Welp, we’re in the home stretch of 2019 now, folks, and if you thought that MMO studios would hunker down and ride out the biggest sales week of the year quietly, boy were you mistaken. You’d think they’d just put up their things for sale and let us succumb to the buying frenzy, but no, one MMO after another, from like MMOs like LOTRO and EVE Online and Star Trek Online to in-dev titles like Star Citizen and Chronicles of Elyria, managed to generate brand-new business model dust-ups. Good work, one and all.
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
LOTRO players denounce $50 legendary item catch-up sale - For quite a while now, one of the most contentious points between Lord of the Rings Online's community and the game itself has been the latter's legendary item system. Unwieldy,…
EVE Online’s new HyperNet Relay reintroduces gambling to New Eden - Remember way back in 2016, when CCP Games outlawed gambling in EVE Online's universe after turning a blind eye for over a decade? In the EULA tweaks from just three…
Chronicles of Elyria starts selling $75 Longest Night advent calendars - There has to be a measure of masochistic joy in stocking up account items that you can't use (yet) for a game that is not out (yet). But if this…
Desert Oasis: A first look at Black Desert’s Dark Knight’s Succession skills - The Dark Knight holds a special place in my heart when it comes to Black Desert. She was the main reason I decided to give this game a shot way back…
Vague Patch Notes: A look behind the magic at Massively Overpowered - Here we are on another Thanksgiving holiday, and as with every year, one of the big things I'm thankful for is that I've now spent a solid decade working in…
No Man’s Sky launches significant quality-of-life improvements and new features in tomorrow’s Synthesis update - Where the Beyond update in No Man's Sky changed the game, the upcoming Synthesis update will refine it. This new large-scale update for the multiplayer space survival title, which is…
Flameseeker Chronicles: Deep-diving Guild Wars 2’s Whisper in the Dark storyline - The first episode of Guild Wars 2’s new Icebrood Saga, Whisper in the Dark, has been out for a week now. MOP's Tina has already done a fantastic job covering…
The Soapbox: Cross-play, console exclusivity, and why companies won’t play nice - Let me tell you something: As the columnist who writes about Final Fantasy XIV I am so damn tired of hearing about crossplay. Seriously. Just so tired. It's exhausting. It's not because I…
WoW Factor: A brief history of allied races (and when a grind is not a grind) - All right, calm down, this is not actually going to be done in the same format as a brief history of flight, if for no other reason than the fact that…
City of Heroes: Homecoming kicks off the winter season in its latest patch - Now that the US has had its Thanksgiving, it's time to look forward to all of the fun in-game wintertime events the MMO gaming world will no doubt have in…
Crimson Desert’s lead producer talks about PvE, co-op campaigns, and trade - Our own Black Desert columnist and many of our readers have pondered aloud just what awaits players in Crimson Desert, one of several newly announced games Pearl Abyss dropped on…
Into the Super-verse: 13 text-based superhero MMOs you can play today - As part of this column covering superhero MMORPGs, we have looked at the usual suspects: MMOs of the past (Champions Online, City of Heroes, DCUO, Marvel Heroes) and those of…
Massively on the Go: Pseudo-MMOing in Pokemon Sword and Shield - So one of the big draws of the new Pokemon Sword and Shield is the open-world exploration area of the game. It's expansive: It has 4-four-player raiding, temporary housing, cooking, mini-games, sudden…
The Daily Grind: What has been your MMO gaming highlight of the year? - I love December around Massively OP because it is a great time to reflect on the journey that we have taken over the course of an entire year. Personally, I…
Inferna is a PvE-centered indie fantasy MMORPG headed to Steam Early Access on December 6 - One more to the list, eh friends? Steam Early Access is going to be getting a fresh arrival for the MMO genre in the form of Inferna, a fantasy-themed free-to-play…
MassivelyOP’s 2019 MMO swag gift guide - The Black Friday is upon us! (Angels and ministers of grace defend us!) Outside there are winter storms, flu viruses, and holiday traffic. But if you're looking for an MMO-themed…
Massively Overthinking: Gratitude for the MMO genre - Thanksgiving conveniently falls on a Thursday every year, which means it's the perfect topic for our regular Thursday Massively Overthinking roundtable. I've asked our writers what they're grateful for in…
Daybreak announces December launch dates for EverQuest’s Torment of Velious and EverQuest II’s Blood of Luclin - Classic MMO gamers have been able to preorder EverQuest and EverQuest II's big expansions for a while now, but there's one key thing they didn't know: when exactly launch day…
Perfect Ten: How to show and share gratitude for your favorite MMO - So you've found an MMO you like. You're thankful that it exists. It's fun, it caters to your personal tastes, and it may not be perfect, but at the end…
The best MMO sales of Black Friday 2019 (so far) - True story, Thanksgiving is not at all my favorite holiday, but I absolutely love the online sales that follow it, especially when I don't even have to put on real…
Google counters accusations that Stadia’s 4K quality was ‘exaggerated’ - Of all the problems early buyers expected to have with Google's Stadia, actual fraud probably didn't factor much into the list. But that's exactly what some reviewers and users alleged,…
Not So Massively: A Year of Rain is a promising RTS with a co-op focus - A Year of Rain sounds like the title of an introspective indie movie about overcoming depression. It also sounds like an accurate description of the weather in Vancouver. In reality,…
A teenage CS:GO player has developed an AI that has successfully found 14,000 cheaters - While cheaters may never prosper, they also have a tendency to proliferate if not kept in check (and even sometimes when companies do try to keep them in check). One…
Massively OP’s guide to MMO Thanksgiving 2019 - Pass the cranberry sauce, we're having mashed potatoes! Oh the turkey looks great! Thank you for loving me, thank you for being there, thank you for loving me, everyone's thankin', the…
Fallout 76 players have found a way to kill pacifists via radiation poisoning - Who would have ever thought that granting players in a sandbox game access to nuclear weaponry would be used irresponsibly? Certainly not Bethesda, which now appears to be dealing with…
MassivelyOP’s 2019 gift guide for the PC hardware aficionado - With the holidays coming up - Black Friday chief among them! - you're surely thinking about what PC upgrades will keep you entertained through the coldest months of the year…
Battleborn is shutting down for good in January 2021 - It's been about two years since Battleborn stopped receiving any updates, but at least it's still operational and playable. But not for all that much longer, it seems, as publisher…
Grim Dawn’s massive 1.1.5.0 update adds a roguelike dungeon and over 6000 item changes - The newest update to Grim Dawn is being touted in the changelog as the largest the game has ever seen, and with tweaks to over 6,000 items that appears to…
Survival shooter DEATHGARDEN announces its shutdown and goes free-to-play in the meantime - All things must die. It is the way of nature and underperforming multiplayer shooters. So it is with DEATHGARDEN, the multiplayer survival shooter/battle royale title from Behaviour Interactive according to…
An MMO character ‘worth’ $1.4M was sold in China for $552 - So here's a fun story of people being particularly... odd. Let's go with odd. Player A, hereafter referred to as "Scrooge McDuck," spends the equivalent of $1.4 million on a…
Fans hold a solemn memorial of Brad ‘Aradune’ McQuaid during a livestream - The death of developer Brad McQuaid is still being acutely felt by many in the MMO gaming community, and no more is that apparent than during a memorial livestream that…
Sales of the Carrack exploration ship appear to create a funding spike for Star Citizen - It's perhaps no surprise that this year's CitizenCon would cause a quick jump in Star Citizen funding, but it would seem that the presentation surrounding the Carrack exploration ship may…
Wisdom of Nym: What we still don’t know about Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers - Ah, the grand world of the known unknowns! We're only one patch into this particular expansion, but there's still plenty of stuff to speculate about in Final Fantasy XIV, and that's…
Persistent open-world MMO Project C gets an official name: Life Beyond - We've been covering Project C for a few years now: It's a SpatialOS open-world MMO sandbox promising “meaningful persistency,” built by by Darewise, the same company that alongside Nvizzio struggled…
Square Enix has begun issuing bans to Final Fantasy XIV dataminers - How do you feel about dataminers? If you're within the Final Fantasy XIV community, you likely know that datamining is against the terms of service. That hasn't stopped folks from…
MMO Book of Travels’ Kickstarter finishes successfully with $261K, hitting all stretch goals - It's been one small step for video game crowdfunding, but one large step for Book of Travels. The "serene" tiny online RPG ultimately raked in $261,183 by the conclusion of…
Star Trek Online’s Mudd’s Market pricing ignites a community firestorm - It sounds like a good idea on paper: a new section of the cash shop in Star Trek Online that offers items that haven't been obtainable in the game for…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 248: Saying farewell to Aradune
Battle Bards Episode 157: Chronicles of Spellborn
The Stream Team: Unlocking and playing with the plushie ram hammer in Dauntless
The Stream Team: Showing a friend a good time in Conan Exiles
The Stream Team: Rallying together to make a Railjack
The Stream Team: The further adventures of OrcElf the Bored Ranger in Kingdom Under Fire 2
The Stream Team: Sailing to AQ3D’s Yokai Island
The Stream Team: The Harbor grind in Dungeons and Dragons Online
The Stream Team: MOP’s first maps in Path of Exile
The Stream Team: Living out the Pumpkin Days (and nights, too)
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.
