MMO Week in Review: Last stand in Lion’s Arch

Guild Wars 2 finished out its season one reboot with a bang this week thanks to the release of episode five, which tasks players with saving Lion’s Arch itself.

Meanwhile, SWTOR announced Showdown on Ruhnuk, FFXIV revealed patch 6.3, we took a look at Marvel SNAP, Crowfall is going into what looks like a sunset, and Activision-Blizzard released its Q3 financials, which finally represented a slight bump in revenues for Blizzard itself thanks to Diablo Immortal’s Chinese launch.

THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES

Crowfall is going offline on November 22, supposedly for further development work - Since Crowfall was purchased in December of last year, the news coming out of the game has been minimal at best. So today's announcement that the game will go offline…

Activision-Blizzard Q3 2022: Blizzard MAUs and revenues are up as NetEase dispute looms on the horizon - Welcome back to our trimonthly coverage of Activision-Blizzard's quarterly financials. As of this afternoon, we have Q3's results, comprising July, August, and September 2022. Analysts had pointed out that share…

Flameseeker Chronicles: Wrapping up Guild Wars 2’s S1 reboot with episode 5, The Battle for Lion’s Arch - It's finally here! The most memorable, most important part of Guild Wars 2's Living World Season 1 story. The moment we've all been waiting for: the introduction of Taimi! Oh,…

Wow Factor: Welcome the desert of the real Blizzard - This entire column came about because our team was discussing World of Warcraft at work and I observed something kind of odd: The Dracthyr just don't look cool. Obviously, everyone's…

First impressions of Marvel Snap, an addictive mobile card game by Hearthstone’s former director - Feeling the effects of the "superhero movie fatigue syndrome" that's going around these days, I wasn't overly eager to check out Marvel Snap when it launched last month. Yet I…

Vague Patch Notes: Alas, poor Crowfall, you’re gone now - Dusty dusty, ashy ashy, Crowfall's plane went crashy crashy. Yes, we are now talking about Crowfall very strictly in the past tense. You could argue that technically it's just sleeping,…

Final Fantasy XIV previews the upcoming patch ‘Gods Revel, Lands Tremble’ - No, Final Fantasy XIV's patch 6.3 is not coming out tomorrow. Or the day after. Or even the day after that. In fact, patch 6.3, which has been titled Gods…

SWTOR is launching Showdown on Ruhnuk with new planet and PvP overhaul by the end of the year - During its livestream last night, BioWare revealed Star Wars The Old Republic's next big thing: Game Update 7.2, Showdown on Ruhnuk, launching "winter 2022." Here's what to expect: The story…

Sony and NCsoft have reportedly teamed up to produce an MMO based on the Horizon franchise - Is anyone else feeling like it's just a little odd that at this point any video game series with more than one entry is now a franchise? Well, that's where…

NCsoft Q3 2022: Lineage W drives QoQ revenues, Guild Wars 2 had a great year - NCsoft's Q3 2022 financials are another tale of ups and downs. While the South Korean MMO company's revenues have declined for the last few quarters, Q3 is up significantly -…

Final Fantasy XI releases its November update with more story and more Sortie opponents - You there! Do you play Final Fantasy XI? If not, go play it until you're ready to do Sortie content! We'll see you for the remainder of this news piece…

Massively Overthinking: The New World comeback - New World is having a bit of a comeback moment - or is it? Since the launch of Brimstone Sands and the fresh start servers over the last few weeks,…

Summoners War Chronicles, the free-to-play Summoners War MMO, has officially arrived to mobile and PC - Back in 2017 we got word that an MMO based on the 2014 mobile game Summoners War was on the horizon. That game ended up being Summoners War: Chronicles, which…

For Science: New study finds positive association between excessive gaming and kids’ cognition - Academics offered up another good reason to play video games this past October: A new study of around 2000 kids found that video game play was positively associated with performance…

Wild Terra 2 New Lands has officially launched as the sequel to 2017’s Wild Terra Online - As promised, Wild Terra 2, the sequel to sandboxy MMO Wild Terra, has officially launched on Steam today under the Juvty Worlds banner. The second game in the franchise was…

Battlefield 2042 plans limited-time free-to-play periods in December and talks up its next two seasons - Earlier this week we had worried aloud that Battlefield 2042 might not make it to a third season owing to the fact that fans were fleeing the shooter for its…

Nexon Q3 2022: ‘Record breaking quarterly revenue’ is earned on the strength of mobile gaming in Korea - We're back with another quarterly gaming financial story thanks to Nexon putting out its third quarter report, which looks to be full of good news for investors as the company…

Overwatch 2 promotes its first mythic skin while reducing legacy skin prices for former players - Dressing up your favorite Overwatch 2 character in shiny skins is likely what makes most players spend their money, and Blizzard is hoping that will be the case with the…

Ex-CCP devs announce post-apoc survival MMO Annex - Ready for a new player in the MMORPG genre? Then meet Arctic Theory, a studio composed of former CCP and EA developers who banded together to "reshape the landscape of…

Flameseeker Chronicles: How the Elementalist saved Guild Wars 2 for me - First off, I know I'm not the usual writer for Flameseeker Chronicles, and I'm not ousting Colin or Tina from their spot; in fact, Colin just delivered impressions of the…

Perfect Ten: 10 metrics to check to gauge MMO success or failure - There are a lot of MMOs out there. How do you know which one of them is the most popular and therefore the best one? Well, you ask me. No,…

Dungeons and Dragons Online releases Update 57 Grip of the Hidden Hand today – here are the patch notes - Today marks a new content update for Dungeons and Dragons Online with the arrival of Update 57: Grip of the Hidden Hand, bringing a new quest pack and a variety…

Diablo Immortal merged a ton of servers with today’s update - How well is Diablo Immortal doing right now? Well, we've had a couple of clues: Its global launch in June wasn't enough to rescue Blizzard's Q2 financials, but its Chinese…

Blue Protocol readies for another network test in Japan ‘in preparation for release’ - Last week we finally heard word from Bandai Namco that Blue Protocol was indeed alive and developing after a worryingly long span of silence. Now the studio is piping up…

Lost Ark’s Reaper class will finally launch in the west on November 16 - While Korean players have already been Reaping it up since September 2020, players in the west have had to wait until this month's update to get their Reap on. Luckily,…

European Union’s executive arm begins investigating the Microsoft-ActiBlizz buyout - The mega-deal for Microsoft to buy up Activision-Blizzard is once again under a major microscope. The European Commission, the executive arm of the 27-nation European Union bloc, announced earlier in…

Neverwinter’s Northdark Reaches module is live on PC and console today - [AL:NW]It's a huge day for PC players of Cryptic's Neverwinter, as the Northdark Reaches launches on the platform. There hasn't been a whole lot of prep time for players for…

Choose My Adventure: Mist Legacy manages to somehow be both an idle and punishing MMORPG - When I first took a look into Mist Legacy during a livestream, I was both intrigued and charmed. The game basically looked and played like a virtual tabletop program and…

EVE Online brings new ship variants, frontlines, and shinier hangars in today’s Uprising update - The latest update for EVE Online has been the talk of the game for a while now (and has reportedly been drawing in a lot of interest), but at last…

Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty claims Halo Infinite’s live service plans have fallen far short of expectations - When Halo Infinite launched, some elements of the game were not ready for prime time. Split-screen co-op was not in the game (and has subsequently been cancelled altogether), the Forge…

Wisdom of Nym: The unfinished spaces left in Final Fantasy XIV - It'd really be nice to visit Ala Mhigo, but I sincerely doubt at this point that we're ever going to go there in Final Fantasy XIV. As with most nations…

Lost Ark announces an upcoming collaboration with The Witcher in spring 2023 - Would you like to share grunts with Geralt in Lost Ark? If you said something to the effect of, "That's not possible, you silly person, those are two entirely different…

Rumor: Diablo IV could release in April 2023, with pre-orders available during The Game Awards 2022 - When can players expect to wander the darkity-dark of Diablo IV? Sometime in the first portion of 2023 if some rumors are to be believed. According to rumors from The…

Vitae Aeternum: Tackling New World’s endgame as a solo player - After nearly a year of stopping to smell the roses, I finally made it to level cap in New World shortly before the launch of Brimstone Sands. Having now been…

Square-Enix Q3 2022: Final Fantasy XIV subs continue to grow along with company’s NFT aspirations - We are now officially in that time of the year when financial reports start flying around the digital room, so today we turn our attention to Square Enix. According to…

This past weekend saw New World hit its highest player concurrency all year - Last week, as we saw New World's concurrency creeping up and up and up, we suspected that it would not only blow past the 69K concurrency peak the game saw…

Guild Wars 2 previews the buffs and nerfs of its upcoming balance update - Big changes are coming to pretty much every class in Guild Wars 2 on November 29th, which may strike anxiety, excitement, or curiosity in those affected (i.e., every player). To…

DC Universe Online devs and fans honor the passing of Batman voice actor Kevin Conroy - Yesterday the world lost one of the greats of acting in gaming, comics media, and entertainment in general when Kevin Conroy passed away at age 66. Conroy's body of work…

Elder Scrolls Online’s creative director admits to ‘rougher than normal’ launch for Firesong - Apparently, Elder Scrolls Online's last big content drop of the year -- and its Legacy of the Bretons cycle -- kind of stumbled, tripped, and fell down several flights of…

THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS

The Stream Team: Relearning the Final Fantasy XIV Ninja

The Stream Team: Defending the DDO caravan

The Stream Team: Marking Makeb and Hoth off the lore to-do list in SWTOR

The Stream Team: Backseat Streaming is bound for Black Desert Online

The Stream Team: Happy 18th birthday EverQuest II

The Stream Team: Elder Scrolls Online’s Sojourn of the Druid King

The Stream Team: Celebrating Star Trek Online’s Ascension console launch with devs and giveaway

The Stream Team: Exploring Warhammer: Vermintide II for the first time

The Stream Team: Peering in on the PC version of Summoners War Chronicles

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.