Weekly Recap #483 February 4th – Swords of Legends Going F2P, GW2 Gets Siege Turtles & More!

JamesBl0nde recaps the MMO gaming news for the week of February 4, 2022! Transcript follows.

Time to go free to play for Swords of Legends Online, Guild Wars 2 gears up for the End of Dragons expansion, The new character Mad Maggie in Apex Legends literally wrecks face, and wouldn’t it be cool to build your own boss fight in Path of Exile, looks like you can now!

What’s good everyone, JamesBl0nde here with the weekly recap for gaming news and announcements for the week of February 4th, 2022 and we’re back to another fairly short recap this week but either way starting out the news…

Gameforge has announced some big news for its MMORPG, Swords of Legends Online. There’s a big update coming around the end of February, and it will mark three milestones for the game. First up is probably the biggest one – the game will be moving to a free to play model! The publisher cited community concerns about player population, and indicates that all microtransactions and Battle Passes will be cosmetic only. Players who purchased the game already will receive exclusive cosmetic rewards as thanks and compensation for the change. Along with this, Gameforge is expanding its service into Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Finally, the update features the game’s first expansion – The Firestone Legacy! This update is packed with new content including two new classes, the Fox Mage and Warrior, an increased level cap, new story quests, zones, dungeons, and more.

Meanwhile Guild Wars 2 has shown off a fun new features trailer for its upcoming expansion, End of Dragons. The trailer shows off new methods of travel, guild hall customization, nine new elite specializations, and what’s really cool: the multiplayer Siege Turtle mount, which you raise yourself and comes equipped with cannons! Take that blastoise! Lots of hype for this new expansion which will launch on February 28th.

Path of Exile has just started its newest expansion, Siege of the Atlas! This update introduces two new Eldritch Horrors to battle – the Searing Exarch and the Eater of Worlds. These powerful beings will take a lot of work to bring down! The Atlas itself has also been reworked, removing regions and changing it so that you can uniformly raise the tier of all your maps through gathering voidstones. Likewise the Atlas passive skilltree has also been reworked to a single tree with over 600 skills to specialize in! For league fans, the new League, Archnemesis, lets you build your own boss fights with over 60 new modifiers to apply. All this and more is going live TODAY, February 4th, on PC, and will arrive on console next week.

Vigor has updated this week with Chronicles: Perseverance, a new chapter in the Outlanders saga. This update includes the new tale of Freyja, and features a Vikings style theme. The new Battle Pass includes horn helmets, shields, and tattoos among other things to give you that Viking feel. The update also includes the new Encounter map, Kjerstin, a new improvised mine consumable, weapon reworks, and more.

Neverwinter has released its 22nd module, Dragonbone Vale, on PlayStation and Xbox. This campaign, which released last month on PC, invites players to prevent the Cult of the Dragon from turning all the dragons of Faerun into zombies. Yeah that would be bad!  Expect to find a new zone, a new ten player trial, a special grappling hook mechanic, and more.

In other news, Warface has rolled out a new update this week, and the star of it is the brand new Rifleman, Agent Whirl. She means business, and with her also comes a brand new series of Englishman weapons and camos. Also new in the update is an event for the Chinese New Year. Pick up the limited time contract to earn achievements, a unique charm, Water Tiger camos and more.

Apex Legends has been rolling out the trailers this week as it prepares to launch its next season, called Defiance. Defiance is bringing with it a new character, Mad Maggie, who can utilize a Riot Drill and Wrecking Ball, as well as highlight enemies she’s damaged. Mad Maggie’s arrival also brings with it changes to the Olympus map, expanding it and adding the new Phase Driver for those willing to take a risk to earn some rewards. The first three weeks of the season will also feature the limited time game mode, Control, in which teams of 9 battle to hold control points with infinite respawn.

Looks like we’re all getting drafted this week as My.Games has announced an open Public Stress Test for their tactical online FPS, World War 3. The test runs from February 3rd to February 7th, and you can access it by downloading the game from its website or by requesting access on Steam. During this test you can experience two modes – Team Deathmatch and Tactical Ops – and four maps – Berlin, Warsaw, Moscow, and Polyarny. Playing will also earn you an exclusive LWH Dark Helmet! Be aware that the game data will be wiped when the game goes into open beta next month, but the game will also be switching to free to play at that time, so check it out.

And finally, let’s drop in to the Epic Games Store to check out this week’s free game – Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair. A sequel to the original Yooka  Laylee, this is an energetic 2.5D platformer with an open world approach, and plenty of puzzles and bosses to tackle. This series is a lot like Banjo Kazooie – in fact some of the team behind it also created that game – so if you love this kind of arcadey platformer give it a go.

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!