Star Wars: The Old Republic celebrated another big news week, what with the launch of GEMINI Deception for subbers, rumors of a Knights of the Eternal Throne expansion, and the start of the Dark vs. Light event. Its business model is having a good week too, as BioWare maneuvered to boost character slot allowances and once again landed near the top of Superdata’s sub MMO revenue rankings.
Read on for the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions.
THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES
Elder Scrolls Online’s Matt Firor on One Tamriel, Cyrodiil PvP, and housing - For many of us at Massively OP, Elder Scrolls Online won E3, if that’s really a thing, but that's partly because all ZeniMax Online Studios really had to do was show…
WildStar is gearing up to sell max-level character boosts - Are you eager to hit the level cap in WildStar without quite so much of that "playing WildStar"? In other words, would you like to be able to just hit…
Flameseeker Chronicles: Re-engaging lost Guild Wars 2 players - [AL:GW2]I recently read an interesting opinion piece by Jason Winter that got me thinking about the general sense of apathy that he believes is trickling into the Guild Wars 2Â playerbase…
Riders of Icarus kicks off head start, has loads of content in the works for open beta and beyond - Today marks the start of Riders of Icarus' head start, provided that you were one of the players who bought into it. For the rest of us, we'll have to wait…
CCP grants EVE Online players skins, skill injectors for Iceland’s Euro 2016 soccer victories - Iceland-based MMORPG studio CCP Games is getting in on the football/soccer hype this week with an in-game EVE Online promo tailored around the success of the country's football team, which…
NBA champion Rick Fox partners with Daybreak’s H1Z1 for e-sport initiative - Multitime NBA champion Rick Fox has his sights set on H1Z1 as the next big e-sports field, so much so that he has partnered up with Daybreak in the hopes that the…
Revelation Online’s fly-through video is breathtaking - [AL:Rev]Revelation Online has a gorgeous new fly-through video out this morning. Clocking in at over five minutes long, the trailer is (almost) one long swoop through the biomes and past…
EverQuesting: Landmark is offering new races – for a price - I knew that new races would eventually come to Landmark! From the beginning it didn't make any sense to me that Daybreak would ignore something the community really wanted, especially when…
SWTOR’s GEMINI Deception is live today for subscribers - [AL:TOR]The latest installment of Star Wars: The Old Republic's Knights of the Fallen Empire, The GEMINI Deception, is live for all subscribed players today. In fact, subbers will be getting…
Guild Wars 2 considers skill splitting to balance PvE and PvP - If you've ever played a PvE MMORPG that had to balance classes, stats, and skills around PvP -- or vice versa -- then you know that separating the modes is…
Black Desert publisher Daum EU rebrands as Kakao - Back in April, we wrote about the company structure behind Black Desert publisher Daum, which is owned by South Korea's Kakao, which also owns Nzin, with which Daum was merging. The…
WoW Factor: The hope I have for Legion - Every week, in Final Fantasy XI, the three main player nations are competing in a form of passive PvP known as conquest. The nation with the most influence in a…
Daybreak bans, unbans thousands of third-party key purchasers - If you bought and activated a key for EverQuest, DC Universe Online, PlanetSide 2, EverQuest II, or a Krono subscription from a third-party reseller, you might have found yourself on the nasty…
Check out all of the housing items coming in RIFT 3.7 - [AL:Rift]We already know that RIFT's 3.7 update is trotting out a lot of new content in addition to the return of Summerfest, but what hasn't been as widely touted are…
Star Trek Online shows off the contents of the Kelvin lockbox - [AL:STO]The Kelvin timeline is edging its way into Star Trek Online, but only in little ways here and there. There are incursions from the timeline that players will have to…
Perfect Ten: MMO novel tie-ins - When I was a kid and only slightly more nerdy than I am today, I used to read movie novelizations like crazy. I don't know why, exactly, especially since I…
Age of Conan’s 5.0 update brings raid finder, new loyalty program - Age of Conan's big 5.0 update is live today, inserting a number of big changes into the MMORPG edition of Hyboria: Expect new daily login gifts, a new challenge journal system loaded…
‘Massively multiplayer’ mobile Avatar game in development - Despite coming out in 2009 and making more money than Scrooge McDuck, Avatar seems to have since slipped from the attention and interest of the entire world. Of course, that…
Crowfall’s resource harvesting design plus a timeline of Monday’s stream - Crowfall's art team has a new video out this week discussing the design of harvesting. The video covers the distinctive design of nodes (which are very much competitive nodes in…
Black Desert Online launches the Valencia Part One update - Ready to head into the desert in Black Desert Online? If not, why not? Few other titles are so explicit about where you're going, after all; it's not like the…
Overwatch’s competitive play patch hits PC today - Blizzard is pushing out Overwatch's competitive play patch tonight -- but only on PC. Console players on PS4 and Xbox one will see the update next week. "We know this…
Player modder earns $5000 for War Thunder model - [AL:WarT]Here's a sweet way to make 5000 bucks: Design a stellar 3-D model for a War Thunder vehicle. That's what Daniil "_Joy_Division_" Zaitsev did, anyway; he designed a 3-D model…
WildStar is making big game changes with its Heroes Evolved patch - You might have sensed a few changes in the wind coming for ol' WildStar, probably because Carbine's been hinting at and teasing them pretty extensively at this point. Well, today…
SWTOR might raise server character slots to 50 for Dark vs. Light event - [AL:TOR]If you've been following the Dark vs. Light event controversy in Star Wars: The Old Republic, you know that one point of contention is that players are being asked to…
Star Trek Online tweaks lockboxes, posts Agents of Yesterday launch trailer - [AL:STO]PWE has rolled out two big pieces of news for Star Trek Online fans today. First, the studio says it's overhauling STO's "All Lock Box Drop" event by replacing old lockboxes…
What the Titanforged gear will mean for World of Warcraft: Legion - World of Warcraft players recently got an eyeful of information about Titanforged items and how the game's item levels will work through Legion (and possibly beyond). That isn't such a huge…
RIFT’s summer patch includes starter guilds, dungeon veterans, and the 64-bit alpha - [AL:Rift]Summer is the perfect time for cookouts, beach parties, sunburns, and meaty MMO patches. At least RIFT thinks so, as Trion Worlds is preparing Update 3.7 for release some time…
Rumor: SWTOR’s next expansion might be Knights of the Eternal Throne - [AL:TOR]Dulfy's spotted a rumor that Star Wars: The Old Republic's next expansion might be "KOTET" -- Knights of the Eternal Throne, as some players are guessing. A Redditor found the acronym buried…
Black Desert Online guilds lead a celebrity (picture) invasion in the game - Do you play MMOs to get away from the endless parade of celebrities in the media? Is one of your greatest joys in life being able to log into Black…
Nostalrius team releases vanilla World of Warcraft survey summary - The Nostalrius team's journey to Blizzard and back may be complete, but the details are still coming forth from the large player survey that the vanilla World of Warcraft group…
Overwatch, League of Legends, and World of Warcraft top May Superdata charts - Probably no big surprise here, but according to Superdata Research in May, Blizzard and Riot Games are still kings of the online PC gaming charts. Overwatch was the MVP of…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 71: Falling to the Force
Battle Bards Episode 77: Spirit of Adventure 2
The Stream Team: It’s the end of MOP Ark as we know it!
The Stream Team: Looking at Landmark’s new appearance pack
The Stream Team: Attack of The Secret World’s anniversary golems
The Stream Team: Digging into Riders of Icarus’ cash shop
The Stream Team: Braving Black Desert’s Valencia
The Stream Team: SWTOR Dark vs. Light Event begins
The Stream Team: Squashing Black Desert bugs
The Stream Team: Wrangling Riders of Icarus’ new mounts
AND FROM OUR FRIENDS AT BLIZZARD WATCH
WoW Archivist: Classic’s Naxxramas and the Scourge event
The Warcraft movie DVD won’t come with a director’s cut
Game of Thrones meets Overwatch’s Play of the Game
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.
