rather the roles. "Of course, when we look at the player data and information that we have on hand, we do see that the DPS role typically has the most players in terms of what they main," Yoshida explains. "As such, recently whenever we think about a new expansion and introducing the two jobs, we would like for one to be accepted or well-received and enjoyed by as many players as possible."

That's why we keep getting at least one new DPS job pretty much every go around – though that "might change down the line" – but deciding the other is a much more abstract process of looking at how the current tanks and healers are being used and deciding if a new one needs to be introduced. Or whether, as the case may be, the team wants to add multiple DPSes.

Once the roles are set, the battle system team holds an internal contest where they pitch ideas for each job. "With Evercold, we had five ideas for the tank role and then I believe we narrowed it down to three ideas for a ranged DPS," Yoshida says. "Then I joined the discussion to kind of refine the idea even further. Looking at the gameplay, or how the job feels when you control it, was different than that of what we had in our Final Fantasy series thus far, so we decided it's going to be a 14-original job. So I guess the process of selecting jobs depends on what kind of experience we want to deliver. How do we make it fun and interesting? But if I keep talking, I might spill something about the new job. So, I'm going to stop there."

"Butt slider?": Final Fantasy 14's Yoshi-P promises to pester devs about the highly-requested feature, but warns fans of the dangers of a big booty.

As a hardened Final Fantasy 14 stan and a shameful (no, not shameless) hardcore raider, I've accumulated thousands of hours worth of healing in various forms of content, but the actual amount of healing I've done is probably not all that high.

That's because I've primarily been concerned with, you know, dealing damage… as just about every role in Final Fantasy 14 must be so as to keep up with DPS checks.

This has rung true for me in everything from Savage raids to Ultimates (I'm looking at you, TEA), and I'm so pleased to say the burden of balancing necessary heals with constant damage output is going to be lifted come 8.0 expansion Evercold in January of 2027.

Alongside the very nice changes to tomestones, roulettes, and item levels, Square Enix is tweaking jobs with two new modes: Reborn and Evolved. The latter – albeit seemingly simple in theory – makes things a bit more streamlined for all classes while still maintaining a good skill ceiling.

All these adjustments to jobs in 8.0 especially impact healers, though, as they transform us into… well, real healers.

Instead of having to grapple with the long global cooldown drag that healing abilities are while trying to deal as much damage as possible, we'll get to insta-cast our DPS-aligned spells.

Battle system planner Hikaru Tamaki – now lovingly known as "Mr. Prime" – confirms as much during Fan Fest 2026 in Anaheim, California, saying that "by casting a global cooldown heal, you will still be able to attack" come Evercold.

"We've removed casting times for attack spells." Why? "We want healing to be a healer's main priority." Tamaki notes that we're usually asked to avoid using healing spells as it is currently, so as to do more damage.

Evidently, Square Enix wants to remedy this, and the 8.0 changes are the best way – in my opinion, anyway – that developers can do so. "It's kind of like a heal plus [you] have DPS, and that's how we'll have it for the Evolved mode."

I think my jaw literally dropped when Tamaki announced all this, honestly. I mean, healers have spent over a decade now trying to act as a strange pseudo-DPS while relying on quick OGCD heals.

This, coupled with what seems to be the death of the two-minute meta, is pretty dang game-changing, and I personally can't wait to see how it affects me as Astrologian and my static as a whole. Healers aren't alone in having an exciting Evolved mode to anticipate.

I'm genuinely thrilled to see the long-promised job changes coming to fruition – it's been a long time coming. Part of me is worried about what this all might mean for my cards as an AST, but I have a good feeling Evolved mode might tweak 'em for the better.

Final Fantasy 14's Yoshi-P has considered a single-player version of the MMO because some fans think "an online Final Fantasy is not a Final Fantasy"

Final Fantasy 14's battle system planner, Hikaru Tamaki, has revealed the unconventional method he used to get his job at Square Enix.

Taking the stage during Final Fantasy 14 Fan Festival in Anaheim, California today, Tamaki introduces himself as a Square Enix developer of 13 years, having started at the company in September 2013, "four days after the launch of A Realm Reborn." Before that, Tamaki says he was "a writer and editor for a game magazine," which gave him a unique perspective on game development. "Before long, I had developed an interest in making games myself," says Tamaki.

So, what did the aspiring game developer do next? Obviously, he went to Square Enix's careers page, picked out a job he felt he was qualified for, and sent an application... No, actually, he rather cunningly used his position as a games journalist to his advantage. Instead of having to jump through the usual HR loops and job interview circuit, he gained direct access to the man in charge, Naoki "Yoshi-P" Yoshida when he was asked to interview the veteran games developer.

"I had already played a lot of Final Fantasy 11 and Final Fantasy 14 1.0, and I thought I could use that to get my foot in the door. So, when I was assigned by the magazine to do an interview with Yoshi-P, I used the opportunity to ask him for a job," Hamaki says.

"Of course, I didn't want Yoshi-P thinking I was kind sketchy, so I asked my boss ahead of time if he could call up Yoshi-P and let him know what I was about to do," he adds.

Yoshi-P, who is sitting next to Hamaki in this conversation, chimes in with his own insights, explaining that Hamaki's lack of experience at the time meant he would have to start "from the bottom" in a "part-time" capacity. Hamaki was apparently fine with this, telling Yoshi-P, "'I can do anything that you ask.'

"He was really serious about this. He really wanted to be a part of the Final Fantasy 14 team. He's a really good gamer too. He's pro-gamer level," adds Yoshi-P to a visibly flattered Hamaki.

Hear that, kids? The key to getting the job of your dreams is to get a different job that gives you access to the person in charge of the job of your dreams, and then just ask them for a job. I know I'll be looking out for any opportunities to interview whoever's in charge of Disneyland.

Final Fantasy 14 Evercold is the MMO's next big expansion, and it's coming early next year

The reveal of Final Fantasy 14: Evercold promised some big shake-ups for the MMO, but one thing remains the same. A new expansion means new jobs. We're getting a new tank and DPS option this time around, and – also true to tradition – director and producer Naoki "Yoshi-P" Yoshida is daring you to stare at his T-shirt for further information.

"Of course, a new expansion means new jobs, and just like 7.0, we're planning to introduce two new jobs with 8.0," Yoshida says via translator at today's Fan Festival keynote in Anaheim, California. We're getting a new tank and physical ranged DPS, and "both of these new jobs are FF14 originals, as opposed to legacy FF jobs."

It's at this point that Yoshi-P took off his jacket to reveal his T-shirt, emblazoned with the words "guess who's back?" and an image of the infamous Rhitahtyn sas Arvina, a boss who appears near the end of the A Realm Reborn story. The original boss fight against him became such a joke as players' power level increased that the devs were eventually forced to revamp the battle entirely, but he still has a memetic place in the community's lore.

He also wields two shields across his bulky arms, which seems like a pretty natural concept for a new tank. But, equally, it's possible that the shirt offers some more esoteric clue. Yoshida did, after all, once use a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shirt to tease the addition of Pictomancer. You know, because the turtles are named after painters, signalling a painting-based class. Obvious stuff, right?

Ultimately, your guess is as good as mine for what the two new jobs will actually be, but we'll know for sure in a few months' time. The proper job reveal is set for the next Fan Festival, which kicks off in Berlin on July 25.

For now, though, there's plenty of more concrete information to pore over. For long-time FF14 players, arguably the biggest news is the death of daily roulettes and the tomestone grind, but the fact that the long-teased Switch 2 port is real isn't far behind in terms of importance. But maybe I'm downplaying just how wild the impending Evangelion raid series is – and man, it is pretty wild.

These are the best MMOs you can play today.

Square Enix has finally revealed its brand-new Final Fantasy 14 expansion, Evercold, with plenty of exciting content to come – but something even bigger is dropping prior to 8.0, it turns out.

Those rumors of a Switch 2 version – you know, the ones reportedly teased by director Naoki "Yoshi-P" Yoshida himself in the past – have turned out to be true. That's right, during today's big keynote showcase at Fan Fast 2026, Square Enix unveiled that it's got a Switch 2 edition of Final Fantasy 14 cooking as work on Evercold presses on, and it's set to launch this August. That's a mere four months away from now.

Not only is it coming so soon, though, but it's also going to be preceded by a free trial that lasts one month. Yep, that means we'll all get to explore how Final Fantasy 14 runs on Nintendo's new handheld system before we fully commit to it. It's a pretty significant trial period, too, if you ask me... especially seeing as we'll have to pay an extra subscription fee if we like it on Switch 2.

Sadly, yes, Square Enix reports that it decided alongside Nintendo that another sub fee felt right for the Switch 2. As it stands now, if you have a subscription on PC, you can share it through to other consoles and play on them – which, you know, feels pretty fair, all things considered. It'll be a different story on Nintendo's platform, however.

We'll have to pay another subscription – albeit one that's 50% off, should we have an active sub elsewhere – but we won't need to have a Nintendo Switch Online membership. I'm not too sure how I feel about that, as I do use that membership for pretty much every other Switch game I play, but I suppose it makes things a little better.

I'll decide how I truly feel about it come the Final Fantasy 14 Switch 2 release late this summer, after I've explored every facet of the free trial version. Until then, I need to learn how to play Astrologian on controller.

Final Fantasy 14 is getting an Evangelion raid series, and shamelessly I'm even more excited for it than anything else in the MMO's Evercold expansion