After several years, the metagame for Massively Overpowered has gotten stale, so we’ve decided to carefully rebalance our characters for increased engagement. But then we thought about it and that sounded like it would be a whole lot of work, so we’re just tossing a whole lot of new characters into the mix like it’s 1998 and we’re releasing a Capcom fighting game. Here’s the quick rundown:
- Andy McAdams is like a cop with a shady past in that he’s writing a law and business column, but not in any other way. His ultimate ability summons an aging Danny Glover to express that he’s getting too old for this. You can use him for jungling, probably.
- Ben Griggs will be taking on duties for our The Elder Scrolls Online column when he’s not busy serving as a literal elder scroll. He costs four colorless mana to put into play and can be tapped to apply +2/+2 to wolves.
- Carlo Alday Lacsina has traveled back in time to warn us of impending disaster, but due to the cybernetic virus implanted in his brain he can only communicate this to us via Black Desert Online column-writing. Also by having a double-jump and a dashing kick with the traditional fireball motion.
- Colin Henry will be taking on some Guild Wars 2 duties as well as serving as a new front-line tank with an ultimate and a toolkit that absolutely no one likes. Hey, Symmetra could use the competition.
- Mia DeSanzo is scouring through more obscure titles for your entertainment and to find another four or five Infinity Stones. You know, just for giggles. She can equip assault cannons but not sniper rifles and generally serves for crowd control.
- Samon Kashani takes on PvP for our PvP column and has also traveled back in time to warn us of an entirely different impending disaster. He could communicate this any way he wanted to, but this way sounds like more fun. When summoned, all of your opponent’s minions are placed in invisible boxes unless they have the Mime passive.
- Last but not least, Tyler Edwards is a combo-centric character who deals increasing damage by mixing light and heavy attacks and also summoning a Ford Mustang from the heavens. He’ll be taking on some Not So Massively duties before unleashing a desperation attack to knock all nearby enemies down.
We hope these characters will either enrich the metagame or at least see you too busy arguing about it to notice any balance issues. Let us know if you’re excited for this down in the comments of this week’s What Are You Playing.
Bonus question: What’s the worst travel experience you’ve ever had?
​Andrew Ross (@dengarsw): More Pokemon Go and Let’s Go this weekend. Training my body for WonderCon (which is my general health motivation right now).
Oh man, I have some really bad, NSFW experiences. The cleanest one though… maybe one winter trip while living in Japan. Went to visit family friends and got horribly sick on my solo day out. I’m talking hitting a bathroom every block sick. I still feel like I ruined their New Year (which is like our Christmas). Being sick sucks, but it sucks more in a foreign country when you’re still learning the language and culture.
Andy McAdams: Final Fantasy XIV; hoping to get some time to keep leveling my Bard and start chewing through the Stormblood content. I might be ready in time for Shadowbringers.
Worst travel experience? I was on a flight home from Minneapolis and this woman stumbled down the aisle carrying a diaper bag and a baby and was clearly a little flustered. She looked at me and goes, “can you hold my baby?” And before I can answer she plops the baby in my lap. I’ll terrified of babies, so I just made vaguely uncomfortable cooing noises while bouncing the baby on my knee. The baby was having none of it and started screaming almost immediately. The mother stoically ignored both her screaming child and my panicking face while she got herself situated.
This goes on for a few minutes, the baby is actively trying to escape from me and I’m getting more and more frantic myself. The woman across the aisle (with apparently more self-awareness than the mother) noticed my discomfort and offered to hold the baby, but the mother said no, she was almost done.
She did sit down and take her child shortly after. Thinking my ordeal over, I pulled out my book, put in my headphones and off we went.
All was good for the first half hour of the flight before said baby started getting fussy. Mother decided she was going to mix him some formula. I’m idly paying attention out of the corner of my eye and I see her pull out powdered formula, unscrew the lid to see it was still sealed with the foil. I had just enough to notice the foil seal was bulging out before she pulled on it and the formula shot out of the container and covered me in a fine powdered dust — it was in my hair, on my face, all over my clothes. Covered.
The mother stares in mute horror at me then starts stammering an apology, licks her thumb and starts rubbing it off my face, then she realized what she was doing and whips out baby butt wipes and starts to frantically clean me with those (instead of her spit) while apologizing profusely. The flight attendant came by and did her best to not crack up and brought me a damp towel to wipe off with.
The woman didn’t say anything or even look at me for the rest of the flight, and asked to be let off the plane first when we landed.
Good times.
Ben Griggs (@braxwolf): I’ll be doing some heists and sacraments for the Thieves Guild/Dark Brotherhood events in The Elder Scrolls Online. Hopefully, I’ll also make use of the 4,000 crowns worth of cosmetics I bought during this week’s sale!
Brianna Royce (@nbrianna, blog): I am actually not sure what I’ll be playing! My Trove sub ran out, but I might re-up that to play with my son. Been considering Guild Wars 2 again too, but only if the rest of the fam plays with me. All my guildies fled to Final Fantasy XIV, but I’m just not sure I have it in me. Maybe TESO? Maybe I’ll just keep listing games so Eliot has to keep putting italics on stuff?
Bonus: The worst travel experience related to gaming? Riding shotgun as my insane MMO guildie drove us like a madman through London traffic (so… many… roundabouts, ugh). The worst travel experience ever? Definitely taking over five days days to drive coast-to-coast with a U-Haul, a three-year-old, and an 11-week-old, only to arrive and find our new rental grotesquely uninhabitable. I’m laughing now, but I was crying then.
Carlo Lacsina (@UltraMudkipEX): It’s been a hella busy two weeks, but between cleaning soap scum off my bathroom walls and attending a concert, I’ll be playing Devil May Cry 5! Gotta get all the characters leveled up to maximum so they’re ready for Bloody Palace in April. Also, this Black Desert Online event with the TRI accessories is more time consuming than other events, so I’ll be doing that over the weekend! I’ll probably pepper in some BDO for the XBox too!
Chris Neal (@wolfyseyes, blog): Well, there’s that whole Legends of Aria thing to work through, likely some more Dauntless as I get reacquainted with the hammer weapon, and probably some ESO.
I don’t travel that much, so I’m afraid I don’t have horror stories to regale anyone with. Which is a mixed blessing, I suppose.
Colin Henry (@ChaosConstant): This weekend I’m going to finally make a real attempt to get that new Warclaw mount in Guild Wars 2. That requires me to actually go to World vs. World for more than just the free teleport to Lion’s Arch. Apologies in advance to anyone who ends up on my team. I’d also like to get into the new Frostvault dungeon in The Elder Scrolls Online. Dwemer stuff is my jam! (Do the kids these days still say “my jam?”)
I’ve been pretty fortunate when traveling for the most part. I think the worst travel experience I’ve had was the time that my extended family all went to Gettysburg, PA together and I came down with a really bad cold (flu?) on the way there. I insisted I was fine and we didn’t need to turn back… then spent pretty much the entire week alternating between sleeping and coughing my head off in the hotel room.
Eliot Lefebvre (@Eliot_Lefebvre, blog): Between my alt-leveling antics in FFXIV and my playthrough of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, I’ve got more than enough to do this weekend. But I might find my attention drawn in other directions anyhow, because I’m a rascal.
My worst travel experience of all time, at the very least, was for work. On a trip across the country, I was forced to check my carry-on bag for the first leg of a connecting flight. Unfortunately, it was raining when we landed, and my tag soaked through and fell off… while I’m sitting there trying desperately to rush across the entire airport to catch my connection. I thankfully did make it to my flight successfully (at the very last minute, waving my boarding pass in the air and shouting to not close the ramp) but I still get a twitch in my eye at the sight of Dulles.
Justin Olivetti (@Sypster, blog): With the Moria unlock on Lord of the Rings Online’s legendary server, I’m full steam ahead for another (the last?) trip through this epic underground realm. Apart from that, perhaps a little The Sims 4 and Dungeons & Dragons Online dungeon delving.
Mia DeSanzo (@neschria): I just reinstalled a lot of games after my old hard drive bought the digital farm, and I am not quite sure what the main thrust of my gaming will be, but I will be in Riders of Icarus, Bless Online, and BDO to collect my log-in rewards at least. I have been playing Riders of Icarus quite a bit lately – not a ton of players, but the community is very friendly for the most part.
I have downloaded a bunch of games I have never played before and a few old games I haven’t played in a long time, so we’ll see where that goes.
I once drove from northeast Michigan to Delaware as a solo driver with 3 kids and a dog in a van that broke down 3 times along the way. That was an adventure.
And then there was that time I fell through the boat trying to go from Qeynos to Erudin and got eaten by a shark. Also an adventure.
MJ Guthrie (@MJ_Guthrie, blog): This weekend I will be playing Find a Working Car I Can Afford. I’d have better luck in Grand Theft Auto Online! If, and it is a big if, I can manage any real gaming time I plan on working on my Outpost Zero base, my Conan Exiles treehouse, and finding more memory fragments in Path of Exile.
I have had so many interesting travel experiences! Oh, so many. But many of them I consider fun stories so they don’t seem too terrible. I will mention two. At 18 in Moscow, Russia, while walking in between my host and a friend, I had an older Arab guy (with his own entourage) stride right into me to separate me from my friends and tell me I would be his next wife. I don’t care if you were a rich dude, nope nope nope nope. Oh, the guy following us off the Metro and having to sprint between giant buildings on the outskirts of Moscow to lose him was also interesting. I’d mention the Russian mafia guys protecting me from an extra handsy dude at a dance club, but that one was more of a fun memory really, not a worst. My second instance (those others don’t count!) is the one that probably bothered me most. I was traveling with my kids, ages 6.5 and 4, and forced on standby at San Francisco International because of plane issues. The problem came when they had two tickets come available and repeatedly tried to convince me to take the two tickets and leave one of the kids alone to wait for another flight cross-country. Say what?! Seriously, they spent time and effort trying to talk me into leaving one behind… in SFO… for up to a day (including overnight) alone. They couldn’t comprehend why I was refusing.
Samon Kashani (@thesamkash): This will be a pretty light gaming week for me, but I definitely plan on getting back into Guild Wars 2 for some WvW. That new mount is calling my name, so this is as good a time as any to saddle back up and give WvW some of this precious, sweet time of mine. I wanted to pop back in for some of Crowfall but that will really depend on how much fun I get out of GW2. Other than that, I’ll be in and out of Rocket League to quench my quick-match thirst.
Tyler Edwards: As has been the case for the last several weeks, any free time I can spare will be going to Anthem. I may also log in to TESO just enough to get my event tickets. I really have no enthusiasm left for that grind, but I almost have enough to evolve my Indrik now. Yay sunk cost fallacy. I did pre-order The Division 2, but I want to wait at least a few days before jumping into that to dodge the risk of game-breaking launch bugs or the server hamsters committing mass suicide.
Bonus question: My mother was a professional astrologer. Yes, really. No, I don’t believe in astrology, and that should tell you something. Anyway, when I was growing up, we often had to travel to weird and obscure places for the sake of her solar return. The worst was the time we drove six hours into the middle of nowhere in rural Quebec. We stayed at a tiny, rundown motel where no one spoke English. I suppose it wasn’t the worst experience in the world, but it was very boring, and so very unnecessary.
Patron Pierre: After a busy week at work and on the family front, where I could only find a few hours to start playing it, I may be able to play more of The Division 2 this weekend. It’s the game I’ve been strongly hyped and have been waiting for this year, and I’m so happy it’s here. From my first hours in-game, it’s also very good: The gameplay (enemy AI, guns feelings of impact, activities in-game) has been so much improved from #1, it’s a real pleasure, and apparently a shared pleasure, from what I read on the internet. :D Enjoy your gaming weekend MOP readers ;-)
Your turn!
