Is Star Wars The Old Republic in trouble? BioWare rumors say it might have been, but longtime watchers point to ongoing content updates – not to mention the developer livestream promising a freshened roadmap next week – that suggest just the opposite.
Meanwhile, this week saw the rollouts of two not-quite-MMOs that a lot of MMO players have their eye on: Monster Hunter World, which we’ve covered with impressions and a guide, and Sea of Thieves, whose closed beta has gotten off to a rocky start. Darkfall New Dawn officially launched too!
Read on for the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions.
THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES
Monster Hunter World hands-on: Our first impressions of the PS4 launch - Hey fellow hunter! Did you also enjoy the Monster Hunter World weekend betas as I did? Wondering if the full version is the same? Well here's the short answer: Nope! Article finished,…
Sea of Thieves’ closed beta is live but in choppy waters - Sea of Thieves' closed beta for PC and Xbox One kicked off earlier today, and it's not going that well. Or rather, it's going so incredibly well with so many…
Hyperspace Beacon: No, Star Wars The Old Republic isn’t on the verge of sunset - [AL:TOR]I recently read a wild argument based on unsubstantiated rumor that Star War: The Old Republic is nearing its end of life, that BioWare is tired of it and is…
Sea of Thieves extends closed beta through January 31 - As we've been documenting, Sea of Thieves' closed beta test has proved to be both incredibly popular and incredibly unreliable since starting earlier this week. The biggest issue that's kept…
BioWare shifts resources to Anthem and debates SWTOR’s future - [AL:TOR]Talk about putting all of your eggs into one basket. While BioWare is nominally working on both the next Dragon Age title and Star Wars: The Old Republic, Kotaku reports…
Perfect Ten: Major MMO expansions and updates to expect in 2018 - Now that we're almost 1/12th of the way through 2018, it's probably about time to stop anticipating the year and start experiencing it. We have already looked at MMOs coming…
Star Wars The Old Republic devs tease February roadmap, call 2018 the year of returning companions - [AL:TOR]Ever since the Kotaku article quoting an anon BioWare dev saying that Star Wars The Old Republic's future is "up in the air" - we covered that here - we've…
Hardcore sandbox Darkfall New Dawn launches today – here’s the trailer! - Darkfall New Dawn formally launches today as one of two officially licensed spinoffs of Aventurine's classic hardcore sandbox, which went belly-up a few years ago. As we've previously noted, the game has multiple…
World of Warcraft Battle for Azeroth collectors editions, game datamining - When can we start playing allied races in World of Warcraft? Probably as soon as we can pre-purchase Battle for Azeroth, based on current expectation. And when will that be?…
Elite Dangerous’ Beyond – Chapter One’s beta begins today - When I bought my husband Elite Dangerous a few weeks ago, he asked me what it included, and I gave him a blank look - what comes in what Elite…
EVE Online’s biggest battle ever is about to happen, but both sides may be afraid to fight - [AL:EVE]If there's one constant in the political sandbox of EVE Online, it's that everyone is secretly plotting revenge on someone. Alliances can hold grudges for years, and one of those…
RIFT Prime won’t let you carry your characters over to regular servers - [AL:Rift]Trion Worlds' announcement of a RIFT Prime server for this spring may have raised more questions than it answered. While the studio is starting to dole out more specifics, it's…
WoW Factor: The debate over World of Warcraft’s refer-a-friend nerf - Ah, another day and another thing to enrage people in World of Warcraft. Last time, it was that the Allied Race unlocks might (will) require you to actually play the…
World of Warcraft lays out its class adjustment paradigm for Battle for Azeroth - When Legion was on the way, World of Warcraft had a whole series of explanations about the broad and varied changes coming to every single class and spec. Some of…
Wall Street firm sees Destiny 2 ‘struggling with player engagement’ - Destiny 2 is definitely not riding high in its first year of live operation. Warning signs started to appear late last year, as datamining pointed to a large player slump.…
EVE Evolved: The Citadel conundrum - [AL:EVE]The hot topic on everyone's lips in EVE Online right now is Citadel proliferation: The galaxy is rapidly filling up with an uncountable number of citadels and other Upwell structures…
Another rumored New World trailer surfaces with hints about the game’s premise - [AL:Amaz]Amazon's New World is a game that's captured quite a bit of rumor and speculation lately, and here's a fresh video to throw more wood on the rumor pile! It's…
Epic shutters Paragon over playerbase size woes, declaring it ‘unsustainable’ - When Epic Games admitted last week that Paragon's playerbase just couldn't seem to push past its core, many fans all but expected this announcement, and now it's come. "It’s with…
The Game Archaeologist: Fallen Age - Imagine that one day you wake up, stumble to your computer, and check in on the morning news. Among the various tidbits is a rather surprising notice of a brand-new…
Massively Overthinking: Considering pay-to-win MMO peripherals - MOP reader and commenter Sally Bowls recently sent along a link to an insanely awesome 34" monitor that costs more than a lot of PC rigs in their entirety. "UltraWide For…
Funcom announces new forums coming for all of its titles — including Secret World Legends - Sometimes you really want to stick around to the very end of developer livestreams for any surprise announcements. In Friday's dev stream, Funcom shocked and probably pleased many fans with…
Washington state senator proposes lockbox gambling investigation in new bill - Hawaiian politicians are getting some company on the lockbox front from a compatriot in Washington state. State Senator Kevin Ranker has introduced legislation there that forces the gaming industry and…
The Survivalist: The downside of hosting custom servers for survival games (and why we don’t do it) - After the latest guide introduced even more possible games to sink our survival teeth into, it is understandable that the question cropped up again asking whether Massively OP would be…
Choose My Adventure: Brain bug mischief in Project Gorgon - As soon as I knew I was going after something called "brain bugs" in Project Gorgon, my mind immediately jumped to images of the infamous intellect devourer from Dungeons &…
Star Citizen: The alpha 3.0 feature trailer and Squadron 42’s - On this week's Around the Verse, the Star Citizen devs are dipping into Squadron 42 specifically to explain the design behind the Coil, a massive electrical space storm left in…
Leaderboard: Are you playing on Age of Conan’s new ‘saga’ server? - Age of Conan's Saga of Zath server officially launched yesterday, drawing fresh attention back to the game that Funcom maintenance-moded by proxy last year but apparently just isn't done with.…
EVE Online’s ‘million dollar battle’ ends up a $3300 bust - [AL:EVE]It was touted as the "Million-Dollar Battle" -- a million dollars' worth of EVE Online ships heading to an epic showdown in 9-4RP2. Pandemic Legion was defending its Keepstar in the…
Trademarks, copyrights, and patents: What they mean for you and for video games - Has the pace of news moved so quickly that we've already forgotten about Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene's statement that video games lack any IP copyright protection? Because that was really ridiculous.…
Wisdom of Nym: Reviewing Final Fantasy XIV’s new housing rules - [AL:FFXIV]I've been leery for a long while now of Final Fantasy XIV's "you get your details just before patch day" stance vis-a-vis the housing situation. Thankfully, that isn't quite what…
Age of Conan’s Saga of Zath fresh start progression server launches tomorrow as sub prices drop permanently - Back in December, Funcom announced that it had plans for the effectively maintenance-moded Age of Conan, and those plans included Saga of Zath, a fresh-start progression server. And now, it's almost…
Blizzard Korea helps Seoul cyber crime police arrest 13 Overwatch hackers and cheaters - The MOP comment crew was understandably creeped out by last week's news that Tencent was going after PlayerUnknown's Battleground cheaters by working with the Chinese police, leading to the arrest…
World of Warcraft Refer-a-Friend experience boost gutted to match Heirloom leveling speed - So, were all of the experience boosts you had in World of Warcraft there to get your character to max level as quickly as possible, or were they there to…
Leaderboard: Will you be playing RIFT’s new server? - Last week, Trion Worlds announced a bold move for its MMORPG RIFT: Debuting this spring will be a brand-new server for the game with a business model that differs from…
The greenhorn hunter’s primer: Getting started in Monster Hunter World - As the end of January draws ever closer, so too does the official console release of Monster Hunter: World, the latest entry into Capcom’s venerable series of action-RPGs that began…
Fragmented is ‘more or less in maintenance mode’ due to lack of revenue - Over the weekend, we added a new entry to our "whatever happened to X" series with a quick note about Fragmented, the survival sandbox that Above & Beyond put together…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 154: A Prime experiment
The Stream Team: Sneaking into Subnautica
The Stream Team: A first look at Aftercharge
The Stream Team: Dungeon diving in Secret World Legends
The Stream Team: Plowing through Path of Exile’s Act V
The Stream Team: ARK makes a good testing ground
The Stream Team: Peek into Darkfall New Dawn during free trial
AND FROM OUR FRIENDS AT BLIZZARD WATCH
Satiate your collection impulse with the ALL THE THINGS WoW addon
Legion gets the Chris Metzen seal of approval
WoW’s Allied Race unlocks are “subject to change”
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.
