It was one helluva week for MMORPGs: World of Warcraft announced Shadowlands’ launch date, Guild Wars 2 confirmed that Cantha-themed End of Dragons launches in 2021, we checked out New World during its open preview, and Elder Scrolls Online released its Stonethorn DLC. And just for old times’ sake, we had a big ol’ sub argument!

THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES

World of Warcraft: Shadowlands is launching on October 27 - And we have a launch date, fam! It's been announced at the start of gamescom's digital incarnation this year that World of Warcraft: Shadowlands will be launching on October 27th,…

Guild Wars 2’s End of Dragons expansion takes us to Cantha in 2021 - There's gobs of addenda to this post as the stream rolled along today, so scroll down to the bottom for the big news! There's a lot going on this week,…

Hands-on with New World’s war mode: All the fun you can have blowing up a fortress of lumber - It's really hard to look at the general progress of New World and not get the sense of a game that's struggling to sort out its place in the MMO…

New World’s open preview event has just begun - Amazon's New World has just kicked off its don't-call-it-a-beta beta preview event. The event is a follow-on to last month's density stress test (seriously, is there a reason we keep…

Fight or Kite: Early thoughts on Crowfall’s lively beta, necromancy, and alts - Anyone who’s been following Crowfall over the years since its original Kickstarter has likely at one point or another felt like the game’s development was dragging out to infinity -…

Wisdom of Nym: Impressions of Final Fantasy XIV’s Reflections in Crystal storylines - All right, let's make something very clear right off the bat: There will be spoilers in this column. If you have managed to not do the content yet and wish…

Elder Scrolls Online’s Stonethorn dungeon DLC and update 27 are live for PC and Mac today - [AL:ESO]It's patch day for Elder Scrolls Online, and this is no ordinary patch: It's the Stonethorn DLC and update 27, which as we've been covering ushers in the character pathing…

LOTRO Legendarium: Ranking LOTRO’s expansions from worst to best - Every once in a while, it's a lot of fun to sit down and rank things in your favorite geeky franchises. A while back, I did a ranked list of…

WoW Factor: World of Warcraft has no good excuses for not having housing - We are past 15 years on now, and World of Warcraft still lacks housing. This is, frankly, really dumb. And it comes up a lot, and you always have the…

MMO designer Raph Koster talks about what makes the subscription model a success - Playable Worlds CEO Raph Koster, as we all know, has opinions about MMO gaming and multiplayer gaming, especially on the business side of things, so if you're the sort of…

Into the Super-verse: Marvel’s Avengers feels like Marvel Heroes by way of Destiny - This past weekend, I finally had a chance to actually try out Marvel's Avengers because the game was running its open beta. Certainly I'd already gotten the sense that there was…

Massively Overthinking: The MMOs we intentionally avoid - A few weeks back, I read a Twitter thread about people who avoid specific games and types of games, and the folks chiming in were all over the map. Some…

Final Fantasy XIV confirms new housing coming in patch 5.35 along with how new Skybuilder titles will work - Yes, you saw that right, and if you play Final Fantasy XIV, you're probably excited. New housing day arrives when patch 5.35 does, and it brings with it three new…

Game preservation champion The Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment has closed its doors - VentureBeat is reporting today that MADE, aka the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment, is closing down its Oakland, California, base. It had already been closed since March in the…

Six years after planning a Steam launch, Ultima Online might finally be launching there - Ultima Online studio Broadsword has been teasing all year that it had a big announcement coming for the game this year after publish 109, something that would bring the game…

Gamescom 2020: WoW Shadowlands’ launch date, Star Wars Squadrons’ new trailer - We're updating this post at the bottom - scroll on down for the latest! Forced to go digital thanks to the global pandemic, Gamescom 2020 is finally upon us, this…

PlanetSide 2 announces Shattered Warpgate content campaign - Just a day or two ago I was chatting with an MOP commenter about how PlanetSide 2 really took off this year, getting more love than almost any other Daybreak…

Massively on the Go: Everything we know about Pokemon Go’s new mega evolutions - In another new twist, Pokemon Go has just released Generation 6's big feature, Mega Evolutions, before Generation 6 pokemon themselves. While we've had mega hints coming at us for a…

Sony invites you to register to preorder the PlayStation 5 price-unseen - My kids don't know it yet, but they are probably getting a PlayStation 5 within the next year. It's likely to be a big chunk of change, which is we…

Star Wars: The Old Republic tops Steam’s new F2P releases in July - Is it the Force or Valve that's giving Star Wars: The Old Republic a huge bump in popularity this summer? Perhaps it's both, because a month after BioWare's MMO hit…

EverQuest II lights up Solusek’s Eye with Game Update 115 - Things are heating up in EverQuest II with the release of Game Update 115: Reignite the Flames. The patch comes equipped with many challenges for seasoned adventurers, including two new…

Choose My Adventure: Determining the strengths and weaknesses of AdventureQuest 3D - So it’s my final week here in AdventureQuest 3D and things ended with not a bang nor a whimper so much as with a gentle shrug and a soft sigh,…

Warframe releases the Heart of Deimos for PC, Xbox, and PS4, delays Switch version to later this week - It's time for another romp around an open world region in Warframe, and while an infested moon doesn't really elicit visions of playful romping, there is certainly lots to do…

Epic secures early win against Apple for Unreal Engine, but Fortnite remains barred - If we're keeping score, and really that would be unnecessary since the courts are doing that for us, we're currently at Epic 1, Apple 1 in the Fortnite-involved legal battle…

New week, old problems: LOTRO can’t seem to fix its servers - If you logged into Lord of the Rings Online this week hoping for an easy road to Mordor, think again. There are a whole lot of orcs, balrogs, and stuttering…

Population Zero’s playerbase dwindles into single-digit territory as the devs confirm ‘light’ content for August - It would appear that the fortunes for early access survival MMO Population Zero are not improving whatsoever. In fact, the game's population as of a current check of Steam Charts…

Microsoft general manager says Apple’s block of Unreal Engine ‘will harm game creators and gamers’ - The ongoing kaiju-sized hand-slapping fight between Epic Games and Apple isn't just about two massive corporations having a hissy fit over money; it's tangentially about whether developers will be able…

THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS

Massively OP Podcast Episode 285: Exit En Masse

The Stream Team: The sky pirates are the limit in Neverwinter

The Stream Team: Missing kids is the thing in Dungeons and Dragons Online’s Ravenloft

The Stream Team: Going straight to Warframe’s Heart of Deimos

The Stream Team: Journeying into New World’s preview event

The Stream Team: Scion smash in Path of Exile

The Stream Team: Celebrating Guild Wars 2’s 8th birthday with underwater mounts

The Stream Team: Dual Universe’s NDA is down, and we’re going in!

The Stream Team: It’s raining invasions in Ship of Heroes

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.