The week or two before E3 is usually dodgy: Sometimes, studios hold all their news for the show. Other times, they’re in a rush to get everything out ahead of time. It’s been a bit of the latter this year, as we got big announcements from Black Desert (new expansion! new class) and Elder Scrolls Online (13.5 registered players!). Plus, Path of Exile and Elder Scrolls Online launched big expansions, Google Stadia dropped pricing info, and Bless Online is calling it quits. Plus, we’re expecting more ESO goodies tonight from BE3.
Finally, we’d like to thank MOP reader François, who whipped up this gorgeous MOP logo in honor of Pride.
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
Bless Online’s western version will sunset on September 9 - Yesterday, we covered the news that Bless Online was sunsetting in Japan, leading many of us to wonder whether the Steam version live in the west for the last year…
Elder Scrolls Online soars to 13.5M lifetime players - That's a whole lot of cats rolled, urns broken, and pockets picked. Elder Scrolls Online has pushed past 13.5 million accumulated players since its launch (not including trial users), USGamer…
E3 2019: Black Desert announces Great Expedition expansion and adorable Shai class - Black Desert brought the good stuff to fan con Heidel Ball this weekend thanks to a slew of announcements about new content inbound for the MMORPG. [AL:BDO]First, Pearl Abyss revealed…
Elder Scrolls Online’s Elsweyr campaign is officially launched with its new trailer - After two weeks of early access while PC players got to explore The Elder Scrolls Online's Elsweyr, roll all the cat people, and be heckled by guards over their noobie Necros,…
Path of Exile’s Legion league is now live and launched – and hitting record concurrency - [AL:POE]Here's the bad news: Path of Exile is offline for the next three hours. But there's good news too, and that's that when the game is back up at 4…
Google reveals Stadia pricing, release window, and games – including Elder Scrolls Online and Baldur’s Gate 3 - Back in March (which somehow feels like a hundred years ago?), Google announced Google Stadia - not a console but a platform that will run even the most graphics-intense PC…
Into the Super-verse: Why didn’t Champions Online do better? - A while back I was flipping through the backlog of my personal gaming blog, looking at the history of my gaming trends, particularly in regard to City of Heroes. One…
Star Citizen’s alpha 3.5.1 is live as CIG seeks feedback on ship customization pricing - Ship customization rolled out to PTU testers this week as part of Star Citizen's alpha 3.5.1, but CIG didn't waste much time pushing it live for more backers Wednesday. Worth…
One of City of Heroes’ rogue servers, Reborn/Pleiades, was just shut down by its operator - Bad news for a sliver of the the City of Heroes rogue server community tonight: The Reddit-backed Reborn server known as Pleiades has apparently shut down abruptly over what has…
New Star Wars Galaxies rogue server Sunrunner 2 blends pre-NGE and post-NGE content - So here's the thing about Star Wars Galaxies: The people who tell you NGE stunk are right. When it launched in 2005, it was abysmal, and SOE deserves every bit…
Worlds Adrift is launching one last patch and character wipe before it sunsets in July - Among the sadder bits of news we've covered in the last few weeks - maybe even the whole spring season - was the news that Worlds Adrift is planning a…
Leaderboard: Are you all-in for Google Stadia? - When Google first announced Stadia this past spring, promising it would "revolutionize" the industry, our readers were skeptical. And now that we know much more about it, including the price…
Vague Patch Notes: The curious case of the esports bubble - I've been thinking a lot about esports lately. This is not actually something IÂ like to think about, mind you; my general attitude toward esports has been the same as my…
Star Trek Online promises next year’s story arc will ‘change the face of the game’ - [AL:STO]What will next year bring for Star Trek Online? We don't know just yet, but according to a recent interview with lead designer Al Rivera on the Priority One podcast, we…
WildStar’s Nexus Forever emulator shares a slice of progress - Could a WildStar emulator be closer to reality than we previously thought? Back in May, we reported that a community project known as "Nexus Forever" had been taking the various…
Massively Overthinking: Does the MMO genre have too many games for its own good? - Last month I saw a video from YouTuber Josh Strife Hayes with an eyebrow-raiser of a thesis: He essentially argues that we have too many MMOs - that a flooded…
Hyperspace Beacon: Thoughts on SWTOR’s Dantooine Incursion update - Tuesday, Star Wars: The Old Republic released a new event update called the Dantooine Incursion. I played through the questlines on the PTS, then I played through them twice again…
Interview: Astellia’s westernization covers everything from monetization and VO to dodging and grouping - It seems as if every time we write about incoming MMORPG Astellia, confusion over its guiding principles dominates the ensuing discussion. One of those guiding principles has revolved around the…
Massively on the Go: Exploring Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge augmented reality game - I wasn't expecting to be very excited about the new Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge until I read there'd be an augmented reality game mixed in. Don't get me wrong, I love Star…
Destiny 2 is going free-to-play as Destiny 2: New Light as Bungie confirms Steam launch and cross-save - (This article has been updated since publication; updates are at the end, and the original is as follows.) In what at least appears to be an unintentional goof, Engadget, where…
Blizzard cans another secret game after two years of development, this one a StarCraft shooter - Add another game to Blizzard's development graveyard. According to Gamespot, the World of Warcraft studio decided to cancel an unannounced game project that has been in the works for two…
Desert Oasis: Comparing Black Desert and Blade & Soul’s design philosophies - One of my favorite MMO stories is how I got into Black Desert in the first place. It was right after I tried out Final Fantasy XIV’s Eureka. I was…
Perfect Ten: SNES games that would have made for amazing MMORPGs - I think many of us hold a fond nostalgic torch for a specific console or computer that meant a lot to us growing up, and for me, that was the…
Fallout 76 project lead argues that the repair kits aren’t pay-to-win… as long as you’re not competing with anyone - Before the launch of Fallout 76 the promise was that the game's cash shop would contain only cosmetic options and nothing that actually affected gameplay. You know, the standard "no pay-to-win"…
WoW Classic’s test server raises level cap and reopens Arathi Basin - After the fourth or fifth million battle over the same tiny swath of farmland, the question of "is this truly worth the bloodshed?" comes to mind. Apparently not, because WoW…
Guild Wars 2 is launching the Key of Ahdashim raid on June 11 – here’s the trailer - [AL:GW2]Guild Wars 2 is kicking off the summer in a big way, especially for raiders: It's launching The Key of Ahdashim next week on June 11th. "The raid takes place…
Choose My Adventure: A debriefing for Star Wars The Old Republic - We're ending our run in SWTOR with a roleplay sendoff as we prepare to head into the next game you voted for in Choose My Adventure: TERA.
New World’s always-on test phase comes to a close as Amazon posts alpha infographic - A month ago, Amazon Game Studios told testers of its upcoming MMORPG survival sandbox New World that it was pulling down the always-on alpha on June 3rd, and it's now…
Fight or Kite: First impressions of Nexon’s new multiplayer shooter Rocket Arena - Nexon's new crossplatform multiplayer shooter Rocket Arena came out of nowhere last month and surprised everyone with a closed beta this past week. It's a twitchy 3v3 FPS arena game…
City of Heroes: Homecoming hit 100K players as another donation round funds - Just in time for its 100,000th player registration, the City of Heroes rogue server Homecoming team posted up a second donation-drive, raising just under $8000 from 302 donors in less…
Todd Howard says he expected Fallout 76 to generate ‘very well-deserved criticism’ - Oh, Fallout 76. Just when it seemed like maybe we could all finally move on from the game's disastrous launch, Todd Howard's given a video interview to IGN in which…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 223: Starbase Adrift
The Stream Team: Will Conan Exiles’ underwater dungeon go swimmingly?
The Stream Team: My first melee in honor of Path of Exile’s Legion launch
The Stream Team: Double your dose of adorable with MapleStory 2’s expansion
The Stream Team: Watch and win a copy of Elder Scrolls Online’s Elsweyr
The Stream Team: It’s time for fun and sun in AdventureQuest 3D
The Stream Team: The second half of Warframe’s The Second Dream
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.
