MMORPG vets said farewell to Firefall this week, as on Thursday Red 5 emerged from months-long silence to abruptly announce a sunset for the very next day.
The good news is that there are a few places former fans can get the same vibe, including in Warframe, whose TennoCon event this weekend revealed some upcoming MMO-like features, including open landscapes and adventure areas.
Meanwhile, we issued report cards to both Elder Scrolls Online and Pokemon Go.
Read on for the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions.
THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES
Secret World Legends posts roadmap for the next year - [AL:SWL]Funcom is making good on its promise to post a development roadmap for Secret World Legends, as it just put up the schedule of releases and events for the remainder…
Firefall will officially sunset tomorrow - Did our article yesterday on MMOs in limbo knock one loose? Probably not, but one of them is sunsetting all the same: Firefall. Late last night, an unknown Red 5 staffer…
Crowfall says its biggest parcels are crazy expensive because they’re meant for guilds - Last month, we included Crowfall among the games discussed in a Massively Overthinking roundtable that focused on MMO monetization running amok. Why? Because Crowfall has one of the spendiest cash…
How I got married through World of Warcraft - I've mentioned a lot of times, in passing, how my wife and I connected in part through World of Warcraft. But I've never actually gone into any depth on the…
Tamriel Infinium: Elder Scrolls Online’s mid-term report card - At the beginning of every year, I give the games that I am embedded in a letter grade centered around the four different player types featured in Dr. Richard Bartle's…
Pokemon Go’s first anniversary report card - July 6th, 2017, marks Pokemon Go's first year anniversary. Love it or hate it, it's a game that quickly made a global impact. It's been released in at least 129 countries since…
TennoCon 2017: Warframe’s Plains of Eidolon is the first step toward a true MMORPG - [AL:WarF]Do you think you know what Warframe is? Can you define the game? Well toss that out the window because the new expansion is going to change things quite a bit.…
ARK Survival Evolved has doubled in price ahead of August 8 launch - Welp, hope you bought ARK: Survival Evolved back when it was super cheap on Steam because its price has now increased for PC players to a whopping $59.99 (or $67.98…
Check out Fortnite’s brand-new cinematic short - Hey PvE sandbox fans! If Fortnite isn't on your radar yet, it should be. MOP's own Andrew Ross dubbed it "Crowfall for PvE zombie fans" following his demo at this year's…
SWTOR team explains the need for ‘sweeping and severe’ class changes - [AL:TOR]Is there anything more dread-inducing for an MMORPG player than hearing that massive class changes are incoming? You never know if you're going to come out of such an event…
The Game Archaeologist: Where are all of the open-source MMOs? - Recently we had an interesting question come in from reader and Patron Rasmus Praestholm, who asked me to do a little investigating: "What (if anything of substance) exists in the…
Marvel Heroes is now ‘Omega’ on Steam for PC players (without Omega content) - Say, what's that enormous download chugging up your Steam? Oh no biggie, just Marvel Heroes again... Marvel Heroes Omega, that is. Yes, it's July 2017, and Marvel Heroes' PC version…
Guild Wars 2 studio ArenaNet hires former Ubisoft Creative Director Jason VandenBerghe - Gamasutra is reporting this afternoon that Guild Wars 2 studio ArenaNet has picked up former Ubisoft Montreal Creative Director Jason VandenBerghe. His new title on the MMO? Director of Design.…
Destiny 2’s staggered beta begins rolling out on July 18th - [AL:D2]Destiny 2 fans, open beta is coming, and that means your chance to ruin all the surprises for yourself is just around the corner too! This week, Bungie announced a…
Massively Overthinking: MMO ragequitting - Ragequitting. Most of us have probably done it once or twice from groups or single-player games or even MMO sessions in our time. My husband ragequit (disgustquit?) an Overwatch match…
Hearthstone’s next expansion is Knights of the Frozen Throne - [AL:Hearth]Will Hearthstone have as much success in the frozen northlands as World of Warcraft did with Wrath? We're about to find out, as last night Blizzard announced Knights of the Frozen…
EverQuesting: Falling for EverQuest II’s new progression server, Fallen Gate - A new time-locked expansion server got rolling last week in EverQuest II -- are you on board? I wasn't initially planning to participate; my gaming time is at a premium…
Here’s everything coming in Elder Scrolls Online’s Horns of the Reach DLC - Back at E3, we got a sneak peek into The Elder Scrolls Online's post-Morrowind plans -- how could ZeniMax follow something like Morrowind up? Easy: It's starting with Horns of…
DDO pits Drow against Dwarves in Update 36: Duel for the Underdark - [AL:DDO]Dungeons and Dragons Online fans are about to shake off their summer stupor and dive deep underground, thanks to the next big chapter of the game that just went into…
Perfect Ten: MMOs in limbo - The one thing that I thought we could all count on forever was that the MMO life cycle was pretty easy to understand. A game is launched, then it runs…
Wild West Online extends preorder program, posts alpha server list - Let's get the bad news out of the way first: Wild West Online had to delay getting its promised gameplay video out. The team said that it should arrive sometime…
Warframe posts drop rates for all its loot, hoping to ‘start a trend’ - [AL:WarF]Warframe's Digital Extremes is joining the very small list of online game developers being transparent about just what's in their lockboxes, lootboxes, gambleboxes, lootcrates, or whatever you want to call…
Wisdom of Nym: Final Fantasy XIV Stormblood’s story and the lack of MacGuffins - [AL:FFXIV]I think I was about halfway through the Stormblood story when I noticed that it was avoiding more or less every single bit of storytelling in Final Fantasy XIV that…
MMORPG founding father Richard Bartle establishes new unplayer matrix - Dr Richard Bartle, best known to MMORPG players for establishing the research that ultimately led to the admittedly flawed but widely quoted "Bartle test," spoke at Gamelab Barcelona 2017 last…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 125: Secrets, Mordor, and Argus
The Stream Team: Completing Kingsmouth in Secret World Legends
The Stream Team: Pre-TennoCon Warframe adventures
The Stream Team: Albion Online’s beta winds down
The Stream Team: Win a Paladins Frostmare Mount
The Stream Team: Earning an EverQuest II kick in the pants on the new progression server
The Stream Team: Celebrating the 4th with a Celtic SMITE giveaway
The Stream Team: The Fantastic Four take on Marvel Heroes’ Daily Bugle
The Stream Team: A Secret World anniversary in Secret World Legends
AND FROM OUR FRIENDS AT BLIZZARD WATCH
How to gear up for WoW’s Tomb of Sargeras
Is Mythic raiding in WoW worth it?
Should the next WoW expansion keep Artifacts?
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.
