So this week could’ve been a dumpster fire, what with Blizzard flailing around trying to distract from the upcoming investor call and New World being a pile of bugs with a gameloop stapled to it and Magic Legends sunsetting for good.
But instead, we’re over here cheering for the resurrection of Fallen Earth. We like good news! We also got our hands on Guild Wars 2’s third elite spec beta and dropped our first impressions of Elyon post-launch, plus we got two new pseudo-MMOs: Riders Republic and Pikmin Bloom.
Happy Halloween, everybody! Save some candy for us! Then 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
Activision-Blizzard partly meets some worker demands, dramatically cuts Bobby Kotick’s compensation - At 5:15 a.m. EDT this morning, Activision-Blizzard's PR team dropped a lengthy letter from CEO Bobby Kotick, addressing everything from the ongoing pandemic to the ongoing sexual harassment and discrimination…
Fallen Earth’s servers are finally back online after two years – Fallen Earth Classic is live - Well, that didn't take long: Just one week after initially teasing Fallen Earth Classic, Little Orbit has got the whole thing online. Downloads were available last night, and as of…
World of Warcraft, lacking any sense of shame, releases a new cash shop mount - The year is 2021. World of Warcraft: Shadowlands has been out for nearly a year. It has had one content update. One. Every other game in the big five has managed…
Flameseeker Chronicles: Hands-on with Guild Wars 2’s Specter, Untamed, and Mechanist - It seems like just yesterday that we were getting hyped for the Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons' reveal stream. While we still have a few months to wait and…
First Impressions: Elyon continues to blend in with the MMORPG gaming furniture - After about 30 or so levels and an entirely different class, I can pretty much say with a fair bit of confidence that my impressions of Elyon are no different…
New World is suffering from yet another exploit, this one revolving around malicious chat code - The New World community is becoming absolute experts at finding bugs and exploits in the game, prodded on by Amazon's apparent willingness to provide them for the finding, which is…
LOTRO Legendarium: Six ways to renew your love of Lord of the Rings Online - For a little bit of context, I have been playing Lord of the Rings Online since its beta and pre-launch period back in 2007. In subsequent years, there have been…
Diablo Immortal launches closed beta today as Blizzard’s pre-investor call infodump continues - I joked to my husband this morning that Blizzard has been all over the map this week, with a critical investor call looming on Tuesday. So far, it's canceled its…
WoW Factor: BlizzCon is BlizzGone, so what’s next for WoW? - If you needed a sign of just how bad things were getting at Blizzard HQ, that sign came with the announcement that BlizzConline was not going to be happening in…
New World explains how it handles server and client authority as players agitate for PvP servers - With the myriad bugs that players have been able to unearth over the last month in New World, there have been plenty of assumptions about how the game handles server/client…
Massively on the Go: A guide to staying safe in MMOARG Pikmin Bloom - When we first covered the global release of MMOARG Pikmin Bloom, we noted that because of Niantic's poor history when it comes to "safety," player communities have been remarkably reticent…
The Daily Grind: Which dead MMOs do you hope will come back some day? - Last week, Fallen Earth returned to service, which delighted me to no end. When you have favorite MMOs that end up being shuttered or taken offline for future development, there's…
Amazon’s game studio VP talks about New World’s launch and the company’s vision for future releases - Christoph Hartmann, Amazon’s vice president of games studios, has seen a lot of false starts and stumbles with Amazon Games' previous projects, but with New World's overall success, he's feeling…
Multiplayer extreme sports racer Riders Republic officially launches - After a number of delays, the time has officially come for Riders Republic, the large-scale multiplayer extreme sport racer, to officially launch on PC, Xbox, PlayStation, and Stadia. The game's…
Vague Patch Notes: The fuzzy reality of MMO expansions - So for some reason right now, I'm thinking a lot about expansions. It might be because we've got Final Fantasy XIV's next major expansion in less than a month. It might…
Massively Overthinking: Our favorite MMORPGs of all time, 2021 edition - Five years ago this week - back in 2016 - the MOP team and readers did an epic Massively Overthinking picking out their top five MMORPGs of all time. Thanks…
Massively on the Go: Initial impressions of Pikmin Bloom, now live in the US - Well that was quick! Recently announced Pikmin Bloom and its global rollout have already made it to the United States. And since we announced its formal name and gameplay, I've gotten…
Halloween fun across the MMORPG genre, 2021 edition - Over the last couple of weeks, we've been rounding up all the Halloween events descending upon our favorite MMORPGs and MMO-adjacent titles, and there are a lot - more than…
Blizzard fully assimilates Diablo II: Resurrected’s Vicarious Visions - It's always with a vague sense of unease that we witness studios acquired by larger game developers and then, more often than not, completely dissolved within the company itself. And…
World of Warcraft quietly removed all of its Torghast 9.0 questline with patch 9.1.0 - It seems like basically no one was happy with the plotline that stretched through Torghast in World of Warcraft: Shadowlands. This is not an indefensible point of view, since it featured…
Perfect Ten: Ten MMORPGs you’ve already forgotten about - Not every MMORPG can remain in the spotlight forever. Time has a nasty habit of making us forget titles that used to rile up our excitement and get us talking…
The Division 2 pushes back its next content update to February 2022 for quality control purposes - Back in March, fans of The Division 2 were probably very surprised when Ubisoft Massive announced that it would be putting out new content after the devs had said that…
Everything people are grumpy about in New World, one month in - A timely email from a reader this morning reminded me to poke my head into the New World subreddit to see what's on fire now that we're exactly one full…
Elyon’s weekly patch adds closed beta rewards, Halloween deco and furniture - Elyon is just a week out of the gate and still trucking along, as evidenced by today's patch. Kakao has fixed mana awakening nodes, icons, multiple items in the cash…
Lost Ark plots a course for beta, lays out its monetization and currency plans - Amazon-published Korean MMORPG Lost Ark published two documents for prospective players this week, addressing both how the upcoming closed beta will play out as well as how the business model…
Blizzard has now fully canceled BlizzConline, originally slated for early 2022 - Well, today's Blizzard news isn't going to surprise anyone: The company has canceled its upcoming BlizzConline event. The online event was originally set for early 2022, as pandemic uncertainties made…
The Game Archaeologist: SEGA’s Dragon’s Dream, the first console and cross-platform MMO - When most people are asked to think back upon the first console to attempt an online RPG experience, the name that most likely pops up is Phantasy Star Online. SEGA's…
Choose My Adventure: LOTRO’s fall festival rekindled my love for all things Tolkien - All right, that was a nice detour. It was going to be a long run in Lord of the Rings Online, so it was pretty nice to have something of…
Wisdom of Nym: Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers (not) in review - All right, prepare the fireworks and explosions; I'm going to dazzle you all with an astonishing hot take. Ready for it? Final Fantasy XIV's third expansion, Shadowbringers, is... very good! You're…
Activision-Blizzard is denied its request to pause the DFEH lawsuit - Over the course of Activision-Blizzard's continued legal and federal scrutiny for its sexual harassment and discrimination issues, a strange wrinkle had developed. Readers will recall that California's Department of Fair…
MMO Burnout: Arkham Horror the Card Game scratches my Secret World itch - After enjoying some video games with deck-building mechanics, I've been motivated to spend more time playing actual, physical card games. Following a fair bit of research, I've settled on Arkham…
Path of Exile’s Scourge launch sees concurrency numbers near its all-time highest point - When Path of Exile's Scourge expansion went live this past Friday, we noted how the previous expansion didn't exactly light fans on fire and lead to lower concurrency numbers for…
What we learned from Guild Wars 2’s Specter, Untamed, and Mechanist elite specs stream - The final round of Guild Wars 2 End of Dragons elite specializations was demonstrated for viewers on ArenaNet's Guild Chat stream this past Friday - medium armor wearers, rejoice, for…
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.
