I mean you can try, but you can’t actually do it right now. It’s calling you like the ring calls Boromir, but you’re Gimli and it destroys your axe when you try to do anything to it. I… just want to play LOTRO.
And yet SSG’s five days of troubles are just one topic of note this week for MMO players. WoW dived into Shadowlands’ beta, Nexon continued its long string of sunsets and layoffs, No Man’s Sky’s Desolation went live, Elder Scrolls Online’s Stonethorn got a launch date, and Destiny 2 delayed Beyond Light. And hey, Skull and Bones isn’t dead!
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 Soapbox: Where does WoW need to go beyond Shadowlands? - This expansion hype cycle, I've heard more about how to customize your character and less about raids than any other WoW expansion in recent memory, and I can't see that…
Vague Patch Notes: New World delays to add the game into the game - All right. Someone has to ask it, and it doesn't need to be me but it's still going to be me because I feel like it: Amazon Game Studios, seriously,…
Elder Scrolls Online’s Stonethorn DLC launches August 24 for PC, September 1 for console - Elder Scrolls Online is apparently not wasting any time when it comes to its Stonethorn cadence. After announcing the new DLC last Thursday, it's already pushed it to the PTS…
Into the Super-verse: Seven tips for designing amazing MMO superhero costumes - While we all know that the real endgame in any MMORPG is fashion, superhero titles take this much further than the rest of the field. Your costume in a superhero…
Project Gorgon adds a new animal form [update] - Project Gorgon is calling it -- the end of beta, that is. Coupled with a July 16th patch notice was the announcement that the beta phase of the indie fantasy…
LOTRO players postpone Weatherstock due to unstable servers - If anything, Lord of the Rings Online's server issues worsened as this week progressed. The problems, which initially seemed isolated to a small handful of game worlds, started this past…
Albion Online celebrates three years online and spring playerbase peaks - Remember 2017? It wasn't great, but anything looks good compared to 2020, right? It was also when Albion Online launched. No, not the Steam launch. No, not the free-to-play launch.…
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands has officially moved into its beta testing phase - The bells have tolled, the signal fires have been lit, and the time is upon us: World of Warcraft: Shadowlands is now officially in beta. It's worth noting for any…
Nexon has shut down its California studio, canceling at least one PC title - Nexon's main western studio is no more, as the gaming giant closed down its Irvine location this week and canceled the projects that teams were working on there. GamesIndustry estimates…
Destiny 2’s Beyond Light expansion is delayed from September to November 10 - Remember about five weeks ago when Bungie announced that it was working on three additional expansions for Destiny 2, the first of which would be Beyond Light, launching September 22nd?…
Massively Overthinking: Has the pandemic changed your gaming habits? - There was a popular Medium piece floating around last week about how some people are finding refuge in gaming during the still-raging COVID-19 pandemic. That's not news, of course: When…
No Man’s Sky Desolation is live, sending players to explore spooky derelict ships - No Man's Sky's Desolation update 2.6 is live today, and where do we even begin? The patch notes are short, but there's a ton packed in here: haunted derelict freighters…
Games devs discuss how to make games for players 55 and older - Games can (and should) be for everyone, regardless of things like gender identity, race, or even age. That said, there are certain challenges to making a game for older players,…
Red Dead Online players protest content drought by dressing up like clowns - In what is probably both the most wholesome and strangest protest in recent memory, the players of Red Dead Online have banded together to call out developer Rockstar's lack of…
Lawful Neutral: No really, who owns Jagex and RuneScape? - RuneScape is one of those games that always seems to fly under my radar. It's not intentional, and I don't have anything especially against the game, but I've never played…
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands is trying to move away from ‘anything that feels like it might be a grind’ - You've heard it from the World of Warcraft development team over and over: Anima for your covenants in Shadowlands will not be a grind. A recent interview with production director…
Perfect Ten: Classic alt challenges for MMOs - When you start up your first character in a new MMO, it's all fresh and novel. But if you're the sort of tedious weirdo who makes a lot of alts…
Tencent edges out Sony in Leyou Technologies buyout negotiations - A week or two ago, we covered the especially-amusing-to-MMO-fans news that Sony was gunning to buy up Leyou, the Chinese holding company that both owns the majority of Warframe's Digital…
Astellia Online heads to Avalon with its latest update - The future has been revealed for Astellia Online, and that future is contained in one word: Avalon. The next big content update will take players back to this magical place,…
Choose My Adventure: Exploring the Caves of Chaos in Dungeons and Dragons Online - I’ve heard you loud and clear, Dungeons and Dragons Online friends. There were a number of comments on last week’s column espousing the virtues of the Keep on the Borderlands…
World of Warcraft: Shadows Rising is a solid book stuck in an uncomfortable midspace - My long-standing policy for the prequel novels for World of Warcraft expansions has been to not read them. We've gotten these things for a long while, with Cataclysm being the…
Ubisoft’s Skull & Bones is supposedly rebooting as a live-service title after years of delays - The waters surrounding Ubisoft's long-delayed pirate title are starting to stir once more. After more than a year since last hearing any movement on Skull & Bones, VGC is reporting…
Tencent now completely owns Funcom, purveyor of Conan Exiles and Secret World Legends - Dune, Conan Exiles, Secret World Legends, Age of Conan... all of these properties and more are now directly under the thumb of China's Tencent. Funcom announced that this past spring,…
Previewing Dual Universe’s space PvP, construction, looting, and death - It's no secret that my favorite aspect of Dual Universe is the opportunity for creativity. Bring on that voxel building! Oh the hours I'll spend mining and shaping and crafting.…
The Daily Grind: Should MMOs charge subs for beta? - Dual Universe is not the first MMORPG to charge a sub for a beta - let me just state that upfront. So today's Daily Grind isn't meant as a referendum…
Lost Ark kills the gender lock, adds the Scouter, and preps for global release - Momentum is picking up for the long-long-awaited Lost Ark, which just began its closed beta (in Japan). A Redditor reported that the beta patch included some significant changes, such as…
Players in WoW Classic have defeated Onyxia without wearing anything at all - Who says you can't make your own fun in a themepark? That's just what one raid group did in WoW Classic, electing to take on Onyxia with a fully naked…
The Survivalist: Astroneer adds automation (and it’s awesome) - Astroneer is already an awesome game. Even as a survival game, it is my go-to for chill fun. It scratches the mega harvesting or terraforming itch like no other --…
Former ArenaNet founder and former Riot Games dev get $5.7M for their startup studio One More Game - What can you do with $5.7 million? Apparently, beef up your own game studio. Patrick Wyatt, a former founder of ArenaNet and En Masse Entertainment, and Jamie Winsor, a former…
Wisdom of Nym: What to do in Final Fantasy XIV during the 5.3 patch delay - Here we are in July, and we're not going to get our next patch for about a month. Normally, this isn't such a big deal, but this is an unusually…
Fight or Kite: Examining Crowfall’s newbie systems, from God’s Reach to Awakening - Despite the current pandemic we are all living through, one thing you absolutely have to give the team at ArtCraft credit for is continually improving Crowfall and moving forward with…
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands will have no heirloom experience bonus and no swappable conduits - There have been a few more droplets of information heading into the beta for World of Warcraft: Shadowlands. For one thing, you know those heirlooms you spent a whole lot…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 279: New World in the new year
Battle Bards Episode 173: Down on the farm
The Stream Team: Watching and wanting wyverns on ARK Crystal Isles
The Stream Team: Summer fun with Warframe squirt guns
The Stream Team: A look at AQ3D’s new Adventure Book of Lore
The Stream Team: A summer of snails for Neverwinter’s event
The Stream Team: Checking out Avatar avatars in SMITE
The Stream Team: Catching the killer in Elder Scrolls Online’s Kagnthamz
The Stream Team: Taking Path of Exile gardening to the next level
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.
