I thought this week was going to be all about the reveal of Elder Scrolls Online’s Greymoor chapter – who’s up for vampire vikings?! – with a dash of World of Warcraft’s Visions of N-Zoth and Guild Wars 2’s Shadows in the Ice. But apparently, everyone just wants to sit around and bicker about PvP in MMORPGs, or at least we’re all taking the opportunity thanks to New World’s brutal crackdown on FFA PvPÂ in its big revamp.
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 Elder Scrolls Online announces Greymoor chapter, Harrowstorm DLC, and Dark Heart of Skyrim - As this afternoon's community event in Vegas, ZeniMax Online Studios formally announced the latest year-long theme for The Elder Scrolls Online, The Dark Heart of Skyrim. Yes, the same one…
New World just took a hard turn away from a PvP slugfest, and hardcore PvPers are not happy - Even knowing it was slated to arrive, I was still surprised last night when Amazon Game Studios dropped New World's latest dev blog well after business hours on a Friday,…
Watch Elder Scrolls Online’s global reveal of The Dark Heart of Skyrim and 2020 content plans - [updatetop]Update[/updatetop][updatebtm]The keynote is over now - check out our full recap right here![/updatebtm] Today's the big day for The Elder Scrolls Online, as ZeniMax Online Studios takes the stage of…
The Game Archaeologist: Super-early versions of MMORPG websites - One of the absolute best things the internet ever generated has been the Internet Wayback Machine. Through this site, snapshots of millions of websites have been taken over the years…
World of Warcraft launches patch 8.3, Visions of N’Zoth, today - Who's feeling downright crazy today? It's the day for crazy in World of Warcraft with the launch of patch 8.3, Visions of N'Zoth, concluding the Battle for Azeroth story (or sequence of events,…
Cyberpunk 2077 delayed to September 17, multiplayer to 2022 as crunch debate resurges - CD Project Red has just announced that its upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 title has been delayed from its original April release date - to September 17 of this year. "We are…
Tamriel Infinium: Elder Scrolls Online’s Rich Lambert on the Dark Heart of Skyrim - [AL:ESO]At this week's live reveal of the Dark Heart of Skyrim for The Elder Scrolls Online, I had the chance to sit down with creative director Rich Lambert to talk…
WoW Factor: There is (not) much to do in World of Warcraft - Here's a fun question for you: How do you count discrete activities in World of Warcraft? It's a more complex concept than you might think. Obviously, for example, "queueing for…
Vague Patch Notes: Guild Wars 2 might be the MMO that defined the last decade - It's been about a week or so since we did our Overthinking on the best MMO of the decade, and I ultimately rattled off five titles for that one. As…
Perfect Ten: The MMOs with the most uncertain futures at the start of 2020 - This annual column always inspires a certain amount of debate, which is intentional. Outside of the office, a good chunk of that debate is usually about whether or not these…
Astellia Online plans January 30 Steam launch, teases future western content as Korean version sunsets - Raise your hand if you'd forgotten that Astellia Online wasn't already on Steam. I sure had! But Barunson is rectifying that later this month. It's just announced that the MMO's…
PWE’s new ‘MMO’ Magic Legends confirms spring beta, PC launch in 2020, console launch in 2021 - Editor's note: At 2:15 p.m. EST today, PWE sent official notice that the date given in its original press release this morning is incorrect. It has amended the statement to…
ArcheAge players score $420,000 in ancient class action suit over consumer law violations - We've been following the saga of the ArcheAge lawsuit for what seems like ages now. Back in 2015, three gamers filed a class action lawsuit against the MMO company, alleging that…
Guild Wars 2 previews Shadows in the Ice’s best features in new trailer - [AL:GW2]Here we go, folks - with the Lunar New Year festival underway in Guild Wars 2, ArenaNet is now turning its promotional attention back to the Icebrood Saga and its…
Massively Overthinking: Our favorite MMORPG bugs ever - This week's Massively Overthinking discussion topic is inspired by Crowfall's J Todd Coleman, who last fall tweeted about the time playable spiders almost became a Thing in his earlier game,…
Leaderboard: Have you ever failed MMO events on purpose – like for roleplaying’s sake? - Earlier this week, MOP's Sam Kash came into the MOP writing room cracking up over a thread on the Guild Wars 2 subreddit and the shenanigans some players can get…
Sea of Thieves’ Legends of the Sea is live – check out the new trailer and infographic - Happy patch day, me hearties. We're still doing that, right? The pirate thing? No? Awww. Welp, Legends of the Sea is live in Sea of Thieves today anyway, and it's…
Over a million people subbed to RuneScape in 2019, with ‘many millions’ more playing F2P - Ah RuneScape - the MMO everyone seems to be playing, but nobody you know. It's made our "underrated" lists repeatedly over the years while many veteran MMO players shrug at…
Desert Oasis: First impressions of Black Desert’s new Guardian class - Remember that Futurama episode where Fry, Kip, and Zaf Branbigan got stranded on a planet full of amazons and were sentenced to death by crushed pelvises? I wouldn't be surprised…
Black Desert Guardian pre-creation has begun on PC as the Dark Knight snags succession skills - It's patch day across Black Desert! Really, there are so many versions, it's almost always patch day for Black Desert. Here's what's on deck today. [AL:BDO]The big news is for…
Blizzard is not planning World of Warcraft 8.3.5, so N’Zoth is the last big thing until Shadowlands - If you had been hoping for more heritage armor, system expansion, or anything else in World of Warcraft ahead of Shadowlands... well, your hopes appear to have been dashed. A recent interview…
Path of Exile’s community fiercely debates what to do about trading - It was a quiet morning. Quiet, that is, until one Path of Exile player posted a lengthy criticism of the game's trading system to Reddit. Then it was quiet no…
Datamining offers tantalizing clue about Guild Wars 2 controller support - Ever wished you could play Guild Wars 2 from the comfort of your couch with the simplicity of a controller? That dream may one day become a reality, if a…
Wurm Online is finally getting third-person perspective toggle - The cult MMO sandbox Wurm Online is hitting 2020 at a flat run thanks to a lot of ambitious features planned for the game this year. Chief among them? An…
Guild Wars 2’s Lunar New Year festival is live with a new cape and player-designed guild emblems - [AL:GW2]The Lunar New Year is just a week and a half away, which means a bunch of MMOs are about to start in on another round of holiday events. As…
The Survivalist: My top 20 survival game goals for 2020, part the first - You might say that I like survival games. You should say it because I really, really do. Especially games that let me explore and build... it is nirvana. (Is there…
Choose My Adventure: The juggling act of Black Desert Mobile’s many advancement systems - Last week’s edition of Choose My Adventure had me genuinely impressed by how much stuff I had to manage in Black Desert Mobile, so reason would stand that playing the…
Valiance Online, still gunning for launch this year, drops a brand-new flythrough video - Let's not sugarcoat this: Valiance Online has almost been crowded out of players' vision when it comes to the City of Heroes spiritual successors. At one point it rivaled City…
ESA responds to Sony’s skipping of E3 2020, saying the show will be ‘high-energy’ - So if you missed the news due to it generally being shrug-worthy, it turns out that Sony has decided to skip out on E3 2020. This marks the second year…
Blizzard shows off the remodeled Night Elves for Warcraft III: Reforged - Warcraft III: Reforged might have missed its initial launch date of "by the end of 2019," but not by much; the game is still slated to come out on January…
The Daily Grind: Which game made the biggest contribution to killing MMORPGs in 2019? - Back in 2016, we asked our commenters to propose new awards categories for us here on MOP, and while we didn't go with this one from MOP community staple deekay…
Wisdom of Nym: The little-explained lore bits in Final Fantasy XIV - This column, in part, is in honor of a random party member who had never realized that the currency you're picking up in dungeons in Final Fantasy XIV were called…
Fallout 76 is about to start testing the NPC-populated Wastelanders update - Originally due out all the way last fall, the Wastelanders update for Fallout 76 has been a long time coming to the game. The good news is that players have…
Lost Ark Korea announces personal housing, genderlock removal, and battle royale as part of Season 2 - The Korean version of Lost Ark is already gearing up for its next content in Season 2, and there sure is a lot coming. A special event in Korea was…
Fight or Kite: Griefing! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. - Here we are at the very first Fight or Kite of the New Year and of the decade. With it, let’s discuss something that many gamers believe goes hand-in-hand with…
World of Warcraft’s Visions of N’Zoth is kind of a ‘horrific’ mess – where’s the old ‘Blizzard Polish’? - One popular World of Warcraft YouTuber is calling this past week's Visions of N'Zoth Blizzard's "buggiest patch ever" as a result of the WoW dev team being rushed, understaffed, and…
EVE Evolved: Fight or Flight is a season for change in EVE Online - January marks not just the beginning of a new year for EVE Online but also the start of a new seasonal development strategy for the 16-year-old sci-fi MMO. This winter…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 255: Girls, elementals, and other things that ruin MMOs
Battle Bards Episode 160: MMO cover songs vol. 2
The Stream Team: Warm melodies at LOTRO’s Winterstock
The Stream Team: Barging through Neverwinter’s Blackdagger Ruins
The Stream Team: Exploring Elder Scrolls Online’s The Banished Cells
The Stream Team: To the rescue in AdventureQuest 3D
The Stream Team: Path of Exile’s Rangers are really fun
The Stream Team: Paving the way through Astroneer
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.
