A New World of Tyria
A Vaelwarden and their Seeker spirit companion survey the primordial wilderness of Orr — Guild Wars 3 was announced at Summer Game Fest on 5 June 2026.
Week of 6 June 2026
This is the week the genre changed its shape, at least on paper. ArenaNet announced Guild Wars 3 at Summer Game Fest on 5 June — the first new entry in the franchise since 2012, coming to PC and PlayStation 5 with a beta window of autumn 2027. It is a rare moment: a genuine new MMORPG from a studio with a proven pedigree, announced with enough detail to be real and enough distance to be patient about. Alongside that announcement, Final Fantasy XIV's Dancing Mad Ultimate opened to world-first racing, Star Wars: The Old Republic finally delivered Legacy Reborn on 2 June, and Elder Scrolls Online's Update 50 arrives Monday.
Guild Wars
The announcement came on Friday 5 June at Summer Game Fest, delivered via a cinematic trailer and a press release from NCSoft and ArenaNet. Guild Wars 3 is real, it has a name, it has platforms, and it has a beta window. It is set over a thousand years before the events of the original Guild Wars, in a Tyria that most players have never seen.
What Has Been Announced
Guild Wars 3 is in development at ArenaNet, led by Game Director and Studio Head Colin Johanson — who directed Guild Wars 2 from its early development through its relaunch era. The game is confirmed for PC (Steam) and PlayStation 5, marking the first time the franchise has appeared on home consoles. The official site is GuildWars3.com; Steam and PlayStation Store wishlisting opened on the day of the announcement.
The setting is Orr — the sunken continent known in Guild Wars 2 as the domain of the Elder Dragon Zhaitan — but here presented in its ancient, living state, more than a millennium before the Six Gods walked the world. The announcement describes it as 'a vast wilderness frontier imbued with the world's magic', suggesting open terrain and a tone quite different from GW2's more settled Tyria.
Players take the role of Vaelwardens — members of a guild of adventurers devoted to protecting the spirits of the wild and the land of Orr. Each player's Seeker — a personal Vael spirit — functions as both a narrative companion and a mount, carrying the player through the open world. The emphasis on bond between player and spirit companion is a notable departure from GW2's approach to mounts, which were progression-gated cosmetic tools.
The announcement explicitly describes combat designed to feel natural on both keyboard-and-mouse and controller, with positioning, movement, and momentum as core to the combat feel. Players can transition between movement modes fluidly and use speed as a combat resource. This sounds closer to action-RPG fundamentals than the skill-bar combat of GW2.
The franchise's defining trait — no subscription fee — is confirmed for Guild Wars 3. The press release notes that over 29 million players have engaged with the franchise across its history. Pricing and exact business model will be detailed 'later in 2026 and into 2027'.
A beta test is planned for autumn 2027. No release date has been given. The announcement is structured as a long runway: it establishes the game exists and shows its direction, but places no commitment on delivery timing beyond the beta window. The full announcement text is available via the EQS news release and the official trailer.
Guild Wars 2 — Current State
Guild Wars 2 continues with the 'The Only Way' quarterly still as live content. The next quarterly update is expected in August. Community discussion this week has been almost entirely absorbed by the GW3 announcement, with considerable analysis of what it means for Guild Wars 2's future — ArenaNet has not addressed this directly, and GW2 remains in active development for the foreseeable future.
Eight raiders face Kefka in the Dancing Mad Ultimate — Patch 7.51's world-first race is underway, and the clown king has arrived.
Final Fantasy XIV
Patch 7.51 launched on 2 June as scheduled, and with it came the Dancing Mad Ultimate raid — FFXIV's seventh Ultimate encounter, and its most theatrically distinctive. The world-first race began immediately, with teams from across the globe entering their progression runs on day one.
Dancing Mad Ultimate
The encounter is themed around Kefka Palazzo, the nihilistic court mage and god-emperor from Final Fantasy VI. The fight unfolds as a four-phase sequence built around Kefka's arc in that game: from court mage to esper-infused murderer to the God of Magic. Each phase draws on the iconic locations and events of FFXVI's source material, filtered through FFXIV's encounter design language.
Entry requires completion of M12S — the fourth tier of the Futures Rewritten savage raid — and speaking with the Wandering Minstrel. The reward weapon, the Palazzo Weapon set, comes in one token per clear (the Mad Harlequin's Totem, exchangeable at the usual vendor). Weapon appearances are available as glamour immediately; the stat versions require completion.
As of the weekend, multiple Phase 1 clears have been confirmed by world-first groups but the full clear remained contested. The race is attracting significant viewership, with community interest heightened by the source material's fanbase. Phase 1 footage has circulated widely, and the fight's operatic staging has been broadly praised even by players who are not actively progressing it.
Other 7.51 Content
The Cosmic Exploration finale on Oxysia (also referred to as Oxessia) is live. Players who have completed the prior cosmic initiative content can access it via Oizys. Tool mastery points replace the former cosmic class score system, and a new stellar mission type — the Timed Challenge — rewards players based on final score rather than completion alone.
New custom deliveries client Tiisol Ja is active, with the Eat Taco emote available at satisfaction level five after several weeks of weekly completions. New Triple Triad cards and NPC opponents have been added to the Gold Saucer, presumed to be located in Oizys.
The Make It Rain campaign continues through 24 June with 50% bonus MGP. The Dawntrail patch page carries the full 7.51 details.
Legacy Reborn is live — Khar Shian, Naga Sadow's frozen fortress moon, is the stage for the Legacy of the Sith's finale.
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Game Update 7.9 Legacy Reborn launched on 2 June — one week later than originally anticipated, but landed without significant technical issues. The delay to resolve testing concerns appears to have paid off: community reception has been positive, with particular praise for the story's pacing and the ambition of its central confrontation.
Legacy Reborn Story
The update concludes the Legacy of the Sith storyline — a narrative arc that began with 7.0 in February 2022 and has run across multiple patches and expansions over more than four years. On the frozen moon Khar Shian, the ancient fortress of Naga Sadow becomes the stage for a convergence of the arc's major players: Darth Jadus, Darth Malgus, and Shae Vizla each pursue their own agenda, and the player's choices determine where their loyalties land.
Darth Jadus's scheme — awakening Force sensitivity galaxy-wide using Naga Sadow's fortress — is the narrative centrepiece. Community response has highlighted the strength of Jadus as an antagonist, noting that his return (he was last a significant presence in the original class stories) gives the finale a weight that callbacks to earlier in the game's history carry well.
The launch of 7.9 also brought PvP Season 10 'Honor in Battle', running for 16 weeks. New armour sets, decorations, titles, achievements, and flairs are available through the season's reward track.
A note on localisation: French and German voice acting for Legacy Reborn is not yet in place due to ongoing negotiations. Players using French or German clients are playing with English voices and subtitles in their native language. Broadsword has stated they will communicate a timeline for the localised voices as soon as one is available.
An access guide explaining the story prerequisites is available on VULKK. The official patch notes are on the SWTOR site.
Upcoming Events
Bounty Contract Week ended 2 June. The Nar Shaddaa Nightlife casino event returns 30 June through 11 August. A Twitch drop campaign running until 30 June awards the Nightshade Hssiss mount for four hours of live watch time on a linked account. Galactic Season 11 'Light and Shadow' arrives with 7.9.1, which has no confirmed date yet.
ESO's Werewolf Refresh arrives Monday — a fully reworked transformation with the new Rampage ultimate ability, launching with Update 50 on 8 June.
The Elder Scrolls Online
Update 50 goes live on Monday 8 June — simultaneously across PC, Xbox, and PlayStation for the first time, following a policy change that eliminates the platform stagger that had previously given PC players early access to major patches. The update is already well-documented; the week before launch has focused on preparation content rather than new revelations.
Challenge Difficulty
Four overland difficulty tiers go live with the update. Adventurer is the default. Seasoned adds 100% incoming damage and 50% outgoing damage reduction, in exchange for 50% more gold and 20% more XP. Master adds 300% incoming and 65% damage reduction for 100% more gold and 75% more XP. Vestage — the hardest tier — applies 600% incoming damage and 80% damage reduction, rewarding 200% more gold and 100% more XP. Eleven new achievements accompany the system, with a Vestage-required achievement unlocking a unique dye reward.
Class Mastery
Every class receives five new passive skills, with players having two points to spend. Access requires having maxed all three core class skill lines on a character, and is not available to characters using the subclassing system. Notable examples: Sorcerer's Monolith of Storms gains a passive bonus weapon and spell damage for each active monolith; Templar's Wrath Sun boosts all Templar skills by 25% bonus damage.
Werewolf Refresh
The Werewolf transformation has been substantively reworked. The fixed timer is replaced: activation costs 100 Ultimate, and the transformation now builds a Fury bar through combat. At 1,000 Fury, the player can activate Rampage — a 20-second window granting increased movement speed, increased damage, and zero-cost ability usage including the transformation itself. The reworked female werewolf model is also introduced, with distinct looks for each morph and further customisation available through skill styles.
ESO on PC Game Pass
ESO joined PC Game Pass on 2 June, as scheduled. Early indications suggest a meaningful uptick in login activity, which is to be expected from a new access channel. How this converts to sustained engagement will become apparent over the following weeks.
June Events and Roadmap
An Xbox Games Showcase on 7 June is expected to include a deeper look at Update 51, which arrives in early July. A development update livestream covering Update 51 is also scheduled around that date. The Golden Pursuits campaign 'A New Challenge Arises' runs 18 June through 7 July, tying into the Challenge Difficulty launch. Chaos Ball PvP runs 10–17 June. Zeal of Zenithar begins 24 June. The June survival guide on GameSpace covers the full month's schedule.
EVE Online
EVE Online's Cradle of War expansion launches Tuesday 9 June at 11:00 UTC. The expansion notes were published 5 June on the Fenris Creations site, confirming the final state of all announced systems.
Cradle of War — Launching 9 June
The Military Campaigns framework, four new Navy Destroyers, four Tech II Command Carriers, the Exordium new-player space, the Visions of Greatness Epic Arc, and the Titles and Achievements system all go live with the expansion. The Caldari–Gallente campaign begins immediately at launch.
The full expansion notes are on the Fenris site. Community discussion has been largely positive, with particular interest in the long-term implications of Military Campaign outcomes on the New Eden map. A community celebration event — including hosted fleets, a skinning competition, and trivia — runs 22–27 June on the EVE Online forums.
Old School RuneScape
Old School RuneScape's 4 June update focused on infrastructure and quality of life — the headline being the launch of new regional worlds, but with a meaningful set of farming and sailing improvements accompanying them.
New Regional Worlds
New game servers are now live in Japan, Singapore, and South Africa. Japan has one free-to-play world and two members worlds; Singapore has one free and four members worlds; South Africa has one free and one members world. The worlds use the country flag icons in the world list for easy identification.
This is the first time new regional servers have been added since the Australian worlds in 2017. The Brazil server launch earlier in 2026 appears to have been a catalyst, demonstrating the viability of regional expansion. Players in the new regions have reported significantly improved latency — one Japanese player noted 20ms ping, suggesting server placement near Hiroshima.
Farming and Sailing QoL
Farming changes: crop growth duration and yield have been improved (growth now takes over 20 hours), fertilisers have been removed from the game, mole spawn rate has been doubled with an associated drop rate increase, seed pouches can now be planted directly, the time required to remove fences has been extended to 28 days, and contribution points for specific nodes have been reduced.
Sailing updates accompany the farming pass. Full details are on the official OSRS news page. The Summer Sweep-Up quality of life initiative is also now teased as 'coming soon', indicating the broader seasonal QoL pass will arrive in the coming weeks.
Falador Massacre Anniversary
6 June 2026 marks the 20th anniversary of the Falador Massacre — one of the most famous emergent events in MMORPG history. A longstanding community request to have the anniversary formally recognised with an in-game event has been circulating on the subreddit this week. Jagex has not confirmed anything, but the date has not passed without community acknowledgement.
RuneScape 3
RuneScape 3 had a quieter week following the graphical rendering improvements of 26 May. The most notable community activity centred on the RuneScape: Dragonwilds announcements — the franchise's expansion onto console is being discussed as a signal of Jagex's broader ambitions for the RuneScape brand across platforms.
RuneScape: Dragonwilds — the open-world survival crafting title currently in Early Access on PC — is confirmed for PlayStation 5 via PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium at launch, and for Xbox Series X|S on 15 September 2026. These represent the first RuneScape titles on console in the franchise's 25-year history. The game is a separate product from RS3 and OSRS, but its success or failure on console will likely influence how Jagex approaches platform strategy for the broader franchise going forward.
The Player Avatar Beta in RS3 continues, with community feedback narrowing to edge cases around animation blending and texture behaviour in specific lighting conditions. No timeline for the full rollout has been announced. A development update post summarises the ongoing work.
Black Desert Online
Black Desert Online's 4 June update brought a substantial farming system overhaul alongside the continuation of the Remnant of Distortion event and several quality of life improvements. A hotfix on the same date addressed a client launch issue that had blocked some players from logging in.
Farming Overhaul — 4 June
Fertilisers have been removed from the farming system — a significant structural change that simplifies the activity considerably. Growth duration and yield for crops have both been adjusted, with growth now taking longer but producing more. Seeds can be planted directly from seed pouches. The rate at which moles appear has been doubled. Contribution point costs for specific nodes have been reduced, and new production nodes have been introduced.
Duoksini Calamity difficulty has been adjusted to levels 8, 9, and 10. A sixth orb has been added for C1–7. Star's End has received adjustments. Quint and Muraka boss encounters have been enhanced following last week's conversion to standard equalised boss format.
Events and Pearl Shop
The final chapter of the Remnant of Distortion event continues until 18 June, with the Black Wings world boss at increased HP and a chance to drop the new Iridescence-like Stone. A Node War event runs through July, offering up to 26.4 billion silver and 4,800 cron stones across the event period for participating guilds.
Pearl Shop updates include a Global Self-Publishing 4th Anniversary package (free 15,100 cron stones, 14-day Value Pack, 300 failstacks via login rewards over 7 days), a summer outfit for Seraph and Wukong, and a new Jindo Pup pet. Class Tag Rotation now includes Tamer and Nova. The full update notes are on the Pearl Abyss site.
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft's week was shaped by maintenance hotfixes and the ongoing development of Patch 12.0.7. The June 3 hotfix pass addressed class tuning and several dungeon-specific issues in Midnight Season 1.
Hotfixes on 3 June covered a range of class tuning issues, dungeon and encounter fixes, and PvP balance adjustments. The full list is available on the Blizzard news site.
Patch 12.0.7 Revelations remains the next significant content milestone, with a mid-June release still the working expectation. No official date has been confirmed. The new zones Val and Naigtal, the Sporefall raid with its scalable Mythic format, and the Ritual Site Tier 6 continue to be discussed in developer preview summaries.
The June Trading Post is open, centred on Gilneas and worgen aesthetics. The Flame-Painted Sun Roc is the featured mount. Turbulent Timeways V begins 30 June, running through 11 August — a Timewalking event offering a heroic piece of Qualas raid gear each week from the weekly quest.
Neverwinter
Neverwinter has been relatively quiet this week following the Biting Cold follow-up patch of 28 May. Module 33 content is settling into its post-launch cadence, with community activity centred on the Jotunskar dungeon's Master difficulty and the Ice Breaker Battle Pass premium track.
No major new update has been released this week. The site carries the current event schedule, which includes ongoing Biting Cold seasonal content through the summer.
Broader Genre News
Embers of the Uncrowned — Demo Live
Nexon's dark fantasy action MMORPG Embers of the Uncrowned has its playable demo live via Steam Next Fest from 15 June. Three classes are playable — Executioner, Spectral Blade, and Stormbringer — across three main story regions and up to eight hours of content. The game draws comparisons to Lost Ark's isometric structure but with a more gothic setting and no pay-to-win gear mechanics confirmed.
Throne and Liberty — Frozen Divide
Throne and Liberty's Frozen Divide expansion launches 25 June. New region, high-level boss encounters, and co-op dungeon content are confirmed. Community anticipation has been building since the expansion preview earlier in May.
Tree of Savior — Final Days
Tree of Savior's farewell event is ongoing, with server closure confirmed for 16 June. Premium currency conversion to other Papaya Play titles remains the only transition path for affected players.
Architect — Global Launch
Architect, described as Korea's top-rated MMO (by one metric), is approaching a global launch later in 2026. A closed beta test ran 10–15 June for the global version. The game focuses on city-building and strategic management within an MMO framework — distinct from the combat-focused genre standard.
Looking Ahead
Guild Wars 3 will be the talking point of the coming weeks, whether or not anything new is announced about it. The autumn 2027 beta window is far enough away that ArenaNet will need to maintain community interest across a long runway — how they manage that cadence of information will be worth watching. The GW3 announcement site, GuildWars3.com, is already live with a mailing list for updates.
The immediate priorities are more concrete. ESO Update 50 goes live Monday, and the challenge difficulty system in particular will be put through its paces quickly — Vestage difficulty will attract the kind of players who treat the overland as a solved problem, and early reports will tell the community a great deal about the system's balance. EVE Online's Cradle of War also launches Tuesday, and the first week of Military Campaign data will begin to reveal whether the participation design holds up against player behaviour in practice.
For FFXIV, the world-first race for Dancing Mad Ultimate is ongoing and may conclude this weekend or early next week — the raiding community is watching closely. Guild Wars 2 moves further into its quiet inter-quarterly stretch, now somewhat overshadowed by the GW3 discussion. WoW's 12.0.7 Revelations remains the next major milestone across the genre's most-played title, and its timing — likely mid-June — will anchor the following week's coverage. Old School RuneScape's Blood Moon Rises on 30 June is now within reach; the new regional worlds launch has, in the meantime, quietly made the game more accessible to a larger slice of its existing audience.
