Oh I sure am glad the first full week of 2019 was calm and gentle as we ease into the new year… hah just kidding. We’re already off on a wild ride as Activision’s being investigated for fraud over its Bungie split while Improbable, Unity, and Epic squared off over licensing agreements. 38 Studios even cropped back up in the news!
Video games? Yeah we covered those too: Guild Wars 2 launched All or Nothing, Black Desert announced a battle royale mode, and we got the scoop on Legends of Aria’s next big thing. Plus we brought back our old Storyboard column!
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
Epic and Improbable pledge $25M to rescue MMO studios affected by Unity’s SpatialOS license suspension - We've continued updating this post at the end as more events unfold, including Unity's rebuttal and Unreal's intervention. The original post from 9:55 a.m. EST January 10th is as follows.…
Activision investors are now investigating whether the Bungie split involves securities fraud - Two days ago, Activision and Bungie announced an early split of their long-running partnership, a split that transferred publishing rights for the franchise back to Bungie itself. Bungie was full…
Exclusive: Legends of Aria previews its first major content of 2019 - We've had our eye on Legends of Aria since, well, long before it was called Legends of Aria, meaning we've been watching the game since it's start as a scrappy…
Improbable clarifies timeline and petitions Unity for ‘clarity’ as the SpatialOS drama continues - Yesterday, news of the tiff between SpatialOS company Improbable and Unity spread like wildfire over the internet, with multiple involved parties adding kindling throughout the day and into the wee…
Flameseeker Chronicles: First impressions of Guild Wars 2’s All or Nothing - One amazing trailer and a day of hype later, Guild Wars 2’s All or Nothing will be live this afternoon for us to play. The episode makes for the fifth…
Guild Wars 2 Game Director Crystin Cox has departed ArenaNet - During research on an entirely unrelated article, we noticed that ArenaNet Game Director Crystin Cox has apparently moved on from her role on popular MMORPGÂ Guild Wars 2. Cox was a…
Vague Patch Notes: The fads and the curious (and why Overwatch’s star is fading) - So it's beginning to look a lot like the Overwatch fad has faded. It was a crazy couple of years there, but the fact that it's just not making its way…
Activision is transferring Destiny publishing rights back to Bungie - Still more big changes are afoot at Activision: Bungie just announced that Activision is transferring publishing rights for Destiny back to Bungie. "We have enjoyed a successful eight-year run and…
SEC and Wells Fargo settle a suit over 38 Studios - The seemingly never-ending saga of 38 Studios and Project Copernicus has another coda this week in its sad history. Gamasutra is reporting that the Securities and Exchange Commission and Wells Fargo…
LOTRO Legendarium: A requiem for trait lines - Back in last October when Standing Stone Games announced that it would be launching the legendary server type, one of the most contentious points of discussion arose from vocal players…
Ashes of Creation kicks off another Apocalypse beta, previews castle siege and classes - During last night's much-heralded Ashes of Creation livestream, Intrepid Studios demoed a trailer previewing its castle siege mode. Hey, that ought to perk up those of you grumpy about battle…
Grapeshot Games is working to combat Atlas hackers - It's been a bit of a rough start for Grapeshot Games's open-world survival MMO Atlas since it launched late last month, and it's clear that there are still plenty of…
For Science: The psychology of online gaming toxicity, fanpersonism, and gamer identity - Over the holidays, I bumped into some great video material from author and YouTuber Caleb Ross that seems useful for online gamers in particular. After all, if you want to…
Blizzard and Netease will be cranking out games together at least until 2023 - Chinese gaming giant Netease has popped up in the news over and over this past year. It poured money into SpatialOS and is building a VR MMO called Nostos. It's…
Star Citizen: Procedural layout tools, alpha 3.4.2, and a sweet Stanton system planetary map - Star Citizen's Around the Verse this week is helmed by CIG's Sean Tracy and Eric Kieron Davis and has a lot more meat to it than last week's, as the…
Massively Overthinking: Hopes and fears for MMOs in 2019 - With nearly all of our end-of-2018 content finally and blissfully behind us - seriously, I always breathe a huge sigh of relief when it's over because it's months of extra…
Tamriel Infinium: What teaser swag tells us about Elder Scrolls Online’s next chapter - I try to be as authentic as I can be. I believe it makes me more trustworthy as a reporter and reviewer. When a studio presents me with a piece…
Blizzard’s Mike Morhaime will leave planned advisory role in April - Back in October, Blizzard announced that Mike Morhaime was stepping down as president of the company after 27 years working there. While World of Warcraft Executive Producer J. Allen Brack…
Shroud of the Avatar loses player services lead to Star Citizen’s Cloud Imperium Games - Shroud of the Avatar Community Manager Serafina announced today that she is moving on to greener pastures, stepping down from her role as Portalarium's player services lead to accept a…
The Division 2’s Steam landing page is nuked as Ubisoft joins team Epic Games Store - The Epic Games Store vs. Valve (vs. Discord vs. GOG, we suppose) showdown just got a bit more interesting. Readers will recall that in December, Fortnite and Unreal developer Epic…
Choose My Adventure: Fumbling through the stars of Elite Dangerous - It was a pretty close call in terms of what my first task in Elite Dangerous would be for this edition of CMA, but I'm glad that exploration got the…
Perfect Ten: Mobile MMOs to watch in 2018 - Love it or hate it, MMOs are going mobile in ever-increasing numbers. Last year saw a crop of acclaimed titles making their way to tablets and smartphones, including Old School…
Working As Intended: The MMOs we lost in 2018 - While we lost several painful MMOs in 2016 and 2015, 2017 was noticeable chiefly because we lost a large number of small MMOs, perhaps signalling a shift in the market. In 2018,…
Wisdom of Nym: Final Fantasy XIV’s 2019 in preview - It's the day before the last patch of the Stormblood series in Final Fantasy XIV... technically. Yes, you can argue (correctly) that we'll actually get more patches in this sequence…
The Daily Grind: Should ArenaNet be working on Guild Wars 3? - Despite being a fairly healthy live MMO with plenty of good buzz, a strong following, and a steady (if slow) rollout of content patches and expansions, Guild Wars 2 isn't…
EVE Evolved: Seven of the best EVE Online fan videos of all time - EVE Online has a long history of incredible cinematics and player-made videos, but that legacy has somewhat fallen by the wayside in recent years. Players still regularly put together PvP…
Black Desert is launching a battle royale mode called Shadow Arena as part of a year focused on systems clarity - [AL:BDO]Pearl Abyss spent 2018 busy busy busy with its projects, among them Black Desert. To sum all that up and tease the future, Executive Producer Jae-hee Kim has a dev…
Massively on the Go: Smash Bros Ultimate’s online scene, one month later - I love Smash Bros. I love the mascot battles, the random items, the hazards. And in Super Smash Bros Ultimate, I love the new Ultimate meter that makes the game feel a…
Ashes of Creation introduces new community manager, promising better communication - The whole Ashes of Creation issue with the game's website and forums involved no small number of people pointing out that Intrepid Studios is not doing communication well. So it…
Overwatch releases a new short story and confirms that yes, Soldier 76 is gay - Poor Ana, she got a bit short-sold on her own short story. Yes, Overwatch's healing sniper gets her own bit of short fiction, but the biggest takeaway from the story…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
AND FROM OUR FRIENDS AT BLIZZARD WATCH
• WoW 8.1.5’s new Darkmoon Faire roller coaster is a wildly entertaining ride
• Could Tinkers be the next class in World of Warcraft?
• WoW isn’t going full choose-your-own-adventure — but player choice is definitely a thing
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.
