We got a bit of bad news this week from two fledgling MMOs: Crowfall suffered a round of layoffs that the studio has attempted to downplay, and Elyon delayed its launch to October and changed its business model to improve its success chances here in the west.
Meanwhile, New World launched its final beta test, LOTRO began testing major content for this fall’s Fate of Gundabad, Neverwinter announced plans for battle passes, Blade & Soul rolled out its UE4 graphics update, and Raph Koster is building a sandbox MMO and the metaverse. And of course, every gamer got to enjoy the drama of the conclusion of the Epic v. Apple lawsuit.
Read on to catch up with the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions today as every Sunday (since 2010!) in Massively Overpowered’s Week in Review!THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES
New World’s open beta officially begins this morning – are you playing? - Here we go, folks: There's one more New World test event before the launch on September 28th, assuming we don't see another last-minute delay, and that event begins today in…
Elyon delays launch to October 20th to swap to a free-to-play model - Remember back when Elyon locked in a launch date of September 29th? It turns out that this was more of a soft-lock, really, giving Kakao the right to change its…
Blade & Soul’s UE4 graphics update and Dual Blade class have officially arrived - As promised, Blade and Soul's massive UE4 graphics upgrade went live late last night - probably while the bulk of you were sleeping. "[T]he game has been upgraded to Unreal…
Crowfall confirms layoffs, attributing them to switching to a ‘live service’ op - On Labor Day, we reported that Crowfall team ArtCraft had suffered a round of layoffs. While ArtCraft itself declined to comment on the record about the extent of the damage,…
Lord of the Rings Online tests Brawler and Legendary Items 2.0, reveals fall expansion name: Fate of Gundabad - It's as big of a week for Lord of the Rings Online as possible without an actual release. That's because Standing Stone Games finally started testing two major features that…
Crowfall studio ArtCraft has apparently suffered a round of layoffs - We've got some bad news for fans of Crowfall: It appears that the team behind the game, ArtCraft, is going through some layoffs. The news initially came from Valerie Massey, who…
Neverwinter’s next campaign, Echoes of Prophecy, totes along free and paid battlepasses - [AL:NW]PWE and Cryptic announced this morning that they're launching a new campaign - with what looks like two tiers of battle pass - for Neverwinter. Dubbed Echoes of Prophecy, the…
So it turns out Raph Koster is building the metaverse and a sandbox MMO on top of it - Last week, we covered Playable Worlds' Raph Koster's teasing about a metaverse. This week, he's delivered a lot more than a tease. "We have built a metaverse platform," he says.…
LOTRO Legendarium: Analyzing the first look at Brawler and Legendary Items 3.0 - Friends, I am genuinely so excited to be a Lord of the Rings Online player these days. It feels like this year in the game's been on a steady rise…
The Epic v. Apple ruling permanently stops Apple from blockading third-party purchasing - Happy Friday, and happy one more entry in the longrunning Epic-Apple feud, as today, the judge in the Epic v. Apple lawsuit, Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers, issued her ruling in the anti-monopoly…
So is The Matrix Resurrections making you want a Matrix Online resurrection? - Just two years ago, we all learned that the Matrix movie franchise was getting another entry, complete with one of the original directors and several of the original cast, including…
EG7’s acting CEO Ji Ham discusses investment in existing Daybreak games and support of a ‘AAA project’ - Last week we noted that Enad Global 7's acting CEO Ji Ham, who himself was tapped for the position in a surprise management shake-up, would be answering questions about his…
WoW Factor: How World of Warcraft mirrors a toxic relationship for players - First and foremost, a fair warning here: This is going to be a column that does, albeit indirectly, deal with some potentially heavy subject matter. While I am not going…
Tencent, Netease hit with stock losses amid China’s gaming industry clampdown - If you've been following the gaming industry for a while, you probably remember the big "freezes" that the Chinese government placed on new game approvals in the country back in…
Fallout 76 goes ahead with Season 6 launch amid controversy - It's not been a week when you'd want to work at Bethesda on Fallout 76. First, the studio had to sully its big fall launch by announcing that it had…
Massively Overthinking: Overcoming barriers-to-exit in MMOs - About a thousand years ago, I wrote an article on Old Massively called "but I already have that game" about barriers-to-exit: the difficulty of convincing gamers to leave an MMO…
Vague Patch Notes: The taxonomy of liars in the MMO development space - We have talked before in this column about lies and the lying liars who tell them. Those rotten, rotten liars. But the other day, MOP's Bree and I were talking…
EverQuest starts selling monthly perks on top of subscriptions - How can Daybreak milk even more money out of subscribers? EverQuest is trying out a new à la carte promotion to add monthly bonuses to accounts -- for a price.…
World of Tanks community rep resigns in protest over firing of fellow Wargaming staffer - Wargaming, the studio behind World of Warships and World of Tanks, is garnering the wrong kind of attention all over again, this time for firing a member of the Tanks…
Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis has banned over 1,600 accounts for hateful behavior - The devs of Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis are letting players know that hateful or discriminatory behavior in the game will not fly. A tweeted image touches on the…
Jagex stamps out an Old School RuneScape mod prior to release, players organize a protest [Updated] - (We've updated at the end with Jagex's latest statement.) An Old School RuneScape modder is steaming after Jagex sent out a letter demanding that the project be shut down, despite…
Nightmare is a new F2P pixelart MMORPG that’s launched on Steam today - Happy Tuesday, and welcome to the launch of a new MMORPG! We're talking about Nightmare, a new open-world retro pixelart MMO from the indie Magework Studios, which just fully launched…
The Soapbox: #DayOffTwitch illustrates how good intentions break under bad planning - Those of you reading this probably know me as someone who wears one of three hats here at MOP: a news writer, the Choose My Adventure columnist, and one of…
Sony puts an end to free first-party PlayStation 5 game upgrades - Bad news for PlayStation 5 owners looking to upgrade their libraries: Sony said that it's putting an end to the practice of upgrading first-party PlayStation 4 games to the next…
Wisdom of Nym: A look at Trusts in Final Fantasy XIV before Endwalker - Trusts are simultaneously one of the most important and most invisible features of Shadowbringers on a whole. A whole lot of work goes into making sure that Trusts are available…
Guild Wars 2 details End of Dragons’ fishing and boat mechanics and masteries - Ever since ArenaNet announced that fishing - and its companion fishing boats, skiffs - would be a major feature of End of Dragons, Guild Wars 2 players have been anxiously…
RuneLite HD mod announces a Monday launch date after ‘fruitful’ talks with Jagex - Earlier in the week we reported on some community uproar with Old School RuneScape and the creator of a graphical mod for the game known as RuneLite HD. Jagex had…
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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