There’s no way around it: Funcom’s announcement this week that it plans to effectively maintenance mode The Secret World and reboot it into a smaller-scale multiplayer game more palatable to the mainstream masses of Steam represents the studio’s final farewell to the MMORPG genre following the maintenance mode of Anarchy Online and Age of Conan earlier this year. Secret World Legends may be the best way forward for what’s left of the preeminent horror MMO, and it may even be fun, but it’s game over for MMOs out of one of the founding companies of the genre. Also, no one’s buying “MMO fatigue,” but “bad MMO fatigue” — yeah, that we get.
In happier news, it was April 1st yesterday, inconveniently on a Saturday. Hope you enjoyed our joke and our roundup of the genre’s jokes too!
Read on for the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions.
THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES
April Fools’ Day 2017: Hijinks across the MMOverse - If you don't like tricks and jokes, just stop reading right now, turn the lights off, and go climb back into bed. Nothing on the internet is going to bring…
Introducing the Massively Overpowered Objectivity Guide and App - [Patreon]Friends, enemies, ladies, gentlemen, morphean blobs, and colours out of space, we know that the most pressing question on your mind when you read this site is how you know…
Funcom reboots The Secret World as Secret World Legends, a ‘shared-world action RPG’ - [AL:SWL]Raise your hand if you felt trepidation as well as hope when Funcom announced during that last investor call that it was relaunching The Secret World? Fans have been yearning…
Exclusive Interview: Secret World Legends’ story, monetization, membership, Tokyo, and more - Did you get your fill of Secret World Legends answers from the first half of our exclusive interview with Game Director Romain Amiel? Us neither. Luckily, we have the scoop on much more…
Exclusive Interview: Funcom’s Romain Amiel on Secret World Legends’ combat revamp and more - It is no secret that I am deeply vested The Secret World. It is my favorite game, and I am fortunate enough to get to write about and stream it…
Secret World Legends’ closed beta has started, TSW players will get all weapon unlocks for free - Here's some news we couldn't wait to tell you! Game Director Romain Amiel just publicly shared two bits of information that The Secret World fans should be glad to hear.…
Exclusive Interview: Funcom on the Secret World Legends reboot and the end of updates for The Secret World - MJ sits down with Funcom to get more detailed answers on the Secret World Legends reboot -- and what it means for loyal fans of MMORPG The Secret World.
Funcom CEO suggests that gamers are suffering MMO ‘fatigue’ - It's been a good year so far for Funcom with the success of Conan Exiles and the impending relaunch of The Secret World. CEO Rui Casais recently sat down to an…
Why World of Warcraft’s item level scaling is really, really, dumb - This has been a very stupid week. I know this because any other week, World of Warcraft completely destroying the reason for acquiring new gear would stand out as the…
Destiny 2 launches on PC and console September 8, ‘and there will be a ton of loot’ - As teased and prodded and hinted at all week, Destiny 2 is official, and we've finally got a trailer to go with it. Expect the game to launch on September…
Hyperspace Beacon: Star Wars The Old Republic will finally allow us to switch factions - [AL:TOR]Long-time players of Star Wars: The Old Republic: In the next update 5.2: The War for Iokath, you will finally be able to switch factions. Insert disco horn here. That's…
WildStar just lost its lead combat designer - This is not an April Fools' Day joke: WildStar's Lead Combat Designer just announced on Twitter that he has left Carbine Studios. https://twitter.com/Steven_Engle/status/847950602784997376 "I'll give everyone a shout out when…
The Warcraft Tales add-on project has been shut down by Blizzard - If you were excited about the promise of the World of Warcraft add-on Warcraft Tales, the bad news is that the project has been shut down by Blizzard's legal team.…
The Soapbox: Why is Pokemon GO still a tech demo? - I've been a bit frustrated with Niantic lately. I love some of its ideas, but I watched someone else play Ingress prior to Pokemon GO's release, and I noticed very similar…
Perfect Ten: More terminology the MMORPG genre needs - Many moons ago (so, a few months), I wrote a column about terminology that we need for the MMO genre. This made our Editor-in-Chief Bree extremely happy, and she informed…
Massively Overthinking: Competition vs. community in MMOs - Quantic Foundry, the games research group we've been tracking ever since it posted its original Gamer Motivation Model, has a new piece out this month on competition and community. Dr…
Super Adventure Box is now live in Guild Wars 2 - Super Adventure Box has returned to Guild Wars 2 today! We've previously reported that there is no World 3 this round, but there is a new Crimson Assassin weapon set…
Choose My Adventure: Gearing up for Black Desert - [AL:BDO]I’m going to be honest with you, folks; the last Choose My Adventure installment left me feeling kind of depressed. It’s a shame to see a game that could have…
H1Z1: King of the Kill is a game no one likes that’s still on Steam’s top games - Do you like H1Z1: King of the Kill? That's a trick question; just a quick glance at the game's Steam page would reveal that no one likes it. It has…
Disney’s Club Penguin has sunsetted, replaced by Club Penguin Island - We're sad to follow up on the January announcement that Disney was closing kid-centric Club Penguin to say that it has indeed happened: Yesterday marked the final day of play in…
Star Trek Online announces Season 13: Escalation, coming April 25 on PC - [AL:STO]PWE has just announced Star Trek Online's next season: Escalation. It lands on April 25th for PC players and continues the ongoing Tzenkethi plotline. "Season 13 – Escalation takes the…
World of Warcraft 7.2: Tomb of Sargeras is now live - World of Warcraft 7.2: The Tomb of Sargeras is officially live! As we've previously covered (what feels like exhaustively), you can expect to dive into the Broken Shore zone, the Cathedral of…
League of Legends’ Ghostcrawler on diversity vs. politics in gaming - Don't think politics belong in games? Maybe your problem is a mangled understanding of what politics is. That's the gist of a blog piece out yesterday from Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street,…
The Game Archaeologist: How DikuMUD shaped modern MMOs - Even though there are hundreds and thousands of MMOs spanning several decades, only a small handful were so incredibly influential that they changed the course of development for games from…
Blizzard is rolling out StarCraft: Remastered for hardcore fans - It's been a very long time since StarCraft was first released. By this point, the original game is just part of the landscape, and the gameplay itself has aged pretty…
Black Desert GM punishes a player with a writing assignment - [AL:BDO]The hard part about being a GM has to be when you're dealing with a certain brand of player. You know the sort; they're the ones making other people's time…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 110: Legends of Aria’s Derek Brinkmann
The Stream Team: April Fools in ARK! With unicorns!
The Stream Team: More Conan Exiles cave diving
The Stream Team: Dipping into SMITE with an Isis and Anubis giveaway
The Stream Team: Carrying The Secret World torch and discussing the future
The Stream Team: Taking an anniversary stroll in RuneScape
The Stream Team: EverQuest’s anniversary Pub Crawl
The Stream Team: Hot-rodding around Osiris: New Dawn
The Stream Team: EverQuest II-sday, Monday edition
The Stream Team: Helping HEX’s lost gnomes
AND FROM OUR FRIENDS AT BLIZZARD WATCH
Everything you need to know about WoW’s patch 7.2
Do you want WoW’s mobs to scale with ilevel?
Elisande and other 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.
