MMO Weekly Recap #437 Jan 8th – PoE Echoes of the Atlas, Neverwinter Sharandar, SWC 2021 Info & More

JamesBl0nde recaps the MMO gaming news for the week of January 8, 2021! Transcript follows.

Genshin Impact brings in the second half of its 1.2 update, Hi-rez previews its plans for 2021 along with teasing four new gods in smite and eight new rogues in Rogue company, Runescape celebrates 20 years running, and get ready for the mother of all Path of Exile updates!

What’s good everyone, JamesBl0nde here with the weekly recap for gaming news and announcements for the week of January 8th 2021 and its great to be back and in a new year, I know this year isn’t having the best start one week into it but just imagine this for a second, imagine if 2021 was equally good as 2020 was bad, man it feels good just imagining what that would be like, here’s hoping. Either way we’ve got some awesome news to fire up the new year starting with

Apex Legends as they kicked off a new event for its players: the Fight Night Collection Event. This event adds a temporary game mode, the Airdrop Escalation Takeover, a classic battle royale mode with a ton more supply drops. There’s also the  Pathfinder Town Takeover, a melee only brawl for loot in the central ring. The whole event comes with 24 new cosmetics to earn during the event pass, plus a small assortment of bug fixes and quality of life updates.

In some completely different news, RuneScape is celebrating its 20th anniversary, and they have good reason to celebrate – the game actually has had more subscribers in 2020 than any previous year! The celebrations of this anniversary are planned to last all year long, starting with the Grand Party event, a new anniversary quest line, and new epic story arc. Old School Runescape will also get its own anniversary event adventuring with the Green Gnome Child, and just this week introduced the Soul Wars PvP minigame. Old School RuneScape will launch on Steam this year, and the main RuneScape also will arrive on mobile this year. And for the true fans, there’s a new book coming published by Dark Horse, plus a ton of exclusive RuneScape merch!

Now that Cyberpunk 2077 has been released, Path of Exile is about ready to roll out its next major update: Echoes of the Atlas. This will majorly shift end game content as it lets players specialize each region of their Atlas with a passive tree, selecting bosses and rewards. There’s also new Atlas maps and a new pinnacle boss, the Maven  – though to face her, you will have to defeat ten bosses simultaneously. Yikes! Alongside this update comes the Ritual league, where you’ll have to face waves of monsters while enclosed in a ritual circle. Gain tributes, vessels, and gain all new rewards. The update also features a rebalance of all Ascendancy classes, reworks for Deadeye, Inquisitor, and Elementalist, the return of the Harvest, and permanent inclusion of the Heist league mechanics. This is a huge update, in fact the content reveal video you see playing here is around 30mins long, just to include all the new stuff, so get ready because there’s a lot to take in and it lands on January 15th on PC, January 20th for Console. This honestly looks like an entirely new game, its crazy.

Whats also crazy, Perfect World has just announced its newest expansion for the MMO Neverwinter. Called Sharandar, the expansion will unfold over three chapters starting with the first on February 9th for PC (one month later for consoles of course). The story will take players to Sharandar, originally introduced with Fury of the Feywild, which has been reworked and includes a new social hub, along with the Ruins of Malabog adventure zone and Vault of Stars dungeon. If you like the Forgotten Realms setting, you may want to check this out next month.

Ninjala Season Four has kicked off this week, and the theme is winter! The season will run until March 24th and introduces a bunch of new winter-themed outfits, emotes, and stickers. There are two new craftable weapons, the Scrap Saber and the Chewing V. The Season 4 update also introduces the Fort Riverdale stage, featuring high rises, a clock tower, and beautiful night time scenery. There’s also a bunch of other improvements and balance changes so make sure to check out the full patch notes before hopping in game.

Let’s take a moment to check in with Genshin Impact! Just before we went on break, the game launched its 1.2 update, and introduced the new Geo element character, Albedo. Along with that came a major event, the Chalk Prince and the Dragon. That event just recently ended but it was a huge one, adding a whole new region permanently to the game while also hosting a limited time event that gave players a powerful new sword and tons of rewards. But the second half of 1.2 is just about ready to hit, which will include the Lost Riches event. In this event you’ll be able to seek out treasures with the aid of Seelies and exchange those for rewards – including the game’s first minipets! Unfortunately these Mini Seelie pets come in three colors but you’ll only be able to claim one for now. Next week will also introduce another playable character, the Ice element archer Ganyu, so save up those primogems. Finally while there’s no confirmed date yet for Update 1.3, we expect it should arrive in February, and bring with it the characters Xiao and Hu Tao, so keep your eyes and ears open.

Hi Rez is killing it so far this year with a bunch of new announcements so let’s first talk about Paladins. This week the Eternal Pyre update was launched for Paladins and includes a brand new battle pass featuring four skins and their dark variants. Discover Eternal Retribution Koga, Eternal Conflict Lian, Eternal Guardian Khan, and Eternal Fervor Jenos. Naturally the battle pass has other cosmetics as well including sprays, avatars, and loading frames. But the real big news for Paladins this week is the announcement of Season Four, including the new Champion Yagorath the Devourer! Yagorath is a frontline champion that sprays acid, shoots out piercing quills, and can plant herself to gain defense and attempt to devour an enemy champion, Executing them outright if she’s not stopped! The new battlepass was also revealed which stars the Soul-Stealer Furia skin and the Golden Gryphon Mount.

Next up on the Hi Rez list is Rogue Company, which revealed its plans for 2021 include 8 new rogues, the new Hollows map, a new ranked system, and a new 2v2 skirmish mode. Players can expect their first new rogue, Kestrel, as part of phase one which should drop in the next few weeks. Rogue Company will also be kicking off its first official Season, complete with new Battle and Season passes.

And last but not least from Hi Rez, SMITE has offered its preview for the coming year, including teasers for its god lineup that include four unnamed mysteries. But the first in the line up is Tiamat, part of the Dawn of Babylon arc that begins this month. Tiamat will arrive in February, to be followed closely by Gilgamesh! Of course Season 8 is about to begin and it will bring a brand new Conquest map, designed to model after Babylonian architecture and with a larger map size and new jungle threats. Looks pretty epic!

But speaking of epic, let’s finally talk about our Epic Games Store free game of the week – Crying Suns. This is a sci-fi tactical rogue lite with a retro look and a large, deep storyline inspired by classic such as Dune and Battlestar Galactica. Definitely not your typical roguelike so check it out and remember to nab it before January 14th!

But with that said, that’s about it for all the major news and announcements for this week. Be sure to stay safe, and keep your families healthy! Like always you can find more information on the news topics, linked in the description below, feel free to discuss the news or even more news in the comments below and don’t forget to like, subscribe, wash your hands a bunch, hit that little bell icon to get notifications and of course share this video! But until next time guys that’s going to be it for me… I’m JamesBl0nde… see ya out there gamers!