BlizzCon dominated the weekend, and Diablo dominated BlizzCon, though not exactly for the reasons we might have hoped for: Blizzard ham-handedly announced Diablo Immortal, a mobile-only MMOARPG, to a crowd of PC Diablo superfans. It, uh, didn’t go over so well.
World of Warcraft fans are probably happy right about now, however; Blizzard set WoW Classic for summer 2019 and outlined Rise of Azshara.
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!BLIZZCON 2018
BlizzCon 2018: World of Warcraft Classic is releasing next summer - We all knew that World of Warcraft Classic -- the legacy server that will take players back to the vanilla version of the MMO -- would be playable at BlizzCon…
BlizzCon 2018: Diablo fans go into full-fledged meltdown mode over Immortal - It's hard to imagine a more perfect storm of nerdrage than the one that Blizzard concocted at BlizzCon this Friday. Sorely neglected Diablo fans who looked forward to a major,…
BlizzCon 2018: Diablo Immortal lore, zone, class, and Q&A recap - Blizzard's Wyatt Cheng and Matthew Burger took the stage for the Diablo Immortal Q&A panel at BlizzCon tonight, clearly aware of the drama swirling around the internet in regard to…
BlizzCon 2018: Blizzard defends Diablo Immortal, hints at more Diablo projects on the way - "I'd like to thank April Fools Guy for setting off what's sure to be two solid weeks of hand-wringing over the time/place etiquette of criticism in video games." This was…
BlizzCon 2018: World of Warcraft Q&A liveblog - Here's the problem with World of Warcraft Q&A sessions every time we have BlizzCon, which is now just one bad idea away from happening twice per year regardless of how…
BlizzCon 2018: World of Warcraft Classic liveblog - So. World of Warcraft Classic. Did you think you wanted it, but it turns out you don't? Did you think you want it and are finding out now that you…
BlizzCon 2018: World of Warcraft details Tides of Vengeance and Rise of Azshara - Blizzard just wrapped up its World of Warcraft What's Next panel, and believe it or not, it wasn't a total dud. While we already knew quite a bit of what…
BlizzCon 2018: World of Warcraft – What’s Next liveblog - So what is next for World of Warcraft? Based on the current reception of the game's expansion, my personal prediction is another few months of trying to salvage things, a…
BlizzCon 2018: World of Warcraft reveals the classes for Kul Tirans and Zandalari Trolls - Yes, it looks like this got turned on a little earlier than World of Warcraft had expected. We'll probably hear more about this in a few moments in the next…
BlizzCon 2018: Overwatch’s new anti-hero Ashe is super into doing crimes and voiced by Jennifer Hale - I happen to live with a relatively serious Overwatch player, and let me tell you, he was not remotely concerned about the fact that Blizzard flat out said it wasn't…
BlizzCon 2018: Warcraft III: Reforged is a remaster and update of the classic game due in 2019 - Fighting Infernals, chopping lumber with Ghouls, managing your Wisps and uprooting Ancients... all familiar to any veterans of Warcraft III. But this year's BlizzCon announced that you'll be able to…
BlizzCon 2018: Diablo Immortal is a ‘mobile massively multiplayer online action–role-playing game’ - Hey, Diablo III. Happy Switch launch day. Happy Diablo Immortal day! (So much for that animated series rumor?) As announced during the BlizzCon opening ceremony, the Diablo franchise is getting a…
BlizzCon 2018: Hearthstone trolls players with Rastakhan’s Rumble expansion - Hope you don't mind some serious Trolling because Blizzard is tusking us with a new Hearthstone expansion that's all about the savage jungle race. Rastakhan’s Rumble is heading our way in…
BlizzCon 2018: Opening ceremonies liveblog - It's that time again, dear readers, a time of listening to staff members from Blizzard talk about the company on stage at the newest annual BlizzCon! And because everyone seems…
BlizzCon 2018: Get yourself ready with BlizzCon Bingo - Yes, it's time for another BlizzCon, and as always that means a lot of panels, a lot of nonsense, and... well, let's face it, a lot of repetition. Sure, every…
THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES
LOTRO Legendarium: Six ways to prep for legendary servers - With progression servers on the way for... sometime... this month, many players (myself included) are planning out their brand-new adventures through Middle-earth. There's certainly a lot of things to consider,…
WoW Factor: When long-term progress in World of Warcraft isn’t - "When even the vanishingly tiny playerbase of your game that you've been catering to for years is getting tired... what's going to happen to your game?"
Ashes of Creation announces Apocalypse, its free-to-play battle royale test mode - Over the last couple of months, Intrepid Studios has been talking up Ashes of Creation's alpha one, which was set to include a battle royale mode as one of its PvP…
Vague Patch Notes: The meaning of ‘meaningful’ in MMORPGs - Ironically, the term "meaningful" has a long history of not meaning much of anything with MMOs. Back in 2015 I did a Perfect Ten about terms that we can really…
Original LOTRO and DDO creator Turbine Entertainment changes its name to WB Games Boston - As the Fourth Age begins, Turbine Entertainment retreats into the east where it will continue to be diminished. The studio that formerly brought us MMOs such as Asheron's Call, Dungeons…
Working As Intended: The gamification of the workification of games - Last weekend, my husband made the bold choice to let our young son play The Stanley Parable. I am not entirely sure the kid can articulate the subtext, but he's…
Hyperspace Beacon: Five tools to up your roleplay game in SWTOR - As you all know, I like to roleplay in Star Wars: The Old Republic. In fact, creating characters and creating struggles for them within that universe is my favorite thing…
XL Games’ Jake Song is working with Gamigo to ‘stabilize’ and ‘revitalize’ ArcheAge - [AL:Arche]Western ArcheAge players who've been waiting patiently - or impatiently - for news on what exactly is happening with their game in the wake of Trion Worlds' implosion and the…
World of Warcraft is 14 years old this month – where were you when it launched? - How old were you when World of Warcraft launched in 2004? Now add 14 to that. Do ya feel super old yet? Where were you when it launched? Blizzard is…
LOTRO’s progression server may slow down experience gain (and that’s a good thing) - When Standing Stone Games first announced Lord of the Rings Online's upcoming progression server, the community had plenty of suggestions to how the studio might best tweak this particular ruleset.…
That Fallout 76 speedhack ‘won’t be out until the game launches,’ Bethsoft says - For a while now, it's been pretty common practice among PC gamers to edit a game's .ini file in order to make tweaks to settings that may not be available…
How Legends of Aria is avoiding the ‘gankbox’ MMO problem - Player freedom in sandbox games is always a tricky balancing act, and developers often have to walk a very fine line to prevent their games from becoming "gankboxes." This is…
Leaderboard: Are you playing Fallout 76, Red Dead Redemption 2, or neither? - I have to wonder whether Bethsoft is having some regrets right now. It seems to me that Fallout 76's beta is being completely overshadowed by the release of Red Dead…
Perfect Ten: Compliments to MMOs I don’t play - Back in September, Bree posed a Daily Grind question that I thought was genuinely intriguing. You know, for once. Just kidding, Bree! She asked the community to share a nice…
Guild Wars 2’s legendary upgrade feature accidentally joins weekly patch as new RMT griefing trick emerges - [AL:GW2]If, like our staff, you looked at yesterday's Guild Wars 2 patch notes and thought it was a "filler patch" with just a handful of bug and balance tweaks and…
Fallout 76’s PC beta window got off to a rough start - If you were aiming to tool around in last night's Fallout 76 PC beta episode, you probably found yourself a bit disappointed. Some folks logging in were effectively forced to…
Surprise! Shroud of the Avatar is now officially free-to-play - Have you taken advantage of the fact that Shroud of the Avatar has gone free-to-play yet? Or are you staring at that with some confusion because you didn't realize the…
World of Warcraft factionless player Doubleagent hits 120 after years of picking herbs - World of Warcraft "celebrity" player Doubleagent has done it again: leveled to 120 solely on harvesting without ever picking a faction in the eternal WoW war. MMO players will recall that…
Star Wars Galaxies’ original emulator teases Jump to Lightspeed space content - One of the reasons I favor the Star Wars Galaxies Legends emulator is that it's a late enough build of the game that it includes the original game's expansions -…
New World leaks make it sound more and more like a real MMO sandbox, not a survival game - The weird thing - or clever thing - about Amazon Game Studios' New World alpha is that seemingly everyone is in it, so nobody can talk about it either, whether…
ArcheAge consumer lawsuit hits snag: Trion Worlds’ corporate dissolution - Remember that player lawsuit lodged against Trion Worlds back in 2015? The one where ArcheAge players Aaron Van Fleet, Paul Ovberg, and James Longfield alleged that Trion violated consumer laws,…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 194: It belongs in a museum!
The Stream Team: Halloween and submarines in World of Warships
The Stream Team: ARK Aberration ascension raid
The Stream Team: Bootiful decorations in Black Desert Online
The Stream Team: Extending Halloween with Wild Terra
The Stream Team: A final frolic in WildStar’s Shade’s Eve
The Stream Team: Haunting World of Tanks’ Halloween
The Stream Team: Conan Exiles’ night of the dead
The Stream Team: Star Trek Online’s one-day Halloween event
The Stream Team: Tripping the Rifts with the Dauntless Riftstalker
The Stream Team: Creeping into the new Lord of the Rings Online Halloween area
AND FROM OUR FRIENDS AT BLIZZARD WATCH
• Here are some amazing BlizzCon 2018 panels you might have missed
• Blizzard could have avoided the Diablo Immortal PR catastrophe
• In defense of mobile Diablo Immortal
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.
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