This week, Guild Wars 2 took the lid off its next expansion: Path of Fire, a nostalgia-driven, story-oriented trip back to the deserts of Elona. With bunnies.
Meanwhile, Lord of the Rings Online successfully launched us all into Mordor — read our recap here! — and Funcom successfully ported Secret World Legends over to Steam.
Read on for the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions.
THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES
Everything you need to know about Guild Wars 2’s Path of Fire expansion, launching September 22 - [AL:GW2]If you missed the stream this morning or just want all the goodies in one place, here's what we know about Guild Wars 2's Path of Fire expansion! It's called…
Guild Wars 2’s second expansion, Path of Fire, launches September 22 (liveblog) - Update! It's over now, but you can catch the recap and preorder info right here! [AL:GW2]If you've somehow managed to avoid all the many leaks of Guild Wars 2's expansion…
PSA: Secret World Legends is live on Steam – are you playing? - [AL:SWL]The Secret World's transformation is now complete: Secret World Legends is live on Steam, just five weeks after launching on Funcom's own turf. Are you playing? [poll id="253"] We'll be…
Lord of the Rings Online’s Mordor expansion is officially live with a launch trailer - [AL:LOTRO]After just a brief delay (but still probably way too soon), Lord of the Rings Online has officially launched its Mordor expansion. I'm sure I owe somebody something for wagering…
Massively Overthinking: Gathering our thoughts on Guild Wars 2’s Path of Fire - This week, the dominant story has become Guild Wars 2's Path of Fire expansion, which is coming our way far sooner than a lot of folks had guessed. For this…
LOTRO Legendarium: First steps into Mordor - [AL:LOTRO]Victory. It's a fascinating place to begin an expansion, really. Most games like to set up a new threat, pit players against impossible odds, and have them struggle toward a…
Tamriel Infinium: Impressions of Elder Scrolls Online’s Falkreath’s Hold dungeon, part of the Horns of the Reach DLC - [AL:ESO]Although the vast majority of my time in Elder Scrolls Online is spent solo, running through the single-player storylines, I raid and have done a lot of group activities in…
Wild West Online denies that its alpha has been delayed - Hey, cowboys and cowgirls. When did you think alpha was going to begin for Wild West Online? You're wrong, apparently. 612 Games broke its recent silence to post a pair of…
Video games on Kickstarter continue to struggle thanks to fading consumer confidence - Earlier this week, we got SuperData's mid-year report on the booming video game industry, the enormous multinational congloms rolling around in piles of cash-shop money. But that's just one side…
Star Citizen’s Around the Verse format gets a shake-up ahead of the 3.0 alpha - Cloud Imperium's Chris Roberts has taken the opening segment of this week's Star Citizen Around the Verse episode to personally address the reasons behind the continuing delay of alpha 3.0.…
Choose My Adventure: Get out of here, DC Universe Online - [AL:DCUO]So this is an unusual situation for me: I've never actually played a game for Choose My Adventure that I've disliked this much. Those of you who have followed my…
Crunch mode caused a young Netmarble game developer’s death, Korean government says - South Korean MMO studio Netmarble is being criticized this week for contributing to the death of an overworked game developer in 2016. The Korea Times is reporting that the government…
Path of Exile: The Fall of Oriath launches today - [AL:POE]It's the largest single-day release of new content since the game's launch -- and unlike a lot of expansions mentioned lately, it's all free, free, free. Path of Exile: The…
Activision-Blizzard Q2 2017: Destiny 2 outperforms Destiny, WoW ‘time spent’ improves over 2016 - We could practically copypasta last quarter's Activision-Blizzard report to this one and nobody would notice. That's because once again, it's the Blizzard segment of the company driving the revenue flow; Blizz's…
Star Trek Online channels Next Generation’s spirit with Geordi LaForge, skants, and Galaxy interiors - [AL:STO]Believe it or not, this September will mark the 30th anniversary of the debut of Star Trek: The Next Generation. What began as a stiff, preachy, and controversial entry in…
Elite Dangerous: A ground-pounding newbie’s perspective - Earlier this summer I wrote that Elite Dangerous' community events were something the MMO community should watch. Watch. I never said play, and I never ended up pushing the "purchase" button when…
SuperData’s mid-2017 report reflects a wildly expanding gaming industry - Gaming analysis firm SuperData is touting a new report for marketers today, shedding some light on the shape of the industry so far in 2017 -- for everyone. Yep, today's…
Leaderboard: Did you go back to LOTRO for Mordor? - Before we begin, let's just get the trailer thing out of our systems. It was bad. Really bad. OK? Good. That's done. Lord of the Rings Online launched Mordor yesterday,…
Chaos Theory: To Steam or not to Steam your Secret World Legends account - [AL:SWL]To Steam or not to Steam, that is the Secret World Legends question -- now that the horror game has relaunched on that platform, that is. For those who have…
Derek Smart’s Line of Defense brings on secondary team for console version - Derek Smart's MMO Line of Defense has a progress update this week covering the state of the game's build. A new patch is on the way, and it's fairly light,…
Conan Exiles announces The Frozen North expansion coming August 16 - Just because they aren't known for wearing shirts doesn't mean that barbarians mind a little cold now and then. Rugged and bloodthirsty player fighters will be forging into new territory…
Dean Hall’s Stationeers don’t want no scrubs - DayZ's Dean Hall says his new sci-fi survivalbox Stationeers is launching early access in September, and he isn't sugarcoating the game's difficulty. You might remember Stationeers from its rather casual…
Perfect Ten: The circles of MMORPG combat hell - And so it was as I traveled across the many spheres and realms of MMOs, I came to realize one simple truth: War is hell. But it is a hell…
Check out trailers for all Guild Wars 2’s Path of Fire elite class specs, mounts, and Elona - [AL:GW2]Yesterday, ArenaNet formally revealed Path of Fire, Guild Wars 2's second expansion in five years. This standalone, campaign-like expansion won't introduce a new class, but it will roll out a new…
Stardew Valley multiplayer now slated for early 2018 launch - It's been a long time coming, but Stardew Valley is finally seeing some movement on the multiplayer front: The official blog has a post from Chucklefish Games, which was brought…
Hacker claims to have made a living cheating in MMOs for two decades - Motherboard has a fun-slash-depressing piece out this week on an unnamed hacker who claims he's been cheating at MMORPGs to make a living for almost two decades. Prior to his…
GTA-esque MMO CrimeCraft will sunset at the end of August - Hey, remember CrimeCraft? I had forgotten all about it, but we covered the Vogster-designed MMO from 2008 onward on Old Massively through its 2009 launch and subsequent free-to-play conversion that…
MMO researcher Nick Yee is ‘dispeling myths about female gamers’ - Quantic Foundry researcher and long-time MMO academic Nick Yee has an intriguing blog post out this week titled Dispelling Myths about Female Gamers in which he purports to do just…
Pokemon Go is being sued over the disastrous Chicago live event - If you live in the midwest and are out only a ticket and a tank of gas for your trip to the botched Pokemon Go event a week and change…
Star Citizen addresses its latest delay, studio is ‘working feverishly’ on 3.0 - If you were one of the many backers and industry watchers raising eyebrows over Star Citizen's latest production schedule report and delay, you're going to want to read the followup.…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 129: Treasure Trove
Battle Bards Episode 102: Pure joy
The Stream Team: Path of Exile’s The Fall of Oriath, take two
The Stream Team: Starting fresh on a procedurally generated ARK
The Stream Team: City life in Conan Exiles
The Stream Team: Finishing Path of Exile’s ACT IV and forging ahead into The Fall of Oriath
The Stream Team: Fun with Flappy and the Franklin Mansion in Secret World Legends
The Stream Team: Back in The Black Death
The Stream Team: A second chance to survive in Citadel: Forged with Fire
The Stream Team: Stepping into the Reach with ESO’s Creative Director
The Stream Team: Celebrating Secret World Legends’ Steam launch
The Stream Team: Striking out on the open road of Shroud of the Avatar
AND FROM OUR FRIENDS AT BLIZZARD WATCH
What do Twilight and the Starseeker mount say about WoW’s next expansion?
Differing WoW raid philosophies make balancing the extremes difficult
Argus quests and Netherlight Crucible will be time-gated
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.
