The MMO world is reeling this weekend from the apparently inadvertent Blizzard website leak of World of Warcraft’s next expansion, which appears to be named Dragonflight.
But of course, that was just the capstone to a packed week. In addition to suffering through April Fools’ Day, we saw Guild Wars 2 continue to nerf the overtuned Jade Sea meta, got a hands-on with Black Desert’s Eternal Winter expansion, watched CCP continue to drive EVE Online off a cliff, held our breaths at the New World Heart of Madness rollout, peered into Final Fantasy XIV’s Newfound Adventure patch, and revisited Star Trek Online and Secret World.
Finally, in the midst of layoffs we all know about but Gamigo won’t acknowledge, the company insisted RIFT’s promised update is truly coming… just late.
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
Rumor: World of Warcraft’s next expansion is called Dragonflight according to website code leaks - It should be known by now that dataminers will go to any lengths and plumb any digital depths they can to discover what's coming to a game before the devs…
Gamigo says RIFT’s ‘great first update’ is still happening, still won’t acknowledge layoffs - Readers will recall that at the top of the week, we reported the unfortunate news that Gamigo had conducted widespread layoffs from multiple MMO teams under its purview, including RIFT…
Flameseeker Chronicles: Guild Wars 2’s open world is not the place for hardcore content - If you're paying any attention to Guild Wars 2, you have, by now, no doubt heard the debate over the Battle for the Jade Sea meta event. On paper, it…
Gamigo has suffered yet another round of layoffs, including some RIFT and Trove staff - We've got more bad news for fans of RIFT and Gamigo's other MMOs: RIFT's community manager, CM Vilya, announced on Discord Friday that she was no longer in that role.…
Lost Ark promises a two-month roadmap soon, acknowledges ongoing issues - Amazon has its hands full with Lost Ark these days, not only dealing with a myriad of post-launch issues on its plate but trying to carve out content for the…
Desert Oasis: Hands-on with Black Desert’s Eternal Winter expansion, launching April 6 - I needed to take a sabbatical. Not just from Black Desert, but the whole genre. The pandemic gave me a lot of computer time, and just as too much energon is…
Activision-Blizzard reverses plan to lift in-office vaccine reqs after employee walkout threat - Activision-Blizzard continues to be put on notice by the proto-union A Better ABK and the workers of the studio. The latest incident revolves around a leaked email from COO Brian…
Elyon plots an ambitious 2022 roadmap with new classes, dungeons, and refreshed PvP - Listen, as we're typing this, Elyon has a grand total of 266 players in-game on Steam. This is incredibly sad, as Elyon - back when it was still a steampunk-fantasy…
WoW Factor: Dissecting the Shadowlands story now that we’ve seen the end of it - [disclosure]Editor's note - Well, folks, it happened again: Eliot was unavailable to write his column again after falling into a reality-traversing portal. We'd ask how it's even possible for this…
EVE Online players raised over $500K to benefit Ukraine in latest PLEX for Good charity drive - CCP Games clearly doesn't deserve the players of EVE Online, considering the rapid burning of bridges it seems to be attempting with its fans coupled with the fact that this…
Ashes of Creation grants a first look at Alpha Two’s character creator - It would make sense that the next alpha build for Ashes of Creation would look different, particularly since the PvP sandbox is upgrading to Unreal Engine 5, but those looks…
April Fools’ Day around the MMO world, 2022 edition - Whether you love it or dread it, April Fools' Day is happening everywhere, specifically to annoy copyeditors who have to fix that dang apostrophe a hundred times. And nowhere is…
Final Fantasy XIV patch 6.1, Newfound Adventure, arrives on April 12 - So what do you do the day after the world nearly ends? Well, in Final Fantasy XIV, you dust yourself off and get on with the business of seeking out a…
The Perfect Ten: 10 MMO NPCs as muffins - You’ve all seen those memes or Twitter threads that try to link celebrities or people to food items or other inanimate objects, but I’m not sure that there’s been anyone…
Massively Overthinking: What do you expect from MMO Kickstarters? - I know, I know. People don't trust Kickstarters anymore. Nor should they, especially now. I think our genre knows this now. For every Wagadu Chronicles, there are a dozen Chronicles…
The ‘death by a thousand papercuts version of sexism’ engulfed State of Decay studio Undead Labs, according to new expose - Earlier today, Kotaku ran an expose of Undead Labs, best known for the State of Decay franchise and now housed under no less than Microsoft, its original founder having left…
E3 2022’s digital event has apparently been canceled - In spite of saying E3 would be an all-digital event for 2022 just a few months ago, the ESA has apparently given up on that plan. The news came from…
GDC 2022: Control, revenue, scarcity, ethics, and the human challenges of the gaming ‘metaverse’ - While some panels at GDC 2022 have been deeply disappointing, the panel titled "A Brave New (Virtual) World: Ethics and Governance of XR and the Metaverse" was most definitely not…
Stick and Rudder: Revisiting 12-year-old MMO Star Trek Online - Star Trek Online is an MMO released during the height of the “let’s grab an existing IP and make it into an MMO” craze of the early 2010s. While many…
Vague Patch Notes: Community workarounds don’t excuse broken pieces of MMOs - It's many years in the rear view now because these days it's someone else's show, but there was a time when Choose My Adventure was frequently my jam. And back…
New World’s Heart of Madness has seen a relatively clean rollout - As promised, New World's Heart of Madness patch did indeed roll out to the live servers late yesterday evening. Yes, it's time to strap on your blunderbuss and saunter off…
Fractured’s closed beta begins April 6 amid Gamigo’s corporate chaos - Never mind that this information was supposed to land last week; it's here now. It's the news that Fractured Online's beta is rolling out on April 6th. Prospective players will…
CCP Games CEO joins a private meeting with crypto company heads ‘to talk about EVE Online’ at GDC - The possible shadow of a crypto and NFT Damocles continues to hang over EVE Online. We've previously reported on this year's GDC conference being all-in on cryptobabble, but a worrying…
Perfect Ten: Conversations with anthropomorphic MMO studios IV: The Voyage Home - I swear before whatever deities you want to name, I cannot get away from this. I've done everything I can to avoid these anthropomorphic MMO studios that keep infesting my…
Activision-Blizzard’s $18M settlement with the EEOC is officially finalized - Yesterday saw the long fight among the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing, and Activision-Blizzard over an $18M settlement draw to a close as…
Hackers yoink crypto worth over half a billion dollars from P2E Axie Infinity - We greet you this fine Wednesday morning with some schadenfreude: The people behind massive exploitative pay-to-earn job/game Axie Infinity have apparently seen their network hacked to the tune of $625M…
Fortnite and its community have now raised $100M for Ukrainian relief - Never let it be said that gamers -- and their associated studios -- can't be compassionate and generous. Epic Games and Microsoft announced that along together with the Fortnite community,…
Guild Wars 2’s Super Adventure Box is back in today’s patch - So who's up for some retro jumping puzzle fun? Guild Wars 2 is, and if you're angling for a break from the apparently hugely successful End of Dragons, you might…
Choose My Adventure: Secret World Legends makes me reconsider my interest in the series - After several weeks of slogging my way through classic The Secret World, I now find our readers have dispatched me to Secret World Legends. And sure enough, it was even…
Flameseeker Chronicles: Unpacking Guild Wars 2’s post-End of Dragons roadmap - Last week, we got a tsunami of good news from Guild Wars 2 studio ArenaNet. Studio directors Colin Johanson and John "JT" Taylor, along with executive producer Amy Liu and…
Sony officially announces its new three-tier PlayStation Plus subscriptions coming in June - Last week, anonymous insiders spilled all sorts of beans on an upcoming subscription service for the PlayStation console that would, among other things, merge PS Plus and PS Now services,…
Diablo Immortal opens pre-registrations on the App Store as June 30 launch rumors swirl - Cue the "It's happening!" gifs because Diablo Immortal opened up pre-registrations on the App Store this week, which follows a similar tactic on Google Play earlier this year. There's added…
Wisdom of Nym: What to expect (and not) from the next Final Fantasy XIV expansion - Math is coming for Final Fantasy XIV very shortly. Oh, sure, it can be postponed for a couple years yet, but we know it's coming. There's another expansion being planned, and…
LOTRO Legendarium: Should LOTRO’s raids be made accessible to all? - Despite playing Lord of the Rings Online since beta and covering it professionally since 2010, there is a big part of the game that I've never really seen -- and…
Vitae Aeternum: New World’s slow march to redemption - In the rushes of excitement over Lost Ark and End of Dragons, New World seems to have fallen off the radar a bit. As a result, there has been very…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 366: A blunder and a blunderbuss
The Stream Team: Fighting against the Dreaded Mapserver in City of Heroes
The Stream Team: Flying into No Man’s Sky for the first time
The Stream Team: April Fowls and chickencows in AdventureQuest 3D
The Stream Team: A mortal’s life in Warframe
The Stream Team: Back into the depths of the Vault of Night arc in Dungeons and Dragons Online
The Stream Team: Finishing SWTOR’s Legacy of the Sith
The Stream Team: Seeking a quick spot of Star Trek Online
The Stream Team: Hu’s on first in Guild Wars 2
The Stream Team: Exploring Elder Scrolls Online’s Deadlands with the Ambitions
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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