After a rocky first weekend, Guild Wars 2’s massive Path of Fire expansion smoothed out, impressing the Massively OP staff and readers alike with its eyecandy and “joy of movement” philosophy (if not so much its storyline). Meanwhile, Black Desert launched the first part of its Kamasylvia update, Final Fantasy XIV announced its The Legend Returns patch, and Camelot Unchained’s Mark Jacobs spoke with us about his game’s social system shakeup.
Read on for the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions.
THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES
Guild Wars 2 Path of Fire launch diary: Initial impressions - [AL:GW2]My initial impressions on Guild Wars 2's Path of Fire launch are rather late to the table, owing to some fairly significant connection issues since launch that ran up until…
Working As Intended: The best and worst of Guild Wars 2 Path of Fire (so far) - I've spent a chunk of the last week moving through the first part of Guild Wars 2's Path of Fire, finishing up the Crystal Oasis zone into which a character…
Choose My Adventure: Into the desert of Guild Wars 2 - [AL:GW2]My first week of playing Guild Wars 2 again was interesting, in no small part because it's rare for my playtime to be so devoted to being able to play…
Massively Overthinking: Weighing in on Guild Wars 2’s Path of Fire - [AL:GW2]Guild Wars 2's Path of Fire has been live for just a week now, and while various members of the Massively OP staff have been penning launch diaries and adventures,…
Star Citizen is down to just five critical issues to tackle before the Evocati see alpha 3.0 - Another week, another countdown to Star Citizen alpha 3.0, and we are getting close. In this week's Around the Verse, Cloud Imperium says it's still got 5 issues left to…
Camelot Unchained’s Mark Jacobs on guilds, groups, and the social systems that make an MMORPG go ’round - Over the weekend, the studio behind crowdfunded RvR MMORPGÂ Camelot Unchained released a hefty chunk of its ongoing beta one document, revealing extensive insight into the way the game's social systems…
Trademark registration suggests Daybreak’s new game is called Parabolic - Massively OP tipsters Gankstar and Scott both noticed that just one month ago, Daybreak filed a trademark for what appears to be an expansion or new game. We're guessing the…
Black Desert’s free Kamasylvia expansion launches today with tier 9 pegasi - [AL:BDO]Black Desert has just rolled out the first part of its Kamasylvia expansion today - it's a free update that's been long-awaited on western shores, bringing a huge new region with plenty of…
The Game Archaeologist: The Chronicles of Spellborn - Hey! Hey you! Yeah, you the I'm-so-bored-with-all-of-these-MMOs gamer! You've been grousing about for years how MMOs never take risks, never innovate, and are merely content to rehash the same-old fantasy…
Perfect Ten: How MMORPGs become so darn complicated - MMOs are complicated. This seems like a fairly non-controversial statement; there are more or less complicated games, but they all tend to be complex as heck. I frequently cite Star…
Crowfall’s Raph Koster explains why MMO systems stagnate and die - The man who pretty much wrote the book on many MMORPG systems shared another piece of keen insight about a pitfall in many competitive systems. In a short blog post,…
BioWare confirms eventual beta for Anthem, advises patience - Maybe in this era of unpredictable development cycles, early access, and soft launches, the confirmation that a game will actually get a beta test is noteworthy. So in case you…
Brad McQuaid: MMO devs are ‘making the very, very early foundations of the Holodeck’ - Pantheon and MMOs like it are bringing our dream future one step closer (or at least, Lt. Barclay's dream future), Brad McQuaid suggests in a new interview this week. MMORPG veterans know McQuaid…
Raph Koster on how Ultima Online pushed the MMO industry forward - Game Designer Raph Koster continues to ponder the significance of Ultima Online on this, the 20th anniversary of the MMORPG's historic release. In a recent blog post, he answers a…
Final Fantasy XIV Stormblood launches 4.1 The Legend Returns in October - [AL:FFXIV]Did you think that the final boss of Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood was difficult? You'll probably be singing a different tune when you face off against the Minstrel's Ballad version…
Jagex disqualifies botfarming winner of $20K Old School RuneScape tourney - Last weekend, Jagex held its annual RuneFest event in London, where the studio demoed its mobile edition and teased plenty of upcoming content for both regular flavor RuneScape and its crankier Old…
After 12 years, Minions of Mirth rides off into the sunset - Have you ever heard of this indie MMORPG called Minions of Mirth? It was put together by a small team in about a year and released in 2005. While it…
DayZ moves toward beta, promises more agile development - With all of the influx of survival shooters on the market, it might be easy to forget the game that started them all. Due to its slow pace of development,…
The Survivalist: How procedurally generated maps stretch the life of survival MMOs - It's no secret that I love to explore. And exploring the dangerous new worlds of survival games has been something I have really been enjoying this past couple of years.…
That mobile game Blizzard has been working on? Looks like it’s an ‘MMO RTS’ - This will be neither the first time nor the last time we relay again to you that Blizzard is working on some sort of mobile title. Blizzard's Mike Morhaime was…
Red Dead Redemption 2’s trailer is finally here, still launching on console spring 2018 - It didn't quite make summer, but close enough: Rockstar has finally rolled out the new trailer for Red Dead Redemption 2. We've been keeping an eye on the western as like…
Marvel Heroes gets Age of Apocalypse on consoles, while Gaz is working on a new game - Marvel Heroes has had a fairly quiet summer following the Omega showdown earlier this year, but there's a clear reason for that: Gazillion is working on a new VR game…
Kritika Online moves to full launch on Steam with today’s Fractured Memories patch - [AL:Krit]Lots of big stuff is happening today for Kritika Online. First of all, the game's servers are going down at 9:30 a.m. EDT to apply the game's next major patch,…
Diablo III will get absolutely no announcements at this year’s BlizzCon - Blizzard really cares about the Diablo III fanbase and the overall Diablo franchise. So what if it gets less attention than other franchises? So what if it's gotten an alarming…
Fortnite’s F2P Battle Royale draws 1M players in spite of PUBG, PvE criticism - If the developer of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds was hoping that Fortnite's new battle royale mode would flop on impact, then it is sorely disappointed with the results this week. Fortnite's first…
Wild West Online ends tech alpha early, adjusts bounty system for early access - It shouldn't surprise anyone after those rough couple of Wild West Online tech alpha weekends, but alpha 3 has been "postponed" - actually, it appears that leg of the alpha…
Dungeons & Dragons Online teases Mists of Ravenloft expansion, buffs Clerics and Favored Souls - [AL:DDO]It's always a crapshoot whether or not smaller patches are going to pay out with exciting features or fail to make a blip on the community. This week's Dungeons and…
Hyperspace Beacon: Outside-the-box features to look for in a SWTOR guild (or any MMO guild) - [AL:TOR]On my server in Star Wars: The Old Republic, there are more guild advertisements than chatter in the general channel on the starter planets and fleet. This can quickly become…
SuperData August 2017 revenue report: PUBG bumps WoW, disrupting PC market - SuperData's August 2017 global revenue report confirms what anybody even casually watching PUBG already knows: The upstart game that's kicking butt on Steam is the literal definition of industry disruptor.…
PlanetSide 2 revamped continent locking in this week’s Critical Mass update - Daybreak went all-out in PlanetSide 2 this week with a massive new update, though you probably wouldn't know it unless you play the game. Let's change that now: The update…
Ex-World of Warcraft dev Stephan Frost snapped up by Nexon to head unannounced game - Last week we reported that World of Warcraft and WildStar design producer Stephan Frost had left Blizzard for another opportunity. Now we know what that opportunity is: heading up a…
Video game voice actors and big studios tentatively ink deal to end 11-month strike - Almost a year ago, SAG-AFTRA issued a strike against a round of video game companies following a year and a half of failing negotiation on behalf of the voice actors…
PUBG dev argues Fortnite spat is about Epic and Unreal Engine’s conflicts, not about owning the battle royal genre - Last week, following Epic's announcement that PvE-centric Fortnite would be getting a PvP-centric battle royal mode its paying PvE players apparently didn't want (but that's OK because it's free?), we all…
Happy 20th birthday, Ultima Online! Here’s how to get caught up on the OG MMORPG - Just about 20 years ago, my boyfriend and I were wandering through Media Play (heh) when he picked up this box for some new online subscription video game with a…
EverQuest II stops making older expansions free, while EverQuest hands out skeletons - Daybreak has quietly shifted one of the aspects of its free-to-play business model for EverQuest II. In response to a query as to when the studio would be making any…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 137: Hotfooting down the Path of Fire
Battle Bards Episode 106: Early access themes
The Stream Team: Breaking the law in LawBreakers’ freebie weekend
The Stream Team: Devs deliver a newbie guide for Legends of Aria’s final alpha
The Stream Team: Closers opens its doors for the weekend
The Stream Team: Launch-day Kritika Online adventures
The Stream Team: Exploring Black Desert’s Kamasylvia expansion
The Stream Team: A look at Amazing Eternals (plus giveaway)
The Stream Team: Showing off Villagers & Heroes Starfall expansion with devs
AND FROM OUR FRIENDS AT BLIZZARD WATCH
WoW Archivist: In defense of Cataclysm
September 25th was Mists of Pandaria’s 5th birthday
Account-wide Argus unlocks come with latest WoW hotfixes
Every week, get caught up on the MMO genre’s latest news and Massively OP’s best content in our MMO Week in Review! Want more roundups of content? Try Friday’s Betawatch for MMO testing highlights, Saturday’s Make My MMO for MMO crowdfunding updates, and Sunday’s The MOP Up, which mops up all the little bits of news we didn’t cover anywhere else.
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