World of Warcraft announced Dragonflight this week, along with a LFD-less Wrath Classic that whipped the wider MMORPG community into a froth over the old hardcores-vs.-casuals debate.
Meanwhile, Lord of the Rings Online is giving away so much stuff for its anniversary that the servers crumpled, Guild Wars 2’s Flame and Frost re-emerged for players, TERA announced a sunset on PC, Final Fantasy XIV attempted to mop up its housing crisis, and EVE Online hiked its sub and currency prices citing inflation.
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’s next expansion is called Dragonflight, WoW Classic Wrath launches this year - (We're updating with the big announcements at the end of this post.) Today's the day, folks: As promised, Blizzard will be taking the wraps off World of Warcraft's next expansion.…
WoW Factor: Good job torching Wrath of the Lich King Classic, my dudes! - All right, this is... actually just hilarious to me. Like, seriously, I caught this particular detail after I'd already finished writing my initial reaction to World of Warcraft's next expansion,…
WoW Factor: Initial thoughts on the World of Warcraft Dragonflight reveal - First things first, I want to clarify something: This is being dubbed an early response to World of Warcraft: Dragonflight because... well, it's a new expansion. We're going to be talking…
Flameseeker Chronicles: First impressions of Guild Wars 2’s restored Living World S1E1 Flame and Frost - Where were you nine years ago? I don't know about you, but my life looked very different in 2013 when Guild Wars 2 first released Flame and Frost, its first…
Wisdom of Nym: Why can’t Final Fantasy XIV solve its housing problem? - Here is a column topic that I am tired of writing about. But once again, it is necessary. So Final Fantasy XIV had its first housing lottery on Saturday. It…
TERA’s PC version will sunset in June as Bluehole ceases work on the game - Today is the day that TERA's Japanese servers sunset... and unfortunately, the day heralds bad news for the rest of TERA's PC playerbase in the west and Korea too. "TERA’s…
EVE Online is hiking its sub price to almost $20 – and the price of PLEX is going up too - RuneScape isn't the only major MMORPG announcing a price hike this month: CCP Games just told players that it's raising EVE Online's subscription fees. "To continue investing in EVE Online’s…
Wisdom of Nym: First impressions of Final Fantasy XIV Newfound Adventure’s content - I'm not going to lie: I don't like having to wait for my tribal quests. I recognize that might seem more than a little silly, especially since I have nothing…
New World prepares to sell you character transfers for $15 a pop - You know how we ran that whole "It's a whole New World" thing from Aladdin into the ground about two weeks after Amazon first announced the game? We may need…
Stick and Rudder: Using No Man’s Sky Outlaws as a way to fill the space sandbox void - Hello Games just keeps on proving itself over and over again. That's been the overall reaction whenever No Man's Sky makes an update from both myself and a lot of…
Perfect Ten: The 10 stages of the MMO launch journey, from announcement to release - One of the aspects that I love about MMOs is just how dang fun the build-up to launch can be. I know this period can make some people cranky because…
First impressions of Lost Ark’s new Battle for the Throne of Chaos update - While I have to admit that my playtime in Lost Ark has waned a bit in light of a bunch of other games capturing my interest, I also have to…
Rumor: Ubisoft is on the cusp of being bought out by a private equity firm - If insider reporting is to be believed, the next major gaming acquisition to begin this year is Ubisoft. Reporting from Bloomberg as well as insider sources speaking with Kotaku say…
Hands-on with the promising multiplayer Nintendo Switch Sports, launching this week - April 29th will mark the release of Nintendo Switch Sports, a spiritual sequel to the popular Wii Sports series. The big kicker here is that it's pushing the online side more, even…
Lord of the Rings Online devs reveal Easter eggs, memories, and history for the 15th anniversary - Let's give some props to Lord of the Rings Online: This MMO is setting a strong standard about how momentous anniversaries should be thrown. Not only did the title launch…
Activision-Blizzard’s Raven Software gets green light to vote for a union by National Labor Relations Board - This past Friday saw a major step forward for the QA workers of Activision-Blizzard studio Raven Software, as the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) granted devs at the studio the…
Diablo Immortal is set to reveal its release date next Monday - Well, it's been a few years and the telecommunications industry has come a long way, so we're guessing that most of you finally have phones. And that's really good news,…
Ship of Heroes is running a player housing beta test in May – here’s how to play - Ship of Heroes brings glad tidings this fine Friday: The in-development superhero MMORPG is launching another beta period, this time focused entirely on its version of player housing. "Our Player…
World of Warcraft Classic interview confirms that there will be no servers for The Burning Crusade Classic at launch - Was World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade your favorite expansion of all the various updates for World of Warcraft? Were you hoping to be able to live there even after the next…
Massively Overthinking: The WoW Dragonflight and Wrath Classic roundtable - So this week's Massively Overthinking is going to cautiously stick a paw into the beehive of World of Warcraft, thanks to the reveal of Dragonflight and Wrath Classic on Tuesday.…
Lord of the Rings Online players experience queues for the first time in years as concurrency ramps up - While word that people like free stuff isn't exactly mind-blowing news, what does appear to be surprising to players of Lord of the Rings Online is just how many people…
Tamriel Infinium: A look back at Elder Scrolls Online’s Blackwood - Now that we're firmly entrenched in the year of High Isle and the legacy of the Bretons, it almost seems archaic to jump back to 2021 and look at Elder…
Playable Worlds’ Raph Koster makes bold promises about his studio’s developing sandbox MMORPG - Earlier this week we reported on a big cash injection for Raph Koster's Playable Worlds, with the studio raising $25M in Series B funding to make its modern sandbox MMO…
Embracer Group is rebranding Perfect World Entertainment as Gearbox Publishing - Following the buyout of Perfect World's North American branch by Embracer and its Gearbox subsidiary last year, Gearbox has announced that Perfect World Entertainment itself is getting a new name:…
Massively on the Go: Pikmin Bloom hasn’t improved six months after release - I was recently looking at an article claiming that Pikmin Bloom remains great six months after release and found I couldn't agree less. While I'm admittedly not a hardcore player, I have…
Fight or Kite: World Wide Hack is a terminal simulation for hacking the planet - I’ve always been somewhat enamored with the concept of hacking. For a bit of a layman in terms of that world, the idea of being a hacker that can use…
Neverwinter’s ‘Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons’-inspired Dragonslayer module launches this June - At this afternoon's D&D Direct, Cryptic and Gearbox have revealed that Neverwinter's Dragonslayer is launching in June. Dragonslayer will mark the game's 23rd module to date and arrive on PC…
World of Warcraft’s Ion Hazzikostas discusses theoretical player housing in new interview - Player housing in World of Warcraft is a topic that's come up pretty ceaselessly since the game launched, and it's even more present in people's minds with the upcoming Dragonflight expansion. Obviously…
Greg Street clarifies Riot MMO progress: ‘It is going great. The team is so stacked.’ - A few weeks ago, Riot Games' Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street came out on Twitter to give a bit of an update on how things are going for the Runeterra MMORPG that…
Lord of the Rings Online rolls the servers back after a day of downtime following anniversary patch - (We've updated with the latest rollback info at the end.) What was set up to be an amazing day for Lord of the Rings Online players ended up with all…
Raph Koster’s Playable Worlds scored $25M in investment for his ‘modern sandbox MMO’ - Raph Koster's Playable Worlds is inching a little closer to a playable world thanks to another cash infusion. GIbiz reports that the company has raised another $25M in investment in…
From the Depths: Everything we know about Wargaming’s exit from Russia - Mixing gaming and politics is rough. Think back to the Blitzchung fiasco for Blizzard back in 2019. Or when Daybreak was (and then wasn’t) owned by Columbus Nova, which itself…
Choose My Adventure: Delving the expeditions, cities, and dungeons of Albion Online - I'm not sure that Albion Online is going to sink its hooks fully into me enough that I'll keep playing after this column, but I have to admit that things…
Square-Enix’s president is still bullish on the prospect of NFTs and blockchain in gaming - Have you forgotten about president Yosuke Matsuda's buzzword-laden blockchain pitch from the start of the year? It's entirely possible you have, since in the subsequent weeks and months there's been…
Global Chat: Is FFXIV the perfect solo MMORPG? - Kicking off this week's roundup of MMO blog posts, we'll hop over to Dragonchasers where Pete is ecstatic to share the revelation that Final Fantasy XIV may be the most…
Mike Ybarra says Blizzard isn’t ‘doing NFTs’ in spite of its play-to-earn and NFT surveys - Now before anyone begins to get too upset, it should be made plain from the off that surveys are not full-bore announcements of features, monetization plans, or release schedules. With…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 370: Dragonflight, TERA, and LOTRO
Massively OP Podcast Episode 369: FFXIV’s new adventure
The Stream Team: Taking a peek at New World after a little hiatus
The Stream Team: Joining the No Man’s Sky expedition
The Stream Team: AQ3D’s Lore celebrates Earth Day
The Stream Team: Sneaky search for Stolen Plates in Warframe
The Stream Team: A walk through the Wyllowwood in Neverwinter
The Stream Team: Some SOLO Backseat streaming
The Stream Team: A quick space flight somewhere in Elite Dangerous
The Stream Team: Seeing the start of Guild Wars 2’s new Season 1
The Stream Team: Chasing Shadows in the Swamp in 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.
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