While the world is occupied by tragedy, it’s understandable if you need to take refuge in MMOs right about now, and there’s plenty to do that got buried by war dispatches this week: World of Warcraft rolled out Eternity’s End, Destiny 2 patched in The Witch Queen, and both Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online delivered updates as well. With one day left in the month, we’ll see the last of February’s big drops in the form of Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons. Hang in there, folks.
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
World of Warcraft: Eternity’s End is live today - Well, let's see how Shadowlands is going to wrap up, huh? World of Warcraft is receiving its second and final major patch for the expansion today as Eternity's End goes…
Flameseeker Chronicles: Everything you’ve missed if you haven’t played Guild Wars 2 since Path of Fire - There are a lot of great MMORPGs out there, and even if you enjoy Guild Wars 2, maybe it's not your main game. Maybe you got excited for the expansions…
New World acknowledges survival game ‘friction’ in its travel, storage, and other systems - Telling players it's received "over a million" pieces of feedback on the game so far, Amazon has a new dev video and blog up for New World players this afternoon…
Enter to win a Guild Wars 2 Ultimate Collection, headset, mouse, and art print in our End of Dragons sweepstakes! - [AL:GW2]In celebration of the impending launch of Guild Wars 2's End of Dragons next week, ArenaNet has kindly granted MassivelyOP an epic prize pack to raffle for our readers! No,…
MMO Business Roundup: The gaming industry reacts to the Ukraine crisis - Welcome back to another roundup of MMO and MMO-adjacent business and industry news. Ukraine: First, there's no way around the news that Russia shelled and invaded Ukraine overnight as it's…
SeedInvest tells Shroud of the Avatar investors that Portalarium eluded its accountability efforts - Shroud of the Avatar has been a black mark on the MMORPG genre, Kickstarted MMOs, and genre founding father Richard Garriott for years, and the story has only gotten more…
Elder Scrolls Online players are feuding over account-wide achievements - Back in January, ZeniMax Online Studios announced that as part of Elder Scrolls Online's next update, achievements would be made account-wide. That change was emphasized in yesterday's preview of the…
Vague Patch Notes: Lore is not an excuse for bad MMO design decisions - In a previous column, I wrote about how gender-locking classes is bad. This is because it is bad. It is bad in all conceivable circumstances, and it is bad even…
EG7 Q4 2021: EG7 and Daybreak post huge revenues, bank future on MTGO, LOTRO - Overnight, Swedish gaming company Enad Global 7 posted its Q4 2021 financial report, which of course is useful to MMORPG players as EG7 has owned Daybreak and all of its…
LOTRO Legendarium: Exploring LOTRO Update 32’s Angle of Mitheithel - Even after a decade-and-a-half of constant expansion, Lord of the Rings Online's Middle-earth has more left to show us than is currently on the map. Personally, I always feel a…
Global Chat: How is the actual story of SWTOR’s Legacy of the Sith? - To kick off this week's parade of MMO essays by bloggers in the virtual trenches, SWTOR site Going Commando gave us an honest review of the Manaan storyline from the…
Albion Online launches controller support next week ahead of Steam Deck support - If you aren't a big fan of trying to manipulate Albion Online on your phone, but you also don't want to deal with your keyboard and desktop, say hello to…
From the Depths: Checking up on World of Warships’ community promises - [AL:WoWS]Wargaming’s World of Warships had its share of controversies in 2021, some of which led to the resignation of many of its most prolific community contributors. In response, Wargaming released…
WoW Factor: Shards of Azeroth, a speculative WoW expansion exercise - Our story this time starts in a fight we don't yet know about, so I freely admit that there is the possibility that this particular speculative exercise will be proven…
Activision Blizzard faces lawsuits from shareholders regarding the sale to Microsoft - Ah, here we go, the lawsuits have started to roll in about the sale of Activision Blizzard to Microsoft. We all knew they were coming because you can't have a…
The most important reveals from the Guild Wars 2 End of Dragons influencer sneak peak - Guild Wars 2 fans are so close to Cantha, they can practically smell the incense wafting out of Shing Jea Monastery. And yet there are still many unanswered questions in…
Massively Overthinking: Is free-to-play as bad as we thought it’d be a decade ago? - It's 2022 and we're about to talk about free-to-play like it's 2012! Back then, the conversation was all about which MMORPG would fall to free-to-play next, since after all, it was…
DDO’s Update 53 goes live with adventure pack, free unlocks, and anniversary giveaways - Someone over at SSG really likes alliteration, apparently. Last week, LOTRO received its Rangers and Ruins update, and now Dungeons and Dragons Online is enjoying the release of Update 53:…
Activision Blizzard’s Bobby Kotick urged by U.S. Senator to get out of the way of unionization efforts - Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick received a stern warning from the highest levels of the U.S. government not to interfere with burgeoning unionization efforts at one of the gaming company's…
Diablo Immortal explains everything that was learned and changed thanks to closed beta feedback - You may not believe that Blizzard is listening to player feedback on the regular, especially not when it comes to Diablo Immortal in general (we will never forget that the first…
Massively on the Go: A guide to preparing for Pokemon Go’s Johto Tour 2022 - While Niantic is prone to dropping information at the last minute (2/23 Update: It's started), we now have enough information on Pokemon Go’s upcoming February 26th Johto Tour to at least…
What to expect from Elder Scrolls Online’s Update 33, launching March 14 for PC - Listen, I know February is brimming with MMO stuff, but Elder Scrolls Online would like you not to forget it's got a thing coming too. On March 14th, we're getting…
Perfect Ten: 10 reasons MMO armor is completely ridiculous - This is probably a rant best saved for another day, but I want to know when it became completely acceptable not to demand that MMO studios explain the building blocks…
EverQuest II’s level-agnostic progression server, Kael Drakkel, is open for play - EverQuest II's latest "lore and legend" progression server, Kael Drakkel, is live as of this week for subbers. First announced a month ago, the server is essentially a level-agnostic alternative…
World of Warcraft designers talk storytelling in Shadowlands without saying much - Are you wondering why it is that a random baker from Stormwind can casually walk through a portal to the afterlife and sell bread in Oribos in World of Warcraft:…
Destiny 2’s The Witch Queen expansion and Season of the Risen are live today - Here we go, folks: Elder Scrolls Skyrim carved out its place in history on 11/11/11, and now Destiny 2's The Witch Queen will follow suit by being the big game…
Choose My Adventure: Exploring VR MMO Zenith with my hands - Zenith is a bit interesting in terms of being a game for exploration. On the one hand, there are methods and means where I could push around and explore the…
Bethsoft is sunsetting its launcher, migrating libraries – including Fallout 76 – to Steam - Hopefully you weren't too attached to the Bethesda.net game launcher, as it's sunsetting in early April and Bethsoft is asking players to migrate their existing libraries and accounts to Steam,…
The Wagadu Chronicles has kicked off its alpha-1 phase today - As promised, The Wagadu Chronicles begins what Twin Drums is calling alpha-1 as of today. "The first closed Alpha-1 will last a week from today (until 1. March at 11:00 CET)…
Hyperspace is a new MMORPG sandbox that sounds neat except for the blockchain play-to-earn parts - There's a new MMO on the horizon quite literally: It's called Hyperspace, and it's the first game from Scottish game studio Carbon Based Lifeforms. The press release is almost enough…
Nightingale studio Inflexion has been sold to Tencent – and it’s still launching this year - Tencent is apparently continuing its gobbling-up of all the games and studios you're interested in: Improbable just announced it's sold Inflexion Games to Tencent - that's the Canadian studio led…
Fight or Kite: Checking in with Crowfall after the acquisition - I’ve been playing all kinds of different games these days, many of them MMOs and many of them offline RPGs. I find myself kind of like an ethereal ghost: I’m…
Wisdom of Nym: Everything we learned from the February Final Fantasy XIV live letter - So what did we learn from the latest Final Fantasy XIV live letter? A lot, and most of it good, although some of it might not be what people had…
Multiplayer roguelite Conan Chop Chop launches PC demo ahead of March 1 release - Conan Chop Chop, the charmingly cartoony multiplayer roguelite that started life as an April Fool's joke, has had a three year-long crawl into becoming a real game, but publisher Funcom…
Fallout 76 just dropped a roadmap for the entirety of 2022, including The Pitt this fall - At the tail end of last week, Bethsoft teased Fallout 76's next update, Invaders from Beyond, but as of today it's revealing what it's got in store not just for…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 361: A disturbance in the Force
The Stream Team: Crawling through Neverwinter catacombs
The Stream Team: Backseat streaming drives into Genshin Impact
The Stream Team: Sailing the Sea of Thieves towards its first adventure
The Stream Team: Time to save Taimi in Guild Wars 2
The Stream Team: Testing the chops of Conan Chop Chop
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.
