This week, Gazillion announced that long-time CEO David Brevik was stepping down from his post and leaving the company that makes Marvel Heroes. Brevik told forum-goers and stream-watchers that he loves Marvel Heroes but wanted to step away from the business of leading a company and get back to being personally involved with game design and programming. His new company, Graybeard Games, will likely build something “RPG-oriented.”
Read on for the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions.
THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES
First impressions of Black Desert’s closed beta test, part two: Crafting, gathering, and economy - On Friday, I took a look at the classes, combat, and tricky mechanics of upcoming sandboxy Korean-import Black Desert's first western closed beta test. Today, I'll pick up where I left off by addressing the game's…
The Oculus Rift costs a staggering $599 - Did you think the Oculus Rift would be $350? Not so fast: Oculus is asking $599 US for its sweet chunk of virtual reality equipment. As promised, pre-orders for the Oculus Rift opened this morning. The $599 bundle…
Should you play Black Desert or Blade & Soul? - Just the other day we were discussing in the office the differences between Black Desert and Blade & Soul, and I said that I desperately needed a comparison chart to help me keep the two games…
Star Citizen has a ‘surprise’ in store for Alpha 2.1 - Hailing frequencies are open, captain, and a new Star Citizen broadcast is coming through, loud and clear. CIG has published its latest episode of Around the Verse, clocking in an hour of news, sneak peeks, and…
SWTOR grants subscribers HK-55-inspired jetpack in February’s Anarchy in Paradise - [AL:TOR]If you've played through the first nine chapters of the Star Wars: The Old Republic expansion Knights of the Fallen Empire, then you've probably already seen the name of the next chapter: Anarchy in Paradise. You've…
Chronicles of Elyria hitches its death mechanics to its business model - Indie sandbox Chronicles of Elyria captured MMORPG players' attention last autumn when it began revealing details about some of its more unusual mechanics, including its character aging and death system. A new dev blog this week…
Massively OP’s guide to choosing an online ARPG - Bored of MMOs, despondent about the industry, or simply looking for something a little different? Turning to something similar to MMOs, yet offering a new experience, is what's attracted many people to online action RPGs. MMOARPGs, or…
Star Citizen shares dev progress on its Million Mile High Club - No, you're still not invited to hang out at Star Citizen's exclusive Million Mile High Club -- at least, unless you've decided to spend $10,000 on the game for some reason. But you can press your…
Did Guild Wars 2 just tease gliding in vanilla Tyria? - During today's Guild Wars 2 livestream, ArenaNet's Rubi Bayer demoed a video of a character flying... in what looks like Orr. Malchor's Leap, to be precise. Only Orr is in vanilla Tyria, not in the expansion…
Industry analysts react to Oculus Rift’s $600 price tag - What was your reaction when you found out that to hop on board the Oculus Rift train, you were going to need to drop $600 on it? That price point really makes one weigh how important…
Neverwinter moves cosmetics from ZEN cash shop to lockbox currency - [AL:NW]Back in October, PWE wrote about its plans to massively overhaul Neverwinter's Trade Bar Store -- that is, the special store where you can buy goodies with currency found inside lockboxes. Call it cashshop-ception. As of…
Red 5 Studios is undergoing ‘strategic reorganization’ - Firefall developer Red 5 Studios is apparently in the midst of a "strategic reorganization," according to a message from the executive team passed along to us this evening through PR: Red 5 Studios Update: Strategic Reorganization…
SWG-inspired sandbox Divergence Online is now on Steam early access - If you've been waiting over the last week for Valve to approve Divergence Online for its inevitable Steam early access release, wait no longer: It's finally live today. The game is currently $29.99 US, 25% off its…
Divergence Online calls for an indefinite moratorium on ‘gaming yelp reviewer bullshit’ - Still waiting for Valve to approve Divergence Online for its inevitable Steam early access release? Stained Glass Llama's Ethan Casner is too. While we all tap our feet impatiently, he's penned a rant against "gaming yelp…
Check out what World of Warcraft looked like 17 years ago - In 1999, the year that EverQuest released, work was already underway for another fantasy MMO called World of Warcraft. It wasn't until a couple of years later that gamers got their first look at the game,…
EVE Evolved: Three things you don’t want to miss in 2016 - [AL:EVE]In the previous edition of EVE Evolved, I looked back at some of the big highlights EVE Online throughout 2015. It was a year that revolutionised practically every aspect of EVE's day-to-day gameplay with a flood of updates,…
Elite Dangerous outlines its 2016 content rollout plans - You might think it's the year 2016, but for Elite Dangerous players, the calendar has ticked over to 3302 and brings the promise of more adventures and features. In this week's newsletter, Frontier outlined some of…
Indie sandbox TUG secures $8.5M in new funding, delays game for engine switch - Indie sandbox TUG has become the beneficiary of a huge windfall. In a new Kickstarter update sent to backers this afternoon, Nerd Kingdom announced that it has raised an additional $8.5 million to "expand on TUG,…
Life is Feudal transforms into an MMO with its March beta test - [AL:LIF]A long time ago, back in the stone ages of 2014, Bitbox did alpha testing for its upcoming MMO, Life is Feudal. It was an ambitious sandbox with terraforming, building, landownership, bartering, trade routes, diplomacy, and PvP.…
Working As Intended: The MMOs we lost in 2015 - It's become tradition to fare well the MMOs that sunsetted in the preceding year, but that wasn't always the case. At the beginning of 2015, in saying goodbye to 2014's sunsetted games, I tried to put that…
Sword Coast Legends postpones free update in favor of Rage of Demons expansions - Development schedules are tricky things. From the outside it's easy to look at them as promises, contracts made between players and developers, but in reality they're more like educated guesses wherein the developers are simply stating…
Massively Overthinking: Let’s play with the Gamer Motivation Model - Over the winter holidays, we wrote about game analytics consulting firm Quantic Foundry, which has published what it calls its "Gamer Motivation Model" -- essentially, it's an updated Bartle test for modern gamers that groups gamer types…
PlanetSide 2’s next major patch lets you gather and build - The next major patch for PlanetSide 2 managed to sneak onto the game's test servers just before Christmas, but no one noticed. Thus, the patch has started quietly entrenching itself and fortifying the area so that…
‘Father of MMORPGs’ Richard Bartle is publishing new books on the genre - "Father of MMORPGs" Dr. Richard Bartle, author of the pioneering research that spawned the Bartle test, is publishing two new books about our imperiled genre. MMOs from the Inside Out: The History, Design, Fun, and Art of Massively-multiplayer…
Final Fantasy XIV voice actress goes missing, possibly murdered - Tragic news for Final Fantasy XIV fans this afternoon: The BBC is reporting that actress Sian Blake and her two children are believed to be missing and that police have discovered a trio of bodies in the…
Hyperspace Beacon: A roleplayer’s SWTOR wishlist - The dawn of a new year is a great time for many people to hit a tiny reset button on life. I’m doing that personally. In many ways 2015 was the year of Star Wars, but I’ve…
John Smedley on player emulator projects: ‘Good for them’ - Ex-Daybreak President John Smedley took to Twitter last night to throw his support behind MMO emulator projects. While most studios publicly ignore or condemn these fan projects, it was a well-known secret that Daybreak held a favorable attitude…
Jumping onto a Final Fantasy XIV Japanese server can be a culture shock - [AL:FFXIV]Have you ever been curious about how different the Final Fantasy XIV experience is on its native Japanese servers? One English-speaking player decided to roll a character on a Japanese world to learn the language and…
RIFT raiding guild drama results in player suspensions - Guild Wars 2 isn't the only game to have recently been smacked with a spate of raiding guild drama: The normally unassuming MMO themepark RIFT was embroiled in spectacle over the holiday. Major RIFT raiding guild…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 45: MMOs in the new year
The Stream Team: Gone fishing in ARK
The Stream Team: More Makeb mischief in SWTOR
The Stream Team: Rooftop hopping in The Secret World’s Issue #13
The Stream Team: Galavanting in EverQuest II’s Gorowyn city festival
The Stream Team: A MechWarrior Monday
AND FROM OUR FRIENDS AT BLIZZARD WATCH
WoW’s resource gathering professions are awful
Warcraft movie launches themed exhibition in China
WoW’s Legendary ring upgrades now available to purchase with Valor Points
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.
