Well, at least this week wasn’t boring! While gaming headlines were dominated by the emerging Epic Games lawsuits against Apple and Google over Fortnite and money, the MMO industry brought its A-game, with EVE Echoes going fully live, FFXIV launching Reflections in Crystal, Guild Wars 2 rolling out the Festival of the Four Winds, and Crowfall hitting beta. Plus, Daybreak acquired the studio building the Alien MMOFPS, and we got a good look at Valiance Online.
On a sadder note, the genre lost one of its founders far too young, as Meridian 59’s Brian Green passed away.
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
Into the Super-verse: Early impressions of Valiance Online - When I heard that Valiance Online was going to be running an open beta this week to coincide with the PlayNYC convention, I knew I had to get in and…
CCP and Netease’s mobile MMORPG EVE Echoes is officially live on Android and iOS - We hope you got your preloading done overnight because EVE Online mobile MMO EVE Echoes is officially live, offered up by CCP Games and Netease as an "authentic" version of EVE…
Daybreak has acquired Cold Iron Studios and its Alien MMOFPS [Updated] - We've updated the end of this post with the confirmation and press release; we've left the original reporting intact. For the last year, it seems that Daybreak has registered more…
Epic Games is suing Apple (and probably Google too) over its payment monopoly - Epic Games is really swinging for the bleachers on this one. Earlier today, Epic revealed the Fortnite "mega drop" - a permanent discount of up to 20% on V-Bucks in…
Meridian 59 and Storybricks’ Brian Green has passed away at only 46 - It's with a very heavy heart today that we report that Brian "Psychochild" Green has passed away at a relatively young age. Green was an MMO developer who was deeply…
ArtCraft on Crowfall’s beta release today, Eternal Kingdoms, the newbie experience, and much more - Crowfall, the PvP-centered MMORPG originally Kickstarted back in 2015, announced last week that it had finally arrived at its beta milestone and would begin opening up the game not only…
Star Citizen is on track to breaking sales records in 2020 as it passes last year’s $47.7M - As of right now, funding for Star Citizen just ain't slowing down. A graph shared on the game's subreddit illustrates that 2020 has already been a banner year for funding…
Flameseeker Chronicles: How Guild Wars 2 can improve underwater combat - Way back in the lead up to Guild Wars 2’s launch in 2012, I remember the community being all abuzz about the addition of aquatic combat to a franchise where…
Epic Games could lose almost $50M every month the Fortnite Apple/Google lawsuits go on - Yesterday, we covered the emerging legal drama between Epic Games and... well, everyone with a platform trying to take a cut from transactions inside apps. Epic implemented discounted direct payments…
GDC Summer 2020: Better living, climate awareness, and citizen science through games - Way back during GDC 2018, I covered several panels relating to gaming for good. Things like citizen science projects, games as medicine or for health education, charities, and more. Considering…
Razer is launching an improved left-handed Naga MMO mouse - Did you know that today is International Left Handers Day? It is indeed, which makes it the perfect day to announce gear for lefties, right? Enter Razer, which is doing just…
Vague Patch Notes: Balance in MMOs is overrated - Earlier this week, we did a post all about balance in Crucible. It was a detailed post explaining all of the ways that the team looks at data, at the…
When the COVID dust settles, Nexon hopes to be among entertainment’s winners - Nexon CEO Owen Mahoney recently gave one whooper of an interview to GamesIndustry.biz arguing that the games industry is reaching a "major transition point" for a "new generation of major…
Massively Overthinking: Jumping the shark in MMOs - I'm sure those few people out there still bearing a grudge over the Rune-keeper would disagree with me, but one of the things that attracts me to LOTRO is my…
Final Fantasy XIV states more housing plots are on the way for patch 5.4 - Back in March, Final Fantasy XIV's developers turned off the housing demolition timers due to the ongoing global pandemic, so no one has to worry about logging on to the…
Pearl Abyss Q2 2020: EVE Online is doing great, NA/EU drives 48% of company revenues - Pearl Abyss dropped its second quarter financial report today: The South Korean MMO company saw its revenues decline ever so slightly, down to 131.7 billion KRW (111 million USD), representing…
GDC Summer 2020: Creating kinder digital communities outside of online games - I don't know about the rest of you, but I've found that being familiar with online communities and tech has really helped me survive our COVID situation. As I'd developed…
NCsoft Q2 2020: Lineage 2M drives revenue as Aion and Lineage flag and Guild Wars 2 rebounds - MMO readers will recall that NCsoft has been having a big year for revenue, doubling its revenue in the first quarter of this year largely thanks to the success of…
Bless Unleashed is heading to PlayStation 4 with a closed beta already planned for next week - You could be forgiven for assuming that Bless Unleashed would have no truck with any sort of successful reception, given its pedigree. But expanding to be playable on the PlayStation…
ArcheAge’s Ipnysh Sanctuary is live today for Garden of the Gods players - ArcheAge's latest content update from Gamigo has arrived today, and the good news here is that unlike Garden of the Gods itself, this isn't a separate paid DLC that's going…
City of Heroes Homecoming confirms NCsoft talks continue, plans new name, domain, and launcher - Of all the City of Heroes rogue servers to spring up over the last year in the wake of the 2019 reveal that the game's code was out in the…
GDC Summer 2020: Accessibility shouldn’t be a dirty word in online gaming - I don't know about you readers, but one of the first things I always do when starting a game with voice acting (or movie) is turn on the subtitles. I'm…
ArtCraft says ‘the purpose of Crowfall is to destroy’ the themepark model - Crowfall is in beta. If that statement reads a bit reverently, that is perhaps one's cynicism that a crowdfunded anything can reach a finish line, let alone a milestone, and…
Tamriel Infinium: Six more things to love about The Elder Scrolls Online - When I think back to my earliest days of gaming, sitting in front of a tiny TV set with the non-ergonomic 80s beauty of an Atari joystick in hand, I…
Torchlight III just got its last big update before its official launch - [AL:TL3]Torchlight III testers got absolutely wiped this week - literally. PWE and Echtra Games dropped part one of what it's dubbed the "mainline" patch yesterday, with a complete character and…
DDO Wayfinder players are getting even more boosts and refunds following three-week rollback - Last week, Dungeons and Dragons Online players were dismayed to learn that they hadn't quite escaped all the horrors of the LOTRO downtime last month after all: In fact, one…
Albion Online’s Rise of Avalon is live with its unique new (and deadly!) roads network - Albion Online's long-awaited Rise of Avalon update is live for all players today, and I promise I won't make the joke about not needing roads this time - besides, you're…
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands pre-patch hits the test realm - Could World of Warcraft's Patch 9.0 be arriving soon? The Shadowlands "pre-patch," as this game's strange terminology goes, just arrived on the public test realm, signalling that it's making its…
Guild Wars 2’s Festival of the Four Winds is live, along with WvW quality-of-life enhancements - [AL:GW2]Guild Wars 2 is having a pretty packed summer, with the recent arrival of Jormag Rising and a special update for underwater skimmers coming in just two weeks. But if…
Final Fantasy XIV patch 5.3, Reflections in Crystal, is live today - It's been a long wait for players (two months more than expected, even), but the latest Final Fantasy XIV patch is finally live today. You know we've talked about it…
EA shareholders overwhelmingly reject excessive executive pay in latest vote - Remember back in June when investment accountability group CtW was agitating against Activision-Blizzard's corporate finances, arguing that Bobby Kotick is grossly overpaid and urging shareholders to vote down the company…
GDC Summer 2020: How Astroneer’s crafting balances cognitive load for the player - Long time followers of Astroneer may recall that the game's early development crafting felt cute but incomplete. Despite the game already being in the wild, System Era Softworks decided it'd take…
Shocking almost no one, Dragon’s Prophet was yeeted off Steam - So, we have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that there's a Dragon's Prophet emulator out there that's been running for several years, so if…
Massively OP Podcast Episode 283: TennoConversations - Justin, Bree, and MJ discuss Warframe and TennoCon 2020, Crowfall's beta, LOTRO's Rohan housing, DDO's nasty rollback, Blizzard's latest mess, and Guild Wars 2's underwater mounts, with a special edition…
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.
There are three types of games: 1) pay more to win, 2) play more to win, 3) casual.
When there’s a steep price tag upfront, you have to do some homework and learn about the game from all available sources. You have to know what’s it all about before you make the purchase. This was the common practice – freemium/microtransactions/etc models came much later.
When players take time to do the research it basically means they come prepared and there’s less chance for “screw this piece of crap” situations, resulting in quality communities.
Most free to play games open their doors wide, hoping to milk their customers later (sometimes the popup comes up within first 30 seconds). I do not say most of the free to play games are crap, but it does ring a bell.
The pay to play model is destined to return one day.
Eve echoes can bite my ass. $15 a month to stay competitive in a cut down version of the original game? Worse, it’s actually 16.70 where I am due to what I assume is currency conversion or failed regional pricing. So will I pay more for a bad spinoff than the original? No thanks.
I would have been in at 5/month, but that gets you virtually nothing other than they take away some prohibitively punishing and bad mechanics.
It’s very much a moneygrab meant to screw fans of the original, and they’re not even trying to hide the fact.
We live in interesting times. Good luck and o7, Eve Echoes!