Were you too busy gaming this week to pay attention to MMOÂ news? Get caught up every Sunday evening with Massively Overpowered’s Week in Review!
Raph Koster changed the direction of Star Wars Galaxies historiography forever this week by blogging about the travails of the sunsetted MMO’s PvP system and laying most of the blame for SWG’s struggles at the feet of the Jedi. In follow-up comments, he debunked the widely held belief that the NGE killed SWG by quoting internal stats that suggest earlier SOE decisions that foreshadowed the NGE — like tone-deaf nerfs to merchants, pet skills, and group sizes — had far earlier and far worse consequences for the epic sandbox.
Read on for the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions.
WILDSTAR RUMORS
WildStar is now on clearance at Best Buy - So... you all remember how yesterday saw WildStar boxes being yanked in Australia, combined with that promotion encouraging players to buy more boxes of the game? That could mean anything, sure. But the game going on…
Rumor: WildStar box recall and promo might herald free-to-play - The last time the retailer yanked boxes of a game from the shelves and returned them to the distributors, it was The Elder Scrolls Online, shortly before that title announced its buy-to-play conversion. Now the same…
WildStar deep-dives in the Bay of Betrayal - The Bay of Betrayal is another piece of content being added in WildStar's next patch, and it adds in a few more new ideas to the usual Adventure gameplay. Story-wise, it's a chance for players to…
THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES
Elder Scrolls Online advertises cash shop item in game - Nothing helps you get immersed in your favorite MMO like a gaudy multilingual cash shop advertisement pasted on your game screen, right? ZeniMax is apparently OK with the tactic, as the company responded to complaints about…
LOTRO Legendarium: Why LOTRO needs a progression server - [AL:LOTRO]At some point this year -- Turbine isn't saying when, yet -- Lord of the Rings Online will be making an effort to consolidate server populations. It's a good move, considering that this MMO has quite…
WoW Factor: The WoW token and the upcoming patch - Since the last edition of WoW Factor, two big things hit World of Warcraft in quick succession. The first is that the much-discussed WoW Token finally went live, meaning that anyone who wants to buy gold…
Trion snaps up Linda ‘Brasse’ Carlson - Nothing tells your player community that the transition to a new corporate structure will be totally fine like firing a pillar of community interaction, right? That was the collective reaction when beloved community manager Linda "Brasse"…
EA shutters several online titles, touts SWTOR’s growth - [AL:TOR]It's a dark day for several online EA titles that contains ray of light for Star Wars: The Old Republic. The publisher announced today that it will be ceasing service on four of its games due…
World of Warcraft adds retro ‘timewalking’ dungeons - There's no reason for you to go back to older dungeons in World of Warcraft unless you particularly like the look of something that drops there for cosmetic purposes; they surely don't offer much in the…
Flameseeker Chronicles: Exclusive Guild Wars 2 Maguuma Hylek interview - I had the pleasure of chatting with Scott McGough, a Guild Wars 2 narrative designer who is currently working hard on Heart of Thorns content, about two new Hylek tribes that we'll be meeting in the Maguuma Jungle.…
Wisdom of Nym: What we now know about Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward - [AL:FFXIV]I honestly hadn't expected to learn quite this much about Heavensward this soon. I don't know why I hadn't expected this, to be fair; we've got 67 days as of this writing before the expansion launches,…
Final Fantasy XIV Heavensward update: Job and racial lore - [AL:FFXIV]The official teaser site for Final Fantasy XIV's first expansion, Heavensward, has gotten a big update today. If you've been sitting on the edge of your seat hoping for more information about the Au Ra, you…
Infinite Crisis has basically made me a MOBA fan - It's 1989. My buddy and I are in a comic store and raising our eyebrows at this odd little one-shot called Gotham by Gaslight. You probably know it; the cover is all greens and blues with a…
Guild Wars 2 explains the philosophy of Masteries - Players are not getting a level cap bump with Heart of Thorns; the apex of power in Guild Wars 2 will remain Level 80. But there will be new progression in the form of Masteries, which…
Perfect Ten: Important features MMOs lacked at launch - Every MMO represents a journey, starting with an idea, progressing to a fledgling beta, launching as a production title, and growing thereafter. All of the games we know now aren't exactly the same as they were one,…
Guild Wars plans ‘huge bash’ for its 10th anniversary - The Guild Wars that started it all will turn 10 years old on April 26th, which means one thing: party time! ArenaNet announced that Guild Wars' 10th anniversary celebration will begin on April 22nd and continue…
Eternal Crusade updates players on design goals and founder packs - The melee combat in Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade has gone through several revisions, and it's going to go through several more. The latest State of the Crusade letter to fans makes it clear that the development…
RIFT’s 3.2 Echoes of Madness patch is now available - Trion wants you to know that RIFT's 3.2 patch is officially live. Echoes of Madness adds a 20-player Hammerknell raid and improvements to instant adventures including "better scaling and pacing," fewer event distractions, featured queues, and…
GTA V and GTA Online now available on PC - A little game called Grand Theft Auto V launched last night. You may have heard of it. Well, technically it launched on the PC, as consoleers have been playing it since 2013. What's the big deal,…
Black Desert adjusts for ‘casual lite’ Korean market - Every game changes during testing, but Black Desert seems to have changed even more significantly compared to its original vision from the fan standpoint. One such fan recently penned an article explaining what changes the game has…
Could this algorithm detect a forum troll? - We've all known trolls who love to dwell in dank forum posts and shadowy comment sections, ready to spread ill will and spark flame wars just to see the world burn. But what if a tool could…
THIS WEEK’S STREAMS
AND FROM OUR FRIENDS AT BLIZZARD WATCH
Warcraft movie trailer may premiere before Jurassic World
Hodor shows his WoW devotion with a Sylvanas tattoo
