Daybreak’s latest round of mass layoffs Friday put a damper on a week that wasn’t all bad, not even for Daybreak itself, as we caught wind of a trademark filing for PlanetSide Arena too – hopefully the devs affected all land on their feet.
We’ve also got a brand-new MMO, Atlas, inbound later this month, plus Legends of Aria hit early access off Steam, Path of Exile launched Betrayal, and Ashes of Creation’s battle royale mode launches F2P for all in December. Heck, even Fallout 76 got it together with a new patch and bag compensation before moving on to its next fiasco.
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
Daybreak has suffered another round of layoffs, between 60 and 70 people - It's Friday afternoon, which often portends bad news. Tonight, we're looking at more Daybreak layoffs. Massively OP understands that between 60 and 70 people may have been affected. Former SOE/Daybreak…
ARK’s Studio Wildcard is launching a 40K-person-server pirate MMO called Atlas next week - If you blinked during the Game Awards on Twitch, you might have missed the announcement of a new MMO launching next week from the makers of ARK: Survival Evolved. Studio…
Rumor: Daybreak might be building a new PlanetSide game - So who else had "the PlanetSide franchise gets a class-based battle royale" in the predictions pool? Welp, looks like it's happening. We've gotten several unsubstantiated tips on this now, but…
Lord of the Rings Online offers an everything-in-one $200 bundle - There's a pretty strong opinion out there that Lord of the Rings Online's lifetime subscription was one of the best such subs in the industry, at least if you had…
Perfect Ten: The healthiest live MMORPGs at the end of 2018 - Another year is coming to a close! That means we're doing all of our usual end-of-year recaps, and that also means that we're once again taking a look at the…
Massively Overthinking: The best and worst MMO developer quotes of 2018 - It's become a tradition on Massively OP to include among our end-of-the-year roundups and editorials and retrospectives a run-down of our favorite - and least favorite - MMO dev quotes…
Path of Exile’s biggest expansion ever, Betrayal, is live this afternoon - [AL:POE]Get ready to be betrayed, folks: Path of Exile's Betrayal expansion is livesies today. The official site anticipates the servers coming up at 2 p.m. EST today after the patch-and-pray…
Ashes of Creation Apocalypse, the MMORPG’s battle royale mode, launches December 18 - Over the course of the fall, Ashes of Creation developer Intrepid Studios has been testing a battle royale mode component for the Kickstarted full-scale MMORPG. Devs have maintained over the…
Even Fallout 76’s ticket system is a buggy mess: A customer support loophole was leaking personal info - Did you think Bethsoft's Fallout 76 woes couldn't get anymore woeful? You lack imagination. According to multiple Reddit and forum posts collected by Kotaku, those folks dutifully sending tickets to…
Hyperspace Beacon: Why PVPers are abandoning SWTOR – again - [AL:TOR]I don't usually like to jump into the PvE-v-PvP debate because no one wins, but I have started to see an exodus of PvPers from Star Wars: The Old Republic…
The Game Archaeologist: Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2 - At the end of June 2014, dozens of online worlds flickered and vanished with the flip of a switch. It was a online apocalypse the likes of which we had…
Anthem doesn’t need whales to succeed, says BioWare’s Mike Gamble - It's fairly common knowledge that many games with microtransactions tend to rely heavily on big-spending "whales" to keep their finances in the black and turn a healthy profit, but according…
WoW Factor: The zones that changed the most from Classic, Eastern Kingdoms edition - We've got a little while until World of Warcraft actually drops its Classic server, but the nice thing is that those of us who have been playing long enough already know…
Vague Patch Notes: MMO emulation as a paean for the dead vs. a mockery of the living - If you ever need to know why we'll happily cover Star Wars Galaxies emulators and not Ultima Online emulators here on Massively Overpowered, the reason is very simple: SWG is dead. UO is not.…
Rapper 2 Milly files lawsuit against Epic Games over Fortnite dance emote - Epic Games is under fire from rapper 2 Milly, who has filed a lawsuit against the Fortnite developer that alleges that one of the game's dance emotes infringes his copyright…
Dungeons & Dragons Online offers a two-year season pass for $299 - There was a time when lifetime subscriptions seemed like they were a bridge too far, but Dungeons & Dragons Online is breaking into new territory with its new season pass. For…
You can customize your new Archer in Black Desert today - Nobody does a new class rollout like Black Desert, and Kakao is showing why today. As promised, the Archer's pre-patch is out this morning. You can't technically play him just…
Valve bans a toxic Dota 2 pro after his team takes insufficient action - Herein lies the problem for Valve running Dota 2: The company doesn't want to actually provide any rules or guidelines or moderation for the game's community, but it also doesn't want…
Red Dead Online shores up its economy and offers compensation in today’s update - If you're still beta testing Red Dead Online, or patiently watching from the sidelines while the console players get things sorted ahead of the inevitable but not-yet-announced PC launch, listen…
Fallout 76 buffs the stash and nerfs endgame mob XP with today’s patch - Are you over the Fallout 76 canvas bag thing now that you're actually getting the canvas bag? Cool cool. So now let's get back to some of the ongoing problems…
Choose My Adventure: Taking the steering wheel of Star Citizen - Star Citizen's recent free fly event, and in particular the time I spent with MJ and friends riding an extremely swanky ship, has gotten me to dive further into Star…
Epic will challenge Steam with the Epic Games Store’s pro-developer policies - Hey Valve, it's not just Discord coming for you: Epic Games wants a piece o' that action too. The Fortnite-and-Unreal-Engine developer today announced the Epic Games Store, a Steam competitor…
The first early access shot is fired in Civil War battler War of Rights - Attentive MOP readers will know that we have been covering an interesting Civil War title called War of Rights for a while now. Apparently aimed at reenactors who would love…
Funcom’s tactical adventure game Mutant Year Zero has officially launched - One of the many games under Funcom's ever-widening umbrella is Mutant Year Zero, and in fact it's officially launched as of today as planned. Developer The Bearded Ladies has pushed it…
Fallout 76 collectors edition buyers will get the canvas bags they were promised after all - Last week, Fallout 76 fans lit the world on fire over the revelation that the "West tek canvas carrying bag" promised to $200 collector edition customers was in fact swapped…
Legends of Aria pushes off Steam early access launch into 2019 - So for Legends of Aria this afternoon, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that general early access is still happening: It's still going to go live for…
Leaderboard: What do you think about Steam’s new revenue sharing plan? - At the tail end of last week, Valve announced a new revenue sharing plan for publishers on Steam that simmered all weekend. In a nutshell, the company is reducing its…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 199: Delay after delay
The Stream Team: More dungeon healing in Final Fantasy XIV
The Stream Team: A day in ARK’s desert dome
The Stream Team: Beginning Betrayal in Path of Exile
The Stream Team: A brief Star Citizen road trip
The Stream Team: A Warframe ascension ceremony
The Stream Team: The forgotten boss of Secret World Legends’ Scorched Desert
The Stream Team: A first look at Funcom’s Mutant: Year Zero
The Stream Team: Taking care of Blizzness in SWTOR
The Stream Team: EverQuest II’s Frostfell is the first holiday of the season
The Stream Team: Experiencing Celestial Domination in SMITE
AND FROM OUR FRIENDS AT BLIZZARD WATCH
• Where have all WoW’s guild achievements gone?
• What would you remove from WoW?
• WoW’s Battle of Dazar’alor arrives January 22
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.
