If you were hoping that if BioWare just kept its head down and buffed up Anthem, it could avoid the trainwrecks of some other recent launches, then you can join me in being disappointed this week, as the company met a major publication’s exposé of the game’s chaotic development with a missive and memo that seemed more miffed at journalists than at management. (But maybe don’t panic yet!)
Meanwhile, Z1 Battle Royale saw layoffs, while Guild Wars 2 reshuffled its content teams ahead of its next update.
Here on MOP, we recapped all of our new columnists and columns in one convenient place so you guys can see exactly how we’re bolstering our content! 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
Kotaku’s Anthem exposé unmasks a studio in ‘crisis’ – and BioWare’s response is alarming - Kotaku has another lengthy expose up today, this one homing in on Anthem. Author Jason Schreier interviewed 19 Anthem (and Anthem-adjacent) developers to paint a picture of a studio in…
BioWare internal memo vows to address studio disarray, says Kotaku’s Anthem exposé was ‘traumatizing’ - On Tuesday this week, Kotaku published a devastating exposé of BioWare, interviewing 19 people in the know to reveal a state of "crisis" in the company over the production of…
Rumor: Z1 Battle Royale, H1Z1’s PC version, seems to be in big trouble as devs confirm layoffs - Note: We'll be updating this piece at the end with the latest, and we've also put out a second piece here with NantG's statement. It sounds as if Z1 Battle…
LOTRO Legendarium: Five fun secrets hidden in Moria - Making your way through Lord of the Rings Online's Moria can be a unique experience -- for both good and bad reasons -- but these days players are more focused…
Guild Wars 2 staff are reorganizing into ‘fully staffed content teams’ as ArenaNet outlines future content - Guild Wars 2 has been in a bit of limbo this winter. Following mass layoffs at ArenaNet, the cancellation of two additional games, and the revelation that no expansion was…
The final episode of Guild Wars 2’s fourth season of living story is called War Eternal - If you can tear your eyeballs away from Super Adventure Box for a minute, ArenaNet has some Guild Wars 2 living world content updates to tease. The studio dropped a…
Flameseeker Chronicles: Stories Guild Wars 2 could tell without dragons - Thus far, Guild Wars 2’s story has revolved largely around the six elder dragons. The base game’s personal story crescendoed with the slaying of Zhaitan, the undead dragon, and the…
Lawful Neutral: The future of MMO game design in a streaming gaming world - It’s been an interesting few weeks for gaming. We saw the announcement of Google’s game streaming service, Stadia, and then Apple’s subscribe-to-access game service, Apple Arcade. The services differ, but…
Chaos Theory: Secret World is getting new story content, but it’s not in Secret World Legends - That feeling when something is so close yet misses the mark -- in a painful, how-on-earth-can-you-miss-that-giant-glowing-target way. The good news is that a Secret World-themed Halloween spinoff game is happening…
Warframe gives its Plains of Eidolon open world zone new content and better visuals - Why not take a good thing and make it even better? That's the attitude that Digital Extremes has in regards to one of Warframe's successful open-world zones. The studio pushed…
Massively Overthinking: If an MMO item is buyable with gold, does that excuse its presence in the cash shop? - This week's Overthinking topic comes from longtime MOP reader and commenter Sally Bowls. It's about monetization, but it's a nuanced argument we don't see all that many people making. "Does…
Hyperspace Beacon: I wasn’t going to talk about Anthem, but I think I should - Like everyone else working in or around the gaming industry, I read Kotaku's Jason Schreier's exposé on BioWare's development of Anthem. And like many of you, I read it having…
Wandering Wraeclast: A class guide to getting started in Path of Exile - Just because Path of Exile is more than five years old doesn't mean the influx of new players has dwindled. In fact, for quite a few leagues now the player…
Wisdom of Nym: A measured response to Naoki Yoshida’s mystery project - Well hello there, news on April 1st. I really have a tendency not to put much stock in anything revealed on April Fools' Day because while I love the holiday it…
PAX East 2019: Destiny’s Sword aims to take the ludonarrative into actual gameplay - They were called Failure Force, and they were the team that could never make a roll. My roommate, my wife, and myself were playing a game of Risk in college,…
World of Warcraft’s Ion Hazzikostas explains the philosophy behind Azerite now and in the future - It turns out that even if you liked World of Warcraft's Artifact Weapons and how they were designed, their front-loaded nature was very bad. That's one of the big takeaways from…
QC Games says it’s ‘winding down internal operations on Breach’ - It looks as if Breach is in trouble, folks - or at least the company behind it is. In a message to players today, QC Games announced that it's "winding…
RIFT’s battle pass will run $9.99 and dole out rewards for doing dailies - Remember when Gamigo asked the community what it thought about the RIFT battle pass without actually telling anybody what was in said battle pass? Good times. Anyhoo, the company finally…
Tamriel Infinium: The power of community in five-year-old Elder Scrolls Online - Given the volatility in today’s video game industry, it’s nice when an MMO is able to celebrate some longevity. Elder Scrolls Online has not only survived for nearly five years,…
Perfect Ten: MMO celebrations that didn’t rip off real-world holidays - Does it ever slightly bother you that in these alternate fantasy and science fiction worlds that we explore there just so happens to have evolved the same dang holidays that…
Wisdom of Nym: Thoughts on the end of Final Fantasy XIV’s 4.x story - So now we've gotten the ending. And... gosh, sometimes these patches really do not merit splitting up, which is kind of the case for Final Fantasy XIV this week. I'm not sure…
Choose My Adventure: What Legends of Aria taught me about sandbox MMORPGs - As much as I enjoy the new guard of MMORPGs, with their quick-hit content and action combat models, I'm also not completely ignorant to some of the ways it used…
PAX East 2019: Dauntless talks launching, version 1.0, and the Epic Store - The fine folks at Phoenix Labs aren't bringing Dauntless to Steam; instead, they're heading to the Epic Store as planned. We can all speculate about lots of back-and-forth potential reasons why,…
Torchlight Frontiers introduces Contracts in today’s alpha update - Today, Torchlight Frontiers is turning over a new leaf with its New Beginnings alpha update, which introduces the much-touted Contracts system and adds some other minor fixes and quality-of-life improvements.…
PAX East 2019: Bless Unleashed really isn’t Bless Online (to its credit) - The folks behind Bless Unleashed are not just porting over Bless Online to the Xbox One. This is a refrain that Bandai Namco and Neowiz have been forced to utter on many…
Not So Massively: The Division 2 has more stuff than personality - The Division was a game with a number of flaws, but one thing it did very well was present an incredibly detailed, realistic, and immersive game world. That endeared me…
The Elder Scrolls Online takes home inaugural GLAAD award for Outstanding Video Game - This is not a joke whatsoever: LGBTQ media-advocacy organization GLAAD has awarded The Elder Scrolls Online: Summerset with its first-ever award for Outstanding Video Game during its 30th annual GLAAD…
Crowdfunding begins for action combat sandbox MMO Oath - Hello from the land of grand promises and positively roiling cynicism that is Kickstarter! Today we're casting a quick spotlight on Oath, an all new sandbox MMORPG that has hitched…
Final Fantasy XIV’s Naoki Yoshida is overseeing a new project that may very well be another big online game - We don't know what it will include. We don't know when it will be released. We don't even have a title. What we do have is confirmation that the Third Business…
Reddit’s gaming hub has shut down for April Fools’ Day, but it’s no laughing matter - While the gaming world is busy punking each other with goofy stunts and pranks, /r/games has shut its doors. Don't worry, internet trolls; it's only for one day, and it's…
MMO Business Roundup: Prince Harry vs Fortnite, China’s big thaw, Gamigo’s new acquisition, and industry transparency - Welcome back to another edition of the MMO Business Roundup, random bits of industry news that are interesting but probably not worth their own post, let's be honest. So we'll…
Massively Uplifting: Bethesda’s gift to gaming granny, friendships forged in EverQuest and Guild Wars 2 - It is no joke: There is plenty that's good going on in the gaming world, and we want to share that with you. You may have to be wary of…
Ask Mo: Introducing Massively OP’s latest columns and columnists - As part of our planned expansion for 2019, Massively OP brought on a slew of new writers to perk up our pages with new voices and ideas. They've now been…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 214: No fools we
The Stream Team: Presents and prologues for Elder Scrolls Online’s 5th birthday
The Stream Team: SWTOR’s Tatooine balloon ride
The Stream Team: I lava you Conan Exiles
The Stream Team: WoW! A stream
The Stream Team: Eyeing Warframe’s big Plains of Eidolon refresh
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.
