Gamigo’s bad news continued this week as we learned that multiple RIFT developers had been laid off. While Gamigo says RIFT is “contributing a great deal to [its] roster,” it stopped short of calling the game one of its core MMOs, couldn’t discuss future content for the MMO beyond its anniversary events, and wouldn’t tell press or players the location or number of the current RIFT team.
Meanwhile, Guild Wars 2’s Balance chapter and Elder Scrolls Online’s Flames of Ambition launched, LOTRO outlined its 2021 plans, Saga of Lucimia rattled fans with news that its founder had effectively departed, and Ashes of Creation postponed its alpha one.
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
Gamigo has laid off an unspecified number of RIFT devs, says MMO will continue - Yesterday, we learned through a trusted tipster that multiple Gamigo developers situated in the US and working on RIFT had been laid off from the company. The layoffs reportedly included…
Flameseeker Chronicles: First impressions of Guild Wars 2’s ‘Balance’ chapter, launching today - Another month, another round of Dragon Response Missions. Balance is part three of four chapters in Guild Wars 2’s Icebrood Saga, and things are starting to heat up (no conflagration…
Gamigo says RIFT is ‘contributing a great deal’ to the studio, promises 10th anny events - Earlier this week, we learned from one of our sources that multiple developers from Gamigo's RIFT team had been laid off from the company, which further added to the fears…
Ashes of Creation delays its alpha one test to June for ‘additional polish’ - The moment of Ashes of Creation's first large-scale alpha test won't be as soon as previously anticipated. Intrepid Studios came out this week to announce that due to performance "challenges"…
WoW Classic ‘Fresh Crusade’ movement boasts 10,000 players and counting - Leave it to the endlessly innovative and motivated MMO community to make their own fun when game developers won't play ball. After Blizzard declined to announce fresh start servers for…
Indie space sandbox Avorion celebrates first anniversary – and 300K sales - Avorion's been on our radar for the last year, almost to the day: It's a "procedural co-op space sandbox where players can build their own space ships out of dynamically…
The Elder Scrolls Online officially releases Update 29 and Flames of Ambition on PC - We've been covering the next update for The Elder Scrolls Online from the very jump, starting with its initial reveal all the way through to its dungeon previews. Now the…
Lord of the Rings Online’s 2021 roadmap includes Wildwood, Bilbo, Blood of Azog, Gundabad, and the LI revamp - Lord of the Rings Online's Rob "Severlin" Ciccolini just posted a new letter from producer for the community, through if you've been watching the game's streams (and reading MOP's Justin's…
Casually Classic: How Burning Crusade revolutionized WoW questing - While it's been a blast stepping back into an era where I can re-experience World of Warcraft as it once was, playing WoW Classic has also reminded me of several…
Wisdom of Nym: Final Fantasy XIV’s forced grouping serves an important purpose - It's not exactly a secret, but just in case you didn't know this, Final Fantasy XIV has dungeons that are absolutely necessary to progress through the game's main story. They…
‘We will never be the same’: Cryptic is adopting a permanent work-from-home policy - A lot of gaming companies, including MMO companies, shifted to working from home when the COVID pandemic began in earnest last year. And one of the "silver linings" of the…
EU MechWarrior Online, RUST servers go offline following French data center burning to the ground – no one hurt - Well, this might be a first for the MMO industry: The data center in Strasbourg, France, that housed MechWarrior Online's servers was partially destroyed in a major fire overnight. Here's…
New test strings hint that The Burning Crusade Classic may be arriving as soon as May 18 - The machinery behind the scenes at Blizzard is moving fast on the classic version of the first World of Warcraft expansion, The Burning Crusade, and there's reason to start speculating about how…
Elder Scrolls Online and Fallout 76 launched on Xbox Game Pass as ESO celebrates 18M total players - Yesterday's Xbox and Bethsoft roundtable dropped a bit of information about the merger and the future of the games as well as the current state of one of the games…
LOTRO Legendarium: Analyzing the 2021 LOTRO producer letter - Despite the title of the "February 2021" producer's letter, Standing Stone Games' official annual roadmap was welcomed when it arrived last week. In March. Anyway, it's here, and as always,…
Path of Exile’s upcoming nerfs to Harvest crafting sets the community on fire - According to the devs of Path of Exile, the crafting mechanics introduced in the Harvest league, even after adjustments made in update 3.13.0, made getting good items way too easy.…
Massively Overthinking: Picking the ‘wrong’ MMORPG class - Last month, the MMORPG subreddit slept on a good thread about picking classes in MMOs. Let's wake this sucker up. "Am I the only one who is afraid of picking…
Fallout 76’s Locked and Loaded update isn’t landing until April 27 - Fallout 76 players already know that the Bethsoft team's been prepping the Locked and Loaded update this past season, and as of today, we now know when the update is…
Desert Oasis: A brief history of Kakao Games, Black Desert’s former PC publisher - It's been a busy couple of months for Pearl Abyss and Kakao games. While Black Desert players knew about Pearl Abyss taking up self publishing duties for the game's western PC…
MechWarrior Online and RUST are slowly recovering after data center fire yesterday - As we reported yesterday morning, a massive fire in Strasbourg, France, took out multiple buildings at the OVH data center where countless companies, including gaming companies, hosted websites and games.…
Vague Patch Notes: The sneering elitism of the MMO term ‘welfare epics’ - A few weeks ago, I saw an MMO player unironically complaining about "welfare epics" here in 2021. This is basically the equivalent of saying, "I'm a gigantic elitist turd," and…
Saga of Lucimia’s founder hasn’t been involved in the game’s development since last fall - Last fall, we did a "Whatever Happened To" article on Saga of Lucimia, the group-centered hardcore MMORPG that we've had an eyeball on since 2015 and was originally targeting 2017…
Dark Age of Camelot’s leveling event draws ‘thousands’ of characters - It's Fast Times at Dark Age High these days, as DAOC is in the midst of a 10-day "Catch Up in Caledonia" event to help players pump out those levels…
Leaderboard: Are you hyped for WoW Burning Crusade Classic? - I don't think I've ever seen people fight over the details of a classic server as hard as they do for WoW Classic. Dipping into the comments of our WoW…
Not So Massively: Outriders’ demo teases a decent but unremarkable looter-shooter - Outriders, the new co-op shooter from publisher Square Enix, is not a game I've followed super closely, but with Anthem consigned to eternal purgatory, I could use a new sci-fi…
Perfect Ten: Ten things that killed me in Final Fantasy XI - In many ways, Final Fantasy XI was a designed copy of EverQuest. It did, however, remove a lot of the elements of that game in particular. You no longer purchased training for…
Choose My Adventure: Fizzle frustration, boss beatdowns, and slowly forming strategies in Wizard101 - Remember last week how I wrote about being surprised at the depth of Wizard101’s combat? This week I learned that the game’s combat can also provide a stern challenge for…
Whatever happened to superhero MMO Valiance Online? - As one of the original community-led "Plan Z" superhero MMORPGs that sprung up in the wake of City of Heroes' original demise, Valiance Online has had the appearance of an…
Leaked internal email suggests that The Burning Crusade Classic will be in beta testing this month - If you can't wait to go through the Dark Portal in WoW Classic, you can take heart that you may not be waiting all that much longer. According to a purported…
ArcheAge announces Akasch Invasion patch coming March 25 – with some paid content for Unchained - [AL:Arche]Over the weekend, Gamigo teased that "something's coming" for ArcheAge, prompting more trepidation than curiosity. Now we know what it is: a big update, and not even far away. It's…
Fight or Kite: Crowfall’s Transformation added necessary polish to bring us closer to launch - The most recent patch to Crowfall brought a whole slew of improvements and enhancements to the game. Every update we’ve seen in the past year has enhanced the game tremendously,…
Corepunk’s class options expand to include the Mercenary, Pain Reaper, and Warmonger - Have you settled on a class to play when Corepunk's beta arrives? You may want to reserve judgment until you read the full reveal on the Mercenary, because this class…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
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.
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