The global pandemic continues canceling gaming events, but MMOs keep on going – some of them better than ever. Fallout 76, Guild Wars 2, EverQuest II, and DC Universe Online were all the beneficiaries of major content drops this week; Daybreak’s Holly Longdale swapped over to Blizzard; we poked our noses into upcoming sandbox MMO Fractured; and the ESRB and PEGI took a few feeble baby steps toward dealing with the lockbox problem.
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
Former EverQuest boss Holly Longdale scooped up by Blizzard to work on WoW Classic - Daybreak's Holly Longdale raised a lot of eyebrows a month ago when she announced she was departing the Darkpaw Games sub-unit and leaving behind the EverQuest and EverQuest II franchise,…
Phantasy Star Online 2 launches on PC in late May, officially leaves Xbox One beta today - If you're one of the many, many would-be Phantasy Star Online 2 fans waiting eagerly for news about the game's PC release, you have finally gotten it. The news may…
WoW Factor: Examining Shadowlands’ Shaman, Monk, and Druid ability changes - So, here's something you might find funny: My greatest struggle with this particular ongoing World of Warcraft column was deciding the best possible order to take it on. I didn't…
Into the Super-verse: Catching up with the big superhero MMOs - With the weirdness of the quarantine and how it's been impacting game development, I thought it might be a good time to take a tour around all of the different…
Lawful Neutral: Leakers, trade secrets, and lawsuits in the online gaming world - In recent years, you might have noticed a new type of lawsuit coming out of game companies, as some of the more litigation-happy studios have been suing people who leak…
Vague Patch Notes: Maintaining MMO anonymity in the age of parasocial bonding - In an author's note at the end of the novel The Dark Tower, Stephen King writes frankly that some people will not like how the novel ended or question the…
Leaderboard: Are you giving Fallout 76 a second chance? - Fallout 76 has not had the best couple of years. As MOP's Justin said in his column rounding up Bethsoft's worst flubs - and there were many - in the…
Desert Oasis: How I’m progressing through Black Desert without spending a dime - I've been playing Black Desert for quite a while, and in that time I've made a bit of cash and built up a stable of characters I'm pretty happy with.…
First Impressions: Fractured’s alpha playtest begins to put the pieces together - As we reported at the end of last week, MMORPG sandbox Fractured opened up its alpha test to all backers. With this test phase, Dynamight Studios has continued to move…
DC Universe Online’s latest Birds of Prey episode is live with gobs of new content - [AL:DCUO]Daybreak's DC Universe Online has been kicking ass and taking names lately, and it's doing it again now. Last night, the latest Birds of Prey episode swooped in. "Metropolis has…
Riot Games outlines rules for Valorant esports competition including a ‘no blood’ toggle - With Valorant all over the gaming news recently and in the minds of a fair few (judging by the number of people watching streams for a beta key), the prospect…
Massively Overthinking: MMO business models in the face of recession - MOP reader Sray posed us an interesting question this past week focused on how MMO business models interface with the global economy. "The last major worldwide recession largely ended subscription only…
Magic: Legends details the mechanics of Artifacts - In the traditional card game of Magic: The Gathering, Artifacts are special sorts of permanents that offer a variety of different effects for gameplay once you play them from your…
COVID-19: Gamescom goes digital, Star Trek Online honors medics, Raph Koster tackles pandemic denialism - Welcome back to another roundup of how MMOs and the gaming industry are handling the COVID-19 pandemic. Yesterday we reported on the news that Germany had canceled all large events…
Jukebox Heroes: Lord of the Rings Online’s unreleased soundtrack - Lord of the Rings Online's soundtrack is well-loved by many who have played the game, tying in memorable tunes to specific locations to where these songs ARE the Shire, Rivendell,…
The Daily Grind: Do you want controller support for your PC MMOs? - The fact that it looks like World of Warcraft will get some sort of controller support is a piece of news that fills me with complex emotions. In some ways,…
Perfect Ten: Sports-themed MMOs - Here's something we don't talk about much here on Massively OP: sports games. When we think of "MMOs," we tend to run right toward fantasy RPGs (or to a lesser…
World of Warcraft previews Shadowlands’ Torghast while WoW Classic goes into Phase 4 - Will Blizzard ever crack the code of engaging and replayable World of Warcraft endgame content that doesn't go stale for a long time? It's certainly going to keep on trying,…
Choose My Adventure: Hexaria is a grindy yet competent Roblox MMO - Another week, another random bit of Roblox adventuring. This time around, I wanted to see just what sort of MMOs this game's community could cobble together, and the voting chose…
Guild Wars 2’s Super Adventure Box festival is finally live (check out the new SAB raptor skin!) - [AL:GW2]Way back in 2013, Guild Wars 2 dropped an April Fools' Day patch so epic it literally won our team's award for best expansion or update that year. Yes, I'm…
Warframe of Mind: Looking back at Warframe’s lucky seventh year - In our first Warframe anniversary retrospective in 2019, we covered everything from the beginning up through the shooter's sixth birthday. For the lucky seventh birthday, we only need to look…
EverQuest II faces the Showdown at the Diaku Corral in today’s patch - Over the course of your adventures in EverQuest II you've gotten to do a lot of things, but the odds are good you haven't had the chance to tell someone…
Fallout 76’s large-scale Wastelanders update is officially live — here are the patch notes - It's been a long and oft-delayed time coming, but Fallout 76 has finally lit the fuse on the bottle rocket that is the Wastelanders update. At this point, everyone reading…
ESRB starts putting warnings about lockboxes on its game ratings - You have to imagine that a lot of video game marketers have developed facial twitches today upon the news that they will no longer be able to slip in lockboxes…
Player who claims a mobile RPG’s gacha mechanics were falsely advertised loses court case - Fair game monetization and gamer spending are topics that are on the minds of many right now, and one of the more slippery monetization schemes involves "gacha" mechanics, aka buying…
Wisdom of Nym: Final Fantasy XIV patch 5.25 and the new weapons of choice - I have to admit, part of my reaction to patch 5.25 was simple relief that finally, finally, I had something to spend Poetics on again. Overcapping on Poetics in Final…
NASCAR driver botches yet another online iRacing esports event - It would appear that NASCAR drivers are no better than the worst esports gamers among us. An iRacing esports event with NASCAR drivers -- the same sort of pandemic-inspired online…
Not So Massively: Comparing online ARPGs, from Wolcen and Diablo to Grim Dawn and Path of Exile - A while back in the Not So Massively column, I did a piece comparing the pros and cons of some of the biggest names in the realm of looter shooters.…
San Diego Comic Con is officially cancelled this year thanks to COVID-19 - It looks like the novel coronavirus has once again successfully put the kibosh on another major convention here in the US. San Diego Comic Con has officially been cancelled due…
Riot Games defends Valorant’s Vanguard security driver, offers a $100k bounty to exploit it - Last week, Riot Games unveiled that their in-development competitive FPS Valorant runs an anti-cheat process in the background of player systems, which caused no small measure of community discussion, both…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 267: Who had ‘New World delay’ on their bingo card?
The Stream Team: Participating in AQ3D’s Pirate Siege
The Stream Team: Seeing The Snitch in Dungeons and Dragons Online
The Stream Team: Birds and boxes, a SWTOR story
The Stream Team: Hold your horses and bunnies in EverQuest II
The Stream Team: World of Tanks turned nine
The Stream Team: Bouncing through Trove’s Bunfest
The Stream Team: Astroneer’s clean up event
The Stream Team: Star Trek Online honors the medical field
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.
