If our poll is any guide, a whole lot of our readers — and presumably the broader MMO playerbase — were immersed in Guild Wars 2’s Path of Fire preview event this weekend, putting out actual in-game fires, hopping around on raptors, and wondering if Herald Kehnan was ever gonna shut up! (He is not.)
Meanwhile, World of Warcraft’s next expansion was probably leaked, Black Desert talked up its plans for the rest of the year, a huge war is brewing in EVE Online, and Star Citizen stripped all the dates from its public production schedule.
Read on for the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions.
THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES
Guild Wars 2’s free-play Path of Fire preview weekend is live - Update: It's up, go go go! [AL:GW2]Ahead of its September 22nd launch, Guild Wars 2's Path of Fire expansion will be on public display this very weekend -- likely starting…
Guild Wars 2 begins selling level 80 character boosts - [AL:GW2]Does anyone actually take a character to level 80 in Guild Wars 2 the normal way any more? With all of the boosts given out as daily rewards and for…
PSA: Guild Wars 2’s mounts may be causing motion sickness issues - Longtime readers will know that we take motion sickness from games pretty darn seriously around here, given that we have a writer who's been severely affected by some of the…
Flameseeker Chronicles: Cautiously optimistic about Guild Wars 2’s Path of Fire expansion - [AL:GW2]ArenaNet chose to very cleverly stave off the post-season blues by teasing a long-awaited, much-anticipated, and very-spoiled Guild Wars 2Â expansion announcement as a close to the living world's third season.…
Guild Wars 2’s new item identification system is a huge blessing for bloated inventories - [AL:GW2]WoodenPotatoes is continuing his huge Guild Wars 2 infodump on ArenaNet's behalf with a few more videos you might want to peek at ahead of the Path of Fire preview…
Rumor: World of Warcraft’s next expansion leaked - Warning: If you hate potential spoilers about World of Warcraft, you may want to skip the rest of this article! Photos and descriptions of the alleged expansion, which is called…
Black Desert team reveals perma-AFK leveling, tent camping, and a wicked sea monster - (We've updated this article since it went live with additional notes from Kakao - it's all at the end!) [AL:BDO]When it comes to divining the future of an MMO that comes…
EVE Evolved: A massive war for revenge is brewing in EVE Online - [AL:EVE]Just over a year ago, the largest PvP conflict in gaming history kicked off in EVE Online as war erupted between the game's most prominent territorial alliances. Over 60,000 pilots were…
Hyperspace Beacon: Star Wars The Old Republic’s Uncle Owen problem - [AL:TOR]When Star Wars: The Old Republic first released, an old Star Wars Galaxies argument popped up, and the crux of that argument was this: "No one wants to be Uncle…
Secret World Legends to re-open Tokyo on Wednesday - Ever since Secret World Legends went live earlier this summer, there's been a large, Tokyo-shaped hole in the reboot's content offerings. Part of this gap, at least, will be filled…
Massively Overthinking: Is the popularity of small-scale co-op games hurting MMORPGs? - Gamasutra has an unusual piece from an Ubisoft developer this week arguing that co-op gameplay is the industry's rising midcore trend, one that he believes will ultimately outstrip team competitive…
Blizzard memo indicates renewed focus on hiring diversity - Blizzard is doubling down on diversity and inclusion when it comes to its own hiring practices. That's according to a leaked internal memo from Blizzard President Mike Morhaime, which Kotaku excerpted…
Check out Star Citizen’s absurdly detailed in-game hologram smartwatch - Chris Roberts and Sandi Gardiner are helming another episode of Star Citizen's Around the Verse this week, in the temporarily abbreviated format introduced previously. The headliner of the episode? MobiGlas,…
TERA announces the Elin Gunner, tees off Argon Assault event - [AL:TERA]We guess TERA was feeling left out of the Asian "little girls with big guns" club, because Bluehole announced this week that the Elin will be able to take on…
No Man’s Sky is finally getting multiplayer by way of ‘joint exploration’ - Remember all the fuss a year ago when No Man's Sky finally launched and the multiplayer features Hello Games' Sean Murray had teased (and the "online play" feature apparently hidden under a…
LawBreakers player numbers are below the top 100 for Steam games - Launches are vital to a new game. LawBreakers appears to be having some issues with its launch, and unfortunately they're not the sort that can be patched away. The game's…
Wisdom of Nym: Why does Final Fantasy XIV feel so much better now? - [AL:FFXIV]It took me a very long time to cap out everything in Final Fantasy XIV when Heavensward was current. Until the moogle questline was introduced, my crafting jobs languished pretty…
Paris Olympic committee considers e-sports for 2024 - The AP is reporting that the leaders of the Olympic Games are at least considering bringing video gaming on board for the 2024 program in Paris. The co-president of the…
Choose My Adventure: Starting completely fresh in Shroud of the Avatar - I really know pretty much nothing about Ultima. This is only partly my fault. Way back when the Ultima games were a big deal on PC, I was still decidedly…
Albion Online offers proof that it is still being DDOSed by RMT blackmailers - It's hard not to feel sorry for Albion Online. As we've been reporting, the newbie sandbox has been absolutely plagued by a long series of nasty DDOS attacks since at least early…
Perfect Ten: Fresh approaches for familiar MMORPGs - Short of taking a blow to the head, there's very little I can suggest in the way of experiencing a familiar MMORPG for the first time again. That new car…
Destiny 2 also has a line of scented candles - [AL:D2]She enters your apartment and you stand ready to greet her, wearing your Destiny 2-branded bathrobe. "Come in," you purr, offering her a sippy cup full of Destiny 2-themed energy…
Lineage Eternal delayed again, Guild Wars 2 mobile game teased - Steparu is reporting on a Korean-language piece today that suggests Lineage Eternal is once again in do-over mode. According to the report, NCsoft has gutted the game's engine plans, switching from…
Final Fantasy XIV passes 10 million worldwide players and gets a small patch - [AL:FFXIV]Looking forward to more ranked PvP in Final Fantasy XIV or just the removal of the game's automatic logout? Both of those features have been brought around with the game's…
Indie sandbox MMO Tree of Life officially launches on August 17, won’t include PvE-only servers - Here comes another MMO emerging from early access! We're talking about Korean sandbox import Tree of Life, which hit beta last year following a transition to factional PvP and a…
Destiny 2’s Pop-Tarts and energy drink promo is everything wrong with this industry - [AL:D2]Don't forget to drink your Ovaltine! This is not a joke: ActiBlizz just sent 'round a press release announcing a partnership with Rockstar energy drinks and poptarts, which I've just learned…
Chaos Theory: Guide to Secret World Legends’ Whispering Tide event - [AL:SWL]Have you met Flappy? If you haven't yet, you might want to do so very soon else you'll miss your chance. That dirty bird has made its appearance in Secret…
NCsoft Q2 2017: Guild Wars 2 drops to new all-time low, Blade and Soul heads to console - Ready to take high Asian fantasy to your home console? You'd better because NCsoft recently announced that it is working on adapting Blade and Soul to such platforms. The video game…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
The Stream Team: A first look at Foxhole
The Stream Team: Battling ARK’s Broodmother
The Stream Team: Mountaineering in Conan Exiles
The Stream Team: Lucius Fox’s fate in Telltale’s Batman The Enemy Within
The Stream Team: Tracking Tyler Freeborn in Secret World Legends
The Stream Team: Digging into Batman: The Enemy Within – The TellTale Series
The Stream Team: Onward into Oriath in Path of Exile
The Stream Team: Exploring the end of SWTOR’s KOTFE Chapter XII
The Stream Team: Base building in Fortnite
The Stream Team: Checking out Marvel Heroes’ Carnage
The Stream Team: Very Venus adventures in Warframe
AND FROM OUR FRIENDS AT BLIZZARD WATCH
Latest WoW fixes nerf Kil’jaeden on Normal and Mythic difficulties
WoW 7.3: Cutscenes explore Argus’ past and present
Dalaran gets Doomsayers and Argus in the sky ahead of WoW 7.3
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.
