Weekly Recap #492 April 22nd – Space Punks Goes F2P, ESO High Isle, and 2 Dragon Themed Expacs!

JamesBl0nde recaps the MMO gaming news for the week of April 22, 2022! Transcript follows.

The Paragon resurrected moba Overprime heads into its 2nd closed beta, Lost Ark brings in a new advanced class in its latest update, Space Punks has gone free to play and into open beta, and World of Warcraft announced a new expansion focused around dragons and flying them.

What’s good everyone, JamesBl0nde here with the weekly recap for gaming news and announcements for the week of April 22nd, 2022 and starting out the news this week,

Netmarble has annnounced that its upcoming MOBA, Overprime, is about to enter its second closed beta! This is the moba that was originally Paragon under Epic Games and now has been sorta resurrected by Netmarble and yeah its one of the ones that I was a big fan of back when it was Paragon. The test is scheduled to run from April 28th at 7 pm Pacific through May 9th at 3am Pacific, but if you want to participate, you can pre-download the client early starting on April 25th! The beta period will feature seven server regions and 28 languages, new optimization, improved user interface and tutorials, and more. If you want to take part make sure you check the info linked below.

Here’s some good news: Space Punks has gone free to play, and has launched into open beta! If you’re not familiar with the game, it’s a top-down ARPG with a sci-fi twist and a focus on co-op. The open beta has done a lot of tweaking to improve the game, including a new Get-a-Job feature and an improved crafting system. The open beta also introduces an anticipated end game feature: The Crack. This is a procedurally generated endless dungeon that has two modes to offer two ways to challenge players to go to any length to get that next sweet piece of loot. If you want to check it out, head over to the Epic Games Store and get it downloaded!

In other big news this week, World of Warcraft announced a new expansion for its core game – Dragonflight! Players will be sent to the Dragon Isles, the ancestral home of the Dragonflights, in a new series of main quests. Along with this players will be able to play the new Dracthyr race and its exclusive class, the Evoker; and master the art of Dragon Riding, which includes being able to train and customize four special drakes. Of course there’s a lot more than that, but I also have to mention that Blizzard also announced the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion for WoW Classic – so for those who really liked that iconic expansion, expect for it to head to Classic sometime soon!

Speaking of dragons, Neverwinter just revealed its next free update – Dragonslayer! The update, which is inspired by Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons, will task players with hunting down chromatic dragons in an all new Dragon Hunt system. Of course, this means new battles, lairs, challenges, and more, but the game will also see an update to the existing dragons of the game and the Temple of Tiamat trial. Pretty crazy that this came just days after the Dragonflight announcement for World of Warcraft, but D and D was the first of the two to come up with chromatic dragons after all! One other interesting piece of news related to this – Gearbox acquired Perfect World this past week! I wonder what that will mean for Perfect World’s MMOs in the future . . . Maybe a Borderlands MMO one day? That’d be nice!

Another expansion revealed this week is in The Elder Scrolls Online – High Isle! This new chapter of the ESO story will be told across three DLC and a new story chapter, taking a dive into the history of Britons over the course of a year. The content will start this May with the Ascending Tide DLC, continuing with the High Isle chapter in June and two more DLC later in the year. This content expansion includes over 30 hours of story content, a new in-game collectible card game, new world events, and much more. Look forward to this especially if you love Elder Scrolls lore as it’s going to places we’ve yet to see in universe!

This week Lost Ark has launched its April update, called Battle for the Throne of Chaos. One of the key parts of this update is the new Glaivier advanced class for the Martial Artist, which utilizes spear and glaive in a balance of stance swapping to deal damage. Players will also discover the new South Vern continent, a tier 3 region with new quests and story to uncover – as well as dangerous new battles. With all this there are also new progression events, new skins, balance fixes, and much more.

Tree of Savior has revealed an upcoming new class, the Keraunos! This is a lightning type magic user of the Wizard class, which carefully balances its ability cooldowns to deal out maximum damage. Definitely sounds like an advanced class as you’ll have to carefully control your own cooldowns while managing spark stacks on the target. When this class goes live, other Wizard classes will also be receiving some updates, so make sure to check the notes linked below for the full details.

The Lord of the Rings Online is celebrating a big milestone this month – its 15th anniversary! As always the game is hosting a big celebration event in-game, located at Party Tree in the Shire, with special quests and rewards to collect – both old and new. Standing Stone Games hasn’t stopped there though – it’s making a lot of content permanently free for free to play players, including all expansions up through Helm’s Deep, the High Elf Race, and the Rune Keeper, Warden, and Beorning Class! Log in during the giveaway period that runs from April 20th until May 11th to claim additional free gifts, including a Corgi pet, new mount, cosmetics, boosters, and expansions! Not only that, the team is introducing a new region, Yondershire, which is available free for subscribers or for purchase otherwise.

If you missed out on the first season of the Living World story in Guild Wars, it’s making another re-run! In fact, this week’s update adds new rewards and achievements to the story arc, and also makes it a permanent, free addition to the game. This hasn’t been playable since 2013 so if you missed the quest line, it’s a great time to visit it and experience the story while getting some new achievements. There’s also been a few adjustments and changes to the game with this update, so make sure to follow up with any patch notes.

And finally let’s look at the latest free games on the Epic Games Store! First up this week is Amnesia: Rebirth, a first person horror game in the Amnesia series that is absolutely guaranteed to deliver some scares and freak outs. If you need something a little less dark though, there’s a second free game up for grabs: Riverbond! This game is pretty cute, a voxel style couch co-op adventure RPG that supports one to four players. Either way two great games up for grabs!

and 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!