Welp, it definitely wasn’t a boring week over here in the world of online games. It all kicked off on Monday, when Microsoft announced it had bought ZeniMax, Bethsoft, and Elder Scrolls Online’s ZeniMax Online Studios. Plus, we covered Ultima Online New Legacy, new afrofantasy MMO The Wagadu Chronicles, LOTRO’s upcoming DLC and rumored new class, and No Man’s Sky’s Origins update. We also interviewed FFXIV’s Naoki Yoshida.

And if you missed it – and you may have, since Funcom buried it on a Friday night – Secret World Legends is actually getting some new content. No, that’s not a typo!

THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES

Microsoft just bought ZeniMax, Bethsoft, and Elder Scrolls Online’s ZOS for $7.5B - Here's your Monday bombshell: Microsoft announced this morning that it has acquired ZeniMax Media - and therefore Bethesda Softworks and ZeniMax Online Studios and all its franchises and games, including…

‘One of the biggest updates ever’ is coming to Secret World Legends - There's nothing like dropping the news on a late Friday afternoon that a direly neglected MMORPG is getting a massive update in the near future to wake you up. We've…

Broadsword just announced Ultima Online: New Legacy on its 23rd birthday - We're updating this post with the big news down at the bottom! All year, Broadsword's been teasing something big for Ultima Online, which we've been assuming just has to be…

Vague Patch Notes: Why stan an MMO with nothing to show for itself? - We need to talk about Star Citizen, folks. But maybe not in the way you might be thinking. Not about the game's development, which is dragging on with no end in…

Rumor: Lord of the Rings Online’s next class might be the Brawler [Updated] - Sharp-eyed Lord of the Rings Online players seem to have discovered a big secret on the game's test server: the existence of a new class-in-the-making called the Brawler. [AL:LOTRO]A screenshot…

Interview: Final Fantasy XIV’s Naoki Yoshida on home development, future villains, and the big changes in patch 5.3 - The story of Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers got a pretty explosive sendoff in patch 5.3, which brought several major plotlines to their conclusion and set up the next portion of…

WoW Factor: The stuff I’m genuinely excited for in World of Warcraft Shadowlands - For the first time in the past three expansions, I am not in the beta for World of Warcraft's next expansion. This is fine. It's fine. I'm fine. As a result,…

Star Citizen’s Chris Roberts says the game’s economy simulation tech is still a ways off - Star Citizen's Chris Roberts, bleary-eyed and exhausted from the self-reported "running a company of 630 people spread around the globe, while directing two projects [which] already takes way more than…

No Man’s Sky adds new planets, biomes, creatures, weather, locations, and items in today’s Origins update - Yes, that headline has a lot of things broken up by a lot of commas, but it should effectively illustrate the number of things added to No Man's Sky with…

Afrofantasy MMO The Wagadu Chronicles hits Kickstarter target, adds navigation stretch goal - Earlier this week, we covered the launch of the Kickstarter for a new MMO The Wagadu Chronicles. Built by diversity-minded developer Twin Drums and based in Berlin, Germany, the game…

Lord of the Rings Online begins testing War of the Three Peaks DLC, and yes, boar mounts are high-price bundle perks - The big fall update for Lord of the Rings Online -- newly promoted to "mini-expansion" status with an accompanied price tag -- is now on the Bullroarer test server for…

Phantasy Star Online 2 delivered a glut of New Genesis gameplay goodness - Latch your rods and cones onto this one, boys and girls, because Phantasy Star Online 2 is showing how it's going to get a whole lot more pretty come next…

The Game Archaeologist: The short ride of Auto Assault - When you think of post-apocalyptic video games, what comes to mind? Most likely it's a crawl through a bombed-out or zombiefied landscape as you might find in The Last of…

Occupy White Walls now allows artists to upload their own creations with the Open update — for a fee - The multiplayer art museum of Occupy White Walls just got a whole lot more personal with the release of the Open update, which now allows artists to upload their own…

Krafton continues its massive corporate consolidation with PUBG Corp amalgamation - If you've been watching all the Bluehole and Krafton and TERA and En Masse tomfoolery this past month, you've surely wondered what the heck is going on over there. And…

EVE Online’s unpopular ‘resource distribution’ plan, plus the messy 49u battle and Japanese localization - Earlier today, EVE Online studio CCP Games released a dev blog on the next leg of its resource distribution plan. The studio aims to "create room for a better geographical…

Leaderboard: Are you tempted by Ultima Online’s New Legacy server? - So here's a fun fact for you: While vanilla, legacy, and progression servers have been all the rage for the last five years or so, even taking our "trending" award…

Massively Overthinking: MMO voids that haven’t been filled - I swear, so many of the posts I bookmark on Reddit to muse on later wind up deleted, and today I've got another one, but hey, I at least liked…

World of Warcraft shows off customization changes coming with the Shadowlands pre-patch - Every World of Warcraft fan knows that the Shadowlands pre-patch remains locked in a future of indeterminate date, forever happening "soon" without an actual announcement. But it's clear that it's going…

SuperData August 2020: Fall Guys dethroned League of Legends, pushed WoW to its lowest rank in over a year - SuperData's August global revenue report for the games industry has more than a few eyebrow-raisers this week. On the PC side of things, World of Warcraft West has fallen all…

Star Wars: The Old Republic previews the Feast of Prosperity on the test server - Clearly, what a a galaxy far, far away needs for players are more seasonal events. The Feast of Prosperity is the next annual recurring event for Star Wars: The Old Republic,…

Bless Unleashed launches for PS4 on October 22, with preorder packs live now - The Bless IP never seems to give up, and so it is with the Bless Unleashed PS4 version. We knew it was coming, of course, following the game's launch on…

Yikes… WoW’s Khadgar server accidentally sent characters back to Mists of Pandaria levels - Time travel isn't unknown in World of Warcraft, but usually when players experience it there, it's a thrilling adventure to other eras. However, some players on the game's Khadgar server…

Blade & Soul’s Cosmic Horizon update goes live today — here are the patch notes - It's time for the Lyn to unleash star-powered hell on the foes of the Earthen Realm. This isn't the only thing that's been added with the launch of today's Cosmic…

Book of Travels promises gameplay footage this fall, delays early access to Q2 2021 - Book of Travels effectively took Massively OP's most anticipated award last year, especially since the game that tied with it no longer really exists. It came almost out of nowhere…

Perfect Ten: Why do players keep playing MMOs they hate? - Hating your recreation is an oddly common hobby for a lot of people. It's not universal, of course, but after any given new game releases you don't have to search…

World of Warcraft developers discuss endgame loot tables, Chris Metzen acknowledges Warcraft movie sequel rumor - The endgame mechanics for World of Warcraft: Shadowlands are still under a degree of scrutiny by players, to the point that the developers have taken a moment on the official forums…

MMO Business Roundup: Morhaime is back with Dreamhaven, plus NCsoft’s parking lot and Epic’s Manticore ambitions - Welcome back to another quick roundup of video game industry news relevant to MMOs and MMO fans! The Morhaimes: When Mike Morhaime announced he was leaving Blizzard just two years…

Star Citizen devs offer alpha 3.10 postmortem, consider nerfs and ‘power triangle’ tweaks - It appears that 3.10 is truly in the rearview mirror of Star Citizen, but that doesn't mean that the team at CIG hasn't learned a thing or two as a…

EVE Online players submitted over 41M classifications to fight COVID for CCP’s latest Project Discovery initiative - What's better than a science MMO story or a feel-good MMO story? One that's both. And this one is both, as EVE Online and CCP Games have officially announced the…

Choose My Adventure: Wurm Online is not for me, and that’s OK - Wurm Online has made me feel the most noobish I've ever felt in an MMORPG in ages even after the tutorial. A tutorial that, by the way, I did indeed…

Riot Games-backed afrofantasy MMO The Wagadu Chronicles just went live on Kickstarter - MMO developer Alexander Zacherl kindly put this game on our radar today, and it couldn't be more timely, given that this summer's swelling of support for Black Lives Matter initiatives…

Dungeons and Dragons Online postpones its level cap increase - In a year of many game and project delays, one more isn't surprising -- even though it isn't welcome to hear. So bad news, Dungeons and Dragons Online players: You're…

Blizzard outlines World of Warcraft Shadowlands prepatch changes, announces BlizzConline for February 2021 - The one thing that basically everyone playing World of Warcraft wants to know right now is when the prepatch for Shadowlands will arrive. Thus, it makes perfect sense that the latest update from…

Fight or Kite: Spellbreak’s epic combat and classes set it far apart from the battle royale pack - Another week, another battle royale arrives at my doorstep, this time with a subtle but sweet note attached: Please kind sir, take it in, and treat it like family. I…

THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS

Massively OP Podcast Episode 289: Microsoft and Bethesda sitting in a tree

The Stream Team: A friendly tour of Conan Exiles’ Isle of Siptah

The Stream Team: AdventureQuest 3D’s new Crimson Corsair quest

The Stream Team: Beating Bartholomew Blackdagger in Neverwinter

The Stream Team: Fourth day’s (hopefully) the charm for finishing Warframe’s Deadlock Protocol

The Stream Team: Celebrating Aion’s 11th birthday

The Stream Team: Pulling off a Path of Exile Heist

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.