Mabinogi Mobile is an upcoming animated MMORPG playable right on your smartphone! Like its PC predessor, Mabinogi Mobile focuses on community activities and life skills like hunting, gathering, crafting, and writing music.
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Publisher: Nexon Playerbase: TBD Type: Anime MMORPG PvP: TBD Release Date: 2018 Pros: +Visuals & music retain charm of original. +Tons of life skills and community driven activities. +Full scale MMORPG with dungeons, bosses, and more. Cons: -Limited information available. -No Western release announced. -Portrait-mode view leaves wasted screen space.
Final Fantasy XIV has released the Patch Notes for their latest patch, Patch 4.05. With it, a new raid tier has been added - Omega: Deltascape (Savage) has been added. On top of that, an increase in Item Level for players via new gear is available, both from the Deltascape, and via weekly tomestone currency that can be exchanged for gear. And Astrologian nerfs.
Normally, as a writer for MMOs.com, I try to maintain a certain air of professionalism in my articles. Less about myself, more about the news. However, a certain change caught my eye in the patch notes.
The Balance (Single Target): Increase to damage dealt reduce from 20% to 10%.
The author's face upon seeing this change.
Astrologian is a job in Final Fantasy XIV that buffs the party, at the cost of not having the greatest damage output. Since The Balance, a buff they can give, was buffed from 10% to 20% during Patch 3.4, Astrologians have been so desired, that White Mage players were actively frowned upon. By nerfing Balance, Balance has been restored. Poetic? Lets get to some of the other changes in this article.
Tanks now have strength on i290 and up accessories
Similarly, Paladins and Warriors will no longer lose half their job gauge when switching between DPS and Tank stance
Black Mage received Mana cost reductions
Scholar received healing potency buffs across the board
The Spear, another Astrologian buff, now gives a 10% chance to crit for 20 seconds, instead of reducing the cooldown duration of Abilities
And even moving past Tank, Healer, and DPS changes, there has been plenty of new content added-
A new Savage raid tier
New Tomestones of Creation (Exchangeable for presumed Item Level 330 gear)
Implementation of the Gear Design Contest (Tank Edition) winning entry (seen below)
New Mounts
New Minions
PvP balancing across the board
This is shaping up to be one heck of a patch. I can barely hold my enthusiasm, seeing all of the new gear and fights being added with it. You can check out the patch notes here. See you all in Omega: Deltascape (Savage)!
Now, lets not be under any false pretenses here. Mobile phones have been getting more and more powerful as technology advances, and with that power, they can play more and more complex games.
With that statement out of the way, lets move on! Jagex is promising mobile phone-optimized interfaces, and persistent cross-platform play with the desktop client. With games such as Fire Emblem Heroes, Brave Exvius, Fate/Grand Order, and more on the rise, was this only a matter of time before RuneScape got ported to Mobile devices?
Jagex says Old School RuneScape will arrive on mobile devices "this winter," and that RuneScape itself will arrive in 2018 - presumably early 2018, but Jagex did not state when exactly.
However, more interestingly - Albion Online launched today. Is Jagex trying to take some wind out of Albion Online's launch? Personally, I think not - especially since the mobile clients are only arrive in 2018, and late 2017 for Old School. Either way, I think this is a step in the right direction - MMOs that are not overly graphically intensive can usually only benefit from having such cross-platform play.
Weekly MMO News Recap #104 - July 17, 2017 by Omer
A look at MMO News and updates for the week ending July 17, 2017. This is episode 104 in a weekly series every Monday that will cover all major MMO news and updates. The games mentioned this week are: Albion Online, Wild West Online, Final Fantasy XIV, Riders of Icarus, Citadel: Forged Fire, Revelation Online, Mabinogi Mobile, Grim Dawn, Mad World, Asta Online, Mobile Legends, Jagex New MMO, Tree of Life, Elder Scrolls Online, First Assault, Black Squad, War Rock, and Gigantic. Links to individual news articles we covered this week:
Black Squad, the free to play lobby based Korean tactical shooter from Neowiz just ended its first round of closed beta testing on Steam today. The beta test ran from July 13 - July 15 and was available to everyone on Steam who redeemed a CBT Key from the game's official discord channel. Closed Beta 2 is set to begin on July 22, which is exactly 1 week from now on Saturday. No word on what changes to expect between now and then. The full game is set to launch sometime this summer.
Black Squad plays a lot like other lobby based tactical shooters developed by South Korean companies. It plays very much like Combat Arms or Alliance of Valiant Arms, except with more polished visuals. Check out my first look video to learn more:
Black Squad is a free to play lobby based tactical shooter developed and published by Neowiz Games. It looks and plays a lot like Alliance of Valiant Arms, Combat Arms, and other Korean lobby based shooters. The game launched on Steam closed beta in July, 2017. Having played dozens of games like Black Squad, I don't think it offers anything different from other tactical shooters. I personally enjoyed Combat Arms / AvA or even First Assault a bit more. Still, this ones only in closed beta at the time of this video so the game may yet change.
Coming on July 18th, First Assault will be revamping, ahem, Renewing their game. Nexon is promising "Major" updates (please tell me someone caught that pun) and optimizations to the user experience. Lets try to break down some of the updates, and more importantly, new characters to play at in First Assault.
New maps, balance changes, a new weapon - there's so much to cover here. Lets start with some new Operatives!
Azuma, Assault Class. 180 HP, 135 AP.
Reiko, Infiltrator Class. 135 HP, 90 AP.
Sitara, Specialist Class. 175 HP, 150 AP.
In addition, all Operatives will now be either Assault class, Infiltrators, or Specialists. On top of that, all weapons have gotten tweaks and rebalances. You can check them out here. The Renewal update doesn't end there, though, with a new map being announced - the Electronics Center
Available in both Team Death Match and Demolition flavors, the Electronics Center is a vital hub for information, and Operatives are frequently requested to defend it.
All this will be playable on July 18th, when the Renewal Update goes live.
Letters from the Producer LIVE are always interesting. It gives the players of FFXIV a window into what the Dev team has planned, and also for players to ask questions of the dev team. The most recent live letter, Letter #37, took place in the wee hours of the morning on July 15th, 2017, and there were a lot of balance changes. Some key points to note, coming in Patch 4.05, are-
Strength is being added to Tank accessories in 4.05, to reduce the amount of people using i270, level 60 tank accessories, instead of i310, level 70 accessories.
Tanks no longer lose half of their Job Gauge when switching between DPS and Tank stance
Lowered Black Mage mana costs
Healers can now see each other's buffs in the party list
That last change does not sound like much, but prior to Stormblood, double Astrologian parties could see each other's card buffs as to not potentially overwrite a stronger effect with a weaker one. This change coming in 4.05 should make it easier for Astrologians and healers everywhere.
More than just balance changes, Yoshi-P and Co. answered many questions not relating to the battle system, such as meeting characters in the Main Scenario Quests that have been helping us from a distance. You can read the full list of questions here, and as a reminder, Patch 4.05 drops this Tuesday, on July 18th, 2017.
Conquer Online grindfest Friday video with Omer and Erhan. We downloaded and played some Conquer Online - an old school (2004) fantasy MMORPG with a strong emphasis on PvP. The game is developed and published by Netdragon, the same company behind Eudemons Online. While Conquer Online hasn't aged too well the game still remains fairly popular today. We played it through the PC client but it's also available on mobile. The most ridiculous aspect of the game was its anti-bot / anti-cheating policy. Players who get caught for botting/cheating can get unbanned through the cash shop by spending real money.
Papaya Play, the same company that relaunched La Tale last month, officially relaunched War Rock today. The free to play FPS was previously available through NexonEU and GamersFirst before that. The game originally launched back in 2007 in North America and has been running for about 10 years now. Despite its age it's still fairly popular. The relaunch of the game comes with some changes, most notably a new anti-cheat system as well as a brand new tournament mode.
Unlike La Tale, players can transfer over their full character data to the Papaya Play version of the game. This includes character name, items, achievements, clan progress, and even friends list. Papaya Play is also celebrating the relaunch with a series of events and giveaways so make sure to check those out on the official website. For those that never played War Rock, it plays a lot like Combat Arms and other Counter-Strike inspired lobby based tactical shooters.
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