Activision-Blizzard (shareholders) had some good news this week, as its Q2 2020 revenues actually improved year-over-year for the first time in six quarters, owing largely to COVID, WoW, and COD. Not that they ever quite report it that way. Unfortunately for the corporation, that was all followed by the news that Blizzard employees specifically are agitating for better pay. Because their pay is abysmal. Because Acti-Blizz made nearly $2B last quarter while some of its workers are living on oatmeal.
Meanwhile, Guild Wars 2’s getting underwater mounts, DDO suffered a nasty three-week rollback, Crowfall is about to hit beta, Star Citizen entered alpha 3.10, the Fallout 76 community was on fire, and everyone’s nervous about the Tencent EO.
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
New executive order could ban US transactions with Tencent – potentially bad news for gaming [Updated] - File this one under "I was about to go to sleep when the internet erupted in an absolute panic over Tencent": Late this evening, the sitting US president issued an…
LOTRO Legendarium: The pros and cons of Rohan housing - To my knowledge, this past week's Update 27.2 for Lord of the Rings Online may well be the biggest housing patch that's hit the game since the system was first…
Blizzard staffers confirm ‘honor point system,’ further exposing the company’s wage disparities - This week we've been following Bloomberg's reports on Blizzard employees' attempts to secure pay and equitable pay for the gaming industry. Early in the week, staff were circulating a spreadsheet…
LOTRO and DDO re-enables character transfers, Wayfinder suffers three-week rollback [Updated] - We've got a bit of good news, bad news, and really bad news for those looking to hop servers in Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online.…
Kickstarted PvP MMORPG Crowfall just announced it’s launching beta next week - Big news coming out of Crowfall this morning, as ArtCraft has just announced that it's marching right up to its next milestone, with a beta planned to open up on…
Star Citizen brings new flight models, new weapons, and a plushie penguin in alpha 3.10 - Alpha 3.10 is now live in Star Citizen, bringing with it a whole lot of important changes. Chief among them is the new flight model, which brings atmospheric effects, limited…
Activision-Blizzard Q2 2020: Year-over-year revenues are up for the first time in six quarters - We're back with another dip into Activision-Blizzard's financials, this one Q2 2020, the first report since shareholders lambasted the company for excessive executive pay and the first report since BlizzCon…
Fallout 76’s Colossal Problem patch lives up to its name as the communuty melts down over massive building bugs - So yesterday's Fallout 76 patch did... not go to plan. Bethsoft added the foundation for A Colossal Problem to the game, and that's not a euphemism, mind you; that's actually…
Guild Wars 2 is adding new underwater functionality for Skimmer mounts August 25 - If you ever thought Guild Wars 2's graceful water-based mount, the Skimmer, looked more like something that should be flitting about under the ocean than hovering over it, you aren't…
Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen offers dates and details of a systems test ahead of pre-alpha - A pre-test "shakeout" before the next pre-alpha is happening in Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen, which seems redundant, but it's better than not having things ready to go before the…
Star Trek Online gives out free Lower Decks duty officers, starts summer event - This week, Star Trek's newest TV series debuted. But instead of it being a serious, live-action show, Star Trek: Lower Decks is an animated comedy that looks at the antics…
Guild Wars 2 is planning some quality-of-life changes for Drizzlewood Coast next week - The Drizzlewood Coast map and its associated metas have been the subject of chatter in the Guild Wars 2 for months now, as players have stumbled trying to effectively complete…
GDC Summer 2020: Roblox, player-generated content, and the ‘metaverse’ - Roblox VP of Product Deepak Chandrasekaran held a skill-building talk at GDC Summer 2020 this week titled Building the Metaverse through User Generated Content and the Cloud, but in true,…
Jukebox Heroes: It’s time to turn your MMO’s music back on - We're going to take a detour from our tour of various MMO soundtracks to talk about one of the most common statements I hear when the discussion of in-game music…
GDC Summer 2020: Gachapon reward models in (mostly) free-to-play games - Let's be real: Some of the panel titles at GDC Summer 2020 are unintentionally misleading. For example, the "Evolution of Gacha Systems in Mobile Free to Play Games" panel by…
GDC Summer 2020: Pokemon Go’s Niantic offers augmented reality design advice - I was really looking forward to Niantic's AR Game Design 101 panel at GDC Summer 2020 this week because for all my criticisms of the company and its games, I…
GDC Summer 2020: What online gaming can (and should) learn from social media’s trainwrecks - The circle is now complete: Social media has mastered skills MMOs and online games haven't, not that social media was paying much attention to the fact many of its problems…
Temtem is headed to PS5, XBXS, and the Switch, not just PC, when it launches next year - Still got your eye on Temtem? The totally-not-Pokemon MMO hit early access earlier this year, with plans to formally launch next summer, and as of yesterday, Spanish studio Crema Games…
Massively Overthinking: Changing the mindset of the MMO genre - I recently saw a journalism professor argue that generating a widespread thinking shift in an entire profession can take decades. "You have to keep making the case in different ways,"…
EverQuest II’s GU 115: Reignite the Flames launches August 25 - Blink and you'll miss it: Daybreak dropped a teaser for EverQuest II's GU 115: Reignite the Flames last night, and if this is the first you're hearing of it, you're…
Final Fantasy XIV launches new 5.3 microsite, hits 1.2M active players (with caveats) - Final Fantasy XIV has today launched a new microsite for the 5.3 patch, arriving August 11, 2020. The site confirms the new content coming with the patch - the Heroes'…
GDC Summer 2020: Unionizing the video games industry - Just in time for Blizzard's latest labor crisis, Game Workers Unite UK treasurer Kevin Agwaze held an Ask Me Anything at GDC Summer 2020 earlier today. While obviously not all…
GDC Summer 2020: Quantic’s 400K-gamer motivation model - Quantic Foundry's Nick Yee gave a lecture at GDC Summer 2020 yesterday showing how the analytics firm's massive amount of data can be used in various ways to parse out…
World of Warcraft wipes Shadowlands beta, adds a memorial to popular YouTuber - Even as you slumber, the World of Warcraft: Shadowlands beta continues to toil away in its preparation for the great day of reckoning that will soon come to all. All…
Infantry Online rogue server asks for Daybreak’s help - Usually rogue servers and game emulators like to stay on the down low as to not draw any unwanted attention from the legal owners -- and their lawyers -- of…
‘Our mentors are leaving in droves’: Blizzard staff are organizing to demand better compensation - Yesterday, we covered Bloomberg's report on how Blizzard employees were circulating a spreadsheet of their wages and raises in an effort to determine whether Blizzard had gone far enough with…
Desert Oasis: Our guide to playing Black Desert’s season servers - The introduction of Black Desert's season servers this summer was my chocolate-in-peanut-butter moment of the year. I didn't know the combination would be so good! Other players seem to think…
Perfect Ten: Ten things to do when you just want to chill out in an MMO - Let's face it: Sometimes, playing MMORPGs -- as with any video game -- has the potential to stress us out. We might feel under pressure to get all of those…
No, Lord of the Rings Online Classic isn’t going to happen, Standing Stone says - When any MMORPG has gone on long enough, a movement among fans to return to the earlier days of the game tends to emerge. Call it "legacy fever" or what…
War breaks out in WoW Classic as Horde players retaliate for Alliance Ahn’Qiraj Scarab Lord griefing - It would seem that the factional drama over getting the Scarab Lord title in WoW Classic was simply the flashpoint for a major bonfire on the Sulfuras server, as the…
Choose My Adventure: The absurd tsunami that is AdventureQuest 3D - Let's see... I was flung across the world, I fought an extremely hyperactive unicorn bro, I nearly got defeated by chickens, and I fought a monstrous tree stump that spoke…
Camelot Unchained works on giants, pretty trees, wyverns, and replacing Ben Pielstick - It's another week of Camelot Unchained updates with another Top Ten-ish and look at artwork -- followers know the drill by now. In this update, the devs discuss working on…
Not So Massively: First impressions of StarCraft II’s co-op prestige system - Last week, StarCraft II celebrated its tenth anniversary by launching the major 5.0 patch. With it came the new "prestige" system for co-op mode, offering a wealth of new strategic…
Trove interview: Gamigo on console’s future, Bomber Royale, and the next class for a revamp - With Trove's fifth birthday and its Delves expansion now behind it, we're curious about what's next for the game. Gamigo's Cornelia and Coby - Product Manager and Game Designer on…
Blizzard staffers agitate against poor worker pay as Activision-Blizzard rakes in billions - Blizzard's labor practices have been under scrutiny over the last couple of years, propelled in large part due to mass-layoffs at the top of 2019 that coincided with Blizzard's "historic"…
New World wraps up ‘density test,’ and the community is impressed - With all the activity flitting about Amazon's New World these days, you wouldn't think that the upcoming MMORPG has been delayed all the way into 2021. This past weekend, the…
Wisdom of Nym: What it means to be good at Final Fantasy XIV content - Let's start with an assertion that some people may or may not believe but is still true no matter what: Dungeons in Final Fantasy XIV are not terribly difficult. That's…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 282: Gate crashers
The Stream Team: The Shroud of SWTOR
The Stream Team: Star-studded fun in Trove’s Lunar Plunge
The Stream Team: Into the Mists of Dungeons & Dragons Online’s Ravenloft
The Stream Team: Completing concert collection and powering a ranger in AQ3D
The Stream Team: Speed gardening in Path of Exile
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.
