MMO Week in Review: Go. Hunt. Kill Skuls.

What a week in MMOs, right? BlizzCon got dates, we explored Elder Scrolls Online’s upcoming Necromancer class, EVE Online rescinded its accusations against a CSM member, and we got big updates in Guild Wars 2, Neverwinter, and Elite Dangerous.

And then there was the City of Heroes drama: The first server was deleted over what turned out to be a hoax about legal action, then Titan Network announced it was negotiating with NCsoft on a lawful server agreement, and then the Homecoming team brought up another new rogue server, Torchbearer, and then still another, Excelsior, and then two more for a total of four servers while all that works itself out. A peak of 8000 people were all trying to log in to play on these servers concurrently this weekend as the game celebrated its 15th birthday. Dang.

THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES

Nearly 30K people have rolled City of Heroes rogue server accounts as the game turns 15 years old - The City of Heroes community's live rogue server, Torchbearer, came online yesterday thanks to player developers and continues today with a new record: over 22000 accounts, 3500 4000 concurrency, and…

Aaaaand now there’s a new temporary City of Heroes rogue server up - This story has been updated several times over the last few days; updates are at the end. The original story follows. Can we just agree that the City of Heroes…

The Titan Network is negotiating to open a legal community-run City of Heroes server - Following the abrupt shut-down of the first City of Heroes rogue server yesterday, the game's community has been in turmoil as leaders urged patience. Now, it's been made clear why,…

City of Heroes’ first new rogue server shut down over a fake legal threat, but admins say it’s coming back - [This story has been heavily updated throughout with more at the end.] It appears that the City of Heroes rogue server that was up in testing all weekend has already run…

Tamriel Infinium: Dissecting the Elder Scrolls Online’s Elsweyr Necromancer class - I spent some time this week playing on the Elder Scrolls Online public test server. I've explored quite a bit of Northern Elsweyr. I played through the prescribed first questline…

BlizzCon 2019 announced for the start of November - It's almost time! All right, it's nowhere near time, but it will be time when November 1st rolls around for BlizzCon. The convention dates have been announced for November 1st and…

Guild Wars 2 just dropped its massive balance patch and War Eternal Supply Drop Requisition - Happy patch day, Guild Wars 2 players. As promised, ArenaNet has implemented a wide-ranging balancing update for multiple professions and elite professions. Definitely read up on everything that's changing with…

WoW Factor: What could win back the crowd for the next World of Warcraft expansion? - So the conclusion to the Azshara raid has been mined out, and I'm just going to link it to you here. I don't want to talk too much about what…

Neverwinter has officially launched the Undermountain expansion for PC players - It's expansion day for Perfect World's Neverwinter! At least if you're on PC, that is; console players will be waiting until June 11th for their crack at the content, which…

Into the Super-verse: Six things that made Marvel Heroes great - With all of the City of Heroes revival talk lately, our office chat turned in the direction of other MMOs we'd love to see resurrected. I think we all have…

CCP Games withdraws all accusations against EVE Online CSM member it banned for supposed leaks - At the beginning of April, we covered the latest scandal to rock MMORPG EVE Online, as studio CCP Games rather publicly removed a member of the Council of Stellar Management,…

MMO Cartographer: Exploring Richard Garriott’s Shroud of the Avatar - Since my last report from the field, I have been exploring Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, a game developed by Portalarium, described as a "spiritual successor" to my very first…

Desert Oasis: A post-mortem examination of Black Desert’s defunct Shadow Arena - Last week was such an intense week for Black Desert. The community took a blow when news broke out regarding Black Desert’s second major loss in the past few months:…

Fight or Kite: First impressions of newly free-to-play Albion Online - As soon as I heard that Albion Online was going free-to-play, I knew where I was going to spend the majority of my PvP time for the next couple of…

Massively Overthinking: Is there a ‘do or die’ moment for MMOs now? - This week MOP's Eliot and I were chatting about the wild summer the MMO industry is about to have, what with a whole bunch of major titles about to drop…

Vague Patch Notes: It’s all right for MMO studios to stop trying - Let me tell you about last year's NaNoWriMo project. If you've never taken part in National Novel Writing Month, it's a great reason to push yourself as a writer, and…

Star Trek Online: Age of Discovery unveils a May 14 PC release date - The steady stream of details for Star Trek Online's latest content update has reached its logical conclusion: a release date. PC players can fly in to the newest content this…

SWG: Beyond is the latest in a long line of Star Wars Galaxies emulators - Is it rogue server week or something? Fans have now announced another privately run Star Wars Galaxies server, this one called SWG: Beyond. Longtime fans of the franchise will know that…

Another crunch-ridden game studio exposed: This time it’s Fortnite’s Epic Games - "Crunch" was surely the gaming industry word of the year in 2018, thanks to a massive backlash over horrible working conditions at some Rockstar studios working on Red Dead Redemption…

Perfect Ten: Things do prepare for ahead of Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers - Let's be real, folks, Final Fantasy XIV's third expansion is not right around the corner. You have two months until that thing is even in early access, and that's just for the people…

Black Desert’s new roadmap teases new maps and new group-based content on the way - [AL:BDO]There's big news coming out of Black Desert today, as Pearl Abyss and Kakao have dropped a roadmap of new content coming to the game "before the end of this…

BioWare delays several Anthem ‘Act 1’ features including guilds and masteries - A little under a month has gone by since BioWare's stress-inducing, crunch-heavy environment was exposed by the media, and since then the studio has struggled to bolster public perception and…

Exclusive: MMORPG Astellia Online deep-dives its Warrior and Scholar classes - Korean-born Astellia has been hovering on the horizon for the last few years of its development as Barunson E&A - the majority owner of the studio behind the game, Studio…

Today’s Fallout 76 Wild Appalachia Patch 8.5 introduces a camera, repair kits, and new complaints from fans - In its on-going rollout of Wild Appalachia, Fallout 76 brings update 8.5 to players, which features the ProSnap Deluxe Camera, basic and improved repair kits, and balances to aluminum. Besides…

Choose My Adventure: Finding the perfect group activity in RuneScape - Early on in this month's Choose My Adventure, a reader in the comments mentioned that RuneScape is the perfect game to have a CMA, and I'm inclined to agree. That…

Wisdom of Nym: Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood in review – side stories, part one - Those of you who don't remember the last time I did this particular column series (which is understandable, it was two years ago) should know that we spent a lot…

CCP’s Hilmar Petursson says EVE Online isn’t in ‘stagnation’ – it has an active playerbase of 300K - GIbiz got a monstrously huge interview with CCP Games' Hilmar Petursson thanks to the EVE Online company's presence at Reboot Develop this month - so far, we've covered how the…

1998’s Lineage finally adopts free-to-play in Korea - It's one of the oldest continually running graphical MMORPGs -- and also one of the last free-to-play holdouts in the industry. That last part will change on May 2nd when…

THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS

Massively OP Podcast Episode 218: A pretty darn good week

Battle Bards Episode 143: Rappelz

The Stream Team: Save AQ3D’s Battleon from the void attack!

The Stream Team: A dozen years of LOTRO Middle-earth merriment

The Stream Team: A Rend Reckoning

The Stream Team: Creating chaos in Path of Exile

The Stream Team: Touring Conan Exiles’ Treasures of Turan DLC

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.