World of Warcraft dropped War of Thorns this week, kicking off the commercials and prelude events for its Battle For Azeroth launch later this summer, and it hasn’t been without criticism, as players have pointed out significant plot flaws, community problems, and leveling slowdowns.
Meanwhile, No Man’s Sky launched NEXT to wide acclaim and refunded GOG players, Guild Wars 2 launched a throwback festival, Star Trek Online plotted a Discovery tie-in, Fractured successfully funded on Kickstarter, Camelot Unchained got a new beta date, and we took an extensive look at upcoming survival MMO Rend in three epic hands-on pieces.
Read on for the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions.
THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES
WoW Factor: Dissecting the dumb plan in World of Warcraft’s War of Thorns - There's a lot to be upset about with the World of Warcraft Battle for Azeroth prepatch. There's stuff that just doesn't feel good any more (and yes, go ahead and make…
Camelot Unchained’s beta is now set to launch on July 31st - City State Entertainment's Mark Jacobs has just announced on today's studio Twitch stream that RvR MMORPGÂ Camelot Unchained's beta one will begin next week on July 31st. The launch is contingent…
The Game Archaeologist: Digging up the history of City of Heroes - For the longest time in the early 2000s, MMORPGs scared me off. They looked too obtuse, too grindy, too ugly, and too unapproachable for my tastes. It took a special…
Rummaging through Rend: Alpha impressions of Frostkeep’s blissfully social survival MMO - Early access for Rend is just around the corner, which means hype for the game is picking up. Frostkeep recently invited us to check out its studio and dive back into the…
GOG offers No Man’s Sky refunds after players discover that multiplayer won’t come for months yet - As you may have seen, No Man's Sky is back in the spotlight thanks to this week's massive NEXT multiplayer update. However, not all players are rejoicing. Specifically, those who…
Star Trek Online warps into Discovery’s universe as Stephen Ricossa steps down as exec producer - [AL:STO]While Star Trek Discovery has proven to be a divisive entry into the long-running franchise, with some fans hating its take on the Trek universe and some loving the new…
Space survival game ROKH has suspended development - Following ROKH's early access debut in May 2017, the space survival game faced significant obstacles. It got bogged down in a legal dispute last fall and vied for the attention of…
Riot’s Marc Merrill was just joking about a League of Legends MMO - It's always good to know that this genre that we love and enjoy can be the butt of the games industry's jokes. Last week, Riot Games co-founder Marc Merrill asked…
Lord of the Rings Online brings Christmas to July - [AL:LOTRO]Just because it's the middle of the summer doesn't mean that Middle-earth can't enjoy some frosty fun! Lord of the Rings Online is bringing back its Yule Festival next week…
The Survivalist: Hands-on with survival MMO Rend’s closed alpha - It's been nearly a year since I met with Frostkeep Studios at PAX West and got an early first-hand look at Rend, the three-faction fantasy survival sandbox with a timer.…
Star Citizen’s Around the Verse covers ground races, 3.3 ships, and security checkpoints - Hey guys, log into Star Citizen, I wanna do a Death Race! Yeah, maybe that isn't the best nickname for the Scramble Race, which is actually literally a 16-person race,…
Black Desert Online gets ready to show off its remastered graphics - [AL:BDO]Is it possible for Black Desert to look any more gorgeous than it already does? Kakao apparently thinks so, because the developer has been hard at work on a massive…
CCP has obliquely confirmed it’s working on a brand-new ‘action MMO’ - Remember back in December, when the gaming world noticed that CCP's hiring page sought a lead designer to run "a new and highly ambitious MMORPG" under its banner? It seemed…
World of Warcraft admits that it has a serious leveling problem - World of Warcraft's expansion pre-patch kind of broke a lot of stuff that the devs are frantically rushing around trying to fix. One of the worst issues right now is…
Riders of Icarus’s Dawn of the Magician update is live with a new class and events - Guess what's up from maintenance with a hefty update today? It's Nexon's Riders of Icarus, and the patch is called Dawn of the Magician, chiefly because - drumroll - you're…
Defiance 2050 has big plans for new classes, advancement, and endgame as it hits 1M players - Defiance 2050 isn't just launching and going away, oh no: Trion Worlds has a new producer letter up today detailing exactly how it's planning to buff the new baby over…
Previewing Rend: Frostkeep studio visit, early access, PvP, factions, and more - If something goes wrong with Frostkeep's early access launch of Rend, blame me. While I was at the office, I distracted Co-Founders Jeremy Wood and Mat Milizia, caused an update to…
World of Warcraft’s Communities feature is already running into some serious issues with trolling and harassment - The pre-patch for World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth has had some notable problems, and it looks like they extend all the way down to the relatively innocuous Communities feature.…
MMORPG sandbox Fractured’s Kickstarter has just fully funded at over $130,000 - Phew! A few weeks ago, I was not confident that Fractured's Kickstarter was going to make it, but it cleared its goal with just a few days to go, and…
Perfect Ten: The best expansions for specific MMOs - Looking over the past two decades or so, MMORPGs have grown by leaps and bounds with regular releases, events, and (of course) expansion packs. Hundreds of expansions have now flooded…
No Man’s Sky’s concurrency is waaaaaaay up since the launch of NEXT - Can't take the sky from No Man's Sky. It's built right into the name, see. You can take the game from Green Man Gaming for a cool $25, however, and…
New World of Warcraft commercials have fun with Battle for Azeroth’s factional conflict - With Battle for Azeroth only a few weeks away, Blizzard is pulling out all the stops to promote the latest World of Warcraft expansion. Yesterday, the studio released a four-pack…
‘Full multiplayer experience’ flies into No Man’s Sky today - There's no reason to explore the galaxy solo, thanks to today's massive No Man's Sky NEXT update. The "full multiplayer experience" has finally arrived in the game, two years after…
The War of Thorns starts today in World of Warcraft - All right, champions, time to run down our list for what we need to get done before World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth is live. Let's see... we need a…
Guild Wars 2’s Festival of the Four Winds has launched after four years asleep - [AL:GW2]Guild Wars 2 is going old school today with the return of the Festival of the Four Winds, a festival players haven't seen in over four years - heck, some…
Former BioWare lead James Ohlen regrets not pushing SWTOR towards ‘Knights of the Old Republic Online’ - [AL:TOR]Earlier this month, BioWare's James Ohlen announced that he was retiring from the company where he'd worked for more than two decades, part of that as the creative director and…
Fallout 76’s closed beta is scheduled for October - Zip up those Vault Tec suits, kiddos, because you're going out into Fallout 76's West Virginia wasteland as soon as this October. That is, of course, if you are able…
EVE Evolved: Four changes to improve EVE Online for new players - [AL:EVE]A few months ago, I created a new character and ran through the new player experience for an article on how to get new players to stick with EVE Online.…
Massively Overthinking: Random acts of MMORPG kindness - Last week, down in the comments of an innocuous post about gamers being nice in Fortnite, a couple of MOP commenters requested a column where MMO gamers could essentially submit…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 179: MMO parenting fails
Battle Bards Episode 125: Archlord
The Stream Team: Life and death and pets in Rend
The Stream Team: Adding an AdventureQuest 3D adventure
The Stream Team: Investigating Immersion in Secret World Legends
The Stream Team: Poking around Rend’s closed beta with devs
The Stream Team: Frivolity in Guild Wars 2’s Festival of the Four Winds
The Stream Team: SWTOR’s KOTET plot twist
The Stream Team: DCUO’s The Death of Superman Finale
The Stream Team: Going after Warframe’s Archwing
The Stream Team: Popping Trove’s piñata warriors
AND FROM OUR FRIENDS AT BLIZZARD WATCH
WoW Archivist: The first pre-expansion events
Warbringers: Jaina animated short delivers an emotional gut-punch in song
New Diablo bestiary Book of Adria due out in October from Blizzard
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.
