This week, we took a first deep-dive into Torchlight III (we found it cheerfully “adequate”!) and struggled to puzzle out just why Standing Stone Games would try to spin Lord of the Rings Online’s first paid patch ever as an “expansion” when it most definitely is not, and even if it were, players are unhappy about the way it was done.
Meanwhile, the MMO community was busy debating wings, the eternal problems with Kickstarter, and the absolute absurdity of thinking streamers should pay extra for licensing.
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
LOTRO Legendarium: Is LOTRO at war with Orcs – or with its playerbase? - Normally, I would be opening this column with my enthusiastic explorations of the brand-new content update for Lord of the Rings Online. After all, we only get a few of…
Vague Patch Notes: Kickstarter shouldn’t be your investor demo funding - There are a few things that kind of make me see red about indie game studios. Generally speaking I'm of the philosophy that indie studios are very good for this industry.…
First Impressions: OARPG Torchlight III just hasn’t click-clicked with me yet - Since it never hurts to be honest, I should say upfront here that Echtra Games' decision to radically retool Torchlight III from a F2P MMO to a buy-to-play multiplayer experience…
WoW Factor: The World of Warcraft leveling experiences ranked, part two - And we're back! Last time, we went through the four lower expansions in terms of ranking World of Warcraft's leveling experiences. This time, we're going through the top four. This…
No, friendos, streamers should not be paying games studios for licenses - Did you miss the debate last night? The debate over whether we should all be paying game companies extra for the pleasure of streaming their games, I mean. Yesterday, Alex…
World of Warcraft’s new wings have the community in an uproar - Hey look at that, Blizzard is running another promotion to try to lure players into enlisting for a six-month tour in World of Warcraft. What's the shiny incentive this time?…
World of Warcraft may be getting ready to test Burning Crusade Classic - While it hasn't been officially announced, The Burning Crusade is all but assumed to be coming to the World of Warcraft Classic scene, presumably next year. Blizzard teased the 2019…
Bless Unleashed has officially launched on PlayStation 4 - After launching on the Xbox One this past spring, Bless Unleashed is working to spread to other platforms in a bid to make this franchise work. This week's conquest is…
MMO Burnout: Red Dead Redemption 2 succeeds in spite of itself - I have very little experience in the Red Dead world. I can recall wandering around Best Buy nearly two decades ago and encountering an overzealous sales boy in the video…
Massively on the Go: All the events and promos coming Pokemon Go this fall - Pokemon Go has received a sudden influx of new events, updates, partnerships, and "heads-ups" from Niantic in the past few days. Most are small, a few are unclear, and others…
City of Heroes Homecoming’s Issue 27 beta adds new story, travel changes, and enhancement overhaul - City of Heroes' Homecoming rogue server has been a bit sparse on new-content updates over the last little while; Issue 26, you'll recall, was all the way back in March.…
SuperData September 2020: Fall Guys falls hard, WoW claws its way back up - SuperData's September report on the state of the game industry's global revenues is not going to shock anyone this month. On the PC side, League of Legends has once again…
Massively on the Go: Pokemon Sword and Shield’s Dynamax Adventure dungeons for the fan and MMO player - Helping to bring the Pokemon main-series games closer into the MMO realm, Pokemon Sword and Shield's new expansion, The Crown Tundra, introduced Dynamax Adventures, a kind of simplified dungeon experience. As we previously mentioned,…
TERA Console teases crossplay for Xbox One, PS4, Xbox Series X, and PS5 - As we've been covering this fall, the dissolution of En Masse has caused no end of confusion over timelines and publishers when it comes to TERA. Last week, we finally…
Massively Overthinking: Where is the line between buy-to-play, free-to-play, and subscription MMOs? - You might think this Massively Overthinking topic is way too obvious, but I assure you, it's not! Consider this: When the buy-to-play-with-no-sub Guild Wars 2 made its basegame a giant…
The Wagadu Chronicles reaches its Emere sub-culture stretch goal, looks to nomadic village totems next - The Kickstarter stretch goals for afro-fantasy MMO The Wagadu Chronicles just keep on getting met. With the project crossing the $160K funding threshold, the four sub-lineages of the Emere people…
Dual Universe bans players who took advantage of an official construct’s poor permissions settings - There's something of an uproar occurring in the Dual Universe community involving two players, the game's RDMS system that powers who has access to certain permissions for a construct, and…
Tree of Life spawns a survival MMO sequel named Oddria - A quick history lesson: Back in 2017, studio Oddone Games released a multiplayer sandbox named Tree of Life that didn't do so hot and eventually settled into maintenance mode by…
A Black Desert node war bug dumped quadrillions of silver into the North American servers - Protip: If your Black Desert guild mysteriously manages to pull quadrillions of silver in tax from the guild incentive system, maybe just log out and report it instead of splitting…
Canadian class action lawsuit argues EA’s lootboxes constitute illegal gambling - Ah, it's a good thing for the companies relying on lockboxes that people have completely forgotten about those this year, isn't it? Turns out not so much. People have definitely…
Perfect Ten: A small sampling of literary offerings from MMOs - Salutations are in order once again for our most literate and eloquent readers of Massively Overpowered! I bid you welcome to our numerical column of weekly merriment, Perfect Ten, because…
Gamigo officially announces the Atlas Reactor rogue-lite co-op PvE title Atlas Rogues - So let's review: In the middle of October, the Atlas Reactor Twitter account suddenly sprang to life with confirmed activity from several official Twitter accounts, fueling speculation that the game…
WildStar composer Jeff Kurtenacker signs on with Blizzard - We've made no secret over the fact that we absolutely love the WildStar soundtrack -- and you have too, with the MOP community previously voting it as the greatest MMO…
Star Wars The Old Republic’s GU 6.1.4 update is live with the Feast of Prosperity - Who's hungry? Star Wars The Old Republic players better be because the Feast of Prosperity is live today in the just-launched GU 6.1.4 update. "Over the years, the Hutt Cartel’s…
Choose My Adventure: Good friends and bad player behavior in Star Wars Squadrons - Well, I was hoping for this to be more fun than it actually was. I adore the heck out of X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, it should be pretty evident that…
Cliffy B now states he might return to game development after all - In November of 2018, Cliff Bleszinski (or "Cliffy B" if you prefer) stated that he was never making another game ever again, for real, never. Many people responded to this…
Whatever happened to Saga of Lucimia? - Sometimes the development of a title goes so dark that months go by before anyone really notices. Such is the case with the group-centric Saga of Lucimia, which has been…
Lord of the Rings Online’s $20 quest pack, War of Three Peaks, launches today - It's a strange and uncertain new era in Lord of the Rings Online, as Standing Stone Games has moved to start selling quest packs to everyone -- including its subscribers.…
Derek Smart’s MMO shooter Line of Defense shows a brief sign of life after two years of radio silence - You know him as the self-professed "internet warlord" and Star Citizen critic, but we have to remember that Derek Smart is also someone who is trying to make a game…
Wisdom of Nym: Going to war in Bozja in Final Fantasy XIV - Here we are in the wake of Final Fantasy XIV's latest content patch, and while there are a lot of different things that were technically contained in patch 5.35... let's face…
Fight or Kite: Checking out veteran sci-fi sandbox MMO Vendetta Online – on mobile - Over the last few months, I’ve been playing around with VR on my phone. I know, not the ideal VR experience but I had my reasons. In any case, as…
Star Citizen has 720K total backers and 34K subscribers according to gathered public data - Getting subscriber details for multiplayer and MMO titles out of companies can often be like pulling teeth out of an alligator's mouth with a pair of tweezers while it's doing…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 293: Passing the Torchlight
Battle Bards Episode 179: Arrr pirates!
The Stream Team: The perfect year for a Masquerade of Liars (in Neverwinter)
The Stream Team: Another AdventureQuest 3D Mogloween dance party
The Stream Team: Newbing it up in the all-new Trove hub tutorial
The Stream Team: The Headless Horseman haunts EverQuest II’s Nights of the Dead
The Stream Team: Treasure hunting in Elder Scrolls Online
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.
