It’s been a week, fam. The MMORPG genre weathered one of its worst tragedies, losing two developers in the span of just a few days: Matt McDonald and Brad McQuaid. McDonald served as an MMO industry artist and animator since the dawn of the genre and was working on a secret game at Amazon, while McQuaid helmed multiple classic MMOs and was working on Pantheon. Both will be deeply missed.
Meanwhile, this weekend has been the battle of the sci-fi MMOs in the UK, as EVE Online held its meet and Aether Wars event at EVE London and Star Citizen previewed its upcoming content at CitizenCon. Don’t miss our interview with CIG from before the con either.
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
Veteran MMORPG developer Brad McQuaid has passed away - I'm sorry to report another MMORPG genre obituary tonight: It's just been announced that veteran MMORPG developer Brad McQuaid has died. McQuaid was probably best known for his stewardship of…
Remembering the life and work of legendary MMO designer Brad ‘Aradune’ McQuaid - When the news hit last night, it brought everything to a screeching halt in the Massively OP office: At the age of 51, veteran MMORPG designer Brad McQuaid had died.…
CitizenCon 2019: Star Citizen previews alpha 3.8, details Theatres of War, teases next star system - While the opening beats of Star Citizen's CitizenCon event may have started with some disappointment, the remainder of the event had lots of things for fans of the space sandbox…
CitizenCon 2019: Star Citizen keynote kicks off Carrack delay and community disappointment - The start of Star Citizen's CitizenCon convention appears to have arrived with a bit of a thud, if the community temperature is any indication. During the keynote presentation, players got…
Interview: CIG’s Jake Muehle on the player economy and doing crimes in the Star Citizen universe - We're zooming on toward CitizenCon tomorrow, when Cloud Imperium will deliver its annual live showcase of the state of Star Citizen - and drop the requisite tantalizing nuggets that tease…
EVE Online developers will soon be allowed to… play EVE Online - EVE Online's developers have historically had to keep the community at arms length to avoid inadvertently influencing the player-run sandbox. After the 2007 t20 scandal that revealed a developer had…
Flameseeker Chronicles: First impressions of Guild Wars 2’s Whisper in the Dark - ArenaNet has just dropped the first full installment of Guild Wars 2's the Icebrood Saga after a strong start with its prologue, and I'm ready to guide you through my…
Activision-Blizzard’s Bobby Kotick downplays the role of politics in games - Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick clearly doesn't fear the Blizzard boycott that is still technically ongoing following Blizzard's October decision to penalize a Hearthstone esports star and multiple other casters and…
EVE Evolved: Inside Hadean’s EVE Online record-breaking battle attempt - If EVE Online is known for one thing (apart from massive scams and online heists), it's the truly massive PvP battles that have taken place in its sandbox over the…
Diablo III goes on a killstreak with Season 19, now live - With quite a ways to go until Diablo IV hits the scene, Diablo III will need to feed the insatiable hunger for loot piñatas for the foreseeable future. And while…
MMO Business Roundup: Amazon, gaming toxicity research, Blizzard’s court victory, and why people love Mike Morhaime - Business business business! We're back for another speedy Friday afternoon roundup of some MMO and games industry business news. Amazon's next big thing We're not sure why why anyone would…
Naoki Yoshida hopes to have Final Fantasy XIV on the PlayStation 5 - Let's get one thing out of the way right away: At this point, there's no confirmation that Final Fantasy XIV will be available on the PlayStation 5, which makes sense…
Lawful Neutral: When Marvel sued NCsoft over City of Heroes - One of the biggest MMORPG genre stories over the last year has been the ongoing saga/drama around the bizarre but very much welcomed rebirth of City of Heroes. If our…
Vague Patch Notes: Sub-optimal play vs. just plain bad play in MMORPGs - Something we need to start reckoning with when it comes to MMOs is the fact that it really is a problem when you're playing badly in group content. This is…
Black Desert PC teases its next class and Black Desert Mobile KR is adding the Mystic - It's all about classes in this bundle of Black Desert news, which might cause some to roll their eyes, but both additions should be impressive ones. At least if you…
WoW Factor: Speculating on Shadowlands’ release date using math - Gosh, I love doing these math columns. Not just because I enjoy math, although that's definitely a part of it; there's something so satisfying about having the numbers line up.…
Massively Overthinking: What MMO were you hoping to hear much more about this year? - Going through our coverage of 2019's MMOs, I realized there are a bunch of games that have previously been on our "anticipated" lists that didn't do a whole lot of…
Reign of Darkness is a new grimdark hardcore MMORPG now in early access - If you're more of a hardcore MMO player and don't mind things like "solo developer" and "early access," take a peek at Reign of Darkness, which just launched on Steam…
Mad World’s dev team finally explains its recent radio silence - Things have been radio silent regarding the development of MMOARPG Mad World, with the most recent news being that Netmarble will be publishing it. But what about the game devs?…
Elite Dangerous’ big bug-fixing update lands in January, with betas starting next week - Remember back in October, when Frontier announced that it was listening to player feedback and bumping off Elite Dangerous' big December content update - the one with fleet carriers -…
ExileCon 2019: MassivelyOP’s hands-on with Path of Exile 2 - Ever since Path of Exile 2 was revealed at ExileCon 2019, the hype has been real. Seven brand-new story Acts? Improved skill gem system? Shapeshifting?! I want, I want! The…
Lord of the Rings Online says it has ‘a good 20 years’ of content left - Lord of the Rings Online players looking for an inside scoop are in for a treat today, as Destructoid visited Standing Stone Games' offices and wrote up a pair of…
Wild Terra devs announce Wild Terra 2, now open for crowdfunding - Did you notice that updates for PvP MMO sandbox Wild Terra had slowed down? We did, but we assumed the game was just reaching the end of funding or development.…
The Daily Grind: What’s your most treasured EverQuest or Vanguard memory? - EverQuest was not my first MMORPG, but it's certainly one that shaped me profoundly. While I look back and grumble at the antique design mechanics and annoyances and drama, I'm…
Guild Wars 2 admits new fractals, raids, and even hairstyles are many months away - As we're mulling over our own impressions of Guild Wars 2's latest content release, Whisper in the Dark, the players who've likely already finished it up are back to Reddit,…
Perfect Ten: When MMO lore is at odds with the game - Lore is made up. We all know that. People who write the lore for games are not doing research into the real story and then letting us know how these…
Leaderboard: Are you still playing WoW Classic? - On today's MassivelyOP podcast, Justin and I briefly discuss WoW Classic and how quiet the buzz around it's gotten lately. It actually irks me that Blizzard's fumble with the Bliztchung fiasco…
Fallout 76’s latest patch focuses on bugs, but probably not the ones you wanted fixed - It's a testament to how messy this year has been for Fallout 76 that I see patch notes on Twitter and cringe, hoping as I click on the link that…
MMO Burnout: Exploring EA’s new Star Wars title, Jedi Fallen Order - It’s impossible to understate how much cultural influence Star Wars had on kids born in the ’70s. One of my first movie-going memories includes a drive-in theater showing the original…
BioWare’s former general manager discusses the performance and limitations of the Frostbite engine - You may or may not blame the woes of Anthem on the engine it's built upon, and odds are that's probably not the cause of every single issue. But former general…
Google Stadia’s launch day might have arrived, but the future of cloud gaming hasn’t - For several years now, various companies have tried to attain the holy grail that is smooth cloud-based game streaming. For several years now, it has been one disappointment after another.…
Fight or Kite: MMORPG PvP is about competition, not combat - Over the last month, Eliot has written a Daily Grind and Perfect Ten that really got me thinking about what PvP truly is. He mentions how PvP is so much…
Wisdom of Nym: Final Fantasy XIV’s Ishgard restoration after the first phase - The biggest thing that disappointed me about the Ishgard restoration in Final Fantasy XIV was when it was clarified pretty early on that we were going to be rebuilding the…
WildStar’s Nexus Forever emulator previews a mostly functional housing system - Sure, WildStar had some endgame things like high-level Adventures, dungeons, and raids, but for many players (self included), the real endgame was housing. So imagine my delight when I learned…
Gamigo tells MMO players ‘the development of RIFT hasn’t stopped’ - It's been a nail-biting year for RIFT players following the collapse of Trion Worlds and the sale of the game over to Gamigo. There's a palpable fear that the new…
Torchlight Frontiers isn’t going to make its original 2019 release window - With the end of the year rapidly approaching, it is probably no surprise that Torchlight Frontiers isn't going to make its earlier projected 2019 release. After all, the game is…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 247: Shopping for MMO guilds
The Stream Team: Playing with some new toys in the Star Citizen free fly event
The Stream Team: Survival Saturday in Citadel Forged with Fire
The Stream Team: A return to the anime brawler Kritika:REBOOT
The Stream Team: Dancing through some dailies in Final Fantasy XIV
The Stream Team: An opening look at Kingdom Under Fire 2
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.
