Good news, junior high students everywhere: The Crucible is canceled! Nobody even likes that play. It’s boring and sanctimonious and tedious – good riddance!
Oh. Not that Crucible. The other Crucible. Amazon’s Crucible. Yes, Amazon canceled its malingering flopped shooter Crucible and tried to bury the news on a Friday night. Boo hiss. But also, everyone saw that coming. Sorry fam.
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
Amazon just killed off another online game – this time it’s Crucible - Like Breakaway before it, Amazon's Crucible is over before it began. Before it began again. It really depends where you start counting. Yes, Amazon announced tonight that it's "discontinuing development"…
Star Citizen’s AMA confirms Squadron 42 has ‘a ways to go’ before beta, will be ‘done when it is done’ - The question that's been on the lips of the Star Citizen community for the past several months has been in relation to Squadron 42's development progress. So naturally, that would…
The Game Archaeologist: Deadlands Legends, the western MMO that never saw the light of day - The saying goes that there is nothing new under the sun. So while you probably can't write an original setting that's never been seen before, the next best thing is…
First Impressions: Genshin Impact is half decent ARPG and half gacha - I forget when I first heard about Genshin Impact, but it was a while back, and it was something that I earmarked for the future as worth keeping an eye on.…
WoW Factor: The problem with World of Warcraft’s storytelling - Back a long while ago, when I reviewed the prequel novel for World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, I noted that my general policy has been to ignore the novels and supplementary storytelling…
Dungeons and Dragons Online starts Fables of the Feywild pre-orders, gives a free dungeon to all - Monday will be a big day for Dungeons and Dragons Online, as a sizable patch is dropping for the game at the same time as Standing Stone Games will begin…
Yes, CCP London is still working on an unannounced new online title (or titles) - The HR department over at CCP London is looking pretty busy in recent days. The satellite branch of CCP Games has kicked out another two tweets in search of an…
Star Wars Galaxies Legends keeps teasing Bespin and we want it - Star Wars Galaxies Legends, the Star Wars Galaxies rogue server that's dominated the game's headlines for the last few years, has been teasing Bespin for a while now. It's one…
Final Fantasy XIV has cancelled its European fan festival for February 2021 - This is probably not a surprise given what happened before, but Final Fantasy XIV fans will not be gathering in Europe for a convention. The European fan festival has officially been cancelled…
Star Citizen marks its eighth birthday with alpha 3.11’s release, free goodies, and Halloween events - This coming Saturday, October 10th, will mark the eighth anniversary of Star Citizen's reveal to the public, which in CIG terms is the game's official birthday, and that means it's…
World of Warcraft director Ion Hazzikostas promises to reverse the Shadowlands ability limitation - It was just yesterday that people found out World of Warcraft: Shadowlands had made a change to Covenant abilities by limiting them to the eponymous Shadowlands. This made a lot of…
Pathfinder Online is still alive, and the devs are embracing the cloud - Pathfinder Online is transitioning to the cloud, and no, that's not a euphemism for ascending to heaven because Pathfinder Online is still alive against all odds. Yesterday, the Paizo/Goblinworks team…
Final Fantasy XIV previews its next major patch, Futures Rewritten, in its newest live letter - The next patch for Final Fantasy XIV isn't coming out until December, but the latest live letter from producer and director Naoki Yoshida has already revealed some details for the upcoming…
World of Warcraft’s free-to-level-20 edition is about to get a ton more content - With next week's World of Warcraft: Shadowlands pre-patch, the overall value of the game is about to take a jump up. As we noted yesterday, Blizzard running a sale on…
Massively Overthinking: How do you know you’ve fallen hard for an MMO? - For this week's Massively Overthinking, I want to bounce off something MOP's Chris tweeted a few weeks back. "I can tell a game's hooks are sinking in when I start…
World of Warcraft drops Shadowlands pre-patch notes, merges Battle for Azeroth into sub - We've got a bundle of World of Warcraft news here to cap off your Thursday. First, if all the jeering for Battle for Azeroth kept you from buying the expansion,…
‘Boob streamers’ and ‘boys clubs’: Twitch staffers blast sexist, racist corporate culture - GI.biz has a detailed expose of Twitch's corporate culture out today, painting a picture of ongoing and systemic racism, sexism, and abuse, both in the office and in the community.…
Star Wars Squadrons creative director: ‘We’re not trying to treat the game as a live service’ - If EA wanted a fast way to chill all the fervor for Star Wars Squadrons, then what it told UploadVR this week in regard to future content is basically the…
‘One of the largest PvP battles ever to occur in video game history’ just happened in EVE Online - The biggest clash this week might not have been on the debate stage but rather in a video game. Over 8,806 EVE Online pilots swarmed together for "one of the…
Perfect Ten: What gamers need to understand about MMO mages - So the first two times I tackled this type of topic for the Perfect Ten column here on Massively OP, I had the advantage of every game having a Warrior…
O’dyllita is live for Black Desert PC as console launches its first Succession classes - [AL:BDO]The O'dyllita region is finally open for PC players of Black Desert today! Readers will recall that the high-level area was postponed back in 2019 and then resurfaced in March…
Cryptic’s Stephen D’Angelo on City of Heroes’ lessons, Star Trek Online’s booming revenues - It's been a wild year for PWE's Cryptic Studios, as it's been busy maintaining its core MMORPGs but also working on Magic Legends, which began life as an MMO and…
Baldur’s Gate 3 has officially entered early access – with multiplayer (kinda) - With Cyberpunk 2077, World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, and Baldur's Gate 3 coming out this fall, it's certainly shaping up to be the season of the RPG. And speaking of Baldur's…
The Daily Grind: Does gacha have a place in MMO business models? - Just so, so many of my friends are playing Genshin Impact these days -- and not just playing, but gushing over the fun, the beauty, and the gacha business model.…
Star Trek Online’s House Shattered is live on PC as the game heads to the Epic Games Store - [AL:STO]Star Trek Online's new season is called House Shattered, but it is not in fact about shattering actual houses, as satisfying as that might be. Instead, it's a continuation of…
Activision-Blizzard is reportedly shuttering its Versailles, France, office - Activision-Blizzard is apparently closing down one of its offices, specifically the one in Versailles, France. The news comes from Bloomberg, which this morning reported that staff have been told that…
Choose My Adventure: How Spellbreak kicked my butt - So, you’re first of all likely all wondering what happened to the voted-for Fallout 76 that was supposed to be part of this column. I ran into some technical issues,…
World of Warcraft addresses LGBTQ storytelling: ‘Whatever your background is, there’s a place for you in this world’ - TechRadar has an interview up this week with Blizzard's Steve Danuser, currently the lead narrative designer on World of Warcraft, and Johnny Cash, senior game designer and LGBTQ+ Advisory Council…
Star Citizen opens update 3.11’s PTU build to all backers, with cargo decks, new weapons, and more - The test build before the alpha test build of Star Citizen -- a super alpha, if you will -- has now opened up to all backers of the space sandbox.…
Massively Uplifting: Shattering mental health and disability stereotypes while increasing gaming inclusivity - Back to school? That quintessential September mantra may not be a given for everyone this year. However, what is still a given is the goodness of so many in the…
ZeniMax Online Studios appears to be ramping up development of its long-speculated new MMO - If you've been wondering what's going on with that new IP that's almost certainly in development at ZeniMax Online Studios... well, we don't know yet. But we do know that…
Fallout 76 roleplay group had its Facebook account terminated for being mistakenly flagged as a hate group - Politically, things in the US are... charged, to say the least, and the impact of misinformation efforts across social media platforms is more in the spotlight than it ever has…
Wisdom of Nym: Final Fantasy XIV leaves the Deep Dungeon for now - We don't quite have patch 5.35 here yet, but we do know that the patch will add the Bozjan Southern Front to Final Fantasy XIV in lieu of prior expansions offering the…
Fight or Kite: Small changes (and one big one) to improve Spellbreak’s balance - An inordinate amount of my time has been spent playing Spellbreak recently. I’m honestly not a gigantic fan of battle royale as a primary game mode, but I can barely…
VR MMORPG Ilysia ends its Kickstarter drive successfully with over $150K in funding and 13 stretch goals met - Clearly, many people are looking for more MMORPG titles in virtual reality. Or at least enough people that want to see Ilysia close out its Kickstarter funding campaign strong; the…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 291: Day of Delays
The Stream Team: An Astroneer escape alleviates Earthly woes
The Stream Team: A raveyard undead dance party for AdventureQuest 3D’s Mogloween
The Stream Team: Frozen fun in Neverwinter’s Icespire Peaks
The Stream Team: Conjurer class questing in FFXIV
The Stream Team: Frolicking in EverQuest II’s moon forest
The Stream Team: Filching is funnest with friends 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.
