This week, Guild Wars 2 players, primed by the last few months of anti-lockbox sentiment in the gaming community, rioted over the addition of pseudo-lockboxes containing random mount skins in the cash shop. ArenaNet President Mike O’Brien has since provided a statement acknowledging that the timing and context were poorly chosen and that the multitude of new random skins unduly exacerbated the perception that ArenaNet was headed down an ugly path. That said, he also points out the upsides: that the mounts are cheap, progressive, and diverse. So will Anet change them? Yes and no.
“Microtransactions can be polarizing, and we’ve received both positive and negative feedback on the license. We won’t change the existing license in a way that would invalidate the investment players have made, but I want to confirm to you that our next planned mount skin releases will focus on individual sales like the Reforged Warhound and bundles like the Spooky Mounts Pack. We will not add any skins to the currently available Adoption License, thus not pushing down the odds of acquiring any one skin in that set.”
Thanks to our tipster Miol and the artist of the image header too, qears2gnomes/knight-mj! Now read on for the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions.
WoW Factor: Is World of Warcraft’s Battle for Azeroth fixing Legion’s many problems?
WoW Factor: What we still don’t know about World of Warcraft’s Battle for Azeroth
WoW Factor: World of Warcraft’s Battle for Azeroth has a weak conflict for a strong focus
WoW Factor: World of Warcraft Battle for Azeroth’s allied races, the knockoff factor, and future hopes
WoW Factor: Understanding World of Warcraft’s upcoming Heart of Azeroth system
Nostalrius admins take victory lap over World of Warcraft Classic
World of Warcraft Classic starts hiring for its team
World of Warcraft Classic announcement sends shockwaves through the vanilla emulator community
The Daily Grind: Will you be playing World of Warcraft’s Classic servers?
The Daily Grind: Will you be buying World of Warcraft’s Battle for Azeroth expansion?
EVE Evolved: EVE Online’s CCP Games is gambling with the livelihoods of employees - [AL:EVE]Last week we broke the story that EVE Online developer CCP Games is backing out of the virtual reality games market, closing its Altanta office and selling its VR-focused Newcastle…
Working As Intended: Guild Wars 2’s new mount licenses are still lockboxes, but they’re not the worst lockboxes - [AL:GW2]Pretty much everyone assumed that back when Guild Wars 2 planned out mounts, it did so with its cash shop in mind. The game is already not-so-jokingly known as "Fashion…
Guild Wars 2 balances classes and adds spectacular new mounts – for a price - [AL:GW2]Guild Wars 2 patched in new mounts today, and they're gorgeous. But don't get too excited; they're in gated behind a weird new RNG scheme that's not remotely as bad…
Niantic accios a Harry Potter mobile MMOARG - Like the idea of a mobile augmented reality game (ARG) but aren't really keen on Pokémon? Niantic, the operator of Ingress and Pokémon Go, is branching out to include an…
NCsoft has rebooted Lineage Eternal as Project TL in Unreal 4 - Remember Lineage Eternal? It seems as if we've been watching the gorgeous MMOARPG sequel to the Lineage franchise for half of forever, as NCsoft has moved it into and out…
Kakao will launch Bluehole’s Ascent: Infinite Realm MMORPG in the west - Good morning! Who wants some genuinely good news for the MMORPG genre? Great. Black Desert publisher Kakao is bringing Ascent: Infinite Realm westward. That'd be the Bluehole MMO codenamed Project…
BlizzCon gamers react to, reflect on Overwatch toxicity - Toxicity in online gaming is easily one of the biggest stories of the year, particularly in Overwatch, where Blizzard has been focusing its anti-toxicity efforts with such persistence that it's…
Star Wars: The Old Republic proceeds with its United Forces server merge - [AL:TOR]Today will be a day long remembered. It has seen the death of many Star Wars: The Old Republic servers and will soon see the death of long matchmaking queues.…
En Masse confirms TERA chat vulnerability and potential security breach as servers go down for emergency maintenance - [AL:TERA]Earlier today, TERA players began circulating the claim that an in-game chat vulnerability was allowing hackers to wreck up all regions of the game the way only hackers can. En…
Perfect Ten: A list of all the MMORPGs I supposedly hate - Did you know about all the MMOs I hate? I sure as heck didn't! I mean, I knew there were a few games I hated (Scarlet Blade, Alganon) and some…
Black Desert’s Reddit community erupts over Pearl Abyss’ datamining suppression - [AL:BDO]So how do you feel about dataminers? One player apparently datamined a significant chunk of info about Black Desert's so-called hidden stats, posting everything to the game's subreddit to finally…
Star Citizen’s Around the Verse on making space travel more exciting - So, Star Citizen alpha 3.0. Around the Verse. Does anyone read these, or do you just skip to the comments with your popcorn? Let's find out! In this episode, CIG's…
EVE Online players take action to prevent a suicide - [AL:EVE]When they heard a cry for help go out in their game, these players took action right away. A few days ago on November 5th, an unnamed 28-year-old EVE Online…
Whatever happened to Global Agenda, The Realm Online, and Mabinogi? - Ever pause during your day and find yourself wondering, “Whatever happened to that game?” With hundreds upon hundreds of online titles these days, it’s surprisingly easy for MMOs to fall through the…
Blizzard considers an Overwatch movie - One of the persistent complaints about Overwatch is that for all of the animated shorts, comics, and CGI trailers that Blizzard has released, the story has been in arrested development…
Pathfinder Online perseveres with housing and ninjas - This is your bi-annual reminder that, yes, Pathfinder Online continues to exist and even grow through development. The reduced team pushed out its first patch since last August, but considering…
Skyforge’s Xbox One early access has begun - [AL:Sky]Free-to-play sci-fantasy MMORPG Skyforge has semi-launched on the Xbox One, at least kicking off its early access program. The move follows a hop from PC to PlayStation 4 earlier this year. The downside…
Masangsoft casts rez on RaiderZ - Can't kill the Z! RaiderZ, that is. Masangsoft is apparently trying to resuscitate the title, which sunsetted under PWE's banner in 2015. "Masangsoft have been looking at the MMORPG RaiderZ…
ArcheAge promises better communication, but the community isn’t having it - [AL:Arche]A lengthy letter from the ArcheAge team about the state of the game and its direction forward isn't making a lot of people in the community excited. On the contrary,…
Asta Online prepares to shut its doors… again - Alas-ta, poor Asta Online. We were pretty surprised when the game got its third lease on life earlier this year, but it appears to have been sadly abortive, as it…
Blade & Soul’s Dawn of the Lost Continent drops Dec 6 as the game’s biggest update ever - [AL:BaS]NCsoft just keeps the Blade & Soul content train coming as the game slides into its second birthday early next year. Next up on the docket? Dawn of the Lost…
Massively OP Podcast Episode 143: BlizzCon strikes back
The Stream Team: Going on a griffon hunt in ARK
The Stream Team: Back to building in Conan Exiles
The Stream Team: Slipping into Secret World Legends’ Scorched Desert
The Stream Team: Happy 13th birthday EverQuest II!
The Stream Team: Onward into MU Legend’s open beta
The Stream Team: Slaying SMITE’s new Shadows Over Hercopolis adventure
No real money loot boxes coming in WoW’s Battle for Azeroth
Here’s what’s happening to your Artifacts in WoW’s Battle for Azeroth
What would your ideal WoW Classic server look like?
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.
