Standing Stone Games floated – and then withdrew – yet another set of controversial changes for Lord of the Rings Online this week, this one prompting angry pay-to-win complaints, proving once again that the only thing standing between SSG and the game’s slow demise is player protest.
Meanwhile, Star Citizen is on fire, Elder Scrolls Online is on fire, and Black Desert is… actually doing rather well for itself. We’ll take it.
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
Lord of the Rings Online defends – and now pauses – controversial pay-to-win currency changes - (We've updated the end of this article with SSG's afternoon announcement that it will be pausing this plan. The original article follows.) An abrupt announcement yesterday that Lord of the…
Vague Patch Notes: Star Citizen is not going to live up to your dreams - So the other day, we were reminded that Squadron 42 - which was supposed to be released back in 2014, if you can believe that - is still likely a couple…
Perfect Ten: The best value MMOs at the start of 2022 - One of the reasons that I have been a huge fan of MMORPGs for nearly two decades now is that they offer a terrific bang for your buck. I recall…
Elder Scrolls Online PvPers are grumpy over an out-of-context stream clip - (We've updated with Matt Firor's new statement on PvP at the end of this article.) Longtime players know that The Elder Scrolls Online Creative Director Rich Lambert frequently streams the…
Black Desert claims a 230% increase in new western daily players on PC thanks to class reboot - Back in December, Black Desert implemented a major reboot of all of its classes in the PC version of the game, alongside the launch of its winter season servers, and…
Final Fantasy XIV outlines plans for sales resumption, server expansion, and server adjustments - If your server in Final Fantasy XIV is still crowded right now, you can be assured that Naoki Yoshida knows that, and the team behind the game is working on…
The Game Archaeologist: Talking 25-year-old Tibia with CipSoft - It's not every MMORPG that can boast that it started back in the late '90s and is still going strong even today. However, Tibia is one of a very elite…
Second Life’s original founder rejoins the project to create the ultimate metaverse - I swear, every time I have to write the word "metaverse" these days, a part of my soul dies and my eyes get a little more crossed. It's hard to…
Lawful Neutral: Recapping the MMO industry’s legal dramas, 2021 edition - With meatspace commitments causing no-end of stress and herculean amounts of work for me, Lawful Neutral had a bit of a slow year that I'd like to amend in 2022…
The Daily Grind: What MMOs are you no longer anticipating? - Yeah, this is going to be a hard Daily Grind to write. But there are some MMOs that have lingered so long in testing phases of one sort or another…
Massively Overthinking: The biggest 2021 MMO trainwrecks (almost) nobody noticed - Believe it or not, we're finally almost done with our entire lineup of turn-of-the-calendar-year content and recaps and tallies. It's exhausting! But I have one more thing I wanna do…
Valve abruptly cancels Dota 2 esports tourney over COVID, ticking off teams - There's some bad news coming out of the Dota 2 esports scene, as Valve has made the snap decision to cancel its February Pro Circuit Winter Major. The in-person LAN…
Lost Ark teases its story and world, from treetop towns to cyberpunk cities - We're now less than a month away from the official launch of Lost Ark here in the west, and if you thought for even a minute that Amazon and Smilegate…
Avatar: Reckoning looks like a mobile MMO with shooter vibes, backed by Disney and Tencent - If you are one of those people who's always wanted an MMORPG based on the movie Avatar and the world of Pandora, well, prepare to be simultaneously thrilled and disappointed.…
EVE Online’s surprise Doctor Who crossover event goes live - Like it or not (and the widely shared opinion around here appears to be "not"), the crossover event between the TV series Doctor Who and the space sandbox of EVE…
Elite Dangerous Odyssey had a ‘difficult calendar year,’ but Frontier claims an ‘upturn in player sentiment’ - Back in November, we covered the release of Frontier Developments' annual investor report, which didn't bode well for Elite Dangerous. Readers will recall that the game's Odyssey expansion was a…
Kickstarted VR MMORPG Zenith launches on Oculus, PSVR, and SteamVR January 27, with PC coming ‘later’ - You might recall that Kickstarted MMORPG Zenith was already teasing an early 2022 launch when it hit beta back in December. Now we know the date, and it's not even…
Riot Games lays out five-year plan, partial ownership for employees - Yesterday, Riot Games' Nicolo Laurent released a length letter to workers and gamers, essentially outlining what the next five years of Riot will look like. He centers gamers rather than…
Elyon adds the archer, balances all classes, and revamps RvR in today’s update - It's go-time for Kakao's Elyon: The Archer class is live with today's update. Readers will recall that Elyon, once called Ascent: Infinite Realm and developed by TERA studio Bluehole, launched…
Former Activision-Blizzard staffer likens the company to the Titanic - Remember a few years ago when one of our quotes of the year was "our mentors are leaving in droves" - one Blizzard worker's lament for the state of the…
Neverwinter’s 22nd module, Dragonbone Vale, is live today on PC - Neverwinter fans are riding high off the recent confirmation that their MMORPG is the biggest in Cryptic and Perfect World's stable, and now they're getting some content to go along…
Choose My Adventure: Elder Scrolls Online’s Blackwood has slowly hooked me - In a landslide vote, the CMA readership said that I should press on with the Blackwood chapter of The Elder Scrolls Online. Which lead me to believe that there was…
LEGO pauses launch of Overwatch 2 toy set over ongoing Activision-Blizzard scandal - Activision-Blizzard might've thought it could start over after the holidays and put some distance between it and the massive discrimination and harassment scandal it fostered and is still fostering, but…
Fight or Kite: Twisted Metal meets Mad Max in Crossout - Leaping over sand dunes and ramming my car into an unsuspecting opponent all while unloading my machine guns is the absolute height of car vs. car PvP. My enemy attempts…
Star Citizen and Squadron 42 are still years from launch, CIG confirms - It's a source of endless frustration for backers and MMO players and a running joke in our own comments: Will Star Citizen ever release, and will we be too old…
Wisdom of Nym: What might be next for Final Fantasy XIV post-Endwalker - The launch content of Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker is finally here in its totality, and that means that it's time to start looking ahead to the future to an extent.…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 355: All your ships are belong to us
The Stream Team: Taking a return trip to Dungeons and Dragons Online
The Stream Team: Astroneer adds wildlife for Snail Floof Saturday
The Stream Team: Wrapping up AQ3D’s Sandsea by battling all the boss challenges
The Stream Team: Backseat Streaming premiere introduces A Hat in Time zombie tag
The Stream Team: Starting off the hunt in Monster Hunter Rise on PC
The Stream Team: Getting back into Guild Wars 2’s personal story
The Stream Team: Visiting Warframe’s Deimos Isolation Vaults
The Stream Team: Ready for Trove’s Renewus 2022
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.
