MMO Week in Review: Riot’s MMO, Albion’s new owners, Elyria’s revival

Who says nothing interesting happens right before the December holidays? Riot’s working on an MMORPG, Albion Online’s studio just got bought out, City State is teasing Final Stand Ragnarok, Chronicles of Elyria swears it’s still in production, Funcom’s expanding the scope of the DUNE game, Diablo Immortal is finally starting alpha, there’s another EVE shooter coming, and oh yeah, Cyberpunk 2077 is on fire.

THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES

Greg ‘Ghostcrawler’ Street confirms that Riot Games is working on a League of Legends MMO - Are you ready for that League of Legends MMO? Because it looks as though it's actually going to be coming your way. On Thursday evening, former World of Warcraft developer…

City State Entertainment’s Final Stand: Ragnarok heralds the arrival of ‘first access’ - It's been some time since we had heard much about Final Stand: Ragnarok, the second game coming from Camelot Unchained developer City State Entertainment; the last we had heard, they…

Albion Online studio Sandbox Interactive just got bought out for more than €100M - As it turns out, the MMO industry is going to see one more big buyout move before 2021 is upon us. Last night, Albion Online studio Sandbox Interactive announced on…

Chronicles of Elyria is still in development, new video from Soulbound vows - Chronicles of Elyria's 2020 saga is without a doubt of the most concerning MMO stories of the entire year. This past spring, after reaching pre-alpha and running a funding campaign,…

Funcom says it’s expanded the DUNE game’s scope with Tencent’s backing - There's a little nugget of interest in Funcom's traditional holiday letter to fans and press this week, at least if you're waiting impatiently for the DUNE game whose development was…

Into the Super-verse: A heroic year of superhero MMO development - As we get ready to tuck 2020 into the annals of history and venture into the wilds of 2021, it's a good time for superheroes to kick back, down some…

Massively OP’s 2020 Awards: Best MMO Player Housing - MassivelyOP’s end-of-the-year awards for 2020 continue today with our award for Best MMO Player Housing, which was awarded to The Elder Scrolls Online last year. MMORPGs eligible for this award…

Life is Feudal MMO announces imminent closure, cites ‘reasons beyond [its] control’ - Enjoy this Christmas, Life is Feudal, because it will be your last. The Life is Feudal team made the shocking announcement on Friday that it will be shutting down the…

Phantasy Star Online 2 shows off new classes, locations, and details for New Genesis in a livestream - Earlier this morning, the devs of Phantasy Star Online 2 showcased gobs of new details for the upcoming sequel PSO2: New Genesis during a livestream. The broadcast offered up a…

Massively OP’s 2020 Awards: Worst MMO Business Model - MassivelyOP’s end-of-the-year awards for 2020 continue today with our award for Worst MMO Business Model, which was awarded jointly to Star Citizen and Fallout 76 last year. This faux-ward is…

Asheron’s Call 2 died 17 years ago, then came back, then died again, and here we are - On December 30th, 2005, Asheron's Call 2 was shut down - the first time. That was 15 years ago. And then, without warning, seven years later, the game was brought…

Massively Overthinking: Our MMO predictions for 2021 - So... 2020 didn't go exactly as anyone planned. Our predictions for this past year were pretty janked up by that whole pandemic thing and the whole games industry going way…

World of Warcraft is making Torghast easier and faster to clear in response to player behavior - Torghast isn't too hard for what the developers had intended in World of Warcraft, but it is too hard for how players had actually been playing it. That's been the important…

Sony yeets Cyberpunk 2077 off the PlayStation Store, offering full refunds - File this one under "comeuppance for months of crunch that didn't even really get the game to a launch state before Christmas": The Cyberpunk 2077 launch fiasco has only ramped…

Diablo Immortal kicks off technical alpha, confirms that it’s free-to-play - Queries about telephonic ownership aside, Diablo Immortal still has the attention of many who would dearly like to see an official Diablo on a mobile device. The Blizzard-NetEase project dropped…

Winter holiday events around the MMO universe, 2020 edition - Ho ho ho, it's Santa's younger brother Derrick here to do all of the jobs that Nick can't be bothered with this holiday season! Oh, my big brother always shows…

Massively OP’s 2020 Awards: Best MMO Business Model - MassivelyOP’s end-of-the-year awards for 2020 continue today with our award for Best MMO Business Model, which we could not reach a staff consensus on last year, meaning we awarded it…

Vague Patch Notes: The verbs of MMOs - Even if you don't like crafting, you should care if your MMO of choice has meaningful crafting. And you should especially care if it has housing because one tends to…

Pearl Abyss devs talk up the visuals, story, and gameplay features of Crimson Desert’s solo adventure - If the preview video of the upcoming Crimson Desert whet your appetite for more detailed video footage, then you're going to absolutely gobble up a new video featuring the game's…

CCP Games partners with Sperasoft for the latest in a long line of EVE franchise shooters - It's no secret at all that CCP Games has been working on a new multiplayer online game, or at least it shouldn't be if you read MOP regularly. That's because…

Funcom’s Conan Chop Chop isn’t dead, and it’s really launching next year - Funcom's Conan Chop Chop, originally introduced as a rogue-like ARPG back in 2019, wrecked our predictions for 2020 by not launching, and I'm holding a grudge. OK, I'm not. But…

Massively OP’s 2020 Awards: Biggest MMO Disappointment of 2020 - MassivelyOP’s end-of-the-year awards for 2020 continue today with our award for Biggest MMO Disappointment of 2020, which was awarded jointly to the cancellation of Peria Chronicles and the decline of…

End-of-Year Eleven: The biggest MMO stories of 2020 - Here's a fun question for you: What's the difference between the biggest surprises of a year and the biggest stories of the year? The answer, in short, is that it's something…

Amazon’s New World improves alpha combat with a new axe and shield - Who's pumped for New World to come out next year? There's a lot of hope and expectations riding on how much Amazon Game Studio can improve and flesh out the…

Diablo IV works to ‘get itemization right,’ promises something ‘chunky’ for BlizzConline - When you come to a Diablo game, your brain is often just craving one thing: those loot explosions. Gear is a major source of those juicy endorphins, and it's a…

Vin Diesel is officially part of the development team for ARK 2 as President of Creative Convergence - Just in case you happened to miss it during our coverage of the Game Awards, a sequel to survival sandbox ARK: Survival Evolved as well as an animated series are…

Choose My Adventure: Simply skipping through quests small and large in Fallout 76 - I'm not sure that this week has fully inured me to Fallout 76, but I will say that things were starting to come together a little bit more this time…

Fight or Kite: Forget Cyberpunk 2077 – Hackmud is the real cyberpunk game you should be playing - Right now the game dominating headlines is Cyberpunk 2077 - Cyberpunk this and Cyberpunk that. I honestly believe some players expected this game to change the way we see a…

Rumor: Nexon’s Final Fantasy XI mobile remake has been cancelled - It looks as if the sun has finally set on the never-materialized mobile remake of Final Fantasy XI, as Korean site MTN is reporting that the project has been cancelled. The…

Massively OP’s 2020 Awards: Best MMO Character Customization - MassivelyOP’s end-of-the-year awards for 2020 continue today with... what's this? A brand-new award? Yep! This year we're debuting a new formal award for Best MMO Character Customization. After all, making…

World of Warcraft’s Ion Hazzikostas evaluates Shadowlands’ launch - Now that we're approaching a month of exploring Shadowlands, Blizzard and players alike have a better idea of how the World of Warcraft expansion is functioning in a live environment.…

Star Wars Galaxies Legends will launch Bespin as the City in the Clouds expansion in early 2021 - Star Wars Galaxies rogue server Star Wars Galaxies Legends has some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that it's put a halt to some of the…

Microsoft outlines shared goals with Sony and Nintendo to make gaming ‘safer’ - There are a lot of things that Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo all disagree about. Which company gets your money, for example. But a new posting on the official Microsoft site…

Wisdom of Nym: Impressions of Final Fantasy XIV’s patch 5.4 content - Here's something that I think no one, even me, really acknowledged heading into this particular patch: Final Fantasy XIV set itself up with a really difficult act to follow. Patch 5.3 was…

Tencent moves forward in buying Leyou Technologies for over a billion bucks - Throughout the 2020, we've been covering the many companies competing to buy up Leyou Technology, the holding company that both owns the majority of Warframe's Digital Extremes and is working…

Massively OP’s 2020 Awards: Biggest MMO Blunder of 2020 - MassivelyOP’s end-of-the-year awards for 2020 continue today with our award for Biggest MMO Industry Blunder of 2020, which was awarded to Blizzard last year thanks to the multi-month Blitzchung fiasco. This…

Astellia Royal is the free-to-play version of Astellia Online released to North America and Korea - We recently learned about the existence of Astellia Royal, and naturally we initially assumed it was some sort of free-to-play battle royale version of Astellia Online. As it turns out,…

CD Projekt Red apologizes for Cyberpunk 2077’s woeful performance on PS4 and XB1, offers refunds - The experiences of those playing the single-player RPG Cyberpunk 2077 appear to be wildly divergent based on which platform one has chosen. If you're among those who elected to play…

THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS

Massively OP Podcast Episode 301: Hurtling into Oblivion

Battle Bards Episode 183: Theme parks

The Stream Team: Joining in on Frostfall snowball fights in Dauntless

The Stream Team: A first ride in Raft

The Stream Team: Gift’thulu gives goodies for AdventureQuest 3D’s Frostval

The Stream Team: Dungeons and delves for Trove’s Snowfest

The Stream Team: Squelching Neverwinter’s spellplague

The Stream Team: SWTOR’s Echoes of Vengeance repeats itself

The Stream Team: Decking the halls (and snowmen and fish) in Star Trek Online’s Winter Wonderland

The Stream Team: A launch-day look at EverQuest II’s Reign of Shadows

The Stream Team: A Bargain of Blood in Dungeons and Dragons Online

The Stream Team: Down into an Endless Delve 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.