Week in Review: NCsoft’s wild week (May 17, 2015)

May 17, 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!

NCsoft did not have the best week. Amidst WildStar’s ongoing Reddit drama, NCsoft’s first quarter financials broke, and rumors about WildStar’s Steam launch as a supposedly F2P title began to brew. Korean mecha MMO Project HON was canceled, too, but it’s not all bad news; scuttlebutt has it that Blade & Soul might be bound for the west after all, and revenues for Guild Wars 2, still rolling out expansion reveals, are up quarter-over-quarter.

Read on for the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions.

THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES

Perfect Ten: Future MMOs that I can’t wait to play - I imagine that most of us have a future bucket list of MMOs that we wish would get here already. It wasn't but a couple of years ago that I was salivating over several major up-and-coming…

EverQuesting: Life after Landmark’s big wipe - It was just over a week ago that Landmark's servers went offline in preparation for a major upheaval that affected nearly every system in the game, from a total reworking of topography to a complete character…

WoW Factor: A three million loss lesson - It's been a little while, hasn't it, friends? In the time since I last penned WoW Factor (which missed an installment purely due to transit strangeness - the only time I've ever missed a column, I…

World of Warcraft goes on the offensive against bots - World of Warcraft botters, beware: Blizzard is coming after you hard. The studio said yesterday that it has leveled the banhammer against several accounts -- perhaps as many as 100,000 for up to six months --…

The Repopulation adds diplomacy minigame with new patch - Wait, there are other ways to resolve conflict with in-game NPCs than to stab large holes in their torsos? The Repopulation seems to think so, as the sci-fi sandbox has added a new diplomacy minigame with…

Here’s a look at the latest Black Desert open world boss battle - Want to see the newest Black Desert boss battle? Head to Steparu's site, as he's got video clips and screenshots of the new creature that lives inside Serendia Temple (an open world dungeon, if you're wondering). Steparu…

The Elder Scrolls Online will not require a one-time code for play on consoles - Good news for those of you looking to play The Elder Scrolls Online on consoles - if you want to sell your copy or trade it to a friend, you won't have to fret over it.…

Ubisoft delays The Division until Q1 2016 - A couple of months ago, we reported that The Division was on track for a 2015 release. Not so fast, according to Ubisoft, which today announced that the MMO shooter's launch is being pushed back to…

See two of Overwatch’s superheroes in action - Which Overwatch character are you going to pick when you get into the beta? That's a hard call to make before you can actually get in and sample each of them, although preview videos are the…

The cowpocalypse hits Diablo III for its anniversary - Hey, would you look at that: Today is Diablo III's third anniversary! Of course, this being a hell-torn haunted world, there can't be a birthday party with balloons and pin-the-tail-on-the-Diablo. No, the way the game celebrates…

DC Universe Online: Halls of Power II and the end of DLC - If you are not a subscriber to DC Universe Online, you're still sitting back on the sidelines anticipating the release of Halls of Power Part II next week. We all know trying to be patient isn't the…

Crowfall backers can now gift a copy to a friend - If you have too much money burning a hole in your pocket and a good friend who didn't get on board with the Crowfall campaign during its Kickstarter, then ArtCraft has a way to solve both…

Neverwinter cracks 1.6M players on Xbox One - [AL:NW]If you're looking for Neverwinter's true success story, it might not be on the PC at all. Cryptic Studios announced today that ever since launching on the Xbox One, Neverwinter has racked up an impressive 1.6…

Massively Overthinking: What would persuade you to play a classic MMO? - For this edition of Massively Overthinking, Kickstarter donor Sargon wants us think back to 1997, when Ultima Online launched and parted MMOs from graphical MUDs forever. Now think forward to 2015 again. UO's still here! And Sargon wants…

Ask Mo: The trouble with roleplaying in MMORPGs - Long ago on Massively-that-was, a reader named Avaera sent in a long list of fabulous questions worth addressing. I'm tackling another in today's edition of Ask Mo: Would you welcome a large scale roleplaying-enforced MMORPG? One…

Elder Scrolls Online loses two key devs, WoW picks up Moorgard from EQ Next - The MMO industry is a vibrant market that's always shifting as developers move between projects. So who has gone where lately? For starters, former EverQuest Next Lead Content Designer Steve "Moorgard" Danuser has migrated over to…

‘No more grind’: PvP sandbox Das Tal launches its Kickstarter - As promised, buy-to-play indie PvP sandbox Das Tal has begun a Kickstarter campaign today to coincide with the launch of the German wing of the Kickstarter platform. Das Tal isn't a new game for many of…

EverQuest’s progression server launches on May 20 - Are you itching to turn back the clock with EverQuest's progression server? You don't have much longer to wait, as Daybreak has announced that Ragefire will launch on May 20th. If you're planning to take the…

Crowfall’s Walton wants to shake up the MMO business - Crowfall producer Gordon Walton features in a new interview at MOTD Media. If you're a big fan of the crowdfunded PvP MMO, you won't find anything here that you didn't already know. If you're on the outside…

THIS WEEK’S STREAMS & CASTS