Welp, Diablo Immortal finally launched, and it’s everything you’d expect from a Blizzard mobile title, which is to say, there’s apparently a decent game under all those layers of grotesque mobile monetization? Sigh. We’ll be digging in more this week.
Meanwhile, we got a look at that Marvel MMO we can’t have, Gamigo threw in the towel on Atlas Rogues, Kritika is getting a crypto resurrection, World of Warcraft rolled out patch 9.2.5, and we got prepared for Elder Scrolls Online’s High Isle.
Read on to catch up with the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions today as every Sunday in MassivelyOP’s Week in Review!THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES
Diablo Immortal launches on mobile and PC today with hellacious microtransactions - The newest entry in Blizzard's long-running Diablo series was couched in controversy literally from the first minutes that it was announced. Now, with Diablo Immortal's launch finally upon us, we'll…
WoW Factor: What was the point of Shadowlands? - Do I have another column or two in me about World of Warcraft: Dragonflight? I mean, probably, even though we clearly have a long, long man time until the expansion…
Tamriel Infinium: The Elder Scrolls Online’s High Isle brings new story, new lands, and a new card game to Tamriel - It’s spring. The birds are chirping, the pollen is flying, and a young person’s thoughts turn to another major chapter release for The Elder Scrolls Online. The yearly ZeniMax release…
World of Warcraft wraps up Shadowlands with today’s patch 9.2.5 and faction crossplay - As World of Warcraft increasingly turns its attention to Dragonflight, Shadowlands' days are coming to a close. With the arrival of today's mid-sized Patch 9.2.5, the expansion cycle has officially…
Vague Patch Notes: Mobile MMOs, free-to-play MMOs, and the path of microtransactions - When I first started playing Magic: the Gathering, Revised was the new hotness and I got used to the idea that Serra Angel was considered to be an overpowered creature.…
EVE Online’s ‘revitalized’ multiple character training monetization sends players into a tailspin - Why go through the "hassle" of having multiple accounts and multiboxing when you can pay more for the convenience of training multiple characters? That appears to be the question being…
The Soapbox: Are modern games more disposable than ever? - Atlas Rogues went out not with a bang but a whimper. I forgot it even existed. And after it closes July 5th, it's gone. Of course there's always hope that…
Massively Overthinking: Making money in MMOs – easy, hard, or in-between? - A few days ago, I was hanging out in a certain MMORPG's Discord when an age-old class fight broke out - and I don't mean character class. Essentially, some players…
Kritika Global will resurrect as a play-to-win NFT monstrosity next week - So you guys remember Kritika Online, right? It was published here by En Masse but shut down back in 2019, although it continued running in Korea. Then we learned about…
World of Warcraft posts previews for Dragonflight’s Druid and Death Knight talent trees - One of the marquee features for World of Warcraft: Dragonflight is the return of talent trees for each class, which are meant to bring more customization to players than ever…
Legends of Runeterra plans to scale back PvE mode in favor of PvP focus as devs reshuffle to other Riot projects - Why do you play Legends of Runeterra? I promise that's not a facetious question, since the digital CCG has a base competitive PvP game mode and the Path of Champions…
Microsoft promises ‘creative and collaborative approaches with unions’ in official blog post - With Microsoft on the cusp of buying out all of Activision-Blizzard, there's been plenty of governmental scrutiny and a healthy dose of concern for workers in relation to what happens…
New World readies a double weapon XP event while player counts drop - Is your weapon training lagging behind where it should be in New World? Amazon hears you, and Amazon is prepping a four-day event to help out with your lax progress.…
Star Citizen shares work on ships, a new player experience, missions, and dev tools in May report - As we slip into June, it's time once again for CIG to check in with May's development progress for Star Citizen, outlining work done by the various teams in its…
MMO Burnout: Miss Heroes of Might and Magic? Try Songs of Conquest - If I were president of video games™, I'd make sure every computer has a copy of Heroes of Might and Magic 3 installed in it. And I'd put our greatest minds towards…
Hot Pockets teams up with PUBG: Battlegrounds to award you awful cosmetics in a circuitous fashion - The makers of Hot Pockets know what you want, players of PUBG: Battlegrounds. You want Hickory Ham & Cheddar, and you want it hot, and you want it quickly, and…
But seriously, War Thunder nerds, stop leaking classified military documents - The Venn diagram that sees players of War Thunder and people incapable of keeping classified military documents under wraps is merging into a worrying circle. For a third time, a…
Final Fantasy XIV’s Naoki Yoshida skipped Final Fantasy XI at launch to play Dark Age of Camelot - Naoki Yoshida is best known for his role as the producer and director of Final Fantasy XIV, but the fact of the matter is that he wears many hats, and…
Perfect Ten: Weird ways we heal each other in MMORPGs - One of the most important implications of the virtual worlds we visit is that they all boast medical care far above and beyond anything we have in our society. In…
Wrongful death lawsuit filed by family of an Activision-Blizzard employee is dropped - One of the many legal clouds that hang over the head of Activision-Blizzard has cleared: The family of Kerri Moynihan, which alleged in a wrongful death lawsuit against the studio…
DC Universe Online delays episode 45 to 2023 over ‘staff shortages’ - DC Universe Online's executive producer Landon "Panderus" Falls has offered players a roadmap of updates planned for the rest of 2022 and just beyond, looking forward to the final three…
‘Nostalgic’ browser MMORPG Genfanad opens its Kickstarter, immediately hits its $10K ask - Last year we reported on Genfanad, a self-described "nostalgic browser-based MMORPG" that promised to mesh old-school sandbox MMORPG sensibilities with an off-beat sense of humor. In the game's initial announcement,…
Choose My Adventure: The long-awaited and slightly bumpy return to Final Fantasy XI - So as you can see, I got Final Fantasy XI working. More specifically, I got the help of our resident expert on all things FF MMORPGs. I’ll not drone on…
Fight or Kite: Absolver is the greatest martial arts melee brawler you never played - I’ve been wanting to write about Absolver for the better part of my time here at MOP. In fact, it’s been rolling around the back of my mind since I…
18 European countries back a Norwegian government body’s assertion that lootboxes are ‘manipulative’ - Clearly, pushback against the lootbox monetization model is not going away, a fact that is once more being brought to light thanks to a report from the Norwegian Consumer Council…
The Division 2 rolls back player progress over XP bug - A bad bug in The Division 2 that caused players to advance too quickly in their levels has prompted Ubisoft to take action of the "rollback" variety. Today, high-level players…
MGI & Gamigo Q1 2022: Atlas Rogues is dead - I'm sorry to report this morning that Gamigo is sunsetting Atlas Rogues. The news came on Memorial Day when nobody in the US was paying any attention. "We have concluded…
Belgium and Netherlands reject Diablo Immortal over lockbox gambling concerns - This week's "global launch" of Diablo Immortal already wasn't going to be that global considering that several southeast Asia countries will have to wait for the release. And now the…
Pokemon Go’s Niantic might be exploring NFT and crypto-infused AR games - We've noted before that Niantic leadership is heroically awful at reading the freaking room on a number of matters, so perhaps it should come as no surprise that CEO John…
Massively on the Go: Pokemon GO’s new season Goes back to the biggies in June - It's always hard to be a Pokemon GO player. On the one hand, the upcoming stalker app, Campfire, shows us that someone at the top really has not been listening…
Wisdom of Nym: Reconsidering Final Fantasy XIV’s Primals - Back in the early days of Final Fantasy XIV, Primals were kind of a big deal. Not the biggest deal in the game's lore or the setting, no; it was…
Artist shares character creation screens from Daybreak’s nixed Marvel superhero MMO - It's very likely that the news of EG7 pulling the plug on Daybreak's in-development Marvel MMORPG didn't hit you very hard, considering that we didn't have an official announcement, a…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 375: Mail call!
Battle Bards Episode 213: Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker
The Stream Team: Sunday hunt day is happening in Monster Hunter Rise
The Stream Team: The Calling of Star Trek Online
The Stream Team: The odds and ends of AdventureQuest 3D
The Stream Team: Finishing Fazrian’s tasks in Neverwinter’s Terminus
The Stream Team: Backseat streaming some mission running from The Secret World
The Stream Team: A live game master drops in enemies in Arma Reforger
The Stream Team: Rebuilding the dragon extractor in Guild Wars 2
The Stream Team: Rescuing Warframe’s Lotus
The Stream Team: Elder Scrolls Online’s The Missing Prophecy
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.
