If you’ve ever fancied a sandboxish MMORPG where you can exercise your pig form, flower arrangement, iocaine resistance, interpretive dance, phrenology, and dying skills, then Project Gorgon was made for you – and as luck would have it, it rolled into early access on Steam this week.
Meanwhile, Secret World Legends announced its South Africa-themed content patch, we dug into new research on aggression and games, multiple sci-fi games honored Stephen Hawking, we got the scoop on ArcheAge 4.5, and classic EverQuest turned 19 years old.
Read on for the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions.
THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES
Project Gorgon has officially launched on Steam early access with a big sale - The time is here for brave Gorgoneers to suit up, face curses, and brave the lands of beta testing. Project Gorgon has officially gone into Steam early access as of…
Secret World Legends is going to South Africa on April 4 - [AL:SWL]No, it turns out that the Congo was never the intent of Funcom after all for Secret World Legends' next jaunt, but South Africa instead. The studio announced today that…
Interview: ArcheAge 4.5 Legends Return launches April 5th with dragon taming and fresh start servers - [AL:Arche]If I were to tell you that ArcheAge's next big update is launching next month, you'd tell me that it's too soon. And we'd both be right! Although 4.0 was…
For science: New long-term study shows video games don’t make adults violent - Before we start, yes, I'm sure many of our readers are feeling a big wave of "duh" at the statement in the headline, but remember that testable results carry more…
Exclusive: Explore Bless Online’s Hieron races, including elves and werewolves - Most western MMORPG gamers know about Bless Online's mechanics and visuals thanks to years of watching the game developed from afar. What hasn't crossed the ocean and language barrier as…
EVE Online, Star Trek Online, and Elite Dangerous players memorialize physicist Stephen Hawking - Multiple MMORPG communities are celebrating the life of internationally renowned cosmologist Stephen Hawking, who passed away earlier this week. In EVE Online, players came together yesterday to "spend a little…
Massively Overthinking: The war on MMO chat toxicity - This week, The Ancient Gaming Noob posted up an image of RIFT Prime, where Trion asks people to... play nice. "Just a neighborly reminder that 1-29 chat is for RIFT…
Hyperspace Beacon: Why SWTOR fans should be excited about Fogbank - [AL:TOR]This week, I'm going to depart a little from the usual insights into the world around Star Wars: The Old Republic and talk about another studio that isn't owned by…
EverQuesting: An EverQuest 19th anniversary retrospective and party planner - There are MMOs that have been around a while, and then there is EverQuest. It's so old school it is old enough to be out of school! Yup, EQ turned…
The Game Archaeologist: World of Warcraft’s Corrupted Blood pandemic - It began with an exploitable glitch. It exploded into an uncontained nightmare of death. It established a meme as strong as Leeroy Jenkins. It even saved lives. One of the…
EA is fixing Star Wars Battlefront II’s monetization mess (again): It won’t be selling lockboxes - Don't call it a victory - nobody wins forever in the Star Wars universe - but there's still reason to cheer in Star Wars Battlefront II today. EA has announced…
Choose My Adventure: Single-track shooting in Warframe - [AL:WarF]After my second week in, I have to admit that I'm kind of bothered by Warframe. Or, more accurately, the fact that I like the game's overall mechanics doesn't fix…
Star Citizen on some of the big ships of alpha 3.1 and the St Patrick’s Day event - I hope you like starships because in this week's episode of Star Citizen's Around the Verse, you're getting two whole segments on just that. Ship Shape #1 focuses on the…
RIFT starts Carnival celebration, previews Tenebrean Prison warfront - [AL:Rift]RIFT's anniversary event, Carnival, is now raging across the game's live servers -- but not on the new Prime progression server. While the latter does have a vendor that sells…
Star Trek Online will make a 3-D model of your ship for hundreds of dollars - [AL:STO]For Star Trek Online captains who have fallen deeply in love with their starship of choice, now they can take that ship out of the game and into their real…
The Crew 2 is rescheduled for a June 29 launch - The Crew 2 isn't as delayed as you might've thought: Ubisoft just announced that it's launching on June 29th, and it's looking like a simultaneous PC, PS4, and Xbox release.…
Eternal Crusade promises a new update coming this month - The last time we heard from the team behind Eternal Crusade, there were some vague plans of stuff to be done about a battle royale mode and ambiguities with the…
WoW Factor: The Kul Tiran Druid ‘problem’ in World of Warcraft - One of the important things to note about World of Warcraft lore is that it's never been static. It will retcon itself six ways from Sunday letting you know that…
EverQuest celebrates 19 years with a two-month anniversary event and a new progression server - When 19 years old you turn, reason for throwing a lavish party for yourself you will have. As of tomorrow, EverQuest will turn 19 years old, having launched on that…
Here’s everything you need to know about Sea of Thieves ahead of launch - With only a few short days until Sea of Thieves officially launches on Xbox One and PC this March 20th, it's safe to assume that more than a few pirates…
Lord of the Rings Online team works on future ‘far-flung adventures’ - [AL:LOTRO]Having some issues with Lord of the Rings Online Update 22? A small patch released on Wednesday may have cleared it up. The small patch contains a couple of dozen…
Perfect Ten: MMO missteps that didn’t have to happen - Around the time I started working at Massively-that-was, there was an article that I quite liked talking about how four high-profile MMO failures were not necessary. It was a product…
Pantheon on mismatched newbie armor and open-world dungeons - This month's Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen newsletter is stuffed with images, thanks to features on gear creation and dungeons. Over on the armor side, Pantheon will cleave to the…
Google and Ubisoft are working on a multiplayer open source server - The next time you play an online game, you might have Google to thank for handling the heavy lifting. The tech giant announced that it is working on an open-source…
Warframe celebrates five years and 38 million players - [AL:WarF]Warframe continues to defy expectations for online gaming playerbase sizes. A year ago, it boasted 30M registered players. As of today, it's up to 38M. Not too shabby, but then, it…
SoulWorker Online begins selling subs, responds to outcry over energy system P2W - SoulWorker is technically in open beta on paper; it isn't supposed to truly launch until later this quarter. It hit Steam at the end of February. It announced it was…
Here’s how Netmarble’s fighting crunch after multiple developer deaths - Last year, Netmarble came under fire from South Korean authorities following the death of a game developer under its banner. Korea Workers' Compensation and Welfare Service noted at the time…
Another writer allegedly leaves BioWare – what on earth is going on with Anthem? - Surfacing at the tail end of last week was the news that multiple former BioWare devs who'd all contributed heavily to Star Wars The Old Republic at one point or…
Blizzard’s Overwatch League addresses toxicity with fines and suspensions, while the Dallas Fuel drops a toxic player - Last week, we covered an ESPN piece in which the author called out Blizzard for sitting on its hands after an Overwatch League player signed to the Dallas Fuel, Timo…
Guild Wars 1 programmer answers fan questions, affirms the game’s continued existence - Do you have any burning questions about Guild Wars? No, not Guild Wars 2 -- the original, the one that has long fallen out of the public eye? ArenaNet Studio…
Albion Online launches Lancelot with fishing and guild updates, grants everyone a week of sub play - Albion Online's Lancelot update, its third major release since launch, is officially live this morning. The star of the update, as we've previously covered, is the new fishing system. "Cast a…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 161: Project power
Battle Bards Episode 117: Destiny
The Stream Team: Partying with a 19-year-old EverQuest
The Stream Team: Xsyon made it 7 years!
The Stream Team: Excited for Project Gorgon’s Steam launch
The Stream Team: Celebrating Shroud of the Avatar’s upcoming launch party
The Stream Team: Cave diving for ARK glowtails
AND FROM OUR FRIENDS AT BLIZZARD WATCH
Kul Tiran Humans and Mag’har Orcs are coming in WoW’s Battle for Azeroth
Amazing new Vulpera customization options make me think Blizzard is trying to kill me
Know Your (WoW) Lore: Ebon blades against the Legion
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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