This week, the universe of EVE Online was rocked by a sudden but inevitable betrayal that compounded the ongoing player-instigated wars and led to the banning of a notable EVE player and elected CSM official caught threatening to mutilate another player in real life. The impetus? The theft of in-game property worth approximately $20,000. Ouch.
Read on for the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions.
THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES
MassivelyOP’s complete PAX West 2017 coverage - Massively Overpowered was on the ground in Seattle for PAX West 2017, bringing you expert MMO coverage on Ashes of Creation, Ship of Heroes, Dual Universe, and everything else on…
Star Citizen’s Chris Roberts is ‘fed up’ with giving 3.0 release estimates - Eurogamer's Chris Roberts interview covers why the alpha 3.0 is more like early access than beta, how making games has changed in the era of crowdfunding, and why he's tired…
Notorious EVE Online player banned for threatening to cut off someone’s hands in real life - [AL:EVE]Yes, you've read that headline correctly. It's been an insane day for EVE Online, as players awoke to the news that powerful military alliance Circle of Two had been betrayed…
Guild Wars 2 begins its final countdown to Path of Fire’s launch - [AL:GW2]With the launch of Path of Fire just a week away now, the Guild Wars 2 team has outlined its plans for the next seven days. Aside from the launch…
Massively Overthinking: What keeps you from playing mobile MMOs? - Earlier this week, we wrote about Black Desert developer Pearl Abyss' IPO and its grand plans for the future - among them, four additional MMOs. Sounds great, right? Except that…
PAX West 2017: Chronicles of Elyria’s monetization philosophy, tribe evolution, and the PvP sandbox stigma - What is Chronicles of Elyria? We first learned about the game and its goal to redefine the MMORPG genre back in 2015. Since then, CoE has been developing steadily, especially…
Star Citizen’s alpha 3.0 inches closer to testers, CIG touts its mission system - In this week's episode of Star Citizen's Around the Verse, Cloud Imperium says it's reduced its must-fix issues by 50 over the last week, bringing us that much closer to…
Secret World Legends mission inventory and new Tokyo content coming next week - [AL:SWL]Funcom isn't finished with its Tokyo vacation just yet. The studio still has a lot of content from Kaidan to reincorporate into Secret World Legends, including next week's Beyond the…
Warframe’s Plains of Eidolon introduces ‘open landscapes’ later this year - [AL:WarF]During its livestream earlier this afternoon, Digital Extremes formally unveiled Plains of Eidolon, Warframe's next big expansion. As announced back at TennoCon, the expansion will add a touch of MMOishness to…
Shroud of the Avatar reveals a batch of investment rewards for the one percenters - People, steel yourself for an entire article about gold-themed housing decorations that won't involve a single Trump joke. It's going to be hard, but we can get through it. Together.…
Wild West Online’s first closed alpha has officially begun - "Open-world action-based, online multiplayer" game - somewhere between a survival sandbox and an MMO - Wild West Online officially hits closed alpha today, or at least its first phase for…
Guild Wars 2 DPS meter creator adds build templates to popular arcdps mod - If you have min-maxer friends in Guild Wars 2 as I do, you probably already know about arcdps, a player-designed mod that originally merely parsed chat logs and gathered DPS…
Revelation Online adds in a new level cap and new bosses in the Uprising update - [AL:Rev]It's time to get better than you ever thought possible in the latest Revelation Online patch. Heck, better than it was possible to get, even; the patch raises the game's…
Final Fantasy XIV prepares for Shirogane housing while halting house demolitions - [AL:FFXIV]Looking forward to picking up a house in Final Fantasy XIV's Shirogane housing district? The houses are planned to open up with the release of the upcoming patch 4.1, and…
Star Citizen denies claims that a backer sought and received a $45000 refund - [Update: ArsTechnica now reports that a Cloud Imperium rep has gone on the record stating that some of the Redditor's claims are fabrication, including the amount (CIG maintains it was…
Here are all of Crowfall’s launch class/race combos - Now that Crowfall has split with the whole fixed-archetype thing, it's a world of possibilities over at this PvP title. And while there will be plenty of possible class and…
Choose My Adventure: Shroud of the Avatar in summation - All the time through playing Shroud of the Avatar, I found myself wanting to like the game a lot more than I did. And my brain kept turning back to…
The first Destiny 2 raid is already down - [AL:D2]The first Destiny 2 raid is out in the wild, ready to challenge and delight players for some time, setting a new bar for difficulty while players - oh, wait,…
Overwatch’s Jeff Kaplan on how needing to babysit toxic turds slows down game dev for everyone - "I'm Jeff from the Overwatch team," the outrageously famous Blizzard game director Jeff Kaplan says in this week's Overwatch developer video. I get a kick out of it when he does…
ArcheAge celebrates its third anniversary with giant corgis - [AL:Arche]It's hard to believe that ArcheAge has been with us for three years now, but that's what the game is celebrating with its new anniversary event. Starting today, players can…
Phantasy Star Online 2 is coming to Nintendo Switch… in Japan only - At what point is Sega officially just taunting Phantasy Star Online 2 fans in North America? It's hard to be sure, but the announcement that PSO2 is coming to the…
Project Gorgon is ‘gearing up’ for a Steam launch, adds item context menus - When the history books go to record the development of Project Gorgon, they're going to have to use terms like "ages" and "epochs" to describe the slow-burning process of this…
BlizzCon reveals this year’s virtual ticket plans, broadcasts pre-show - Is there anything really important between now and November 3rd, when BlizzCon 2017 begins? Probably not, so we might as well all start hibernating in our pumpkin spice caves. However,…
Storybricks CEO shares early EverQuest Next proposal documents - It has been a while since the dust settled on late, lamentable EverQuest Next, and even longer since the sandbox MMORPG acquired and then ditched Storybricks for one of its…
PAX West 2017: ArcheAge’s Corgi Conundrum, anniversary update, and the 4.0 expansion - [AL:Arche]Nothing may quite compare to last week's big server evolution in scope of change for ArcheAge, but there are more changes coming over the next couple of months. The good news…
Perfect Ten: The 10 tiers of MMORPG lore - In which we discuss varying levels of MMO lore effort and Eliot admits he doesn't remember the names of Pac-Man's ghosties.
Guild Wars 2 raids won’t be getting more difficulty options in Path of Fire ‘at this time’ - [AL:GW2]There are new forums for Guild Wars 2, which means that one of the first development posts can be another reminder that the developers at ArenaNet don't want to make…
Black Desert rolls out free-for-all PvP server, welcomes Oktoberfest beer festivals, and teases Kamasylvia - Beer and ganking!
Gunslingers arrive in Blade & Soul today after a lengthy maintenance - [AL:BaS]Patch 3.4 hits the live servers for Blade and Soul today, and that means it's time to get your gun and start shooting everything within range. (Guns are a kind…
EVE Online political betrayal results in record-breaking theft - [AL:EVE]The EVE Online twitterverse exploded late last night with the news of a political twist so enormous that it's become the largest recorded theft of in-game assets in the game's…
Fortnite begins testing its battle royal game mode, launching September 26 - Epic Games heard you liked battle royal game modes, so it's putting one into Fortnite. The so-called Fortnite Battle Royale is "an all-new PvP mode coming to the action-building game…
Destiny 2 prepares its first raid, vows to remove potentially offensive gear - [AL:D2]Hello there, new players of Destiny 2. Did you know that Tuesday is reset day? You probably do, because we've decided to have every game reset things on the same…
Pearl Abyss is building four more MMOs as Black Desert swells to 7.65M registered users - [AL:BDO]We've been tracking Black Desert developer Pearl Abyss' path to IPO since last spring, when multiple Korean outlets began reporting that the company sought a listing on the Korean stock…
PAX West 2017: Life and death in Digital Extremes’ new MMO Survived By - While there were plenty of established games on hand at PAX West 2017, there were also a few new ones offering players a taste of the future. Survived By by…
PAX West 2017: Ashes of Creation’s combat, crowdfunding, characters, and the infamous hat - You don't have to be a massive MMO studio to have a big showing at PAX West - Intrepid Studios proved that. The indie studio developing Ashes of Creation had a…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 135: PAX in the P.M.
Battle Bards Episode 105: Uncharted Waters Online
The Stream Team: A first alpha look at Wild West Online
The Stream Team: Cuddling ArcheAge’s anniversary corgi
The Stream Team: Handing out Hand of the Gods goodies
The Stream Team: Taking on the Blue Mountain bear in Secret World Legends
The Stream Team: Watch SMITE arena fun and win an Ultimate God Pack
The Stream Team: Giving away Dauntless beta codes
The Stream Team: A look at life after the big ArcheAge server merges + giveaway
AND FROM OUR FRIENDS AT BLIZZARD WATCH
WoW’s future belongs to Azshara
What are the WoW addons you just can’t live without?
A quick guide to WoW’s Netherlight Crucible
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.
