The good news is that Lord of the Rings Online got its Bilbo adventures update out this week, not all that long after its last update. The bad news is that even MOP’s Justin found it a bit of a drag: “If I may spoil it for you, these 10 missions can be summed up as, Bilbo felt like going on a walk one day, visited a friend, and got captured by goblins. The Elves freaked out that Bilbo was gone, yet didn’t go look for him themselves because they’re lazy elves. So you get him back. The end.” Can’t win ’em all, we suppose. Happy birthday?
Meanwhile, Guild Wars 2 prepped Judgment, New World talked up its PvP, Albion Online and RuneScape began their mobile hype, PSO2: New Genesis and Swords of Legends planned summer rollouts, we chatted with the Mortal Online 2 devs, Elite Dangerous Odyssey got a launch date, and Jeff Kaplan left Blizzard.
Plus, we kicked off a brand-new column here on MOP called Four Winds, dedicated to Eastern MMORPGs.
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: Bilbo’s further adventures are anything but adventurous - It is certainly not a quiet week around Lord of the Rings Online, as we got both a mid-tier content update and the 14th anniversary celebration. I don't have a…
Stick and Rudder: The frustrating and unsuccessful search for life in Elite Dangerous Odyssey alpha phase 3 - I should have been more capable. If I were a better exploration pilot in Elite: Dangerous, I suspect I would have had a better time. Or would have had more…
Flameseeker Chronicles: Possible futures for Guild Wars 2’s strikes and dragon response missions - Guild Wars 2’s Icebrood Saga gave us a new type of endgame group content starting with its prologue chapter: Strike Missions. Each episode introduced one or more of these mini-raids,…
Casually Classic: Four alternative day one strategies for WoW Classic’s Burning Crusade - OK, real talk time, people. Is there anyone out there that, knowing the zone design of Burning Crusade and Blizzard's track record with launches, isn't anticipating an unholy mother of…
Jeff Kaplan leaves Blizzard Entertainment and his position as director of Overwatch - Everything is going super great at Blizzard Entertainment, and the proof of this can be found in the newest announcement of employment shakeups. Jeff Kaplan, a veteran of the studio who…
Phantasy Star Online 2 will launch New Genesis globally in June, closed beta signups up are live now - Just a week ago, SEGA announced that it was planning to open the global beta test for Phantasy Star Online 2's New Genesis sequel soon, with a beta starting May…
Guild Wars 2 Judgment episode is unleashed April 27 – here’s the new trailer - [AL:GW2]Back in March, ArenaNet hinting that the fourth and final episode of Guild Wars 2's Icebrood Saga would roll out in late April, and now we've got a hard date,…
Classic Guild Wars is about to turn 16 years old and the party has begun in Shing Jea - If you want to get absolutely technical about it, Classic Guild Wars doesn't officially turn 16 years old until Monday. But if we waited until Monday to remind you, you'd…
Four Winds: Why are Asian MMOs monetized the way they are? - Welcome to Four Winds, Massively OP's newest column, dedicated to Asian MMOs and the culture around it. As the resident Black Desert columnist, I'm a fan of the game as…
Heroes of the Storm players lament Blizzard’s neglect and slow development - While Blizzard's all-star character-filled MOBA Heroes of the Storm isn't shuttered or being completely ignored yet -- in fact, there have been a couple of balance adjustments in January and…
Massively Overthinking: How much are you spending on MMOs every month right now? - A while back, MOP's Justin joked that his wife, who loves econ PvP in MMOs, was funding a year of his play on Classic and Retail World of Warcraft through…
Vague Patch Notes: What we mean when we talk about MMO maintenance mode - I've mentioned before that this column's title was inspired by the vague patch notes of Final Fantasy XI, and here we are diving into that game all over again because it…
Elyon’s bonus AMA talks about shifting metas, endgame gearing, and a Russian client - What's better than getting a big fat AMA about an upcoming MMO that you're interested in playing? Two AMAs, of course! Krafton said that last week's Elyon question-and-answer session generated…
Humble Bundle’s charity donation caps cause an uproar among donors and subbers - The folks at Humble Bundle decided to light a tinderbox yesterday with an announcement that outlines a shift in how sales of its game charity bundles will work: It's removing…
Destiny 2’s proposed transmog system is out to punish you for looking fine - Close your eyes and imagine a cosmetic transmog system for a looter shooter like Destiny 2. Not too complicated, right? Now open your eyes and behold the convoluted and grindy…
Valheim could be modded into a 1,000-player MMORPG - While Valheim seemed content to populate its online worlds with a bare handful of brave Vikings, some players are working on a mod that could turn the game into a…
Black Desert’s companion app, Black Desert+, is available now - If you play a lot of Black Desert, you might wish there were a way to get a little bit more of the game even when you're not playing it. Good…
World of Warcraft opens up pre-orders for the Sylvanas novel - Are you a World of Warcraft fan eager to get some more Sylvanas content? Really? Well, you're an odd one, but you're going to get what you want with the next tie-in…
Albion Online confirms summer mobile launch, opens preregistration and German test - RuneScape isn't the only MMO with major mobile news today: Sandbox Interactive has opened registrations for Albion Online's mobile version too. If you follow the game, you already know that…
Neverwinter announces the end of PvP seasons as the devs ‘explore ways to evolve PvP’ - It looks like there's a paradigm shift to PvPing on the way to Neverwinter. While Season 14 is still coming -- specifically between now and May 20th -- it will…
Almost four years after its first announcement, RuneScape is finally hitting mobile this summer - We've been eyeballing RunesScape mobile for a really long time, folks: We covered the original announcement for a mobile client all the way back in the fall of 2017. Old…
Lord of the Rings Online rings in its 14th anniversary - It was 14 years ago that the shadowy forces of evil in Middle-earth faced an incoming horde of intrepid adventurers who were dedicated to fighting for the Free Peoples. And…
New World talks up recently added PvP features, repeats desire to make PvP and PvE gameplay coexist - "New World offers both PvP and PvE gameplay, and balancing these two modes is as important to us as it is to many of you," opens a dev blog shared…
Elite Dangerous Odyssey confirms a May 19 release date on PC - It looks like the progress being made in the Elite: Dangerous Odyssey alpha is moving at a predictable enough pace that Frontier Developments can announce when the expansion will release.…
Diablo Immortal is testing endgame content and the Crusader class in alpha - As you continue your grand quest to secure a phone to play the upcoming Diablo Immortal, Blizzard has moved the mobile game into its next phase of closed alpha testing.…
Lord of the Rings Online players hits level cap by baking millions of pies - If you thought that you were super hardcore because you have raided all the things and are so drenched in purple that other colors might as well not exist, then…
Perfect Ten: Here is the stuff you can have when I quit this MMO - Paul Simon once said that there had to be at least 50 ways to leave your lover. Back in the day, however, there was considered to be one appropriate way…
Discord ends talks with Microsoft, remains independent – for now - Considering how popular and heavily used Discord is to MMO players, there were plenty of concerned and interested eyes turning to a proposed deal by Microsoft to buy the chat…
The Survivalist: Conan Exiles’ Isle of Siptah expands tomorrow with sunshine and a spitting spider god - The Isle of Siptah, Conan Exiles' first major expansion, is now itself expanding -- in size, scope, sunshine, and spiders! Sorry arachnophobes! If you thought the large list of improvements…
Amazon’s New World adds achievements and updated faction PvP to the alpha - As if to reassure everyone that Amazon Game Studios really is planning on launching New World rather than canning it like everything else, the team has launched another alpha patch…
Interview: Mortal Online 2 CEO on stress testing, persistent plans, and the MMO market - It's not every day that I actually get an answer, let alone a number, when I ask an MMORPG developer how many people showed up for a stress test. But…
Choose My Adventure: Further group adventures (that weren’t IAs) in RIFT - Once again, the polls from last week were a split between people saying I should queue for normal dungeons and others saying I should just roll around in Hammerknell. So,…
Swords of Legends Online opens preorders with minimum $39.99 buy-in for closed beta - If you've somehow missed the deluge of class reveal trailers from Swords of Legends Online the last two weeks - or you can't be arsed to watch them all -…
Sony changes course and announces the PlayStation 3 and PSP Vita stores will remain operational - Remember at the end of March when Sony announced that the PlayStation 3, PSP, and PSP Vita stores would shut down this year? Fans were pretty unhappy, especially as it…
Fight or Kite: My mobile MMO experience peaked in 2008 with Parallel Kingdom - It's a distant memory now, but in 2008 I played a mobile MMO that completely and totally had me hooked. I remember sitting on the bus, on my way to…
Wisdom of Nym: First impressions of Final Fantasy XIV’s 5.5 content - This is a bit of an unusual case. I can't think of any patch in recent memory that's been so split between the quality of its content and the quality…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 318: Middle-earth no more
Battle Bards Episode 191: Digging up the past
The Stream Team: Fireworks and friends for LOTRO’s 14th birthday
The Stream Team: Exploring the new biomes of Conan Exiles’ Isle of Siptah
The Stream Team: Sandsea side quests in AQ3D
The Stream Team: Going after fire giants and dragons in Neverwinter
The Stream Team: Guess the deaths in The Shroud’s lair in SWTOR
The Stream Team: Facing Path of Exile’s Ultimatum for the first time
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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