Guild Wars 2 celebrates its best year since 2015 – “The active players have doubled in the last few years”

The year is coming to an end, and many MMORPGs take this as an opportunity to look back at 2022. This works particularly successfully for Guild Wars 2, but other MMORPGs also managed to make headlines this week.

The highlights of the week:

• The almost legendary story guru Chris Metzen returns to Blizzard and is once again working on World of Warcraft.
• The Elder Scrolls Online will throw almost everything you know upside down in 2023 and is focusing on really big innovations, but you’ll have to forgo 2 DLCs.
• Guild Wars 2 says goodbye for 2022 with a year in review, revealing that since 2015, there haven’t been as many new players in Guild Wars 2 as there are this year. Furthermore, the number of active players has more than doubled in the last few years (via guildwars2.com).

The discussion of the week: New World was free on Steam last week to attract new players, but how could it be any different with New World, this also splits the community.

The outrage of the week: World of Warcraft bans tailors for tailoring, because they didn’t know they were exploiting.

The number of new players in Guild Wars 2 was certainly influenced by the release on Steam:

Lost Ark brings a class that should have been there at launch with a 10-month delay

This is what happened with the big MMORPGs:

• World of Warcraft just got a new expansion with Dragonflight, and the next update is already on the horizon. Patch 10.0.5 is a small content patch. Furthermore, Dragonflight’s first season is coming, which also brings the first raid.
• In Final Fantasy XIV, houses that have been left alone for a long time will again be demolished starting next year. This feature was disabled earlier this year due to the long queues from the Endwalker expansion (via massivelyop).
• New World is re-enabling trading and announcing new server mergers (via mmorpg.com).
• Elder Scrolls Online is not only changing a lot of upcoming content, but is also returning to the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (via massivelyop).
• With the December update, Lost Ark finally brings the summoner into the game. It was already there in beta but was cut shortly before launch.
• Black Desert brings two new classes directly for PC after wanting to exclusively gift mobile players.

This is what happened with the small MMORPGs:

• RuneScape will get a new skill in 2023. The 29th ability in the MMORPG will be necromancy (via mmorpg.com).
• The Pokémon MMORPG Temtem is launching a Championship Series and wants to enter e-sports with this (via massivelyop).
• Neverwinter will get three new modules in 2023, but no new class (via massivelyop).
• Tower of Fantasy will receive a major content update in December, where the new character Lyra will come to the MMORPG (via mmorpg.com).
• EVE Online is launching a new website where pilots can see the live status of the faction wars without having to log in (via mmorpg.com).
• The well-known Russian MMORPG publisher MY.GAMES plans to completely withdraw from the Russian market in 2023. They currently operate games like Skyforge, Allods Online, Warface, Revelation Online there (via massivelyop).

A new trailer is available for the upcoming Blue Protocol:

Kingdom Under Fire: The Rise looks really good but has 2 major drawbacks

This is what happened with the MMORPGs in development:

• With Kingdom Under Fire: The Rise a completely new medieval MMORPG is coming our way, but it relies on NFTs and the brand has already flopped with us 3 years ago.
• Blue Protocol is coming to the West with Amazon as the publisher, in a new video they show even more new information.
• Gloria Victis has released a major update that changes how the world itself functions and increasingly focuses on PvP (via mmorpg.com).
• We have compiled an extensive article on which multiplayer games are generally coming in 2023.

These were the most important MMORPG news of the week at a glance. What is your highlight? Did we possibly forget something interesting? Or did you experience something cool yourself? Let us know in the comments here at MeinMMO.

MeinMMO author Mark Sellner recently attended a large community event for Black Desert and shares his impressions with you in an article.