While its NDA remains in place, multiplayer co-op title Wayfinder did let media and players take a peek behind the curtain this week, and we interviewed the Airship Syndicate team from an MMO player’s perspective, poking at the group size, customization, and monetization systems that have MMO players curious.
Meanwhile, Greg Street departed Riot and the Riot MMO, Star Citizen fumbled its latest alpha patch, World of Warcraft previewed Embers of Neltharion, and we took a hard look at Elder Scrolls Online’s combat.
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
Tamriel Infinium: How ZeniMax should fix Elder Scrolls Online’s combat - As much as there can be a consensus on anything in MMORPGs, it's generally -- but not universally -- agreed that something is rotten in the state of Elder Scrolls…
Greg ‘Ghostcrawler’ Street leaves Riot – and the Runeterra MMO he was spearheading - Greg Street aka Ghostcrawler, formerly of Blizzard and World of Warcraft fame and lately of Riot Games, has apparently decided to leave Riot - as well as the League of…
Perfect Ten: 10 franchises that deserve another shot at an MMO - Some experiments are attempted once and fail, and it's not hard to figure out why that didn't work. We don't really need to take another swing at Scarlet Blade to…
Star Citizen’s alpha 3.18 craters its initial launch, causing players to riot across the internet - Alpha 3.18 was meant to be Star Citizen's "biggest update yet," but what appears to have happened is a spectacularly buggy launch instead, causing players to rage all over the…
Interview: The Wayfinder team on group size, customization, monetization, and more - Perhaps you're interested in Wayfinder because you like the idea of a small-group dungeon-running game published by Digital Extremes. (The studio made another game that's pretty fun, after all.) Maybe…
WoW Factor: Everything we know about Embers of Neltharion – so far - So at this point, we actually have a remarkably clear picture of what's going to be in the first major content patch for World of Warcraft: Dragonflight. Well... it's actually…
Roblox confirms that it had $150M in Silicon Valley Bank, now shut down by regulators - We would love to be in the kind of position where seeing millions of dollars disappear registers an "everything is fine" response. That looks to be the situation that Roblox…
City State says new hires put Camelot Unchained progress ‘ahead of schedule,’ debuts Hamadryad race - A significant hiring push is proving to be a "big assist" in the effort to get Camelot Unchained finished, City State's Mark Jacobs said in this week's repot. "With the…
Star Citizen enters alpha 3.18 with more persistence, a new graphics renderer, and more ships and locations - Last night saw Star Citizen make what it's calling the game's biggest update yet. Alpha 3.18 has now gone live, introducing some under-the-hood tech that looks to move the space…
LOTRO Legendarium: 17 groovy places to visit in LOTRO’s Minas Tirith - Minas Tirith: The White City and the bane of server-side lag. The place of a thousand side quests and of a thousand-and-one times that you forgot where to go to…
Lord of the Rings Online makes Before the Shadow mini-expansion available for in-game currency - As promised, Lord of the Rings Online's recent mini-expansion is now available to purchase with LOTRO Points as well as a credit card. To buy it, it'll set you back…
Activision-Blizzard exec calls out Sony’s Jim Ryan for charade over Call of Duty - You might think that Microsoft would be content to just sit back and let Sony impale itself on the sharp edge of its own paranoid freakout over the potential market…
NCsoft is launching Battle Crush, a new MOBA, to PC, Switch, and mobile this year - Last night, NCsoft announced a new game: Battle Crush. I actually had to read the press release twice when it hit my inbox because the studio specifically namedropped Guild Wars…
ArcheAge projects include UI streamlining, global arena, and Fairy race - Despite scooting off of social media, ArcheAge is showing signs that its game world isn't going anywhere. In fact, Kakao has a meaty March update planned for the sandbox MMO…
Massively Overthinking: The FOMO in our MMOs - World of Warcraft has become a very dump-on-able game lately, and Blizzard isn't making it any harder, as a tweet the company sent out last month reminded me that even…
World of Warcraft gives every inactive account free Dragonflight access for the weekend - So, how's World of Warcraft: Dragonflight doing? Well, the game is running a promotional campaign this weekend offering expansion access to every inactive account for free, so... draw your own…
Lord of the Rings Online players are putting on a 30-person adaptation of Sondheim’s Into the Woods this weekend - One of my favorite memories in MMOs is participating in plays and musicals, something I first saw people doing in Ultima Online in 1997 and just knew I needed to…
Vague Patch Notes: Being there or getting there in MMORPGs - Here's an interesting fact to consider: It took me ages to hit the level cap in Final Fantasy XI. Absolute ages. And no, it's not because the game was more…
Blizzard is handing out Diablo IV early beta access in exchange for eating Kentucky Fried Chicken - File this one along with the other weird gaming promos we've seen this week: Blizzard is partnering with Kentucky Fried Chicken aka KFC to distribute beta access to Diablo IV…
Bellatores sounds like a full-scale Korean PvP sandbox MMORPG, now aiming for 2024 - A year ago, we covered a brand-new MMORPG from Korean dev Nyou called Bellatores, an Unreal Engine title revolving around big-scale progression, PvE, and PvP. In fact, we'd actually first…
Sony legal docs suggest hypothetical ways Microsoft could hurt Call of Duty on PlayStation consoles - There are plenty of tinfoil-y ways that people can paint Microsoft as a mustache-twirling villain, but those can be mostly associated with Redditor ramblings or wild-eyed YouTuber video essays, not…
Wayfinder, still wrapped in NDAs, drops new trailer ahead of PAX demo and panel - As part of its press promo yesterday, Airship Syndicate dropped a new video for Wayfinder, its upcoming PvE-centric multiplayer shooter, and yes, there's a big giant fight over how MMO-like…
Final Fantasy XIV and Puma are collaborating for a new line of shoes, shirts, and pants - You might not think that Final Fantasy XIV wants to be Destiny 2, since the two games play differently and are made by different companies and have seemingly nothing in…
World of Warcraft reveals Embers of Neltharion while planning for its next patch before the end of the month - First things first: If you're looking forward to World of Warcraft's patch 10.0.7, you won't have to wait a whole lot longer. The patch is scheduled for launch on March…
Black Desert PC confirms Morning Light’s March launch in Korea, preps a ‘gateway’ area for the expansion - Ever since the Land of the Morning Light expansion was first revealed during last year's Calpheon Ball, many players of Black Desert on PC have been itching to know when…
Lost Ark’s Artist class launches in the west next week – with outfit alterations - We're just a week away from the release of Lost Ark's latest patch and the new Artist class - though Amazon is reminding players that she's not being ported from…
Austrian court finds FIFA lockboxes violate the country’s gambling laws, orders Sony to issue refunds - The question of whether the lockboxes in the recent run of FIFA soccer titles constitute gambling has been one that many nations around the world have been wrestling with, from…
ArcheAge is shutting down its Twitter March 17 and moving announcements to Discord and its website - Whether there are lines to read between here or not is likely up to personal presumption, but the fact is that ArcheAge is going to be shutting down its own…
Fight or Kite: Shadowverse is a wildly successful card game, but it takes cash to compete - Next up in the carousel of card game cutouts we're going to look at here in MOP's Fight or Kite column is a tiny, small, relatively unknown game called Shadowverse. Despite…
Choose My Adventure: Starting out in Embers Adrift is just as tough as expected - It took me an alarming amount of time to get to level two. That's pretty much as good of a summary as I can come up with regarding my first…
Riot Games alums form The Believer Company, putting $55M investment to work on possible MMO - The parade of new studios formed from major gaming industry players and backed by serious venture capital investor cash continues today with the formal reveal of a "new AAA studio"…
Final Fantasy XIV adds a new Deep Dungeon, new tribal quests, and new weapon enhancements with patch 6.35 - Saddle up, Warrior of Light, it's time for moon antics in Final Fantasy XIV. Moon antics, as we all know, are antics you get up to on the moon. In…
Blizzard commissioned artists to paint an entire chapel with Diablo IV’s gothic art - Blizzard is chugging along the train tracks to Diablo IV's beta this month with a drop of several new trailers and a new AMA with some nuggets of info. First,…
AQ3D dev Artix drops new trailer for AdventureQuest Worlds Infinity, launching beta this year - Last year, we caught wind of a new project out of AdventureQuest developer Artix Entertainment, a new version of the game called AdventureQuest Worlds Unity. Artix then called it the…
CCP Games laid off more than dozen staffers from its EVE Online and FPS studios - CCP Games has apparently laid off 13 workers from its studios: According to a statement from CCP Games' comms director George Kelion published on MMORPG.com, the EVE Online developer shed…
In-development MMO Quinfall floods Twitter with preview images and gameplay video - Ever since the Turkish MMO studio Vawraek Technology made its daring declaration of making "the biggest MMORPG universe in the world" in Quinfall (while also clarifying it won't ask for…
Guild Wars 2 player provides a candid cautionary tale about in-game gambling addiction - There is an unfortunate number of methods (read: more than zero) that MMO gaming monetization nears real-life casino gambling, from lootboxes to gacha mechanics to straight-up in-game games of chance,…
Kakao’s mobile MMO Moonlight Sculptor is closing down in May after less than two years online - At 4:20 a.m. EST this morning, Kakao and XL Games announced that Moonlight Sculptor's global servers are set for demolition in multiple regions just two months from now. "Despite the…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 412: It’s a mad, mad, Mad World
The Stream Team: Base building in No Man’s Sky
The Stream Team: AdventureQuest 3D swordmaking
The Stream Team: Sailing the uncharted waters of Uncharted Waters Origin
The Stream Team: Financial tracking in Neverwinter
The Stream Team: Backseat Streaming from a California class starship in Star Trek Online
The Stream Team: Another co-stream in the Stumbledome of Fall Guys
The Stream Team: Guild Wars 2’s Tower of Nightmares
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.
