It was a busy – and drama-filled – week over here in MMORPG land, as the Richard Garriott-fronted crypto MMO got a name and a website that almost immediately vanished from the internet, Embracer scooped up the Lord of the Rings rights, Untamed Isles folded over funding shenanigans, and Blizzard scurried to convince core gamers Diablo IV isn’t Diablo Immortal.
In happier news, Guild Wars 2 announced its Steam launch, Tower of Fantasy is pretty good, Path of Exile released Lake of Kalandra, Dual Universe got a launch date, and Alganon is back from the dead.
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
First Impressions: Tower of Fantasy is Genshin Impact in a PSO2 costume (and it’s actually pretty good) - Let's go ahead and get this out of the way: Tower of Fantasy, the new shared world RPG from publisher Level Infinite and developer Hotta, is effectively what would happen…
Richard Garriott’s NFT MMO has a website and a name: Iron and Magic - You may remember that space tourist Richard Garriott, fresh off the utter collapse of Shroud of the Avatar, had threatened us all with another new MMO project filled with NFTs…
Guild Wars 2 is finally launching on Steam next week – just in time for its 10th birthday - So you folks remember when Guild Wars 2 was planning to launch on Steam, right? It was originally announced way back in 2020 and planned for November 2020. Then it…
Lord of the Rings Online’s next two zones leak as Embracer buys up rights to the LOTR franchise - There's a big announcement on the horizon for Lord of the Rings Online -- but it may have just been leaked from the game's test server. Maps emerged on Reddit…
WoW Factor: Optimal choices in MMO talent trees don’t justify removing them - So there's this funny persistent thing that goes around when it comes to talent trees in World of Warcraft. A certain coalition of players gets very passionate about defending them,…
Sci-fi MMO Dual Universe is officially launching next month, six years after its $630K Kickstarter - It's been a long strange trip for the Kickstarted sci-fi sandbox MMORPG Dual Universe, studded with unusual monetization and the ousting of its founder partway through. But as of today,…
Diablo IV talks live-service content, seasonal structure, and monetization strategy - Blizzard's latest Diablo IV dev blog has arrived this afternoon as the studio promises "ambitious" plans for the post-launch live-service game - and that includes a season structure with "up…
LOTRO Legendarium: What new classes could LOTRO add in the future? - There is certainly no end to the topics to discuss about Lord of the Rings Online, but sometimes I want to take a break to do something a little fun…
Kickstarted MMO Untamed Isles ‘goes into hiatus’ after devs lose funds thanks to crypto market - Just last month we put a spotlight on Untamed Isles, a promising Pokemon-like MMO that raised $528,804 from a 2021 Kickstarter campaign. In fact, players were supposed to get their…
Perfect Ten: 10 MMOs that took aim at World of Warcraft - The fact that we currently have a Big Five in the MMO space is a big change from not so long ago, when the market was so thoroughly dominated by…
Derek Smart promises Alganon is returning in the coming months, but in a staggered invite-only release - Just yesterday we reported on fresh news out of the long-dormant Alganon, pointing out that the game's website came back online, while the game's owner Derek Smart confirmed it as…
Grimdark MMO Mad World confirms 2022 launch as ‘permanent open beta,’ aims for a primary male audience - Jandisoft's Mad World is looking more and more like a candidate for a 2022 release: Not only did we spot a new "winter 2022" window on its Steam page, but…
Singapore creates a government body to regulate lootboxes, citing a blurred line between gambling and gaming - The government of Singapore is becoming another country that's less friendly to the monetization practice of lootboxes thanks to the formation of a new government body earlier this week, which…
Star Citizen answers player questions about ship and vehicle progress in latest video - Star Citizen's regular Star Citizen Live video is back for another week, and this time around it's all about vehicles, as the devs came together to answer a wide variety…
Final Fantasy XIV brings back The Rising for its ninth anniversary - If you had somehow missed that Critically Acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV™ is celebrating its ninth anniversary this year... well, you could be forgiven. The focus has been on patches,…
Judge denies Activision-Blizzard’s attempt to toss California discrimination lawsuit - I'm sorry to ruin your Friday afternoon with another update on the year-long Blizzard scandal, but it must be done, as Activision-Blizzard has lost another round in court. Readers will…
Nightingale’s new video series kicks off with a look at the inspiration and setting of its world - At this point, it's becoming a given that Nightingale loves it some videos, and we're all being reminded of the fact with the debut of a new video series known…
Path of Exile’s Lake of Kalandra expansion and league go live this afternoon - Happy launch day, Path of Exile fans! As usual, Grinding Gear Games has ensured that just as soon as you hear about an expansion, it's already launching before you have…
Massively on the Go: Pokemon Go’s improved Megas and the kitchen sink problem - It's been a while now since Pokemon GO got its third Mega Evolution system, which was one of the big reasons we took a hard look at which pokemon you should…
Massively Overthinking: The real-world value of MMOs - A while back on the MMORPG subreddit, there was a wildly contentious - one might even say transparently provocative - thread declaring that "[i]f governments all over the world banned…
Elder Scrolls Online drops a new QuakeCon trailer for next week’s Lost Depths DLC - We're just one weekend away from The Elder Scrolls Online's third big launch of 2022: its Lost Depths DLC, part of the ongoing Legacy of the Bretons content arc. And…
Massively on the Go: Everything multiplayer fans need to know about Splatoon 3 - So we've all gone through the recent news about Splatoon 3, right? No? Well, don't worry. A lot of the presentation seemed to be aimed at newcomers to the whole series,…
Pantheon may delay its September pre-alpha, discusses early ‘hardcore oldschool gamer’ marketing - MMORPG players have been waiting a long time for Pantheon, but testers might have to have to wait a bit longer: In this month's Visionary Realms newsletter, the studio explains…
Vague Patch Notes: The perils of comparing MMOs to each other - So the other day I read perhaps the worst Tower of Fantasy review I could have possibly read. It was most certainly not the very good one our own Chris…
Tower of Fantasy increases server populations, limits chat spamming, and promises to fight cheaters - The devs of Tower of Fantasy have checked in with a new report that collects some of the latest updates made to the shared world RPG as well as provides…
CWA accuses Activision-Blizzard of spying on workers and threatening to shut down labor discussions - The Communications Workers of America, the parent union where Raven's QA workers' union falls under, continues to keep a spotlight on Activision-Blizzard's ongoing attempts to put employees to heel and…
Rumor: WoW Dragonflight launch date and Diablo IV pre-purchase event possibly leaked - A purported internal memo at Blizzard is making the rounds on the internet this week thanks to certain specific dates for World of Warcraft's Dragonflight rollout and Diablo IV's pre-order.…
Wizards of the Coast silently soft-launches character-driven online CCG Magic Spellslingers for PC and mobile - If a digital card game launches and there aren't banner ads slathered all over websites, does its arrival make a sound? This may indeed be the case for Magic Spellslingers,…
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King launches its pre-patch and fresh start realms on August 30 - Still eager to go back to the days of World of Warcraft when everyone was trampling across Northrend? Your journey starts on August 30th, as that's when WoW Classic rolls…
Choose My Adventure: Making a house and making character progress in Chimeraland - This week in Chimeraland was all about growth - not necessarily for my big round boy Chonkhonk but for my abode and for McFishy himself, thanks to the voting public's…
Wisdom of Nym: Everything we learned about Final Fantasy XIV’s patch 6.2 - To the surprise of basically no one who closely watches Final Fantasy XIV's overall patch progression, patch 6.2 is arriving on August 23rd. That's soon! Seriously, that means that we…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 385: Dungeons & Delays
Battle Bards Episode 215: Lineage W
The Stream Team: Romping through the open world and story quests of Tower of Fantasy
The Stream Team: Roughhousing ruffians in AdventureQuest 3D
The Stream Team: Disrupting the duergar mining in Dungeons & Dragons Online
The Stream Team: Back to Balmorra for more SWTOR Republic Galactic Loremaster tasks
The Stream Team: Heading out for some captain-led shenanigans in Sea of Thieves
The Stream Team: Searching for Snargle stories in Guild Wars 2
The Stream Team: Undercover as a Waking Flame Cultist 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.
