It’s obviously not an MMO, but take two for the MMO once planned as Project Titan didn’t go to plan this week. Blizzard’s Overwatch 2 struggled with DDOS attacks, stability issues, and queues, then came under fire for monetization excesses and security overreach, the latter of which it rolled back.
Meanwhile, Final Fantasy XIV announced its next update and Fan Festival, DCUO was hit with a nasty exploit, No Man’s Sky launched Waypoint, Elder Scrolls Online announced plans to rescue Stadia players, New World announced fresh start servers, EverQuest II opened preorders for Renewal of Ro, the Secret World tabletop RPG flew past its Kickstarter goal, Guild Wars 2 released its last roadmap of 2022, and Shroud of the Avatar is a royal mess.
Finally, stay tuned for tomorrow’s deep-dive into CitizenCon!
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
Overwatch 2’s launch is plagued by multiple DDOS attacks and connection issues - Blizzard brought Overwatch 2 online last night as planned, but what didn't go quite as plan was the technical mess that plagued the team shooter almost immediately. Blizzard's Mike Ybarra…
Final Fantasy XIV confirms Patch 6.25 for October 18, Fan Festival’s return in July 2023 - The Live Letter from Final Fantasy XIV was already planning to have lots of information about what's next for adventurers in Eorzea, and it certainly delivered on some big drops,…
Overwatch 2 ‘makes progress’ on launch issues, but it’s still getting dinged on unlock grinds - The rocky launch week of Overwatch 2 isn't over yet, but the studio says that it's "making progress" on addressing the core issues plaguing the online team shooter. In a…
DC Universe Online players take advantage of a 1 credit cash shop oops – and end up facing suspensions - Earlier this week, players of DC Universe Online were granted an update that brought back the Witching Hour event, alongside Daybreak's fall sale with discounted respecs, catalysts, and style items,…
WoW Factor: Is Dragonflight the last chance for World of Warcraft? - Human beings love narratives. We love stories too, but narratives are like the arch version of that. You don't need an elaborate story about how Thag had trouble finding food…
LOTRO Legendarium: Are LOTRO’s missions a little too good? - When Before the Shadow arrives in Lord of the Rings Online next month, it will bring both an additional set of missions and a new "delving" difficulty option to increase…
China celebrates the launch of WoW’s Wrath Classic with a dazzling drone light show - No matter how excited you may have been for the launch of World of Warcraft Classic's Wrath of the Lich King expansion (assuming you were to begin with), you were…
CEO of Platinum Games on Babylon’s Fall: ‘Live service games are definitely something we do want to do’ - Ultimately, Babylon's Fall went about as badly as a live-service game could conceivably go. It launched to poor reviews and reception, never convinced a critical mass of players that it…
Roblox faces lawsuit alleging it enabled the sexual exploitation of a minor - The company that owns and operates Roblox is facing an extremely serious lawsuit that alleges the game platform failed to keep a young girl safe from predators who led her…
Russian soldier captured by Ukrainian forces claims he joined the army to pay off a World of Tanks-related debt - Friends, this story is definitely unique, but we're going to try to condense this as best as we can. Making the rounds today is a viral video that has a…
No Man’s Sky brings new game modes, a trade rocket, and a Nintendo Switch launch in its Waypoint update - The ever-increasing number of feature additions to No Man's Sky just keep on coming. Waypoint, the survivalbox's latest free update, is now available to players with new modes, several quality-of-life…
Overwatch 2’s first big update tackled SMS Protect as Blizzard teases Kiriko animated short - As promised, Blizzard patched Overwatch 2 overnight, effectively nullifying the deeply unpopular "SMS Protect" feature that required all players to link specific types of phones to their accounts. As the…
New World discusses fresh start character slots and servers, proposes territory management overhaul - Hot on the heels of yesterday's announcement that New World will launch fresh start servers on November 2nd, Amazon reps have been dropping useful info on the game's forums. Notably:…
Shroud of the Avatar says it ‘is not going away,’ but a ‘sanity test’ build rolls the MMO back into August - Earlier this week we reported on a major issue affecting Shroud of the Avatar and its latest release, which featured a bug tied to the game's housing lots that made…
Vague Patch Notes: Why are mobile MMOs Like That? - If you have read my writing a bunch over the years, you have probably observed me mentioning how much I like Final Fantasy Tactics over the years. You have probably…
Elder Scrolls Online players stuck on Stadia will be able to transfer to PC with all their stuff - Last week's abrupt announcement that Google will be sunsetting Stadia in January took a lot of gaming studios by surprise, including MMO studios. As we've noted, early verbiage for The…
Blade & Soul’s first-ever mounts are lockbox drops - Mounts are arriving to Blade & Soul once the Symphony of Destruction update goes live. That would probably be enough information for most, but NCsoft has provided some additional details…
New World officially announces fresh start servers coming November 2 - Just about a month ago, Amazon's New World teased the possibility of fresh start servers, with the devs saying they "hear you" and "think they're cool too" and promising "more…
Flagship’s dead MMO Mythos is back as a single-player RPG from Hellgate owner Hanbitsoft - A few weeks ago on the MassivelyOP Podcast, Justin and I were trying to come up with MMOs that had centaur-like races, and we happened to mention Mythos, which did…
Overwatch 2 partially rolls back SMS requirement, addresses stability and queues - As we've been covering, the Overwatch 2 rollout was a bit of a mess, and it wasn't just a result of first-day technical burps and apparently malicious DDOS attacks that…
Genshin Impact developer confirms it’s not focusing on making new endgame content - You've hit the highest adventure rank possible in Genshin Impact. Now what? Well, you head to the Spiral Abyss for artifacts, materials, and currencies... and that's kind of about it.…
Echo of Soul comes back to the west once again as Echo of Soul Ragnarok thanks to a new publisher - Echo of Soul has had a long and drawn out history of death and rebirth here in the west as well as across the globe. The MMORPG was shuttered in…
Perfect Ten: Ten quirky and interesting MMOs worth trying - Quite often while I'm writing columns for Massively OP, the catalyst behind a given topic is what interests me right then -- and, I figure, if it has my attention,…
Star Citizen reels back publication of digital magazine and gives out huggable ships to subscribers - If you prefer to get your Star Citizen information through the Jump Point e-zine, then the latest issue has some bad news. The opening portion of the magazine announces that…
EverQuest II opens preorders for December’s Renewal of Ro, EverQuest announces Night of Shadows expansion - Mainstream gamers might be out of the loop, but MMORPG players know that the EverQuest franchise kicks into high gear every autumn, and we're in the thick of it now.…
Star Anvil’s Secret World tabletop RPG has already exceeded its Kickstarter goal - As we've been reporting, while Funcom is more or less content to leave both versions of Secret World in maintenance mode for the indefinite future, there's going to be one…
Fight or Kite: Forget Overwatch 2 – Gundam Evolution meets your anime FPS needs - As a self diagnosed techie, I’ve always had a soft spot for mech-related games and shows. But I haven’t had too many opportunities in the Fight or Kite column to…
Choose My Adventure: Returning to the very beginning of Lost Ark - I've been away from Lost Ark long enough that I'm effectively being left in the dust in terms of endgame - presumably, anyway - but I've also not been gone…
Danish Center for Gambling Addiction warns parents about Diablo Immortal’s monetization tricks - The monetization model for mobile ARPG Diablo Immortal made plenty of headlines leading up to and during its launch. The costs of capping out a character were the subject of…
Allods Online’s and Skyforge’s My.Games has been sold off for $642M - My.Games is no longer part of VK Company and its Mail.ru group, according to a press release sent out by the company. The game company was sold off to Aleksander…
Labor board determines Activision-Blizzard retaliated against unionizers, Microsoft launches acquisition website - Last spring, Activision-Blizzard was hard at work trying to suppress the burgeoning unionization movement within its walls, spearheaded by QA testers at Raven Software, and in the middle of these…
Lost Ark promises Reaper, Summoner, and a ‘beautifully dangerous’ raid by year’s end - The last three months of this year promise to offer plenty of new things for Lost Ark players to do as Amazon Games has laid out an end-of-year roadmap for…
Star Citizen talks NPCs and AI, gifts party whales to backers ahead of CitizenCon - NPCs are an important part of making any game feel lived-in and alive, and powering that AI behavior is a big task for Star Citizen considering the things Cloud Imperium…
Guild Wars 2 maps out dates for upcoming events and patch releases for the rest of 2022 - There are not many months left in the Year of This Weird Algorithm 2022, and it looks like Guild Wars 2 is ready to stuff in as much as it…
Wisdom of Nym: The problem with Final Fantasy XIV’s consumables and buffs - All right, gang, who wants a sandwich? Especially if that sandwich involves... a boost to your Determination and Critical Hit rating for the next half hour? Congratulations, and welcome to…
Elder Scrolls Online kicks out a gameplay teaser trailer for the upcoming Firesong DLC - What sort of song would fire sing? What would it sound like? Would it be the most metal jam that ever rocked your face? Or would it just simply be…
New World is launching its Brimstone Sands update on October 18 - You probably do not want to actually be anywhere that brimstone sand can form. It's hard to conceive of a situation where the primary chemical construction of sand is straight…
Shroud of the Avatar’s latest release was so ‘borked’ that it was down all weekend – and still is - Shroud of the Avatar was supposed to kick out Release 106 last week - Thursday, September 29th, to be exact - but the patch never came and the game's Twitter…
Google left Stadia devs in the dark over cancelation, studios race to port game saves - When Google announced that Stadia would be shut down in January, you might have thought the devs and game studios working on Stadia games would be the first to know.…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 391: Shuffling around dragons, pirates, and embers
The Stream Team: Delving the endless labyrinth of Mythic
The Stream Team: The early days of Dual Universe
The Stream Team: Wrapping up AQ3D’s Nulgath Saga Part 2 in the Wastelands
The Stream Team: Dipping into some TFOs in Star Trek Online
The Stream Team: Sky island hopping in Neverwinter
Massively Overthinking: Do you take vacation time to play MMOs?
The Stream Team: Backseat Streaming goes to Guild Wars
The Stream Team: Leaping into the Inferno of Foxhole’s 1.0 build
The Stream Team: A Charr decoy in Guild Wars 2
The Stream Team: Venturing into Warframe’s Veilbreaker
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.
