"Cozy" isn't a word you'd normally put next to open world PvP.

Yet that's the pitch behind EmberQuest, a new MMORPG from Faded Scroll Games, a studio run by a single developer. The game calls itself a "cozy lite MMO" on its Steam page and in an introductory post on Reddit. It also has physics-driven action combat, PvP zones, and world bosses. That's an odd mix on paper. Whether it works in practice is something players will be able to judge soon, because EmberQuest launches on Steam on Thursday, October 15th, as a free-to-play game.

A Familiar Checklist, With a Physics Twist

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Myth of Empires: Throne wants to take its players up into the sky.

The free-to-play multiplayer game, which runs on a seasonal structure, has used its latest dev blog to preview the centrepiece of Season 4. The headline feature is a new region called the Voidbound Realm, a map made up of floating islands. The developers open with a rhetorical question: "What if there were an entirely new realm above the clouds-a place where you could explore, build, and develop?"

It's a big pitch, and the answer is obviously yes. Floating islands aren't exactly unheard of in games, and the blog's sense of wonder can feel a little overcooked. Still, a fresh map is a fresh map, and for a game built around seasons, that matters.

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Sea of Thieves has a habit of talking openly about the stuff that doesn't work. That's rarer than it should be in live service gaming, and the latest developer vlog leans into it hard. Some experiments flopped, some got delayed, and one long-running problem is finally getting smaller. Quite literally.

Here's the rundown of what Rare's pirate sandbox has in the pipeline, and what got shelved along the way.

A Quick Word on Rare's New Bosses

The video opened with something everyone was probably wondering about. Microsoft has moved Rare Ltd. under Activision's control, and the team acknowledged the change only briefly. They thanked fans for their well-wishes and moved on. That's it. No roadmap shake-up, no grand statement about the future. Whether that's reassuring or not probably depends on how you feel about Activision.

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Lord of the Rings Online is about to get a lot more neighbourly. The trouble is that nobody seems quite sure how to be a good neighbour yet.

Massively OP's LOTRO Legendarium columnist has spent time with the new neighbour system that arrives with the Wolves of Mordor expansion. The verdict is mixed. The characters are charming, the missions are fun, and the system is ambitious. It is also confusing, poorly explained and, in the columnist's words, a "half-baked first pass."

An early arrival

The timing is the first surprise. Standing Stone Games (SSG) is shipping Wolves of Mordor later this month, even though developer previews are still rolling out and zone testing has only run for a few weeks. The columnist had expected an early December launch and calls the schedule "very premature." They suggest two possible reasons: dodging November's crowded release calendar, and the multi-month subscription price increase that is happening right now.

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Anyone who follows Camelot Unchained knows how uneven its update rhythm can be. Some weekends, the early access build arrives with a handful of small tweaks and not much else. Then a week like this one comes along and drops a brand-new archetype, the first proper siege tools, and a pile of combat changes all at once.

This is one of the bigger builds. It matters whether you're logging in to the early access yourself or just tracking the MMORPG's progress from a distance.

Meet the Scout

The headline addition is the Scout, a mobile archetype built around utility rather than raw damage. Its toolkit mixes debuffs, crowd control, and general support abilities, which suggests a class meant to shape fights rather than simply win them.

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