While the MMO genre gets itself back in gear and puts the holiday haze behind it, we’ve been reporting back from Hi-Rez Expo 2018, where the studio has already announced a new game (sadly not an MMO, however) and a battle royale mode for one of its two MOBAs. Oh yeah, the H1Z1/PUBG battle royale bandwagon has only just begun!
Don’t miss our complete recap of all of our annual awards and other end-of-the-year articles and roundups! Then read on for the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions.
THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES
Massively OP’s 2017 awards debrief and annual recap - As we did in 2014, 2015, and 2016, today I'm going to recap our annual awards and other meta articles from the end of 2017. We gave out 19 formal awards…
Hyperspace Beacon: Three things SWTOR could add in 2018 to turn itself around - [AL:TOR]Star Wars: The Old Republic did not have a banner year in 2017. It was the first year since the launch year that did not include an expansion. And the…
How video game lockboxes use psychology to manipulate you - We here at Massively OP can't get rid of lockboxes, but by gum, we're not going to roll over and give up on fighting them. At the very least, we…
WoW Factor: The fate of the class orders post-Legion, part 2 - Back before the winter break, I took a look at how the various class orders are going to handle the increased conflict between the Horde and the Alliance. The short…
Richard Garriott on how players ‘destroyed’ Ultima Online’s ecology - With a couple of months to go before its official launch, Shroud of the Avatar has more than a few challenges to overcome to deliver a solid, full-fledged game that…
The Game Archaeologist: Neocron - It's the distant future. The high-tech battle armor you wear sharply contrasts with the ruins of civilization that you traverse. You spot an enemy and raise your pulse rifle, firing…
World of Warcraft’s allied races are an account-wide unlock — and here’s how you can get them - With Battle for Azeroth a ways down the road for antsy World of Warcraft fans, a lot of attention from the community has settled on one of the expansion's key…
Life is Feudal MMO starts early access on January 11 - Have plans for next week? Life is Feudal MMOÂ would kindly request that you make alterations to your schedule to accommodate the launch of its early access program on January 11th.…
League of Legends unbans ‘reformed’ toxic player called a ‘humunculus’ by fired employee - Among last year's toxicity-in-gaming stories was the one that taught the internet an important lesson: how to spell homunculus. No, that wasn't it. It was "don't be a game dev…
PWE is sunsetting both Battle of the Immortals and War of the Immortals next week - Add two more to the sunset list: Perfect World announced last month that it will sunset the international versions of six-year-old War of the Immortals and Battle of the Immortals…
Cult TV series Black Mirror examines online toxicity - Toxic behavior and attitudes is one of the more shameful elements of online gaming that drag down the experience. As developers struggle to address this issue, the cult BBC series…
Monster Hunter World schedules another PS4 beta, talks post-launch plans - Capcom is keeping those Monster Hunter World deets coming! The studio says it's planning on a third beta round for North American PlayStation 4 players ahead of its official release.…
Massively Overthinking: Our MMO hopes and wishes for 2018 - One of the frustrating bits about our end-of-the-year content rollouts is that sometimes predictions and story roundups can come across as negative. It’s way too easy to assume that if someone is…
DC Universe Online brings back its anniversary event with a Krypto base pet - [AL:DCUO]As one year passes into the next, DC Universe Online gets to celebrate another anniversary, and this time around it's bringing in a beloved pet to gallop around your base.…
Blade & Soul celebrates its second anniversary with a new costume - [AL:BaS]Congratulations are in order for Blade & Soul as it celebrates its second year of operation, and as is most often the case with these celebrations, most of the presents…
Superhero indie MMOs City of Titans, Valiance Online, and Ship of Heroes say they’re not in a race - Whenever we write about the current crop of City of Heroes-inspired indie superhero MMORPGs, some of our commenters nearly always ponder whether it would be better for everyone if the…
A look back at the MMO industry’s law dramas of 2017 - In all our many roundups at the turn of the year, we've never done one on the legal dramas that have affected the MMO genre. That changes today! Of note,…
Choose My Adventure Year in Review: DC Universe Online, Shroud of the Avatar, Guild Wars 2, and Secret World Legends - As our review of the past year of Choose My Adventure rolls onward (a bit longer than originally planned), we enter what I think of as the trifecta of disappointment.…
Hi-Rez Expo 2018: Hi-Rez announces 1v1 mobile game Bot Smashers - Hi-Rez devs surprised players with the announcement of a brand-new game during the Hi-Rez Expo 2018 keynote address, and no, it's not a MOBA, an MMO, or even a larger-scale…
Star Citizen was the 2017 crowdfunding champ - With a relatively flat year in terms of Kickstarter's video games fundraising, 2017 ended up handing the crown of crowdfunding back to Star Citizen. The sci-fi project raised $34.91 million…
Hi-Rez Expo 2018: Paladins introduces battle royale mode, new champion Moji, and battle cat mounts - Big brother SMITEÂ isn't getting all the attention at this year's Hi-Rez Expo 2018 -Â Paladins is definitely seeing some love too. The team-based shooter got quite the reveal of its own…
Take a peek at Elder Scrolls Online’s Dragon Bones DLC and outfit customization system, coming in February - [AL:ESO]Just before Christmas, ZeniMax teased a ton of new content coming for The Elder Scrolls Online in 2018, including three DLC and a full chapter. The first DLC, dubbed Dragon…
Dataminer suggests massive Destiny 2 playerbase slump - If player dataminers are right, Destiny 2 is in trouble, and I'm not talking about the ongoing Eververse rioting. Destiny 2 player and Redditor stevetheimpact collected data from roughly a…
Hi-Rez Expo 2018: SMITE Season 5 heralds art update, gameplay overhaul, and new god Cerberus - [AL:Smite]Hi-Rez Expo 2018 is kicking off this morning with a big announcement for SMITE. More than just introducing a new god (Cerberus, the three-headed guardian of the underworld) and revealing…
RIFT players build remembrance garden for well-loved teen - [AL:Rift]Just before Christmas, 17-year-old Nikita Hedingham was biking to a volunteer position when she was struck by a semi and killed. Her death has had a great impact on the…
FCC extends accessibility requirement waiver for online games once again - Last year, my husband deployed the requisite accessibility tools to the college science lab he runs to accommodate a bright student who happened to be blind, which opened a window…
Leaderboard: What’s the best classic MMORPG still running in 2017? - Those of you who've been following Massively OP for a while know that many our writers have a fondness for old MMORPGs - that's how we got into the hobby…
Warframe shares how its business model keeps players happy and giving - [AL:WarF]One of the reasons we and our readers admire Warframe is that this title hasn't descended into the questionable, aggressive, and despised business tactics that are being used in many…
Perfect Ten: The best MMO updates and expansions of 2017 - Last year was positively stuffed with updates, expansions, and cool stuff. A lot of years I struggle to remember which major updates happened in the past year, due partly to…
Black Desert’s first patch of 2018 awakens the Mystic and adds campsite feature - [AL:BDO]The Mystic class that just flew westward at the tail end of last year is already busying herself with awakening, live in Black Desert as of this morning's patch. But…
LawBreakers is the weak link in Nexon’s Q3 2017 financial results - Here's the good news for Nexon's Q3 2017 investor call: The company had a good set of third-quarter results overall, and it has a strong lineup of titles in the…
ESA pushes back against World Health Organization’s gaming disorder classification - In case you missed it over the holiday break, but the World Health Organization announced it would be adding "gamer disorder" and "hazardous gaming" to the latest edition of its International…
Exclusive: Ship of Heroes’ Casey McGeever on the superhero MMORPG genre - Ship of Heroes is super-jumping right into 2018 with two documents of note. The first is a retrospective of what the Heroic Games team learned from the community in the…
Chaos Theory: 2017 was a big year for the Secret World IP - [AL:SWL]Well, 2017 was interesting. It's not often that your favorite game starts off as one game at the beginning of the year and then ends as another game -- all…
Working As Intended: The MMOs we lost in 2017 - It's true that we lost a lot of MMOs in 2016 -- bigger and more important ones than in 2014 and 2015. 2017, however, has been a different sort of beast.…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 151: New year staff roundtable
The Stream Team: Winter holidays in Neverwinter
The Stream Team: A final Frostfell ice race in EverQuest II
The Stream Team: Going after the Grinchta in Villagers and Heroes
The Stream Team: A second stint in Secret World Legends’ Dreaming Prison
AND FROM OUR FRIENDS AT BLIZZARD WATCH
Remembering WoW Classic: The Warrior class in Vanilla
Would you like to see an Overwatch movie?
Diablo 3 hotfixes Wirt’s Leg, players can once again acquire a bovine buddy
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.
