Guild Wars 2 inches closer to the end of its third season of living story this coming week as it launches the next-to-last Flashpoint episode alongside controversial raiders-only legendary armor.
Meanwhile, we celebrated the anniversaries of several MMORPGs, including City of Heroes, where we streamed the emulator festivities live Friday night.
Read on for the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions.
THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES
Guild Wars 2 legendary armor for raiders launches next week - ArenaNet's Paul Ella has a fresh blog post out this afternoon revealing the plan for legendary armor in Guild Wars 2. If you're my kind of Guild Wars 2 player,…
Guild Wars 2 announces Flashpoint living story episode, price drop for Heart of Thorns - Super Adventure Box departed Guild Wars 2 last week, so you had to expect we were on the brink of seeing another episode of the living story. Indeed, ArenaNet has just…
Elder Scrolls Online: Morrowind will not blow your mind, but it will tickle your nostalgia - [AL:ESO]Over the last week or so, ZeniMax Online Studios opened up parts of The Elder Scrolls Online's Morrowind test servers to the press and public, allowing us to hop in and…
Perfect Ten: The City of Heroes basic Archetypes ranked - So it's just about that time again - we're remembering when City of Heroes launched and when it said goodbye. Which is a bit of a sad time, y'know? I…
Video: Story vs. lore, Star Wars: The Old Republic vs. The Elder Scrolls Online - [AL:ESO]In the ultimate battle for your dollar in the MMO industry, two MMOs with rabid fan bases duke it out by serving you a deep and engaging narrative. Star Wars:…
Tamriel Infinium: Class changes are a bad reason to pan Elder Scrolls Online Morrowind - [AL:ESO]Elder Scrolls Online possesses a distinct flavor. I can honestly say that there is no other MMORPG like it. In fact, the whole Elder Scrolls series is unique. The only thing…
LOTRO Legendarium: 10th anniversary interview with Standing Stone’s Rob Ciccolini - [AL:LOTRO]As Lord of the Rings Online players revel in the varied activities of this year's 10th anniversary celebration, the crew at the newly formed Standing Stone Games has a huge…
Overwatch hits 30M players, makes Chinese free-to-play test plans - Blizzard has just announced that Overwatch has just counted 30 million players. That's buyers, mind you, as the game is buy-to-play. However, a limited free-to-play Overwatch is actually happening, albeit with two…
Former Funcom execs convicted, sentenced in insider trading case - The insider trading case that's embroiled the former leadership of MMORPG studio Funcom has finally come to a close today with convictions and sentences for three of the four executives…
World of Warcraft breaks a popular add-on for world quests to fix performance issues - The current flow of clearing World Quests in World of Warcraft is pretty straightforward. You see that there's a world quest out there offering a reward you want, you head…
Final Fantasy XIV’s latest live letter discusses inventory, benchmarks, and housing in Stormblood - [AL:FFXIV]The anticipation for Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood is pretty high among the game's players at this point. It's just under two months away, and there's still so much left to…
‘This universe is going to be awesome’: Chris Roberts on Star Citizen’s evolving moons - On this week's Around the Verse, Star Citizen's Chris Roberts and Sandi Gardiner bookend two key segments. The first is a studio update with Foundry 42 checking in from Frankfurt;…
World of Warcraft walks back claim that 7.2 is the ‘biggest patch ever’ - In a livestream Q&A session, World of Warcraft's Ion Hazzikostas admitted that the studio probably shouldn't have slapped the label of "biggest patch ever" on Patch 7.2. The game director said…
Massively Overthinking: Are MMORPG players a minority in their own genre? - Deep in the comments of the MMOs-vs.-survival-sandboxes thread from last week, reader miol_ produced a beautiful comment about how MMO players have become a minority in their own genre, which…
Black Desert warns players of possible account breach - Heads-up, Black Desert fans: Kakao just let its players know that their account security may be in jeopardy. "We recently received a report that account security may have been compromised…
Choose My Adventure: Failure to trade in Black Desert - [AL:BDO]Despite my best efforts, I walked away from my trading attempts in Black Desert having been wholly unsuccessful. I consider this a good thing, and it left me with a…
Neverwinter claims 15M registered players across all platforms - [AL:NW]Neverwinter has cause for celebration today: PWE has officially announced that the D&D MMORPG has counted over 15 million registered players on PC, Xbox One, and PS4. The game is…
The Survivalist: Is gaming’s early access the new launch? - Previously, while discussing ARK: Survival Evolved’s big bird nerf, I touched on the subject of the early access model. My focus then was on the model in relation to ARK,…
Leaderboard: Where do you draw the line between griefing and roleplaying? - On the Morrowind subreddit a few days ago, a player was recounting a particular roleplay-slash-griefing episode on a hardcore-roleplay Ultima Online emulator. The player explains that he spent months roleplaying…
Players purchase and revive defunct MMO Crowns of Power - An abandoned fantasy MMORPG might be getting a second lease on life thanks to its players, although the road ahead looks to be challenging. Back in 2008, Rampid Interactive launched…
Heroes of the Storm overhauls game, adds Overwatch’s Genji, and gives away 20 free heroes - It is an absolutely massive week for Blizzard's Heroes of the Storm, so let's dig into all of the news. Yesterday, the game launched its Patch 2.0 overhaul, which contains…
World of Warcraft’s Hazzikostas on content creep and the future of the game - Hey, it turns out that designing long-term MMORPGs that aren't pump-and-dump schemes is hard! That's the takeaway from a new PC Gamer interview with Blizzard's Ion Hazzikostas, during which the…
RuneScape DDoS hacker gets two years in U.K. prison - Ever hear that expression, "His name is mud?" It applies on every level to the incarceration of one Adam Mudd this week, who received two years of jail time in…
Star Trek Online’s Season 13: Escalation arrives with war games and a new episode - [AL:STO]Just when one war seems to wrap up in Star Trek Online, the devs seem to scrounge up another. Today, Cryptic pushed out Season 13: Escalation for the PC version,…
Final Fantasy XIV announces the last PlayStation 3 login campaign and a new Amazon promotional campaign - [AL:FFXIV]With the release of its second expansion, Final Fantasy XIV will no longer be supported on the PlayStation 3. There's a free upgrade to the PlayStation 4 available through the…
Bless Online shuts down Russian beta for revisions, preps Japanese test - There's something a little hinky going on with Bless Online's beta test over in Russia. MMO Examiner reports that 101XPÂ was not pleased with the game, deciding to shut down the…
What’s John Smedley building for Amazon Game Studios? - Here's the million-dollar question of the day: What is John Smedley making for Amazon Game Studio's San Diego branch? Ever since being handed the reins of a new sub-studio back…
Overwatch pro player sees career ended over racist diatribe - It's probably not the best idea to start shouting racial abuse in the middle of a live stream if you're public figure with a pro gaming career. That's the lesson…
Academics and addiction experts weigh in on ‘pay-to-loot’ gambleboxes and lockboxes - "Pay-to-win" is old news now -- game designers' new plan for hoovering all the cash out of our wallets is "pay-to-loot." According to IGN's Nathan Lawrence, who dives into the…
MMOARG dev sues Milwaukee county over Pokemon Go-inspired park ordinance - Remember back in February when Milwaukee County in Wisconsin tried to handle the whole "Pokemon Go players are destroying parks and costing municipalities cash money to repair them" ordeal by…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 114: Moving to the big city
Battle Bards Episode 97: The sound of magic
The Stream Team: Dragons and werehyenas in Conan Exiles
The Stream Team: Preparing for ARK’s active volcano
The Stream Team: Celebrating City of Heroes with Paragon Chat costume contests
The Stream Team: Ranger danger in Osiris New Dawn
The stream Team: Take a gander at the new Games of Glory
The Stream Team: So many Secret World sabotage missions
The Stream Team: An Allods Online anniversary
The Stream Team: AQ3D adventures and Mo capes
AND FROM OUR FRIENDS AT BLIZZARD WATCH
Breathing new life into an old WoW character
Bring Dog to Dalaran with a pebble in WoW
WoW group finder addon hotfix breaks familiar addons
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.
