MMO Week in Review: Necrom, Refractions, and Blizzard’s latest blunder

Elder Scrolls Online kicked off the end of January with its reveal of Shadow Over Morrowind, the Necrom chapter, and the Scribes of Fate DLC.

Meanwhile, Blizzard’s rep took another massive dent with the unjust ousting of WoW Classic’s Brian Birmingham, Star Trek Online released its Refractions update, and Dungeons & Dragons Online announced a spring mini-expansion called Vecna Unleashed.

THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES

Elder Scrolls Online reveals Shadow Over Morrowind, the Necrom chapter, and the Arcanist class - Latest updates are at the bottom of the article! ZeniMax Online Studios is just about to begin its big reveal showcase stream for Elder Scrolls Online, during which it'll unveil…

Tamriel Infinium: Elder Scrolls Online’s Necrom is more fanservice, but I don’t hate it - In my last column covering Elder Scrolls Online, I came to two conclusions based on the very rocky year of 2022 for the game: First, that ZeniMax needed to inject…

WoW Classic just lost its team lead Brian Birmingham over Blizzard’s toxic evaluation system - Blizzard has apparently opted to pick yet another pointless fight that makes it look absolutely terrible, this time with well-liked World of Warcraft Classic dev Brian Birmingham. According to fresh…

WoW Factor: Brian Birmingham’s ousting and the ever-deepening rot at Blizzard - Talking about this company is always so exhausting, but let's do a quick recap: Brian Birmingham was, up until recently, one of the top software engineers at Blizzard working on…

Star Trek Online launches Refractions update, season, and anniversary events on PC today - Cryptic and Gearbox are unleashing Star Trek Online's next big thing just in time for the game's 13th birthday: Refractions. PC players will see the update and the new season…

Guild Wars 2 will allow jade bots to be piloted outside of Cantha next week - Have you unlocked the mastery track for the jade bot in Guild Wars 2 but were a little sad that the tiny green friend could only be deployed in the…

Vague Patch Notes: Floaty, samey, and janky – a treasury of MMO terms for bad combat - Any time you bring up The Secret World or Secret World Legends's bland, floaty combat, at least one person is going to chime in insisting, "Well, it seemed all right…

Ashes of Creation showcases alpha two’s updates to UI, animation, and tank skills - Are you ready for 45 minutes' worth of fresh alpha footage from Ashes of Creation? Because that's just what the devs at Intrepid Studios are offering followers as they grant…

Dungeons & Dragons’ OGL fiasco ends in victory for third-party content like The Secret World TTRPG - Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro flooped around and found out. As we discussed earlier this month, the stewards of the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop game have been under intense…

Overwatch 2 devs address issues with ranked play, reward acquisition, and balance frequency - In an attempt to get ahead of several controversial topics in the Overwatch 2 meta, Blizzard posted a developer update to briefly address a number of ongoing issues and concerns…

Guild Wars 2 previews the changes coming to WvW with the update on January 31 - Despite your continued practice of wearing a t-shirt in Guild Wars 2 proclaiming you as "CHIEF DOLYAK DESTROYER STILL THE BEST SINCE 2013" and your hat that says "WOMEN WANT…

‘WELP’: New World leaderboard test event ends with a bellyflop thanks to war mercenary mechanics - Testing is meant to break things and not go to plan, but the devs of New World had a pretty big stumble as the game continued testing its leaderboard system…

Dungeons and Dragons Online’s 2023 roadmap includes a spring mini-expansion, Vecna Unleashed - Dungeons and Dragons Online is the latest of the Daybreak/Standing Stone Games MMORPGs to get a detailed new roadmap for 2023 as of today. (Please keep this up, studios.) SSG…

Throne and Liberty heads down the final stretch of pre-launch testing - NCsoft's Throne and Liberty may finally be arriving at the end of a very (very) long road of development and testing: Korea IT Times reports that the studio is rounding…

Blade & Soul further reduces 2023 content plans in new producer letter - Blade & Soul is ending its January with a producer letter that offers fans several teases for the year ahead. One of them is immediate: NCsoft West says that recent…

Massively Overthinking: What will be your three most-played MMOs in 2023? - Last week in Massively Overthinking, we discussed our three most-played MMOs of 2022 - and whether we'd guessed right at the top of that year what they'd be (and several…

PSO2 New Genesis adds new combat sector, new boss, and updated Geometric Labyrinth in newest patch - The rest of the January patch content for Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis has now come online, opening up new content instances, some new side story, and a whole…

ArcheAge Unchained is launching a NA and EU fresh start server on February 9 - Stop me if you've heard this one: ArcheAge is preparing another fresh start server! OK, technically it's ArcheAge Unchained this time, and technically it's two servers - one in EU…

Villagers & Heroes will finally launch interior housing in early 2023 - We haven't checked in on indie MMO Villagers & Heroes since its Halloween festivities, and truthfully our last hard looks at the game came back in 2021. Major updates and…

World of Warcraft posts a hype trailer for the Trading Post opening on February 1st - Are you sufficiently hype for getting new cosmetic rewards in World of Warcraft via the upcoming Trading Post? It might seem a little odd to have the post showing up…

Shroud of the Avatar plots more tutorials, new treasure maps, and more Episode 2 content in 2023 - Shroud of the Avatar has laid out a course for 2023, with a roadmap of planned updates to quests, features, and communication for the still-developing MMORPG. The post opens with…

Mortal Online 2 recaps its first year of life, teases territory control and siege systems - Star Vault is celebrating a year since Mortal Online 2's steam launch (yes, the beginning of 2022 was pretty bonkers for MMO launches). "If you have been following the game…

The Soapbox: Comparing the monetization of physical and digital card games - Earlier this week, we reported on the recent Blizzard survey about a possible Hearthstone sub. When I read the news, I almost choked on the sourdough jack I was noshing…

V Rising celebrates 3M sales since early access as players await its delayed content update - Vampire survival MMO V Rising is apparently still gathering all the monies and sales: Stunlock Studios just sent 'round the announcement that it's now sold three million copies since hitting…

Riot Games says it won’t be extorted by hackers who breached League of Legends’ source code - Last weekend, Riot Games told fans of its games that it had been hit with a social engineering attack that led to the compromise of its development environment systems, which…

Lost Ark drops new live-action trailer ahead of its first anniversary - We're still a few weeks away from Lost Ark's first birthday here in the west, but Amazon and Smilegate are clearly already cranking up the hype machine in anticipation, as…

Lord of the Rings Online outlines Warden and Captain class overhauls - With one of its stated goals to make sure that every class gets some manner of overhaul by the end of this year, Standing Stone Games is wasting no time…

World of Warcraft 10.0.7 returns players to the Forbidden Reach, proliferates the Monk class to more races - Yesterday, we speculated that with Activision-Blizzard's Q4 financials looming and bad news for Blizzard happening pretty much every day now, we'd likely start seeing some bigger announcements. This one's on…

Perfect Ten: Tutorial topics every MMO really needs to cover - Tutorials are important in MMOs. No MMO has a great one, unfortunately. I don't just mean in the cases where returning players could use tutorials to remember what the heck…

Kickstarted adult-only vampire MMO Shadow’s Kiss puckers up for early access - If you've been seeking the most murky of smooches and the darkest of nighttime strolls in your MMORPG adventures, Shadow's Kiss would like to lay its charms all over you.…

Star Trek Online has a new executive producer, players have a new hairdo - You might have missed it in the excitement of yesterday's Refractions release, but Star Trek Online apparently has a new executive producer: Jarrod Fisher. The previous executive producer was Andre…

Blue Protocol once again delays its upcoming Japanese network test to sometime in late March - For those who were looking forward to Blue Protocol making its next step forward in Japan (and by extension moving closer to its late 2023 release in the west), we…

Survival MMO The Day Before is abruptly delayed to November over an apparent trademark dispute - Just a few days ago, we refreshed your memory on The Day Before, a survival MMO that was supposed to be releasing raw gameplay footage by the end of January,…

Blizzard polls players about a Hearthstone sub as it scales back esports - We begin this article by noting right up front that Blizzard is terribly fond of floating bad ideas in surveys and then saying, Ha ha we weren't really going to…

Destiny 2’s borked patch has already caused a day and night of downtime – and a rollback - Destiny 2 players are... actually probably playing something else right now, if my own spouse is any guide, as the game suffered a nasty outage last night that's continued to…

Broken Ranks players have died 6.3M times since its launch one year ago - Believe it or not, Polish studio Whitemoon Games launched Broken Ranks a year ago tomorrow, and the devs are celebrating in a recap post and an infographic. Apparently, in just…

Blizzard’s Proletariat ends bid to unionize after unionbusting tactics succeed - Activision-Blizzard's latest efforts to head off worker unions were apparently successful: Union group Communication Workers of America has ended its bid to launch a union vote at the Blizzard-owned Proletariat…

Choose My Adventure: Landing on a stable character in the original Guild Wars - Last week in Choose My Adventure, Nightfall proved to be the more suitable starting experience for classic Guild Wars. This week, the Dervish won out in the voting and also…

New World offers up a new video explaining how deceptively hard an MMO actually is to make - Video games are hard. You know that, but it isn't ever really clear how hard from the other side of the screen, and that's why seemingly simple requests like "let…

PvP MMO Gloria Victis will officially launch February 7 after six years of early access - Back in June of last year, Black Eye Games told Gloria Victis fans that the gritty siege warfare MMO was getting close to release with just a few big milestones to…

Fight or Kite: HEROish is blend of MOBA and card game aimed at both PvE and PvP players - I’ve always wanted to really get into some meaty card games. Swords, sorcery, and high fantasy were always my favorite things. My family knew it well, and I even remember…

Wisdom of Nym: Impressions of Final Fantasy XIV Gods Revel, Lands Tremble’s story beats - Considering how I've had to spend my last week and change, I am really glad that this patch hit when it did. I wouldn't really have had the space to…

New World prepares for yet another round of server merges today as population declines - Happy merge day, New World fans! OK, so maybe the thrill has worn off a bit, given how many merge days New World has had, and at this point, everyone's…

Albion Online launches an Asian server on March 20 with multiple founder packs - Albion Online, recipient of our own Best PvP MMO award two years running, is expanding its horizons eastward with an Asian server launching on March 20th after a multiweek beta.…

THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS

Massively OP Podcast Episode 406: Ulduar and Umbar

The Stream Team: A first look at Embers Adrift for the free weekend

The Stream Team: Blazing fun in AdventureQuest 3D

The Stream Team: House touring and roulette running in Final Fantasy XIV

The Stream Team: Fighting fire in Neverwinter is hard

The Stream Team: Backseat streaming acquires secondary professions in Guild Wars

The Stream Team: Enjoying a spot of New World just for the fun of it

The Stream Team: Meeting the Molten Alliance in Guild Wars 2

The Stream Team: Looking at Lua’s Prey in Warframe

The Stream Team: Starting a few first-time matches in Marvel Snap

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.