BlizzCon is still weeks away and yet Blizzard is managing to dominate the MMO conversation: Not only did the company announce diversity and inclusion initiatives for the event and a panel schedule that has Diablo fans excited, but Blizz president Mike Morhaime stepped down with J Allen Brack taking the helm. And our community has continued debating whether WoW Classic is worth the cost of the virtual ticket.
Meanwhile, we gave Maplestory 2 a spin in its early access and issued our first impressions of Nexon’s next big thing. Read on to catch up with the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions today as every Sunday in Massively Overpowered’s Week in Review!THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES
Mike Morhaime steps down as Blizzard president; J Allen Brack takes over - Looks like there's a changing of the guard over at Activision Blizzard: The company just announced that World of Warcraft Executive Producer J. Allen Brack is taking over from Mike…
Perfect Ten: Failed MMOs that could have succeeded with more love - Hindsight is 20/20. Unless you're blind in one eye from nostalgia, in which case hindsight is 0/20. In any case, you understand that it's easy to look back upon MMO…
MassivelyOP’s first impressions of MapleStory 2, Nexon’s latest MMORPG - It's fair to say that MapleStory always did appeal to an audience that was into a very specific look and feel. If chibi anime designs, frantic big-number combat, and goofy…
Flameseeker Chronicles: Deep-diving Guild Wars 2’s A Star to Guide Us, part one - Season 4 of Guild Wars 2Â Living World has been a solid addition to the episodic narrative that drives the game's content development in between expansions, and I am in no…
TUG studio Nerd Kingdom owes its Kickstarter backers an explanation – or their money back - We've been following the sad story of TUG, The Untitled Game, for years now, ever since its May 2013 Kickstarter. At the time, studio Nerd Kingdom promised a creativity-driven sandbox…
Happy 17th birthday, Dark Age of Camelot - Has it been 17 years since Dark Age of Camelot launched? Broadsword has counted up the days since 2001, and here we are on the anniversary once again. To celebrate,…
Camelot Unchained details development updates on UI overhaul, tech improvements, and more - We come to the end of another week, which means it's time for another installment of City State Entertainment's Top Tenish for Camelot Unchained. CSE says its new Coherent UI…
The crucial part of Star Citizen’s alpha 3.3, OCS, will make it into the build by CitizenCon after all - If you were put out by the delay of Star Citizen's alpha 3.3's features to the hastily fabricated 3.3.5 patch, well, you can stop feeling put out. During this week's…
Massively Overthinking: The sunsetted MMOs we never played - I've been thinking a lot about MMO sunsets lately, thanks to WildStar, Pirates of the Burning Sea, and even that ridiculous Free Guy movie about an NPC fighting the sunset…
Blizzard is apparently taking measures to foster diversity and inclusion at BlizzCon 2018 - Diversity and inclusion have been hot topics in the gaming industry for some time now, and it's one that Blizzard plans to put front-and-center at BlizzCon 2018. In an article…
Leaderboard: Are you buying a BlizzCon virtual ticket this year, and is WoW Classic the reason? - Oof, some people really, really do not like jokes about BlizzCon, as I found out Sunday when my throwaway headline about paying Blizzard 50 bucks to let us alpha test…
Legends of Aria plans Steam early access launch on December 4, preorders are live - Legends of Aria is headed to Steam early access, Citadel Studios announced this morning. The launch is set for December 4th. Preorders are live now and come with a week…
Tencent is working on locking kids out of Chinese games using facial recognition tech - So add this one to your creepy dystopian nightmare-fuel bin: In the war on supposed gaming addiction, at least one corporation is hoping to use facial recognition to stop kids…
New World alpha leak video highlights the map, action combat, and dizzying UI - As Amazon Game Studios continues dispatching new alpha invites for its upcoming survival sandbox MMORPG New World, it's casting a huge net - and courting the predictable leakers, despite its…
Bless Online launches free-to-play on October 23, new raid and Halloween event today - If you're still watching to see how Bless Online shapes up come its official launch, you'll want to pay attention to today's announcement: Neowiz just revealed on Steam that it's…
World of Warcraft outlines big azerite armor improvements - It's the given truth that just about nobody -- including World of Warcraft's development team -- is happy with the state of Battle for Azeroth's azerite armor right now. As…
CCP Games offers DUST 514 veteran reward accounts in upcoming Project Nova - Those of you who have been following the highs and lows of EVE Online developer CCP Games over the years will remember the story of DUST 514, the MMOFPS that…
Get Black Desert for free… if you can get to level 56 during your trial week - [AL:BDO]Kakao and Pearl Abyss have been touting Black Desert's 10M players number for a while now, but it's popping the bubbly now with a big event that essentially grants the…
BlizzCon 2018: Blizzard reveals key panels for Diablo, WoW Classic - We're just a month away from BlizzCon now, and as it's the biggest last gaming con of the year that we focus on, we're as excited as you that Blizzard…
Guild Wars 2 tweaks class balance, adds buyable stools and resource contracts - Guild Wars 2's promised mini-balance-patch has arrived on schedule, and it... sure is a pile of class tweaks. Even Reddit doesn't know quite what to think of it all; it…
Anthem will have matchmaking for raids but no loot trading - It's hard not to compare Anthem to Destiny 2 just by the nature of what both games are trying to be. More to the point, though, it seems like the…
En Masse issues DMCA takedowns against some TERA third-party programs - It appears that En Masse Entertainment is bringing the hammer down on third-party programs - again - for its action-MMO TERA, according to a recent post by Senior Producer Denommenator…
Tencent is restructuring amidst continued Chinese game industry woes - Tencent is having a terrible, horrible, no good very bad year so far. Sure, its problems began when Monster Hunter World had to get unceremoniously moved backwards in the release…
Ireland signed declaration of concern but won’t regulate lockboxes as gambling - Remember two weeks ago when a bunch of representatives from the Europe and US cosigned a declaration noting concerns over skin-betting and lockboxes at the 2018 Gambling Regulators European Forum?…
Wisdom of Nym: Final Fantasy XIV’s leaks and the seduction of partial information - I'm going to start off with a statement that should be fairly uncontroversial but could be otherwise and refer back to it: At this point none of us in the…
City of Titans is still on track for Issue 0 by the end of the year - The fact that City of Titans is still planning to have "issue zero" playable for backers by the end of the year is indisputably the biggest piece of the latest…
‘Shave, bathe, or don’t – it’s up to you’: Red Dead Redemption 2’s latest gameplay trailer arrives - Rockstar's just pushed live the second of its teasery Red Dead Redemption 2 gameplay videos, this one filled with gunfights, explosions, and a promise of serious choices. MMO players in…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast episode 189: Time traveling to 2004
The Stream Team: Busting butt to get Guild Wars 2’s bunny mount
The Stream Team: Soaking up ARK Aberration’s luminescence
The Stream Team: See the second half of Conan Exiles’ Sepemeru city
The Stream Team: Back in for Boundless building
The Stream Team: Slipping into Secret World Legends’ City of the Sun God
The Stream Team: Atlas Reactor turns two!
The Stream Team: A look at the launch of Lineage II Classic
The Stream Team: After the SWTOR betrayal
The Stream Team: A first look at Boundless
The Stream Team: How now, Brown Cow – it’s a new Trove event!
The Stream Team: Heading into Maplestory 2’s head start
AND FROM OUR FRIENDS AT BLIZZARD WATCH
How do you decide which WoW world quests to do?
What’s next for the Horde in WoW 8.1? Zappy Boi, for starters
We can soon solo-queue for WoW Legion LFR for mounts and toys
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 bits of news we didn’t cover anywhere else.
