The Division 2 joined the online gaming world’s roster of looter-shooters this week, giving grumpy Anthem refugees something new to try. Meanwhile, Gamigo canceled RIFT’s progression server, we offered our first impressions of Snail Games’ new MMO Outlaws of the Old West, WoW dropped 8.1.5, Fallout 76 got an update, and No Man’s Sky announced an MMO update that is swears is not an MMO (but it is).
And here on the site, we kicked off yet another column – Wandering Wraeclast, covering all things Path of Exile – and introduced a slew of new columnists you’ll be seeing around the site in the coming months! 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
Tamriel Infinium: Stuff it, naysayers, this is the perfect time for dragons in Elder Scrolls Online - I admit that I was one of the first people on board with the original idea that there would be no dragons in the main part of Elder Scrolls Online.…
First Impressions: My first three days of survival in Outlaws of the Old West - Back in 1999, I lived out in Colorado Springs and basked in the wide-open spaces, the scenic mountains, the towering mesas, and the feeling of more nature than people. The…
WoW Factor: The good and (very minor) bad of World of Warcraft patch 8.1.5 - We've spent three weeks explaining, in no small amount of detail, why people are unhappy with the current state of World of Warcraft. We're going to spend subsequent weeks explaining further…
RIFT prematurely ends its progression server run - While progression and legacy MMO servers are fairly popular these days, RIFT is putting an end to its Prime server before it was able to complete the full run, having…
Perfect Ten: MMOs that let you feel superheroic - So, hey, Captain Marvel is out now! And I'm writing this before having actually seen it, so I can't say word one about whether or not it's actually any good.…
No Man’s Sky is planning its major Beyond update for the summer with online play - We've been covering No Man's Sky for a long while here, first because the game was supposed to have a multiplayer component and then afterwards largely out of momentum. But…
Wandering Wraeclast: First impressions of Path of Exile’s Synthesis - [AL:POE]Something's different about Wraeclast. The air, the ground... it's changed. What could it be? If I could just put my finger on it before it disappears into the blue mist…
Indian police arrest 10 over PUBG ban - Four cities in the Indian state of Gujarat have instituted a ban on PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds over concern that the game causes violent behavior. The ban, which began on March 6th…
Star Citizen previews urban dystopia and in-game holidays, drops February studio report - Very few settings in games spark as much joy in me as a glowy rainbow neon urban cyberpunk dystopia, so that makes this week's episode of Star Citizen's Around the…
LOTRO Dwarves delve too deep, progression players rush in to see - Dust off that goat and ride fiercely into Khazad-dûm, for the vast underground kingdom is finally open for business on Lord of the Rings Online's legendary servers. Sure, it might…
Massively Overthinking: MMOs as distraction vs. culture - Earlier this month, there was a fascinating conversation swirling around a Gamasutra article by Bryant Francis, specifically a quote from game dev Patric Mondou. "We're moving away slowly from games as a cultural…
New Blizzard trademark filing rekindles speculation about Diablo TV series - You may remember that last year, there was a brief but passionate firestorm of speculation that Blizzard was gearing up to produce a TV series based on its ever-popular (albeit…
Reports say Ninja earned a cool $1 million to play Apex Legends - How do you get your stock price to jump 16%? Well, if you're EA, you pay Twitch streamer Tyler "Ninja" Blevins to play your newly released title Apex Legends for…
Vague Patch Notes: The philosophy of challenge in MMOs - Today, I want to start thing off by talking about Final Fantasy. This is not entirely surprising. What may be surprising is that I'm talking about Final Fantasy Tactics, which is not online…
The Division 2 fixes the Castle bug, offers wildly confusing preload chart ahead of launch - It's not quite launch for The Division 2 (that's tomorrow), but the game has dropped in a nice solid patch to fix lingering issues ahead of the full launch. The biggest…
For everyone who fancies a trip to New Zealand, Path of Exile’s ExileCon tix are now on sale - Be honest, a visit to New Zealand to see all the Lord of the Rings filming locations is still on your bucket list. You can make it a reality this…
MMO Business Roundup: Gaming inclusion, Peria Chronicles, Google, and PUBG’s Brendan Greene - Welcome to another fast roundup of MMO-related business news! Bookmark this research study so that if ever the loud angry gatekeeping trolls of gaming are getting you down, you can…
H1Z1’s PC version, Z1 Battle Royale, sees another leadership reshuffle as Jace Hall steps down - Yesterday, Daybreak and NantGMobile announced that Jace Hall is no longer consulting on the PC version of H1Z1 known as Z1 Battle Royale, having "reverted back to a player." Hall…
The first chunk of Fallout 76’s Wild Appalachia patch has launched today - After just one day's delay, minor indeed, Bethsoft has rolled out Fallout 76's next big thing - against an admittedly much more crowded multiplayer field than the one it saw…
Blade & Soul’s major Legacy of the Hongmoon update is live today - The latest major update for NCSoft's fantastical martial-arts MMO Blade & Soul, Legacy of the Hongmoon Clan, went live today, increasing the level cap to 60, adding new class specializations,…
EverQuest’s Holly Longdale discusses Daybreak’s reacquisition thrust - Is the original EverQuest doing better than it ever has? Probably not; the game has been running for 20 years now. But it has been on an upward swing since 2015,…
Ashes of Creation says it’s aiming for the ‘largest organized PVP battles of any MMORPG’ in castle siege blog - Buried in last week's news that Intrepid was delaying Ashes of Creation's next phase of alpha one (and therefore delaying its release into next year) was the promise that the…
Guild Wars 2 has already launched five new skins for the warclaw mount - [AL:GW2]Well, that didn't take long! ArenaNet announced today a cash shop update for Guild Wars 2 that includes five new skins for the Warclaw mount, which rolled out to the…
Choose My Adventure: New tools, same flailing in Legends of Aria - So, full disclosure here: This edition of Choose My Adventure is going to come from a perspective of limited play time. My "real" job and other projects effectively ate up…
Snail Games’ Outlaws of the Old West rustle up a Steam early access launch - Form a posse with your best friends and ride out of that fantasy game and into the old west, for today Snail Games has launched the early access version of…
Blade & Soul joins the battle royale bandwagon with the Shackled Isles limited time event - So, how about that battle royale flu, eh? Seems to be going around. Now Blade & Soul has caught the bug with the introduction of Shackled Isles, a limited time…
World of Warcraft lets slip the Tides of Vengeance today - Druids, pirates, and trolls, oh my! It's patch day over at World of Warcraft, and even if this isn't one of the major ones, there's still enough in this "halfway"…
Leaderboard: Should MMO studios be involved in their respective subreddits? - The issue of who controls MMO game subreddits is one that's just kept recurring over the years, at least as far back as when studios like Daybreak and Funcom began…
World of Warcraft: Classic is now planned to get six phases of content over time - As we approach the planned launch of World of Warcraft: Classic, it turns out we're getting a larger number of content updates than were originally announced at last year's BlizzCon. Before…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 211: Carrying the Torchlight
Battle Bards Episode 140: Piano piano!
The Stream Team: Stop! Hammer time in Dauntless
The Stream Team: Sneaking back into Space Engineers
The Stream Team: Investigating Conan Exiles’ latest updates
The Stream Team: Taking a closer look at Exocraft
The Stream Team: Focusing on Star Trek Online’s Foundry before it poofs
The Stream Team: Poking in Path of Exile’s Synthesis league
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.
