Where do we start with a week like last week? Was it the way Marvel Heroes disappeared without a sound from its owners? Guild Wars 2’s pricey new mount and new living story season? Raph Koster and Mark Jacobs weighing on on the business of the genre? Or Star Citizen’s new way of making money by selling off space plots?
I say all of those and more. It’s not gonna be a quiet December, folks. Read on for the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions.
THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES
Move over, pixel ships: Star Citizen is now selling pixel land claims - The Star Citizen community was once again rocked yesterday by the addition of new pixelstuff to buy ahead of launch, this time in the form of land claim licenses. Running…
Raph Koster on the cost of making games from the industry side - All of this talk about the price of making games and the price of playing games thanks to Star Wars: Battlefront II has meant getting a pretty decent peek behind…
Guild Wars 2 defends new mount price, Zadorojny stays on as Game Director, S4 plans brisk cadence - [AL:GW2]There's a bit of a kerfuffle over Guild Wars 2's new mount, which is a gorgeous peacock reskin of the raptor. ArenaNet has put it up for 2000 gems ($25)…
Perfect Ten: The biggest MMO stories of 2017 - One thing you can say for the MMO industry: It never ceases to surprise all of us. No matter what predictions we may make at the beginning of a year,…
WoW Factor: Why are we going back to factional squabbles after the end of Antorus? - Antorus is out now, and if you want to see the cinematic that ends the very long-running story about the Burning Legion and Sargeras, well, that's easy to do. It's…
The Game Archaeologist: Vanguard Saga of Heroes - The significance of Vanguard's development, release, long-running drama, second chance, and eventual closure should be of great interest not just to game historians but to everyone who plays MMOs, period.…
Sony joins Microsoft in giving out Marvel Heroes refunds - Even if Gazillion and Disney can't or won't do the right thing by their customers following the termination of Marvel Heroes, at least the console companies are picking up the…
Black Desert welcomes new toon Ran to the roster - [AL:BDO]Is there room for another character class at the Black Desert table? Scooch over and make room no matter what you think on this, because Ran is on her way.…
Paladins tests a new card system that attracts cries of pay-to-win - Let's review. Paladins, as it stands now, has a system wherein characters get cards that can be used to power up playable characters. You craft them or get them from…
Milwaukee settles lawsuit over Pokemon Go-inspired park ordinance - The Milwaukee lawsuit sparked by Pokemon Go is finally over. Back in February, Milwaukee County in Wisconsin issued an ordinance requiring video game developers like Niantic to obtain park permits…
The Soapbox: Evaluating gaming monetization through the lens of Nintendo’s mobile history - Bloggers and journalists throughout the online gaming industry have been talking about monetization a lot lately. It's not just lockbox/gachapon scandals, or their relationship with gambling, but basic monetization and…
EA caught in lie over Star Wars Battlefront II customization, brings lootbox madness to UFC 3 - Among the controversy of EA's pay-to-win lockboxes in Star Wars Battlefront II emerges a rather reasonable question: Why didn't the studio create and use cosmetic rewards in these lockboxes rather…
Leaderboard: Is Destiny 2’s marketing brilliant or just plain nuts? - So this morning I'm dishing out cheese crackers for my kid, who was up all night barfing. (If my posts have typos today, it's because I'm running on just caffeine…
EverQuesting: First impressions of EverQuest II’s Planes of Prophecy - November: A month of colorful, falling leaves, Thanksgiving... and an EverQuest II expansion! That's right, the 11th month isn't allowed to finish up until we have our next serving of…
Bluehole’s CEO on how Ascent: Infinite Realm (A:IR) will breathe life into a stagnating MMORPG genre - Ready for some harsh truths, MMO players? Bluehole CEO Hyo-Seob Kim recently told GIbiz that he wasn't expecting PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds to do so well globally, that the studio was "pitching up…
Choose My Adventure: Secret World Legends and the mystery of the level-based curse - [AL:SWL]Would you believe that I sort of forgot about levels altogether in Secret World Legends? It's true! I remembered that they were a thing now (it's hard to miss the…
Are rank-and-file devs benefiting from MMO publisher ‘money-grabs’? Camelot Unchained’s Mark Jacobs weighs in - Last week, Massively OP's Eliot Lefebvre wrote a (fantastic) Soapbox editorial arguing that Star Wars Battlefront II (and its concomitant monetization dust-up) is merely a symptom of the "long tail"…
Superdata’s October 2017 revenue report: Destiny 2’s and PUBG’s dominance - [AL:D2]Destiny 2 may be fudging up left and right, but it still sold a truckton of copies. That's according to Superdata, whose most recent revenue report shows Bungie's new baby…
Red Dead Redemption publisher president defends lockboxes - Not everyone in the video game industry is shying away from lockboxes or denouncing them outright. Take-Two Interactive President Karl Slatoff took the side of the ESA by saying that…
Destiny 2 acknowledges ‘betrayal’ over XP adjustments and studio silence - While stopping short of an actual apology in this week's Destiny 2 state of the game post, Bungie acknowledged that players have been greatly dissatisfied over the recent event and…
Saga of Lucimia secures independent funding to hire contractors - Fiercely independent and minimap-free Saga of Lucimia is publicly sticking to its guns in an attempt to fund and make this fantasy MMORPG, eschewing contracts with publishers who wanted the…
Hyperspace Beacon: First impressions of SWTOR’s Chiss flashpoint - [AL:TOR]Yesterday, Star Wars: The Old Republic launched update 5.6, which gave us many new quality-of-life changes to the game as well as our first trip into the Chiss Ascendency via…
Slay-to-win: Massively OP’s hands-on with the Dauntless closed beta - The end of September marked a major milestone for Dauntless, the upcoming monster-slaying action-MMORPG from indie developer Phoenix Labs, as it officially concluded its Founder’s Alpha event and made the…
Black Desert: Epheria Frigate and cookies today; Mystic precustomization next week - [AL:BDO]Black Desert's Mystic class is finally porting westward in December - on the 13th, to be exact, although Kakao will let you "pre-customize" a new Mystic toon beginning with next…
The Soapbox: Inconvenience is not immersion in MMOs or anywhere else - Inconvenience is not immersion. This strikes me as something rather ridiculous to type; to mildly paraphrase Dan Harmon, it seems like should be one of the more automatic things to…
EA lockbox debacle wipes out billions in stock as SuperData forecasts regulation - It looks as though the rebels may have defeated the empire -- or at least struck a mighty blow to give the latter pause. CNBC is reporting that the fallout…
Guild Wars 2’s fourth living story season has officially landed - [AL:GW2]Guild Wars 2's first living story episode since the apparently tepid launch of Path of Fire has officially launched this afternoon. Dubbed Daybreak, a name sure to raise MMORPG player…
Flameseeker Chronicles: Wrapping up Guild Wars 2’s Path of Fire story ahead of season 4 - [AL:GW2]The launch of Guild Wars 2's Living World Season 4 will be upon us today, so it's all the more pressing that I wrap up my Path of Fire story analysis so…
Marvel Heroes: Former dev says Disney’s not the bad guy, Xbox One grants automatic refunds - Still reeling from the abrupt early sunset of Marvel Heroes yesterday? Same here. If you want a little closure, maybe check out Kinda Funny Games, which yesterday posted an interview…
Saga of Lucimia dev argues that minimaps destroy MMORPG immersion - Saga of Lucimia has made a name for itself during its long development as a hardcore old-school indie MMO with a focus on grouping (there's no solo content at all),…
Mother of Fortnite cheater claims that her 14-year-old son is being used as a scapegoat - Last month, Fortnite developer Epic sued two alleged associates of a cheating software site as part of the studio's hard-line approach to cheaters. Makes sense; cheating is not all right,…
EVE Evolved: Three top tips for staying safe from gankers in EVE Online - [AL:EVE]EVE Online is renowned for its cold, harsh universe and relatively few rules, and we've all heard the horror stories over the years of players losing everything they own to…
RIP Marvel Heroes - It's gone, gang, and I'm so sorry. Following the disastrous silences and accusations that unfolded over October and November, Marvel announced that it had terminated its relationship with gaming studio…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 146: World of Warcraft’s fun police
The Stream Team: Storming the castle in ARK: Ragnarok
The Stream Team: Speed building in Conan Exiles
The Stream Team: Staying toasty warm in Secret World Legends’ Scorched Desert
The Stream Team: The final KOTFE chapter in SWTOR
The Stream Team: A first peek at EverQuest II’s Planes of Prophecy
The Stream Team: Get your Wizard101 Empyrean Castaway’s Bundle
The Stream Team: Total War Arena opens doors for a free week
AND FROM OUR FRIENDS AT BLIZZARD WATCH
WoW Archivist: Classic hassles
Everything you need to know to about the WoW Antorus raid
What is the ideal “Tourist Mode” for WoW raiding?
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.
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