Star Wars The Old Republic dropped a patch this week, a quality-of-life update that makes the free-to-play experience a bit less paintful in the lead-up to the Onslaught expansion this fall. Meanwhile, we contemplated what City of Heroes 2 could’ve been, got a hard date on DCUO’s Switch port, saw Life is Feudal go free-to-play, noticed another Daybreak trademark being filed, and sighed over Fallout 76’s latest mess.
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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
The Soapbox: Hoping for Amazon to succeed where Lord of the Rings Online failed - It's not often I really get excited about an upcoming MMORPG. Partly this is because of the industry slowing down, and partly this is because I consider myself relatively hype-proof.…
Jukebox Heroes: The best of FFXIV Shadowbringers’ soundtrack - I don't see a lot of chatter about it, but from talking with some of my Final Fantasy XIV-playing friends, Stormblood was at best "OK." It was an adequate expansion…
Storyboard: Never forget that all MMO lore is made up - Let's take a trip back to the dewy slopes of June 2006, when Chris Metzen addressed the question of how the lore of the Draenei deviated from the lore that…
Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce departs the studio - When Blizzard Entertainment was created in 1991, three men were at the center of this new venture: Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham, and Frank Pearce. All three were fresh faces from…
Some Assembly Required: A Stage Reborn brings live theater to Final Fantasy XIV - There's roleplaying in MMORPGs, and then there is playing a role! We're talking pixelated actors performing live theater within a virtual world. Yes, it's a thing -- an awesome thing!…
Into the Super-verse: A possible glimpse into City of Heroes 2 - In 2010, popular video game network MTV noted that NCsoft had filed an interesting trademark for a possible City of Heroes 2. While companies file trademarks all the time without…
Life is Feudal: MMO is officially going free-to-play with bonuses for existing players - It's been a while since we checked in on the MMO version of Life is Feudal, which hit early access over a year and a half ago and has been…
DC Universe Online soars onto the Nintendo Switch on August 6 - From Metropolis to Gotham, the world of DC Universe Online will soon be available in the palm of your hand when the game comes to the Nintendo Switch this August.…
Massively Overthinking: Revisiting sheep and wolves in MMOs - One of the meta discussions we've been having here on MOP this week has centered on PvP sandbox titles like Albion Online, specifically how Albion has made serious attempts to…
A Tale in the Desert prepares for its ninth iteration - Aside from being a social/crafting MMO with absolutely no combat, A Tale in the Desert's biggest claim to fame is its sporadic reboot of the entire game. That's right, the…
Warframe of Mind: TennoGen fosters player creativity and content, store now on Steam - With TennoCon 2019 in the rearview mirror, it's time for folks to buckle down and get back to work developing more awesomeness for Warframe. Oh, I'm not talking about Digital…
A lawsuit against Jagex for muting a player is thrown out in five days - Let's tell a story about one Amro Elansari, a player of RuneScape who was muted for undisclosed reasons (so almost certainly involving his being toxic to other players). Mr. Elansari…
MMO Cartographer: Riders of Icarus is a very tame MMORPG - I have a few vices, and one of them is a mild to moderate obsession with game pets and mounts. I am pretty sure there’s a drug coming through the…
Vague Patch Notes: Datamining, leaks, unforced errors, and messaging - So now that Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers has been released, basically everyone playing the game has completely forgotten that the expansion actually prompted some notable controversy before its release. Specifically…
Torchlight Frontiers is hoping to keep you busy for a long, long time - On a recent episode of the Massively OP podcast, Bree and I both expressed how much we are looking forward to Torchlight Frontiers' release. When that day happens, we and…
Fallout 76’s latest patch hit like an A-bomb (and not in a good way) - With an improved new player experience, balance changes, and better power armor, you would think that Fallout 76's latest patch would be received warmly by the community. Well it has,…
World of Warcraft’s Classic global stress test delayed as Operation: Mechagon gets a difficulty nerf - If you were looking forward to jumping into the World of Warcraft Classic stress test next week, then I'm afraid I've got some bad news for you: Blizzard has announced…
Daybreak filed for yet another studio trademark just a week ago - Last week, we covered some odd happenings over at the MMORPG company formerly known as SOE and now known as Daybreak, and today we've got a few more to add…
Champions Online’s new serial story continues with a city-wide search - In this, the bizarro timeline of the real world where Champions Online actually produces new playable content on a weekly basis, Cryptic pushed out the second part of the superhero…
Desert Oasis: Taking a swing with Black Desert’s Tamer and her bō staff - When I first started playing Black Desert, it was because I wanted to play a Dark Knight. From her animations, armors, and that sweet giant knife of hers, the kriegsmesser.…
Perfect Ten: How Final Fantasy XI shaped my MMO preferences forever - Your first experience with something has an outsized importance. This feels like one of those statements people really want to argue with sometimes but is also more or less undeniable.…
Villagers & Heroes’ massive A Tale of Earth and Sea expansion launches Shamans and much more today - Indie MMORPG Villagers & Heroes has officially launched its summer expansion, and if you're a fan of underrated and under-the-radar MMOs, this is one you should most definitely check out.…
Choose My Adventure: The ‘hard mode’ of City of Heroes in Going Rogue - Disaster! Our plucky Praetorian has plunged into a pit of perilous despair! The challenges of this bold new world are mounting, and the pint-sized protector of the people has run…
Anthem players get excited for Cataclysm precursor event that turns out to be a bug - Following its delay back in April and a month-long stint in testing, Anthem's long-awaited Cataclysm event finally appeared to be ramping up in the live game, but players' excitement over…
Star Wars The Old Republic’s gives love to non-subbers in today’s update - It's a big day for Star Wars The Old Republic - well, maybe a medium day. Though today's patch comes emblazoned with the forgettable 5.10.4 moniker, the update itself is…
Caravan Stories delays its PlayStation 4 launch - You know what? We spoke too soon. What looked like an imminent launch for the cute-looking but largely overlooked Caravan Stories is going to turn into a longer wait than…
For Science: New longitudinal study demonstrates no link between video games and aggression - It seems we have another one of these papers every few months, and each time we cover them we get comments and tweets that amount to "duh, we knew that,"…
Wisdom of Nym: Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers’ balance issues ahead of the first patch - So, here's the genesis of this particular column: Originally, my plan was to actually just talk about story beats from Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers that wind up raising questions that…
Fight or Kite: Albion Online’s Percival update is for the solo players out there - This week we saw a nice patch released for the world of Albion Online with its Percival update. It’s largely a general quality-of-life update to the game, but one that…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 229: Adventures in Albion Online
The Stream Team: Listen to a little of Lord of the Rings Online’s annual Weatherstock
The Stream Team: Earn a Conan Exiles DLC by entering a tiny house building contest
The Stream Team: Unraveling the mystery of AQ3D’s Arcangrove Tower
The Stream Team: Happy second birthday, Albion Online!
The Stream Team: Taking the Taris datacrons in SWTOR
The Stream Team: A look at Villagers & Heroes’ big summer expansion
The Stream Team: Audience with Path of Exile’s Brine King
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.
