Lord of the Rings Online put a capstone on the Black Book of Mordor storyline this past week with the launch of its Minas Morgul expansion. There was even a trailer, and it wasn’t even bad!
Meanwhile, we got a peek at Pearl Abyss’ upcoming trio of MMOs, previewed Ship of Heroes, and recapped the entire BlizzCon experience, complete with detailed thoughts on WoW’s Shadowlands – an expansion that only feels more urgently needed following Activision-Blizzard’s good news/bad news quarterly financials.
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
Activision-Blizzard Q3 2019: Revenues sink for the third quarter in a row - Activision-Blizzard has not had the best year. In February, the company saw record-high revenues and promptly laid off 800 employees, leading to widespread condemnation. In May, we confirmed the company's…
WoW Factor: Getting hyped for World of Warcraft’s Shadowlands - That title up there isn't sarcasm, folks. I want to actually get hyped up about the next World of Warcraft expansion and talk about all of the good things that…
WoW Factor: The big questions we still have about World of Warcraft Shadowlands - Remember just yesterday when I was all like, "Let's get hyped for Shadowlands, yo!" Well, here's the thing. As much as I'm genuinely excited for the next World of Warcraft expansion,…
Tamriel Infinium: Our biggest Elder Scrolls Online pet peeves - This week, fellow Massively OP writer Justin published a post on his personal blog detailing a pet peeve with his favorite MMO. I find it interesting that even with our…
Lord of the Rings Online’s Minas Morgul expansion launches today - It might be the most subdued Lord of the Rings Online expansion release to date, but Minas Morgul isn't about spectacle and glamour anyway. Today's launch brings players back to…
Red Dead Redemption 2 and Red Dead Online are officially live for PC - Red Dead Redemption 2's PC launch is officially upon us as Rockstar opened the gates as of 8 a.m. EST this morning - and yep, that also means Red Dead Online's…
Pearl Abyss announces three new MMOs: Crimson Desert, Plan 8, and DokeV - Well, it may have been a little bit spoilered by leaks around the internet, but it's official now: Pearl Abyss has just formally announced three of the games it's currently…
Into the Super-verse: Ship of Heroes’ character creator is bare-bones yet still engaging - Every once in a while, Hollywood releases a pair of movies from different studios at the same time that cover, more or less, the same subject. It's always a bizarre…
Overwatch’s Jeff Kaplan thinks Blizzard’s Blitzchung punishment was too harsh - Last week, it was players, game industry leaders, and congress against Blizzard in the matter of Hearthstone player Blitzchung's sentencing over pro-Hong Kong statements. Now, it's Blizz v. Blizz, as…
A gamer has lovingly recreated Beavis and Butt-Head in Star Trek Online - Space. The final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Dumbass. It's five-year mission: To find T.P. for its bunghole. To ruthlessly mock music videos. To stupidly go where…
WAPO says Activision-Blizzard execs profited from dodgy but legal stock sale - Yesterday we covered Activision-Blizzard's third quarter financial results, which were... not good. While WoW Classic drove a subscription spike and saw Blizzard's MAUs finally rise by 1M, the company on…
EVE Online Senior Community Manager CCP Falcon departs CCP Games - It's safe to say that EVE Online hasn't had the smoothest history of dealing with its playerbase throughout the game's 16-year life, having endured high-profile scandals and periods of intense…
Massively Overthinking: The best and worst of BlizzCon 2019 - BlizzCon 2019 is behind us, finally, and we're winding down our coverage and trying to put a capstone on the experience. In this week's Massively Overthinking, we're polling our writers…
Fallout 1st subscribers have formed a clan of aristocrats to perpetrate Fallout 76 class warfare - Whether the reports of Fallout 1st players being harassed in Fallout 76 are highly fabricated or not, a large cluster of Fallout 1st subscribers have taken the narrative idea of…
Final Fantasy XIV’s patch 5.11 arrives on November 12th - Another patch is coming, Final Fantasy XIV fans! It's been two weeks, you've had enough time to get everything out of patch 5.1, right? Probably not, but patch 5.11 is adding…
Riot swears its Legends of Runeterra CCG won’t be pay-to-win - It's easy to assume that Legends of Runeterra, the digital CCG from the League of Legends universe, would be just chock-full of "surprise mechanics" especially considering Tencent's ownership of Riot…
Bless Unleashed has officially entered open beta on Xbox One - Bless Unleashed is journeying into open beta on Xbox One today, and it's not without baggage. The game is a Neowiz/Round 8 Studio collab being published by Bandai Namco expressly for…
China is really adding that youth gaming curfew and block on sex and gore in games - Sometimes it's easy to forget that gamers over in China have it very different than we do in the west. If you need a reminder to this effect, then how…
US politician shades Blizzard over World of Warcraft toxicity - Last week, the gaming world was a tad busy running Halloween events and watching BlizzCon, so it passed almost without notice that a US politician from Anaheim, California, home of…
Vague Patch Notes: Ethics, PR stunts, and the BlizzCon apology - Are you all really tired of talking about ethics and Blizzard in the same sentence? I am too, but a large part of that is because I really thought I'd…
Diablo IV’s developers are hoping to get crossplay working for the upcoming Blizzard title - You may or may not think that Diablo IV is going in the right direction overall (our Not So Massively columnist isn't a fan thus far), but this is a point…
Desert Oasis: Discerning the best purchases in Black Desert’s cash shop - I've always been someone who goes against the grain, and MMOs are no exception. Part of the reason I enjoy Black Desert so much is that it goes against the definition…
Hyperspace Beacon: How SWTOR added two Onslaught stories (but wrote only one) - Star Wars: The Old Republic prides itself on being a game with choices that matter. Fundamentally, one of the biggest choices a player can make in the game is the…
WoW Factor: Battle for Azeroth was a complete waste of time - Well, dear readers, I was totally wrong. All of you predicting that this expansion was a waste of time were right and I was wrong. Long-time readers know that I…
Choose My Adventure: An intriguing and frustrating start in Citadel Forged with Fire - This one’s going to be a doozy, I can already tell. My first arrival to Citadel: Forged with Fire was a bumpy, rough, unpleasant one. At the same time, however,…
Not So Massively: Diablo IV is going in all the wrong directions - I remain torn on whether to forgive Blizzard for its "Hong Kong liberation" fiasco. J. Allen Brack has already contradicted his own apology, but on the other hand allowing so…
The Daily Grind: Are you bummed about the faction divide in WoW Shadowlands? - During the World of Warcraft Q&A panel this past weekend, Blizzard confirmed that it's not planning on dropping any walls between the factions to allow Alliance and Horde to play…
BlizzCon 2019: WarCraft 3 Reforged previews visual updates, gameplay features, and map tools - With all of the things whirring around BlizzCon this year, perhaps some games got lost in the shuffle, like WarCraft 3 Reforged. Just in case other things drew your attention…
BlizzCon 2019: Jeff Kaplan hopes Overwatch 2 will change how game sequels work - If you're thinking of Overwatch 2 as basically DLC with new PvE modes and some tweaked character models, that's understandable; while the sequel has no release date or pricing announced yet,…
Fight or Kite: PvP games to play if you’re still boycotting Blizzard - The past couple of weeks in the land of Blizzard have made for a wild ride. Some of us have extremely strong feelings and emotions regarding Blizzard and its handling…
BlizzCon 2019: When Blizzard prayed for rain and got a drizzle - So we all knew that this year's BlizzCon needed to be bigger than last year's BlizzCon. That was, on one level, not a high bar to clear; accomplishing that in…
BlizzCon 2019: Why World of Warcraft: Shadowlands isn’t adding a new class - If you were wondering why World of Warcraft wasn't adding a new class with its upcoming Shadowlands expansion, you are definitely not alone. After all, it feels like time for…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 245: BlizzContrite
The Stream Team: Celebrating EverQuest II’s 15 birthday with a dragon attack!
The Stream Team: Which way to Elder Scrolls Online’s Witches Festival?
The Stream Team: Testing Ship of Heroes’ character creation closed beta with Heroic Games
The Stream Team: The truth of Neverwinter’s Masquerade of Liars
The Stream Team: Culling King Petryph in SWTOR
The Stream Team: Racing against time in Path of Exile
The Stream Team: A first look at City of Titans’ character creator
The Stream Team: Trick-or-treating in Lord of the Rings Online
The Stream Team: Shadow’s Eve shenanigans in Trove
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.
