We weren’t surprised at all to find out this week that Wild West Online wasn’t actually going to make its planned Steam early access launch this year and will instead delay into 2018. But most of us were surprised to hear that one of the reasons is that the game is basically giving up on its free-for-all PvP system, which is probably for the best as the bounty system as it stood was ineffective. Instead, the developers will be implementing a faction-based PvP system, sans corpse looting, in an attempt to reduce griefing and teamkilling. It might rope in more MMORPG players, but we’re doubting the early adopters are too happy.
Read on for the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions.
THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES
Perfect Ten: The healthiest live MMORPGs at the end of 2017 - As Counting Crows told us, it's been a long December, although the fact that it has also only just started being December speaks to something unpleasant in the makeup of…
Ask Mo: Counting the hits and misses of our 2017 predictions - As we do every year, today we’re going to peer back into the depths of last year's staff predictions for the genre and the games within it to determine just how…
Wild West Online seems to be dropping FFA PvP in favor of faction-based PvP - Still bummed out about Wild West Online's delay to 2018? Wait until you see the game's latest dev blog! 612 Games doesn't mention the delay but does go into detail…
LOTRO Legendarium: Fixing Lord of the Rings Online’s grouping problem - [AL:LOTRO]One of the quirks -- and frustrations -- of MMORPGs is that there never seems to be one game that truly has it all. Even some of my favorites are…
RIFT puts an endgame currency out for real-money sales - Look, we can all agree that "pay-to-win" is, at the very least, a difficult concept to be certain about. Right? There's a lot of stuff where you can argue that…
RIFT pulls pay-to-win packs out of the store — for now - [AL:Rift]Reacting to massive community pushback over what is perceived to be pay-to-win packs in the RIFT store, Trion Worlds announced that it is pulling the items -- at least for now…
Flameseeker Chronicles: Deep-diving Guild Wars 2’s living world S4 Daybreak - [AL:GW2]I'm back with an earlier-than-anticipated special edition of Flameseeker Chronicles to share my impressions of the opening episode of Guild Wars 2's fourth Living World season. I am blown away by…
Massively Overthinking: The best and worst MMO developer quotes of 2017 - Think of all the wacky things devs have said in public in front of gamers and journalists this year. Now imagine what gets said behind closed doors! For this week's…
Warframe revises focus system, adds dynamic weather - [AL:WarF]Perfectionists, nitpickers, or insecure? Your call on Warframe's development team, although it does look like the members are striving to make the best game possible. Shortly after releasing the "Focus…
Dungeons and Dragons Online gives out free level 10 characters for Mists of Ravenloft - [AL:DDO]For a limited time, Dungeons and Dragons Online is allowing players to leapfrog over a ton of advancement and create level 10 characters right out of the gate to enjoy…
Dauntless launches the Sharpen Your Skills update - After several weeks of previews, the latest update for Dauntless has arrived, and it's aiming at making a better hunter out of you. Sharpen Your Skills will allow you to…
Who does Star Citizen love now? HOVERBIKES! - Is Star Citizen alpha 3.0 going to make it past the PTU testers to the live server by Christmas? It's looking pretty tight. According to the game's weekly Around the…
Leaderboard: How should MMORPG studios communicate to players? - The most peculiar comment thread erupted in MJ's recent post about Secret World Legends' Krampusnacht. In response to the casual note that the holiday event rewards had been announced by…
Amazon stops selling digital cards for Star Wars: The Old Republic - [AL:TOR]You can no longer purchase digital time cards or Cartel Coins for Star Wars: The Old Republic through Amazon. This is clearly a sign that you can... er... no longer…
Choose My Adventure: Wrapping things up in Secret World Legends - [AL:SWL]One of the things that I promised way back when I started writing this series about Secret World Legends was to mention the way in which this game seems to…
WoW Factor: Reconsidering the next few months of World of Warcraft - There's a lot of information coming out about patch 7.3.5 at this point. Not everything, of course, and a lot of it is based more on datamining than actual stuff…
Path of Exile’s War for the Atlas expansion is live today - [AL:POE]Path of Exile's free-to-play War for the Atlas expansion is slated to go live this afternoon on PC, expanding the gameworld for diehard MMOARPG fans. As we've previously reported, the…
Chaos Theory: Exploring Secret World Legend’s anima allocation and other QoL improvements - [AL:SWL]Remember that big quality-of-life update that Secret World Legends launched mid-November? Chances are your quality of SWL life did indeed improve with a number of those changes. Mine did. Some…
The Crew 2 has been delayed deeper into 2018 - We've known Ubisoft was working on a sequel to driving MMO The Crew since this past spring, when the company confirmed what it would one month later debut at E3.…
Hyperspace Beacon: SWTOR, it’s time to destroy the Eternal Empire - [AL:TOR]Those players who were looking for consequence in their Star Wars: The Old Republic storyline can, I'm glad to say, look to Knights of the Eternal Throne to get it. Although…
Destiny 2’s endgame is now helpfully locked behind Curse of Osiris access - If you've decided to hold off on buying the Destiny 2: Curse of Osiris DLC, good news! The game's endgame is now locked away from you completely! Looking back, it's…
Hawaii state rep Chris Lee urges gamers to contact their local governments about lockboxes - Say you were a legislator concerned about the lootbox/lockbox gambling issues in gaming. How would you actually go about drafting a law that targets predatory monetization without, as some people…
Crowfall studio ArtCraft just raised another $6M from investors to launch the game - Lest you be dispirited by the fact that Crowfall's soft launch isn't going to make 2017 as promised (after also not making 2016), ArtCraft has a post up today outlining…
Roll a Mystic in Black Desert for fun and profit starting today - [AL:BDO]Fancy yourself a new Mystic toon in Black Desert? You can't play her just yet, but you can roll one starting today. The MMORPG famous for rolling out character creators…
Conan Exiles might have to cut some PC features for launch - This week's Conan Exiles newsletter covers some of the changes coming to the PC version (a plant-harvesting sickle!) and hints that the team might be cutting some of the planned…
Dungeons & Dragons Online launches the Mists of Ravenloft - There's a chill in the air through December under normal circumstances, but the chill rushing through Dungeons & Dragons Online is unrelated to the matter of the holidays flying around.…
Blade & Soul’s Dawn of the Lost Continent launches today (and it has a flying pirate ship) - [AL:BaS]Blade & Soul's biggest update ever is live today - or will be this afternoon once the servers are back from maintenance tonight! As we've previously profiled, Dawn of the…
EA patches Star Wars Battlefront 2 as petition asking Lucasfilm to drop EA reaches 120K sigs - How hard is EA trying to salvage its rep hit from the Star Wars Battlefront 2 drama? It's hard to judge right now. This week, the game will patch up…
Star Wars Galaxies’ main emulator got a major infrastructure upgrade and the Village Jedi system - If you've not played on the original Star Wars Galaxies emulator in a season or two, it's probably escaped your notice entirely that its core server, Basilisk, had a serious…
Fortnite settles one of its anti-cheater lawsuits out of court - If you'd forgotten, Fortnite wound up bringing a lawsuit against two people for cheating software being used in the game. One such suit hit a wrinkle when it turned out…
Dragon’s Prophet sequel Savage Hunt is supposed to launch tomorrow - While Dragon's Prophet took a stiff nosedive in North America and was ultimately shuttered by Daybreak in 2015, the dragon taming MMO didn't die off entirely. It has a stronger…
Wild West Online’s early access has been delayed into next year - In a move that will shock nobody who's played the game, watched the game being played, or followed the multiple delays suffered by the game during its testing this fall, 612…
EVE Online’s Arms Race update offers more ships to free players today - [AL:EVE]Before you get too excited, let's note that today's update for EVE Online is not simply handing out ships like space travel-shaped candy. Free players are still going to need…
Black Desert lays out roadmap with new toon, region, class swapping, and weapon buffs - [AL:BDO]Over the weekend during South Korea's FESTA event, Pearl Abyss slipped out the news that Black Desert is due to get another character: Ran. Turns out that when importing her…
Shadow’s Kiss ends Kickstarter with 300% funding and several stretch goals - Expect some vampires to be popping bottles of the red bubbly today. The team behind Shadow's Kiss is celebrating the conclusion a modestly successful Kickstarter run, the funds from which…
Warframe on how studios should ‘learn to fight superficial microtransaction integration’ - [AL:WarF]Warframe has become aggressively popular according to Digital Extremes' own metrics, and our own readers back that up. Part of the reason is the game's business model, which as DE…
Funcom is raising the price of Conan Exiles on console to $49.99 - Funcom has just announced to Conan Exiles players anxiously awaiting the game on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 that they'll be paying more than they originally thought: $49.99, up from…
Wisdom of Nym: Speculating on the next few years of Final Fantasy XIV expansions - [AL:FFXIV]My friends, I can see the future for Final Fantasy XIV. And by "see" I mean that I can guess at it with reasonable reliability. As we move into the…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 147: Daybreak but not that one
The Stream Team: Visiting Q’s Winter Wonderland in Star Trek Online
The Stream Team: Working toward joining Path of Exile’s War for the Atlas
The Stream Team: A soiree with Said in Secret World Legends
The Stream Team: A first look at Elder Scrolls Legends
The Stream Team: Frostfell begins today in EverQuest II
The Stream Team: Looting crates and looking for Loki in SMITE
AND FROM OUR FRIENDS AT BLIZZARD WATCH
Who actually burned down WoW’s Teldrassil?
How would you improve professions in WoW?
Know Your Lore: The Kobolds of Warcraft
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.
