Elder Scrolls Online appears to be joining forces with Guild Wars 2 to make 2022 the year of boats in MMOs, as the former began teasing its new content chapter and arc this week. Plus, we poked our noses into World of Warcraft, New World, and LOTRO; Square-Enix made FFXIV fans nervous with NFT overtures; and EVE Online is doing a collab with Doctor Who?
We also finished off our annual awards and most of our end-of-the-year pieces; you can get caught up on our whole slate of winners and recap articles in our debrief!
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
LOTRO Legendarium: Does LOTRO need a new dungeon finder tool? - Welcome to a new year of the LOTRO Legendarium! With Fate of Gundabad at our backs and an unknown future ahead, it's quite the interesting time to be involved in…
WoW Factor: Is World of Warcraft a good value for the money? - There are a lot of reasons to not be subscribed to World of Warcraft at the moment, although "the current state of the game plus the overall vibe of everything…
Vague Patch Notes: The MMO term ‘pay-to-win’ is a red herring - It probably hasn't escaped anyone who has been reading my writing over the past several years that I have something of a vendetta against the term pay-to-win. (If you're in…
Elder Scrolls Online has begun teasing what looks like a High Isles Breton-centric chapter - If you follow The Elder Scrolls Online on Twitter, you probably noticed some of the cryptic teases about the game's next chapter and year-long plot showing water and boats. ZeniMax…
Wisdom of Nym: Final Fantasy XIV and the problem with the Matsuda NFT letter - What I really wanted to kick the year off right in the Wisdom of Nym column was to have to push my plans back and alter them based on an…
End-of-Year Eleven: The biggest MMO stories of 2021 - As the year that was 2021 comes to a close -- raise a glass, give a toast, and perhaps think of a few fond memories of the months bygone --…
Vitae Aeternum: Explaining New World’s level 30 wall - If you've been paying any amount of attention to New World, you've probably heard of the dreaded "level 30 wall" - the idea that people seem to bounce off the…
Chronicles of Elyria is now estimating a late 2024 release - After a rocky and litigious 2021, Chronicles of Elyria is no doubt hoping to get its head above water in the new year. Soulbound Studio broke its self-imposed "radio silence"…
New World is extending its Winter Convergence event thanks to ‘fantastic turnout’ - Are you among those players of New World who are enjoying the Winter Convergence event that went live last month? Are you going to be sad that the event is…
Tamriel Infinium: How Elder Scrolls Online made me a believer in public dungeons again - Most folks have their own goals and gameplay that they enjoy in MMORPGs. For me in Elder Scrolls Online, it's gradually bringing a game map to full completion. It's so…
New World begins testing new gearscore-boosting shards and expedition ‘mutations’ - As of last night, Amazon has opened up the New World public test realm for players to test... and scope out the changes coming in the next patch. There are…
Amazon Prime’s Fallout TV series kicks off production this year - Back in July 2020 we reported on the news of a Fallout TV series, which was confirmed to be headed to Amazon Prime Video and helmed by the production studio…
Lost Ark delivers a dynamo gameplay video - With Lost Ark just a month away from launch, it's the perfect time to sit up and take notice of Amazon's MMOARPG -- if you weren't tracking it already. The…
Massively on the GO: How to catch up in Pokemon GO for 2022 - Despite my concerns about player safety in Pokemon GO, especially in terms of stalking and the anemic response to it by Niantic's support, one of the big reasons I still play…
MassivelyOP’s Weirdest MMO Stories of 2021: Weirdest things Richard Garriott did this year that weren’t his MMO you paid for - Today we're finishing off our traditional countdown of MassivelyOP's weirdest MMORPG stories of the year! Coming in at #1 on our list is... Richard Garriott improving his diving and treasure…
A look back at the MMO and gaming science topics of 2021 - It's now become a long-running tradition on Massively OP to track science stories that track with online gaming and MMOs - this is our seventh year, in fact! Last year,…
GameStop plans to create an NFT and crypto marketplace this year - If you've ever wondered how GameStop manages to keep making the worst decisions and losing money with a zeal and intensity usually reserved for making it, we can't tell you.…
Leaderboard: What’s the most vulnerable Daybreak MMO in 2022? - It's time for another annual tradition: examining Daybreak's prospects. We started back in 2015, when Sony cast off SOE and it was reshaped as Daybreak... and purged games and staffers…
Book of Travels studio after layoffs: ‘We don’t plan on shrinking our ambitions’ - Despite cutting its team by more than two-thirds right before the holidays, Might and Delight said that it's full steam ahead for micro-MMO Book of Travels. The studio posted a…
Massively Overthinking: Hopes and fears for MMOs in 2022 - For our first official Massively Overthinking of 2022, we're following tradition: We're talking all about our hopes and fears for the genre in the new year. We like to run…
BioWare boss talks up SWTOR’s Legacy of the Sith, new remote hiring policy - BioWare did not have the best 2021. It lost Casey Hudson and Mark Darrah at the end of 2020, followed by Jonathan Warner in 2021; it gave up on Anthem…
Working As Intended: The MMOs we lost in 2021 - This is always one of the most depressing roundups I do around the turn of every year, and this year... well, we lost some good ones. Gamigo's gamepocalypse took out…
Diablo Immortal is ending its closed beta on January 7 - You know what is definitely far more mortal than the name of Diablo Immortal might imply? Its closed beta, which is ending abruptly tomorrow, January 7th. Players had been previously told…
Mortal Online 2 developer gets an Epic Games MegaGrant, confirms transition to Unreal Engine 5 - The development of the beta build of Mortal Online 2 continues on with everything from player housing and fishing, and now further updates to the sandbox MMORPG are practically assured…
Raven Software strike extends to its third week as Activision-Blizzard claims management is listening - January 3rd marked the third week during which the staff for Raven Software (responsible for several Call of Duty titles including Call of Duty: Warzone) was on strike, awaiting a response from…
ArcheAge bans more cheaters and revamps free trials in today’s update - ArcheAge is down for maintenance this morning, but don't get too excited, as the patch notes reiterate that complete halt to the entire unlock schedule for the fresh start servers.…
Leaderboard: What was the best *new* MMO of 2021? - The downside of letting both old and new games be eligible for MMO of the Year is that it's so hard for brand-new MMOs to compete with the very best…
Choose My Adventure: The Elder Scrolls Online welcomes me back with open arms and fun quests - You know that moment in an MMORPG - or even a single-player RPG - where you boot up the game after a long hiatus and then stand there for a…
Interview: ArcheAge studios on the move to Kakao, bans, land rushes, and the future of the game - One of the surprises the end of 2021 had in store for MMO players was the move of XLGAMES' ArcheAge and ArcheAge Unchained from Gamigo to Kakao Games, at least…
EVE Online is kicking off a huge collab with Doctor Who next week - Well now, it's only the fourth day of January and we've already got a contender for most amazing and weird transmedia synergy cross-promotion of 2022: It's EVE Online's new collab…
China’s continued freeze on new gaming approvals sees 14,000 gaming firms in the country shut down - The fight against the so-called "spiritual opium" of gaming by the Chinese government presses on into the new year. Readers will recall that a so-called "slow down" of gaming approvals…
The Daily Grind: Which MMO was the biggest contributor to killing the genre in 2021? - Before you get all prickly over the question, understand that we've been asking it of our readers since a backer pitched it in 2016. It's provocative, but it's an important…
The Game Archaeologist: The Blizzard Real ID fiasco of 2010 - As we come off a year when Blizzard Entertainment's seedy underbelly of scandals and coverups was exposed, I thought it might be worth risking a pile-on to look back at…
MassivelyOP’s complete 2021 awards debrief and annual recap - As we did in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020, today we're going to recap our annual awards and other meta articles from the end of 2021. We gave out…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 354: Catch-up roundtable and state of the site
Battle Bards Episode 208: Valheim
The Stream Team: Planning on some pixelated piracy in Plunder Panic
The Stream Team: Showdown with Skorpienne in AQ3D’s Sandsea Saga
The Stream Team: Checking out cool Valheim castles
The Stream Team: The Dread Sea Scrolls of Dungeons & Dragons Online
The Stream Team: SWTOR flashpoint fever
The Stream Team: Watching the Heavensturn in Final Fantasy XIV
The Stream Team: Starting the signature timeline in EQII’s Visions of Vetrovia
The Stream Team: Starting the new year with murder and mystery in Elder Scrolls Online’s Blackwood
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.
