Welp, we made it, we’re here, we’re now in the midst of a fourth decadal bracket of MMORPGs. Yay us! Don’t imagine for a second that the holidays meant there was no news, either; just this week, we covered possible movement on the City of Heroes front, fresh promises from Camelot Unchained, and a third stab at life for Bless Online.
We also finished up our awards, settling on Elder Scrolls Online for our MMO of the year. We’ll have a complete recap of all our end-of-the-year content and a break-down of all our awards next week, so stay tuned!
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
Neowiz takes another stab at the Bless IP with mobile MMO Bless Eternal - Will we ever find time to properly process our grief and mourn the late Bless Online? Not bloody likely, as the necromancy team at Neowiz keeps looking for new ways…
NCsoft follows up City of Heroes code copyright filing with fresh trademark application - Do you folks remember last summer when we learned that NCsoft had filed copyright documentation for the City of Heroes game code? The June revelation came just a few months…
Working As Intended: The MMOs we lost in 2019 - The good news is that our sunsetted MMO list from 2019 is shorter than in most years. The bad news, of course, is that it's not empty. The worst news…
YouTuber examines why vanilla World of Warcraft dungeons were so long - For the old and grizzled World of Warcraft vets, dungeon delves were a longer process than they are nowadays. Why was that, exactly? A video from YouTuber Hiru takes a…
Storyboard: The future of MMO roleplaying in the new decade - Here we are in a brand-new decade! (If you feel the urge to pedantically correct this, you are wrong, it's a new decade, hush up.) And at the start of…
Into the Super-verse: What superhero MMOs offer that other games don’t - When I was in high school, the Console Wars were heating up between SEGA and Nintendo. I'm afraid to report that many of my friends did not survive their tours…
Leaderboard: What’s the most vulnerable Daybreak MMO in 2020? - It's become a bit of an unhappy tradition here on MOP to take stock of Daybreak at the start of every year, due in no small part to the fact…
The Daily Grind: Will you kickstart any MMOs in 2020? - I ask you guys this every year. And every year I get the same wary replies. Everyone's sick of Kickstarter. Nobody trusts Kickstarter games. We're all still waiting on the…
Massively Overthinking: Hopes and fears for MMOs in 2020 - All right, 2019. We're done with you. We're moving on. We're in a whole new decade. We've got a brand-new year full of new things to worry about! OK, maybe that's…
See City of Titans’ Alexandria beginner zone in action - After stumbling a couple of years ago when it had hoped to hit alpha testing, City of Titans and its team are projecting confidence that forward momentum is happening with…
Star Wars comes to Star Trek Online thanks to some creative use of the character builder - Sometimes, we have to thank those who have too much free time on their hands, especially when it turns out fun things for others to take advantage of. Take, for…
Classic Guild Wars 1’s December patches are apparently still causing lag and crashes - Classic Guild Wars players know better than to look a gift horse in the mouth when it comes to patches. After getting some significant updates in 2018, the playerbase was…
Desert Oasis: Fun things to do in Black Desert in 2020 - [AL:BDO]With the new decade upon us, I think it's a good time to do some goal-setting for the upcoming decade. I might be biased here in the Desert Oasis column,…
Camelot Unchained to reveal a ‘massive, immersive experience’ this month - What will the new year bring for the long-awaited, long-brewing Camelot Unchained? You might find out sooner rather than later according to the very last post from 2019 that City…
Vague Patch Notes: How to make your corner of the MMO space more pleasant - It's 2020, people - let's do this. What do I mean by this? Unscrew our MMO living space. That one's a lot more fun to chant than last year's new…
World of Warcraft botches its third Battle for Azeroth PvP season - "Oops" is not something you want to hear from your surgeon, your kids in another room, or your MMO development team. But an "oops" is what World of Warcraft fans…
Leaderboard: What was the best new MMO or online game of 2019? - Let's be honest: The last time a brand-new MMORPG really deserved a GOTY was when Black Desert ran away with it. This is why we swapped over to giving our…
Black Desert news: Mobile’s Node War pre-season, PS4’s Altar of Blood, and PC’s content update preview - Every edition of Black Desert has something new to show off heading into 2020, whether it's the start of the Node War in Black Desert Mobile, the point defense Altar…
Ashes of Creation’s 2020 outlook includes Alpha One, castle sieges - Promising "exciting announcements" and "significant team growth" in the new year, Intrepid Studios' Steven Sharif penned a letter that attempts to wrest attention back to the upcoming Ashes of Creation.…
Hellion dev rejects YouTuber’s ‘dirty dev’ characterization despite selling abandoned game - Nobody wants to have their creative endeavors trashed and game developers certainly shouldn't be outright abused in a physical or mental sense. That said, some criticism for kicking out and…
Leaderboard: Are you onboard with the online gaming industry’s new take on sequels? - Overwatch 2 and Path of Exile 2 being announced in such close proximity, plus rumors of an Anthem reboot in the weeks and the re-announcement of Mortal Online 2, are…
Perfect Ten: The best MMO updates and expansions of 2019 - The down side of doing these columns at the end of the year every year is that there's a certain challenge of writing the introductions. The up side? They're not…
EverQuest adds a memorial for developer Brad ‘Aradune’ McQuaid - If you find yourself wandering the lands of Norrath in EverQuest, do yourself a favor and head over to East Karana. There, you may stumble across a flaming sword thrust…
The Daily Grind: Which MMOs do you want to play in 2020? - There's nothing like a new year -- and a new decade! -- to encourage one to make grand plans that may or may not actually happen. It's a whole year…
Goodbye to all the reasons we can’t have nice things in MMOs, 2019 edition - A while back, we started collecting all our cozy, comforting, positive, happy stories under the "warm fuzzies" tag. This year, we turned it into its own column, celebrating the good…
Lawful Neutral: A look back at the MMO industry’s law dramas of 2019 - It's hard to believe that 2019 is almost over. Not necessarily unwelcome, but hard to believe. 2019 has been a year in more ways than any of us wants to…
Choose My Adventure: The perfect sandbox MMORPG already exists in Project Gorgon - You know, I don’t think I’ve ever delighted in being so lost in an MMORPG before. Most of the time, being kicked out into the pasture and told to figure…
MassivelyOP’s 2019 Golden Yachties: Schlag meme of the year - MassivelyOP's not-so-serious end-of-the-year awards end today with our pick for Schlag meme of the year. For those who never dip down into the comments, just know that Schlag Sweetleaf is…
The Daily Grind: What MMO has the brightest future right now, at the end of 2019? - A few years back, we did an Overthinking on the MMO with the brightest future. It was so popular we started making it an annual thing every December. I like…
Wisdom of Nym: Yes, Final Fantasy XIV’s Empire is just plain bad - All right, let's be totally clear about something that... feels like it should already be obvious, but seems to not be. The Garlean Empire in Final Fantasy XIV? It's bad.…
Steam’s top sellers of 2019 include several MMORPGs and MMOs - Steam's top sellers list for 2019 is out, and sitting prominently among the big money makers for the digital storefront are a number of MMORPGs, MMOs, and large-scale multiplayer titles.…
Fight or Kite: Totally reasonable expectations for PvP MMORPGs in 2020 - A new year is upon us, and I am especially excited this time around. The past few calendar swap-outs have been pretty stale from an MMO point of view. There…
Shroud of the Avatar boots real-money transactions off its forums - Real-money traders, you are no longer welcome on Shroud of the Avatar's property. At least, that's the message being sent by Catnip Studios, which declared a unilateral ban on RMT…
Leaderboard: What’s the best classic MMORPG still running at the end of 2019? - We've noted before that while our awards are pretty good at identifying the big modern MMORPGs and the indie gems, it's much harder to properly reward "classic" MMOs - those…
MMO Cartographer: Reminiscing on the MMOs we toured in 2019 - It is that time of the year when retrospectives abound and people set their resolutions for the upcoming year. That seems like exactly the kind of bandwagon I'd climb onto…
Make My MMO: The biggest MMO crowdfunding news of 2019 - Welcome to a special edition of Make My MMO, Massively OP's weekly and sometimes biweekly recap of the big news in crowdfunded MMOs. Hey, you folks who are convinced that Kickstarter…
Chronicles of Elyria postpones its unsold land sales with a date still to be determined - As you may recall, Chronicles of Elyria touted that it was running a big event recently with its "Settlers of Elyria" event, which came down to selling players unsold land…
MMO Cartographer: Gamigo’s voxel MMO Trove is a blocky treasure - Trove was not entirely new to me when I decided to return to its shores for MMO Cartographer this fall. I'd toyed with it a few times back in the…
WoW Factor: A quick glance back at 2019 for World of Warcraft - So how did this year go for Blizzard Entertainment? Well... badly. You cannot have missed all of that. But it also went badly in lots of more subtle and direct…
Massively Overthinking: Our MMO resolutions for 2020 - We're succumbing to tradition this week as we're counting down the days until 2020. As we do at the end of every year, we've asked the Massively OP writers to…
Leaderboard: What was the most overrated MMO of 2019? - Yeah, this is always a fun one. We've been running an award for the most underrated MMO for years now, and we've tried to tag-team it with a poll for…
Star Citizen SOCS socks promise to revolutionize foot warming in the first quarter of 2020 - You can wear your heart on your sleeve regarding Star Citizen, but everyone kind of expects that. What you really want to do is wear your heart for the developing…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 253: Knights of the MOP roundtable
Battle Bards Episode 159: Black Desert revisited
The Stream Team: Storytime in AdventureQuest 3D
The Stream Team: Holiday train-saving in Apex Legends
The Stream Team: Hitting the Neverwinter campaign trail
The Stream Team: A new year of SWTOR Choose My Alignment adventures
The Stream Team: Ending 2019 in AdventureQuest 3D
The Stream Team: Metamorph means many more monsters in Path of Exiles
The Stream Team: A very Villagers and Heroes Christmas
The Stream Team: Flying a more fortified Warframe Railjack
The Stream Team: Celebrating more Seasons Greedings in DC Universe Online
The Stream Team: Putting the dungeon in Dungeons and Dragons Online
The Stream Team: A merry Frostval to all in AdventureQuest 3D
The Stream Team: There’s no fest like Snowfest for Christmas in Trove
The Stream Team: All I want for Astroneer is Christmas!
The Stream Team: Another year, another New Life Festival in Elder Scrolls Online
The Stream Team: Just some friendly Conan Exiles jousting
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.
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