The MMORPG industry came full circle this week as one of the original founders of the genre pitched another new game – laden with cryptobabble and NFT plans.
Meanwhile, Final Fantasy XIV rolled out 6.1 and botched its housing lottery, Elder Scrolls Online previewed High Isle, and World of Warcraft is prepping to reveal its expansion this week against the backdrop of a growing political scandal.
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
Richard Garriott is building a blockchain MMO following the failure of Shroud of the Avatar - Richard Garriott is working on a new MMORPG, and yes, it's filled with NFTs. Garriott, who is probably best known to mainstream gamers as the multi-millionaire originator of Ultima Online,…
Final Fantasy XIV’s new housing lottery is so broken Square has suspended the next cycle - If you were hoping for a house in Final Fantasy XIV's new housing lottery system, well... you probably didn't get one, but it wasn't just bad luck this time, as…
LOTRO Legendarium: Why Lord of the Rings Online’s world feels different from all other MMOs - I truly wish I remember the name of the gaming magazine that I picked up in early 2007, but such details escape me. What I do recall is that I…
Vague Patch Notes: Stop giving rich people money to make failed MMOs - Richard Garriott has been to space. I'm going to repeat that a lot for emphasis, just because I feel like it's important. Richard Garriott has been to space. He was…
WoW Factor: World of Warcraft: Dragonflight isn’t going to fix everything that’s broken at Blizzard - I really wanted to write a different column this week. I really did. But wouldn't you know it, Activision-Blizzard had to remind everyone that it's a horrible company along the…
Elder Scrolls Online just revealed much more about its June 6 High Isle chapter - As promised, ZeniMax Online Studios dropped a ton of information about The Elder Scrolls Online's upcoming High Isle chapter during its preview stream this afternoon - which was, we note,…
DFEH attorney accuses California governor of interfering in the Activision-Blizzard lawsuit - The Activision-Blizzard scandal just keeps on scandaling - and drawing more people and agencies into its ugly orbit. Bloomberg has a piece up today chronicling the fate of the attorneys…
New World talks up PvP reward track, a 3v3 arena feature, and Expedition group finder in dev video - The developers of New World have once more come together for a developer update video, which provided a bit of insight into current and future plans for the MMO, and…
Desert Oasis: ‘Jumping’ into Black Desert’s new Drakania class - Everything gets better when a dragon knight is involved as far as I'm concerned. Kain Highwind made Final Fantasy IV the single best Final Fantasy in the entire series. On…
Guild Wars 2 gives update on the Jade Sea meta, WvW, and DirectX 11 - Guild Wars 2 studio ArenaNet promised more frequent communication in its recent post-End of Dragons roadmap, and today it delivered on the promise. [AL:GW2]Highlights include an update on the Jade…
Lawful Neutral: How is an NFT MMO even supposed to work? - Recently, MassivelyOP hit a milestone: We received our quadrabajillionth email announcing that Scammy-scammers-now-with-NFTs-and-also-metaverse-because-reasons Inc. was a proven market leader with a new scamming game and... blah blah blah. Literally everyone…
Path of Exile’s 3.18 expansion gets some initial content details and a release date of May 13 - Players of Path of Exile have a date to mark on their calendars: Friday, May 13th. That's when the 3.18 expansion will go live, meaning the end of the Archnemesis…
Massively on the Go: Niantic’s Peridot may be cause for Pokemon GO alarm - Earlier this week, Niantic announced its next location-based game coming to some countries later this month: Peridot. It's about finding and raising virtual pets and may turn out to involve…
SWG Legends just announced farming, ranching, new houses, and the return of smuggler spice crafting - Maybe dropping a huge teaser for major new content is not the best thing to drop on Easter Sunday, but that's exactly what fan-run Star Wars Galaxies rogue server SWG…
The FBI says it was a North Korean hacker gang that crimed Axie Infinity for $620M - At the tail end of March, we reported on a massive hack of exploitative play-to-earn blockchain job/game Axie Infinity. At the time, the hackers had made off with $625M worth…
DC Universe Online unleashes ‘suffering’ with this week’s Dark Knights patch - "Suffering descends upon the multiverse," DC Universe Online ominously announced in association with this week's Dark Knights release. The new episode pits heroes and villains alike against the dreaded Perpetua,…
Massively Overthinking: The ideal MMO server setup - Over the last year, we've seen multiple major MMO and expansion launches, and most of them went awry in some way or another. Final Fantasy XIV had to shut down…
Whatever happened to survival sandbox Life Beyond? It went all-in on blockchain and NFTs - It's been a while since we checked in on survival sandbox Life Beyond, huh? The last time we looked at the game was back in November when it added training…
Niantic’s new MMOARG Peridot looks… kinda just like Pokemon Go - You know what Niantic could really use? An MMOARG about "caring for, raising, and breeding adorable one-of-a-kind creatures in your hands." You know, you could take your phone around into…
Disney has quashed another Club Penguin emulator, this time with arrests in the UK - Remember way back in 2017, when Disney shut down the long-running Club Penguin MMO in order to replace it with Club Penguin Island? And then Club Penguin Island was abruptly…
Chronicles of Elyria says the mid-alpha test phase will roll out this spring, addresses stock assets - The Chronicles of Elyria drama would like to reclaim some of your attention from the Blizzard drama and the Richard Garriott drama! Back in 2020, Soulbound Studios ran out of…
Lord of the Rings Online modifies store in preparation for its revitalized F2P model - When the next big update arrives this month for Lord of the Rings Online, it will forever change the landscape of the game's business model. Standing Stone Games is making…
Elite Dangerous won’t address planetary surface tile repetition issue because of unjustifiable resource costs - Among the many, many bugs that players of Elite: Dangerous have filed and upvoted on the game's Issue Tracker, one repeatedly pointed-to problem is apparently not quite so simple to…
Elder Scrolls Online lays out summer roadmap to High Isle, begins free-play event with prologue quest - Tomorrow, ZeniMax Online Studios is going to open the information floodgates for Elder Scrolls Online's High Isle during its preview stream. But hey, you don't have to wait that long…
Perfect Ten: Top 10 favorite Final Fantasy XIV zones - We're getting in the zone with Perfect Ten lately. A few weeks back, Justin posted his own personal ranking of World of Warcraft zones. It's not the list I would…
EverQuest II’s GU 119 Coffers and Coffins is live with new dungeon content - During this week's MassivelyOP Podcast, we joked that Daybreak had managed to announce an EverQuest II patch name and open its beta without telling anyone much about what was in…
Become a pirate or smuggler in today’s No Man’s Sky Outlaws patch - It's a day that ends in Y, which means it's the perfect day for an out-of-the-blue No Man's Sky update! Look, Hello Games just does this sometimes. You gonna say…
Gamigo actually pushed out that RIFT update – it’s called the Budgie Carnival Celebration - So remember how Gamigo said there was going to be a big update for RIFT in Q1, then missed the game's anniversary, then suffered a major round of layoffs it…
Dungeons and Dragons Online preps cat-like Tabaxi race for Isle of Dread - Paws the press! Oh this is just purrrfect. Right meow, Dungeons and Dragons Online is testing a new cat-like race called the Tabaxi for its upcoming spring expansion. [AL:DDO]No, we're…
Former WildStar devs wax nostalgic about the late, lamented MMORPG - Every so often, a burst of WildStar nostalgia bubbles up on Twitter, with previous players holding up a torch for the sunsetted scifi MMO. It goes to show that there's…
Fractured Online lays out its 2022 roadmap and plans ahead of launch - With Fractured Online's indefinite closed beta underway, developer Dynamight has released a new roadmap that should take testers and backers all the way through winter 2022, when the game is…
Lord of the Rings Online welcomes Allan ‘Orion’ Maki back to the team after nine years - Long-time Lord of the Rings Online fans will remember the name "Orion" from back in the Turbine era. Orion - aka Allan Maki - was one of the original developers…
Choose My Adventure: The quest for big punchy gloves in Albion Online - I don’t know whether I was just hungry for a positive experience after last month’s series, I came to this game with a newfound respect and a bit more foreknowledge…
Tales from the Holodeck: Virtual reality is best as a gaming machine, not as a portal to the metaverse - Welcome to a new column here on MassivelyOP! Tales from the Holodeck was inspired by a couple of things: my purchase of a VR headset (a Quest 2 specifically) and…
EVE Online boss: NFT stands for ‘Not for Tranquility’ - At GDC this year, EVE Online's CCP Games raised eyebrows when CEO Hilmar Petursson was photographed meeting with crypto, NFT, and metaverse entrepreneurs. Players were already concerned about CCP's and…
Wisdom of Nym: Highlights from Final Fantasy XIV’s preliminary patch notes - Wait, you get a double column today? Yes indeed you do! This is good news for those of you who like to read about the things I have to say…
Wisdom of Nym: Breaking down the extensive changes to jobs in Final Fantasy XIV’s patch 6.1 - First things first: I'm going to be writing this column in something of a whirlwind. It would have been nice if we had gotten these full patch notes on Sunday…
Interview: Lost Ark’s regional parity, genderlocking, and the Amazon-Smilegate collaboration - A few days before the western release of Lost Ark, we posed questions to the Amazon Games team, and franchise lead Soomin Park was kind enough to answer us last…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 368: Morrowind and the Mirror Universe
Battle Bards Episode 212: Elder Scrolls Online Blackwood
The Stream Team: Trying out the Crystalline Conflict PvP mode of Final Fantasy XIV
The Stream Team: Cleaning up EXO’s mess in Astroneer
The Stream Team: Going down the Grenwog hole in AQ3D
The Stream Team: Heading to Dungeon & Dragons Online’s Haywire Foundry
The Stream Team: Becoming a nerf herder in SWTOR
The Stream Team: Beating back illness with the power of teamwork in Superbugs Awaken
The Stream Team: Going back to Mai’s place in Guild Wars 2
The Stream Team: World of Tanks 11th birthday bombardment
The Stream Team: Rallying allies against Mahrunes Dagon in the Elder Scrolls Online
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.
