MMO Week in Review: Eyes on EverQuest Next (June 7, 2015)

June 7, 2015 8:00 PM

Were you too busy gaming this week to pay attention to MMO news? Get caught up every Sunday evening with Massively Overpowered’s Week in Review!

Hey, remember EverQuest Next? Daybreak does too, which is why it announced on Friday that it’s shifting developer attention to the unreleased title. There are caveats, of course; Daybreak won’t commit to a 2015 release, and Landmark is not being abandoned. “You can fully expect updates and hotfixes to Landmark as we continue with this development process; they are simply going to be on a less regular schedule than you guys have been accustomed to over the past year or so,” says Daybreak’s Terry Michaels.

It was a big week for MOBAs as well, with the launch of Heroes of the Storm and the sunset announcement for Infinite Crisis. Read on for the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions.

A BIG WEEK FOR MOBAS

Infinite Crisis is shutting down on August 14th - DC-themed superhero MOBA Infinite Crisis is shutting down on August 14th, according to an announcement posted on the front page of Turbine's official site. After much deliberation, we regret to announce the official shutdown of Infinite…

Perfect Ten: Why you should care about the Infinite Crisis shutdown - It might seem a little odd that the one thing to break through my current state of hyper-excitement for the launch of Heavensward and the upcoming free-to-play conversion for WildStar is the shutdown of Infinite Crisis.…

Heroes of the Storm readies Eternal Conflict patch - Last week, Heroes of the Storm launched. But that was the past, and Blizzard is all about looking ahead to the future. Part of this forward thinking is the preparation of a meaty content expansion for…

A guide to Heroes of the Storm for MOBA newbies and MMORPG fans - So you've heard about MOBAs by now, right? Maybe you tried League of Legends, or the idea behind DOTA 2 was too confusing to inspire a download. Now there's this Heroes of the Storm thing coming out and…

Heroes of the Storm gets an honest trailer - Surely you've heard of the honest trailer phenomenon, wherein a guy with an action movie trailer voice narrates footage of popular films, TV shows, and games to humorous effect. Blizzard's newly released Heroes of the Storm MOBA…

SuperData’s Van Dreunen on tomorrow’s Heroes of the Storm launch - Tomorrow's the big day for Blizzard's entry into the crowded and uber-competitive MOBA market. Heroes of the Storm officially launches on June 2nd, and SuperData CEO Joost Van Dreunen has penned an editorial at GamesIndustry.biz that…

THIS WEEK’S TOP MMO STORIES

The Soapbox: The fallacy of ‘F2P insight’ in the MMO market - I read with disgust a recent GI.biz piece about free-to-play and its supposed coming of age. The business model has of course run amok through the western MMO industry since Turbine's Dungeons & Dragons Online started…

Flameseeker Chronicles: Hands-on with Guild Wars 2’s Heart of Thorns beta - [AL:GW2]My excitement for Guild Wars 2's first expansion has been no secret, so you can easily guess how much fun I had climbing the trees in heavy armour in the Heart of Thorns beta test last…

ArcheAge’s server merges will spark another land rush - When ArcheAge first announced that there would be some sort of server consolidation, players were understandably nervous. Merges can be a messy business at the best of times, but when you have a game with limited…

Star Citizen’s massive monthly report recaps May’s progress - Star Citizen's monthly report was released last night, and in typical fashion it's a huge info dump that covers much of what Cloud Imperium's globe-spanning dev collective accomplished in May. It's broken down by studio, so expect…

TERA is adding a new PvE server on June 9 - [AL:TERA]En Masse is adding a new server to TERA! The firm says that the Steam launch and the introduction of the new Gunner class have been a huge success, so much so that the population cap…

The Game Archaeologist: The Matrix Online - It's not every year that a movie comes along that captures the pop culture zeitgeist so powerfully and so quickly as The Matrix did. I recall lugging a few college friends along to see this back…

Elder Scrolls Online’s new trailer lampoons ‘that guy’ in your group - You know that guy who's always screwing around, fishing and reading books during raid boss encounters? His name is Tony, and he's the unwitting star of The Elder Scrolls Online's new trailer, which apparently wants to remind…

CCP financials for 2014 continue their downward slide - It's become a cottage industry for EVE Online fans to try to figure out whether CCP Games is doing well or not. Gone are the days with regular crowing about subscriber numbers, and as with most companies, the…

Guild Wars 2 unveils the leafy goodness of the Revenant’s Ventari legend - After a few days of teases, another legend has been formally revealed for Guild Wars 2's upcoming Revenant profession, and it's all about healing. Yes, these dark knights of the Mist have a Legend that's devoted to…

Crowfall preps core combat test, commits to raising $1M from additional investors - With a large roster of potential classes, how will Crowfall balance it all? By starting small, of course. The devs wrote a new post today explaining how they will begin testing the game's combat systems by…

Aion’s Upheaval begins on June 17th - [AL:Aion]At a time when players are leery of being nickle-and-dimed, Aion is releasing yet another completely free expansion. Also known as patch 4.8, Upheaval launches in just two weeks on June 17th for all players, opening…

You can ride a motorcycle in The Secret World tomorrow - The title really says it all, no? Funcom has announced that it is bringing down The Secret World's servers on June 3rd at 8:30 a.m. EDT. Downtime is currently estimated at two hours. When the servers return,…

LEGO Universe died on the sword of dong-detecting software - Give another human being a creative tool with the instruction to make anything, and odds are that first creation is going to be some variety of dong. It's just human nature. This is funny when it's…

The Repopulation on expectations, SWG, and the Q4 launch - When Above & Beyond Technologies announced that its sci-fi MMO The Repopulation will launch before the end of 2015, sandbox fans simultaneously pumped their fists and arched their brows. MassivelyOP tracked down lead developer J.C. Smith and…

Elite: Dangerous launches the Powerplay update - The latest update for Elite: Dangerous does not allow players to personally claim big chunks of the galaxy, but it does allow players to sign up with the people who do. After a little over a…

Defiance devs on the next season and the future of the game - The third season of the show Defiance starts up on June 12th, which is likely of particular interest to fans of Defiance the game. Sure, the two don't always directly correspond, but there's a connection between…

Overwatch shows off the turret-building gameplay of Torbjörn - Torbjörn, aside from having a name that's very satisfying to type when you're familiar with Unicode inputs, is a simple kind of guy. He doesn't rush into danger, he doesn't dance around, he doesn't dual-wield guns.…

ARK: Survival Evolved launches today on Steam early access - Before you go see Jurassic World this summer, why not experience it yourself? The dino-hunting simulator, ARK: Survival Evolved, launches today on Steam early access. The team said that it will be hard at work addressing…

THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS