MMO Week in Review: Star Trek Online is going free-to-play, again (May 6, 2018)

May 6, 2018 8:00 PM

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There are hardly any proper MMORPGs that haven’t already seen at least one major business model shift over the years, and this week Star Trek Online announced its second: It’s going even more free-to-play, or maybe more buy-to-play, depending on how you look at it, as it’s trading its optional subscription away for an optional flat-fee buy-in.

Meanwhile, we’re looking ahead to Guild Wars 2’s underwater update, watching players quibble over Elder Scrolls Online’s and Star Citizen’s business models, debating the state of modern MMO raiding, genuinely enjoying SWTOR’s latest update, being surprised that WoW’s doing so well, and mourning the impending loss of two PWE MMORPGs.

Read on for the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions.

THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES

Hyperspace Beacon: SWTOR’s Update 5.9 concludes the traitor storyline in classic style - [AL:TOR]May the fourth be with you, Massively OP readers. I hope you are having a wonderful unofficial Star Wars holiday. And if you're thinking about jumping back into Star Wars:…

Star Trek Online is discontinuing monthly subscription purchases - [AL:STO]There's a business model shift taking place for Star Trek Online, although you could argue it's a somewhat lateral shift. The game will no longer be offering monthly subscriptions from…

Destiny 2 wants you back for Warmind, Humble Bundle has the game for a song right now - [AL:D2]"Warmind is the start of a new conversation. It's a step forward in the direction we want to start taking Destiny 2." There's a lot riding on the release of…

Choose My Adventure: In which Ultima Online makes its displeasure known - So... this is an interesting situation for me. I've had a number of games that I've played for Choose My Adventure that I haven't particularly liked; some of them because…

Activision-Blizzard talks battle royale and saving Destiny 2 as stock slowly recovers after Dow Jones snafu - Yesterday we teased ActiBlizz for putting out another boring quarterly financial report about its ever-growing piles of money, but even with World of Warcraft doing well, the announcement turned out…

Massively Overthinking: The state of modern MMORPG raiding - Massively OP reader Sorrior recently sent in a question about raiding, a topic we haven't discussed in a while. "I have noticed raiding tends to lead to more homogenization even…

Activision-Blizzard Q1 2018: WoW is actually outperforming expectations – time for a fourth yacht or no? - Reporting on Activision-Blizzard's endless piles of money is about as much fun as reporting on how fifty-bajillion-zillion people are playing fork knife. No, I said that wrong; it's about as…

Black Desert developer Pearl Abyss has even more rebalancing plans for PvP, debuffs, and crowd control - [AL:BDO]Yesterday's Black Desert patch apparently caught some backlash from the community, particularly in regard to the crowd control changes, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. The Pearl Abyss…

Star Citizen looks ahead to 3.2, unveils the new Hercules Starlifter concept ship for sale next week - CIG's Sandi Gardiner and Eric Kieron Davis are back with another installment of Star Citizen's Around the Verse, bookending a brief check-in with the 3.2 roadmap and a Ship Shape…

Jagex says RuneScape is peaking as it builds a new ‘next-gen MMO’ and plans RuneFest - Jagex CEO Phil Mansell is making the press rounds this week, unloading interesting quotes on GIbiz, including the admission that Jagex felt it had neglected RuneScape when it was focusing on…

The Survivalist: Seven survival games I want to love, but can’t… yet - Well that didn't take long! There are a plethora of survival sandboxes out there for fans to play (as you can see from our multiple guides!), enough that there might…

Conan Exiles outlines its day-one patch plans as players grumble over preorder bonuses - With less than a week to go before launch, the Conan Exiles team is putting out one last newsletter with the plan for the rollout. "At launch we’ll be rolling…

S.O.S. ditches survival mechanics to become a full-on battle royale game - What's that sound? It's the sound of a genre becoming even more saturated, that's what, as SOS is converting into a battle royale game called (drumroll) SOS: Battle Royale. The…

World of Warcraft outlines the advantages and drawbacks for its upcoming War Mode - The changes coming to world PvP in World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth means that it's no longer a gap between servers, but a difference of experience. War Mode is…

Ascent: Infinite Realm teases its world-building as it adjusts from beta feedback - Last year's announcement that Kakao would be bringing the steampunk-flavored Ascent: Infinite Realm to the west was a much-needed shot of encouragement to MMO players who have been desperate for…

Amazon is apparently having influencers playtest New World - MMO influencer, fan, and Massively OP reader-slash-heckler Lethality posted publicly to Twitter this morning that he's playtesting Amazon's New World. https://twitter.com/real_lethality/status/991663064679419904 That's good news for everyone, of course, and not…

Perfect Ten: MMOs with different (camera) perspectives - By the time that World of Warcraft came on the scene in 2004, the MMORPG industry had already gravitated toward standard when it came to the interface -- specifically, the…

Perfect World is sunsetting Swordsman Online and Jade Dynasty as teams move on to ‘bigger and better things’ - Perfect World announced two sunsets yesterday: Four-year-old Swordsman Online and nine-year-old Jade Dynasty will close down in June. Here's the official announcement for Swordsman players posted yesterday evening. "It is…

Red Dead Redemption 2 posts third trailer, sticks to October launch date - Red Dead Redemption 2's new trailer is finally here (after an absurd amount of teasing and handwringing over what could be in it). Spoiler alert: It's exactly what you expect…

Massively OP Interview: Dual Universe demo shows off advances in city building, space travel - When you work in video games, you often get asked what new titles you are looking forward to. While experience has been teaching me to temper my enthusiasm, I do…

Elder Scrolls Online players are salty about cash-shop and lockbox mounts - [AL:ESO]The Elder Scrolls Online has a good reputation for offering a fair deal for accessing the game. But if ZeniMax is losing money on freeloaders and players who are refusing…

Star Wars: The Old Republic has freebies for its fake holiday - [AL:TOR]When aliens discover the cratered ruins of our planet in the distant future and study the records from our civilization, they will undoubtedly come to the conclusion that we, as…

Guild Wars 2’s balance update arrives next week – with ‘underwater combat’ revamp - [AL:GW2]Remember back before Guild Wars 2 launched and its underwater content was touted as the most innovative thing in years? And remember when it launched and underwater content actually was…

State of Decay 2 rejects the battle royale genre for being already mined out - Sick of battle royale? Yeah, it hit saturation levels in a hurry. Undead Labs is over the craze too, which might sound funny given that the original State of Decay…

Rumor: Daybreak may be building PlanetSide 3 and EverQuest 3, sunsetting Just Survive - While Daybreak producers are spelling out their games' future, a now-deleted post over at Reddit by an alleged former employee of Daybreak Games purports to spill the beans on a lot…

Bless Online previews the Guardian and Paladin classes with fresh videos - Neowiz is following up its Bless Online class previews from last week with another round of videos, this time focusing on the different combat styles for each playable archetype. Videos…

Guild Wars blows out 13 candles on its birthday cake – were you there for its first? - Travel back with us to April 2005, when an unknown and unproven studio known as ArenaNet decided to make a play at its own gaming in the then-blooming MMORPG genre.…

Daybreak: Here’s where the EverQuest franchise, DCUO, PlanetSide 2, H1Z1, and Just Survive stand - Not counting Standing Stone's titles, Daybreak currently develops and publishes six of its once massive stable of MMOs: Both EverQuests, DC Universe Online, PlanetSide 2, H1Z1, and Just Survive. As…

EVE Evolved: Getting ready for EVE Online’s Abyssal revolution - [AL:EVE]If you've seen the news recently coming out of EVE Fanfest 2018, you've probably heard of EVE Online's upcoming expansion: Into the Abyss. Pockets of a bizarre and twisted underspace…

THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS

AND FROM OUR FRIENDS AT BLIZZARD WATCH

Know Your Lore: What about Gnomes?

Can we ever really deal with player toxicity?

We don’t understand anything about this adorable Murloc song, but we love it

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.