Yet another eastern MMO heavily revised and then ported westward morphed into a temport this week as Kakao announced it’ll sunset Elyon, fka Ascent Infinite Air, at the end of the year.
Meanwhile, Star Trek Online landed Wil Wheaton, Temtem officially launched, EVE Online announced Uprising, and WoW Classic struggled with monstrous queues and oopsed the heck out of the Scourge Invasion.
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
Elyon, once hotly anticipated as Ascent Infinite Realm, is sunsetting in December - I wish I could say nobody saw this coming, but unfortunately, that's not the case: Kakao is closing down Elyon. "Kakao Games Europe, following lengthy discussions with the game developer…
Lord of the Rings Online is about to give soloers a way to earn raid gear - In an hour-and-a-half Q&A video this past Friday, Standing Stone Games' Allan "Orion" Maki took the center stage to field numerous questions from the Lord of the Rings Online community.…
Wil Wheaton joins Star Trek Online as Mirror Wesley in next week’s Ascension launch - Star Trek Online is well-known for scoring big-name Star Trek names as voice actors, but today's reveal on Star Trek Day might be one of the most surprising: Wil Wheaton…
Vague Patch Notes: The MMORPG industry shockwaves that still reverberate - A thought occurred to me the other day regarding World of Warcraft and the way that it deformed the MMO industry: People who are claiming that it's the reason that…
Blizzard begs WoW Classic players to transfer away from queues as tech can’t resolve capacity chaos - As we've been noting for the last week, the WoW Classic Wrath of the Lich King pre-patch launch hasn't gone to plan, largely thanks to incredible queues and Blizzard's apparent…
WoW Factor: What makes World of Warcraft in particular appealing? - I've been covering MMOs professionally for about 13 years now. That's a long while. And it's kind of strange to me that I've been doing so basically covering World of…
Wrath Classic servers unexpectedly experience the Scourge Invasion ahead of schedule - In one of those "happy accidents" that Bob Ross liked to talk about, WoW Classic's servers experienced what's described by the devs as "a surprise [to them], but all in…
The Game Archaeologist: The legacy of Ultima Online - Last week in The Game Archaeologist, we traced the history of Ultima Online’s origin, development, and testing -- not to mention one pesky in-game assassination of its lead figure. But…
Details of Overwatch 2’s next hero are leaked online by Blizzard and fans - The comedy of errors that is Overwatch 2's inability to keep things quiet continues. Both Blizzard and a fan of the game have combined to offer up details of the…
Massively Overthinking: The weirdest ways we’ve leveled in MMOs - One of my favor flavors of fluff post we do occasionally is report on folks who have accomplished fame by leveling "wrong" in MMOs, which is really just to say…
Temtem defends its battle pass, plans adjustments to pass XP and inclusion of pass items to its store - The fact that Temtem has a battle pass isn't anything exactly new, as developer Crema Games announced its intention in a February 2020 roadmap post. Even so, players are apparently…
NFT gaming consultant proposes conscripting poor gamers as MMO NPCs - In case you needed another reason to keep crypto out of gaming, a new article on Rest of World chronicles an NFT scheme in Minecraft that roped in Filipino kids…
Lost Ark is finally back online as Amazon announces which servers will be merged - Lost Ark players were understandably frustrated yesterday when the servers didn't return after maintenance with the patch and instead was offline thanks to a "critical issue with the build all…
Foxhole makes its full launch on September 28 with the addition of factories and trains - The large-scale military MMO Foxhole hasn't popped up on our radar very often, so let's take a moment to look back at this one. First arriving to early access in…
Massively on the Go: Splatoon 3’s Tricolor demo makes double trouble - As Splatoon 3's release swims ever closer, I keep thinking back to the recent Splatfest demo we had. Splatfests aren't new to veterans of the series: Nintendo picks a fun…
Perfect Ten: Recent promising MMOs that died before they were born - Is there anything more agonizing to an MMO fan than to get excited about a promising title and then see that title cancelled before it even launches? It's a bitter…
EVE Online announces November expansion called Uprising - Whether you're a bittervet or a starry-eyed noob, every EVE Online player's ears are going to perk up a bit today at the news from CCP Games that EVE Online…
Amazon canceled its Lord of the Rings MMO over Tencent complications, Smed’s new game is still in production - Almost exactly four years ago, we first learned about the existence of a new Lord of the Rings MMORPG, backed by Hong Kong-based Leyou Tech, one of the companies behind…
World of Warcraft Classic players are still dealing with server queues even after a week - It would be a pretty safe assumption to make that players of WoW Classic are eager for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion's arrival. Last week saw the pre-patch…
New World plans three new servers to manage queues, revives Instanced Wars - If you've been back in New World the last week or two, you know it's been beset by one of the best worst problems an MMORPG can have: so many…
Guild Wars 2’s S1E4, Tower of Nightmares, returns on September 13 - The resurrection and renewal of Guild Wars 2's original living world season continues next week with the revival of episode four next week. It's called Tower of Nightmares, and it's…
Choose My Adventure: Hands-on with Temtem’s early access build before launch - Knowing that the Temtem character I was running was going to be reset at the time of launch, as voted on by you fine folks last week, did kind of…
Legends of Aria details its upcoming jail system, heralds it as ‘the first ever metaverse prison’ - Now that the Kickstarted Legends of Aria has gone all-in on the ultimately superfluous integration of the blockchain, the game is further lauding a feature arriving in its upcoming build…
Fight or Kite: First impressions of Dysterra, a cybernetic post-apoc survival sandbox - In the future, our home Earth is beset by a host of economic and environmental disasters. It got so bad that people with resources and funding actually shuttled their butts…
Temtem officially launches from early access today with 164 critters to collect - People, this is not a drill: Temtem officially launches today. The Pokémon-like MMO, which was propelled into existence with a successful crowdfunding campaign in 2018, is expected to go live…
Wisdom of Nym: Story impressions for Final Fantasy XIV’s Buried Memory - Gosh, this has felt like a long darn week, hasn't it? I couldn't tell you why it felt so particularly long to me, but for whatever reason it did. Maybe…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
The Stream Team: The quest for critters in Temtem
The Stream Team: The Mo Mania IV SUBtember Streamathon
The Stream Team: Riddles in AdventureQuest 3D’s Nulgath
The Stream Team: Peering in to Foxhole before its 1.0 release
The Stream Team: Eliminating elemental threats in Neverwinter
The Stream Team: Backseat Streaming celebrates Star Trek Day with Star Trek Online
The Stream Team: Further free-roaming frolicking in Tower of Fantasy
The Stream Team: Concluding Character Growth in Guild Wars 2
The Stream Team: Pushing for more Warframe power
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.
