We hope you like MMO industry news as much as the fun stuff because we got a whole lot of it this week: Wargaming announced it was pulling its corporate ops out of Russia and Belarus, Activision-Blizzard brought on over a thousand contractors as full-timers, Jagex announced sub hikes for the RuneScape franchise, and we all continued mulling over the Dragonflight leak. Plus, we chatted with Fractured’s founder as it hit closed beta, got a peek at Star Trek Online’s Stormfall, and pondered the MMOs that are playable on Mac.
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: Six reasons why LOTRO’s Beorning is amazing - When Update 33 arrives later this month, Lord of the Rings Online players will have access to a slew of classes and races that were previously locked behind a paywall.…
Star Trek Online’s Stormfall chapter launches May 10, starring Kate ‘Janeway’ Mulgrew - [AL:STO]Star Trek Online has a big juicy announcement for your Friday: Its next chapter through the Mirror Universe is called Stormfall, and it's rolling out to PC players come May…
Vague Patch Notes: When MMOs pit their playerbase against itself - Today's Vague Patch Notes is about something weird that I feel like someone should definitely done something about a long time before now. It's a strange decision because in a…
SpatialOS developer Improbable announces a ‘network of interoperable web3 metaverses’ called M² - Remember back in January when SpatialOS developer Improbable released a poll that asserted that a large number of gamers and game devs believed a metaverse would be populated within ten…
Activision-Blizzard promotes over a thousand QA testers and bumps their pay – but not the ones unionizing - Last night, Activision-Blizzard announced that it is converting 1100 quality assurance testers from contract work to full-time with pay starting at a minimum of $20 an hour. The decision is…
Massively Overthinking: Which MMO suffers from the most useless housing system? - A few weeks ago, I was showing my seven-year-old around Villagers and Heroes, and she wanted to get herself a house. I warned her that she'd probably be disappointed because…
WoW Factor: So let’s talk about World of Warcraft’s Dragonflight leak - Sometimes you just get handed a column, you know? No, you probably don't; you probably don't work in this insane profession. The point is that it does happen, and if you…
Lord of the Rings Online brings big changes to the Brawler and Lore-master classes - You think you know Lord of the Rings Online's Shire? Think again, you know-it-all-Hobbit! A huge expansion to the pastoral region is coming with Update 33, and you can log…
Overwatch alters one of Zarya’s legendary skins to avoid any possible association with the Russian invasion of Ukraine - One of Zarya's legendary skins in Overwatch has received an unannounced but very important change with the game's recent patch: The skin no longer has a Z on it. This is…
Star Trek announces plans for starship NFTs and a new pay-to-earn game called Star Trek Continuum - You read that headline correctly: Paramount Global is getting into bed with RECUR, a company in the business of creating "innovative NFT experiences with the biggest brands in film, TV,…
Lost Ark fixes that fun chat exploit, says the Feiton Powerpass won’t cost real money - Amazon popped in a small patch for Lost Ark players overnight. The studio says it's fixed busted loading into Ancient Elveria during the Time to Heal quest, the bug with…
The Daily Grind: Do you try more MMOs since free-to-play became the dominant model? - I still remember when boxes for MMOs were very much the default. I owned boxed copies of Star Wars: The Old Republic, Star Trek Online, and WildStar even though all of those…
The Elder Scrolls Online will make the Morrowind DLC free for every owner of the game - Do you own some form of The Elder Scrolls Online and somehow didn't pick up the Morrowind DLC (aka one of the superior ways to start the MMORPG)? Then you're…
Ubisoft maintenance-modes Ghost Recon Breakpoint following failed NFT scheme - Let us take a moment to chronicle the brief history of Ubisoft's Ghost Recon Breakpoint. The game actually launched back in 2019, though it was only a middling success for…
Fight or Kite: Classic Robocraft is a mashup of a Minecraftian block-builder and arena brawler - Robocraft - now there's a name I haven’t heard in a long time. Back in those days, we played things fast and loose. You could walk into a restaurant, shake…
Perfect Ten: Top 10 favorite World of Warcraft zones by feels - Recently on the MassivelyOP podcast, we were asked by a listener about our favorite MMO zones. That discussion quickly morphed into selecting certain zones that evoked strong positive feelings in…
Jagex announces plans to raise prices of subs and cash items for RuneScape and Old School Runescape on May 4 - Take heed, potential new subscribers and cash shop customers of RuneScape and Old School RuneScape: On Wednesday, May 4th, your subscription rates are going to shift, as are the costs…
Interview: Scoping out Fractured Online’s closed beta content and update plans - By the time you're reading this, Fractured Online has already begun its closed beta phase, but before then I was granted the opportunity to digitally sit in with Dynamight Studios…
New World fixes bugged quests and storage, preps Steam free-play weekend - New World's overnight patch wasn't a big one, but players will still want to scope out the patch notes, as the update fixes several of the issues introduced during the…
More evidence for WoW Classic’s Wrath of the Lich King surfaces - Break out your warmest Gore-Tex coats and fluffiest Uggs because the WoW Classic community is surely going to Northrend. It's all but officially confirmed at this point that the legacy…
EverQuest II’s GU 119 Coffers and Coffins launches April 12, with a new TLE server coming in May - In its roadmap update for EverQuest II today, Daybreak substudio Darkpaw Games announced the game's next patch: Coffers and Coffins, launching into beta today and to the live servers on…
Guild Wars 2 preps the return of living story season one’s Flame and Frost for April 19 - Just a few weeks ago, ArenaNet stunned Guild Wars 2 players with the news that in addition to a post-End of Dragons living story season and expansion in the more…
Bellatores is an in-development Unreal Engine 5 medieval MMORPG planning a release later this year - Let it never be said that game studios don't swing for the stars. Korean mobile game developer Nyou, which is responsible for titles like Dragon Chronicles and Duel Summoners, is…
Choose My Adventure: The point of a community-guided MMO column - We interrupt your regularly scheduled Choose My Adventure programming for something of a meta discussion on what this column is meant to be and do. CMA is a very old…
MassivelyOP’s guide to 13 MMORPGs that you can play on Macs - Until I got my first Macbook this past December, I admit that I never really paid attention to what MMOs could be played on Apple's products. When I did start…
Massively Uplifting: How gamers are bringing humanitarian relief to Ukraine - It was a month that started in love but ended with war: Terrible, painful things keep happening in the world and in our communities. On top of health plights, inequality,…
The Game Archaeologist: When EverQuest players killed the unkillable Sleeper - In many CRPGs and MMORPGs, there are bosses designed to be so crazy tough that, for most people, these enemies are straight-out unkillable. Developers often put them in, such as…
Wisdom of Nym: Catching up on Final Fantasy XIV’s second patch 6.1 letter - Ah, the second live letter about the patch, reliable as clockwork, confirming the date that we had already probably ascertained just based on the announced cadence of patches as well…
Wargaming will suffer ‘substantial losses’ in corporate exit from Russia and Belarus - Over a month ago, at the beginning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, MMO studio Wargaming was already making a bold statement about the burgeoning war. The Cyprus-based company, which runs…
Warframe preps Angel of the Zariman update for later this month - The next evolution of Warframe's exciting and mysterious universe is set to unfold later this month. Digital Extremes announced this past Friday that it will release Angels of the Zariman…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 367: Day of the Long Charr
The Stream Team: Neverwinter’s underground Wyllowwood forest
The Stream Team: Backseat Streaming’s latest episode enjoys some Star Wars Movie Battles
The Stream Team: Heading into the teeth of Black Desert’s Eternal Winter update
The Stream Team: A few rounds of Guild Wars 2 Super Adventure Boxing
The Stream Team: Jesters and joking for Elder Scrolls Online’s 8th birthday
The Stream Team: Seeking safety gear in Astroneer
The Stream Team: Loving some AdventureQuest 3D live events
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.
