E3, Electronic Entertainment Expo, is the expo which has the entire video game industry talking and with it taking place on the 10th June, very soon we’ll find ourselves up to our eyeballs in gaming news, previews and reveals. In celebration of the coming of E3, in this article I’m going to highlight the MMORPGs to keep an eye out for during the expo.
Final Fantasy XIV
Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIV is one of the only MMORPGs which we can be 100% sure that we’ll see at this year’s E3. A lot, and by a lot I mean A LOT, of news has been hinted for the future of Final Fantasy XIV, with the answers to the endless questions being “Please wait until E3!”
New classes will be revealed, as well as all new content. Many gamers have suspected that there will be some sort of expansion pack for the game, and if that’s the case then we’ll be definitely seeing it here. I expect to see some sort of news at Sony’s E3 Press Conference (Sony tends to have a good relationship with Square Enix and generally show’s their stuff in their press conferences), so be sure to look for the Sony Live Stream.
If there isn’t some sort of expansion pack, then there will at least be a whole stack of information coming our way. Square Enix will be streaming, like they did last year, taking on fan questions and answering them in a live show.
Finally, after Xbox One’s year of struggling we could finally see Microsoft opening up their gates to MMORPGs, and lowering the requirement of people having to pay for Xbox Live to play MMORPGs. Final Fantasy XIV has sold incredibly well on the Playstation 3 and 4, and has helped to boost Sony’s third party offerings. I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw some sort of announcement about Final Fantasy XIV on Xbox One.
Wildstar launched in early June, just before E3. As far as I can tell NCSoft won’t be at E3 this year, however I would be surprised if we didn’t hear some sort of announcement from Carbine (the creators of WildStar), through the internet or via a livestream, about future content coming to their game.
Riot Games normally do some sort of closed press preview for an upcoming League of Legends patch for their game, and this year will be no different. With a rumoured remake of Summoner’s Rift on the horizon, you can expect Riot to be showing it off in some capacity. Whether or we, the consumers, will have access to that preview is unknown, however we can expect to hear something.
Even if Riot aren’t there in some capacity, sometimes League eSports teams come to visit and meet and greet fans.
ArchAge
Trion, the publishers of ArchAge and creators of RIFT, will not be attending E3 2014 (as far as I can tell). This is possibly due to the company’s financial problems as well them taking a more personal approach to ArchAge’s marketing. It’s important to note just because a company isn’t at E3 in person, this doesn’t mean that there won’t be any news from said company. I really do expect to hear something about ArchAge, especially with the game becoming increasingly popular and said to be entering beta real soon.
FortNite
Epic will be there undoubtedly showing off the free-to-play FortNite, the Left 4 Dead meets Minecraft hybrid, as well as showing off more of their new, next-gen engine, Unreal 4. FortNite looks incredibly fun, and is definitely worth keeping an eye on.
The Division
Ubisoft have their own press conference at E3 which takes place on June 9th at 3pm PDT. At the conference Ubisoft will be showing off their MMO-shooter hybrid, The Division, which is set to release sometime next year. The project is said to have been struggling with rumours floating around that the developers are having problems with their engine and many other technical aspects. We’ll be able to see with our own eyes whether or not such rumours are true. Either way it’s going to be an interesting E3 for Ubisoft.
WarGaming, creators of World of Tanks and its many spin offs will be at the show floor at E3 this year. Last year the developers came on stage at Microsoft’s press conference and announced that the game will be coming to Xbox 360. Could WarGaming take center stage again this year, and announce a game for the Xbox One? We’ll just have to wait and see.
If there was going to be a good time to show off Phantasy Star Online 2, now would probably be the time to do so. Sega will be probably be using their E3 floor space to show off their new Sonic game, as well as whatever else they have in store for their fans. I’d honestly be surprised (in an exceptionally good way), if Sega showed of Phantasy Star Online 2 at E3. I really don’t suspect they will, in my opinion Sega has gotten itself in a bit of a mess and is making a lot of mistakes lately, because that’d honestly be a smart thing to do and Sega just aren’t thinking straight right now. Of course, one can dream, and I fully intend to.
Free-to-play developer and publisher, Perfect World will be on the showfloor, showing off their many wares. Perfect World have long been the publisher for the Torchlight series of games (developed by Runic Games), so it may very well be that we see a new game from the Torchlight, even though two of the co-founders of the company left in 2014. Before they left, they confirmed that they would probably not be doing a Torchlight MMORPG. Nonetheless we’ll just have to see what Perfect World can cook up.
That’s about it for this year’s MMORPGs at E3. With Carbine’s Wildstar just released, as well as ArchAge coming soon, there seems to be a bit of a lull in MMORPGs. Hopefully some new games will be shown off this year; however I wouldn’t necessarily expect it. Regardless, I hope everyone reading has a fantastic E3!
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