New World’s second season, Blood of the Sands, officially kicked off this week – just as datamining of non-English tooltips appears to have outed the game’s next weapon.
Meanwhile, we’re looking forward to Guild Wars 2 SOTO, raised eyebrows at some spilled WildStar tea, crossed fingers for a new EverQuest MMO, sighed at World of Warcraft, got hyped for SWTOR, and smirked at Tarisland’s protest over WoW clone accusations.
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
Localized tooltips appear to have leaked New World’s next weapon - The recent season two patch for New World also brought with it a bit of a spoiler for the fall season: The next weapon due to be added to the…
WildStar’s former design director calls out studio politics for his pre-launch resignation - Well here's a little bit of a walk down memory lane - and a bright light shined on a dark period in MMO history: Timothy Cain put up a 22-minute…
Daybreak job listing hints at ‘unannounced’ game with ‘high fantasy’ elements - Ever since Daybreak bailed on EverQuest Next back in the spring of 2016, it seemed to mark the end of its willingness to grow and experiment with new MMOs. Since…
Flameseeker Chronicles: Guild Wars 2’s skyscale changes are great - So here's a funny story: I was literally in the middle of writing an article titled "The time to make the skyscale more accessible is now" when the embargoed PR…
Hyperspace Beacon: Why SWTOR’s move to Broadsword has brought me back to the game - Star Wars: The Old Republic is a special game to me. Like many of you, I've poured hundreds of hours into BioWare's expansive MMO over the years, thrilling to the…
WoW Factor: And now we ruin the Trading Post - Those of you who have read my work in WoW Factor for a while will know that I tend to be very cards-on-the-table about my predictions. I make my guesses,…
LOTRO Legendarium: Hobbits (and River Hobbits) are the heart of Lord of the Rings - I don't care if you want me to be objective when it comes to Lord of the Rings Online's races, because in my book, it's not even close. Elves are…
Massively on the Go: Orna spices things up with step tracking and guilds update - Recently here on Massively on the Go, we talked about some of the good and some of the, uh, "less good" features in location-based MMOs. Orna: The GPS RPG came…
Diablo Immortal unveils the new Blood Knight class arriving on July 13 - We have to admit, it doesn't get more brooding, grim, and aesthetically appropriate than to call a Diablo Immortal class a Blood Knight. The only way a class for the…
Tencent insists Tarisland isn’t a World of Warcraft clone - When Tencent announced Tarisland back in January, just as World of Warcraft was being yanked offline in China, just about everyone, including us, called it a WoW clone, and not…
SEGA backs down on blockchain push, admitting ‘the action in play-to-earn games is boring’ - As companies like Ubisoft and Square-Enix keep going in hard on crypto, others are finally giving up on what have always been losing propositions, and the latter group apparently includes…
Funcom discusses Dune Awakening’s South Korean prospects and MMORPG elements - Those of us who live in western countries know very well the pain of watching games develop in Asia as developers hedge on whether they'll ever port them in our…
Star Citizen player gets a partial refund from CIG in spite of the studio’s legal arguments to the contrary - Getting a refund out of Star Citizen can often seem like pulling teeth, yet one player who goes by the name of BlueBackground is finally claiming victory after three weeks…
World of Warcraft director says Blizzard won’t sell Trader’s Tender – by itself - So not so long ago, dataminers working in the World of Warcraft data mines found Trader's Tender shop assets, leading to the presumption that players will eventually be able to…
Massively Overthinking: The MMOs we wanted a decade ago - Back in May, MOP's Justin penned a fun blog piece on his Bio Break blog about the games he wanted all the way back in 2013 - i.e., 10 years…
Diablo IV’s first season, Season of the Malignant, begins July 20 - During its splashy livestream this afternoon, Blizzard finally took the wraps off Diablo IV's first season, dubbed Season of the Malignant and due to launch July 20th. The season will…
Goofy clowns and pizza mechs: Lost Ark’s Inferno Kakul-Saydon update launches July 12 - Lost Ark's July update is almost upon us: Amazon announced today that the release is set for July 12th. It's expected to drop the Maharaka festival, new Elgacia quests to…
Albion Online’s next weapon line allows shapeshifting into golems, werewolves, ents, and more - Big news for Albion Online fans today: The game is set to get a new weapon line, a staff-centric line called Shapeshifter Staffs. "For the first time in Albion Online,…
Vague Patch Notes: The power of the middle bit in MMOs - I knew that Tales of Arise wasn't really working for me like its immediate predecessor when I started kind of avoiding combat. Now, to a certain extent this is a…
Interview: Neverwinter announces 26th module, Demonweb Pits, with a new ‘post-leveling experience’ - Neverwinter's 26th module is Demonweb Pits, and it's rolling out on July 18th, Cryptic and Gearbox announced today. Launching on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox, the module will cap off the…
New World kicks off Season 2, Blood of the Sands, today – here’s the new trailer! - A new season begins for New World begins today, with just two hours of downtime expected from 8:00 a.m. EDT to 10:00 a.m. EDT (i.e., ongoing as you're reading this).…
Overwatch 2 dev says new story missions won’t be arriving in its next two seasons - With Overwatch 2 bringing PvE content (such as it is) like story missions in its August 10th update, you might assume that successive seasons will be adding to the story…
Gameforge heaps doubt on Magic to Master’s latest lawsuit claims - Last week saw another page in the saga of Magic to Master's revival by Laniatus LLC, when the studio took an offensive posture that, among other things, claimed that it…
Valve confirms blocking games featuring AI-generated assets on Steam is primarily about copyright law - Most of the time when AI art generators are heralded by game studios and publishers, one of the first questions people begin to ask is where its getting its data…
Perfect Ten: Why SWTOR is still a lot of fun to play today - In a time of great uncertainty and some short-term chaos as Star Wars: The Old Republic moves from BioWare to Broadsword, one might assume that this situation would repel prospective…
The Soapbox: A belated The Secret World post-mortem - This weeks marks the eleventh anniversary of the launch of The Secret World. While the game is still playable (for those with existing accounts), it has been relegated to the…
Loftia is yet another ‘cozy solarpunk’ life sim MMO in the making - You know what's a recent trend we can get behind here at Massively OP? The rise of so-called "cozy" multiplayer life sims that prioritize warm fuzzies, cooperative gameplay, and cultivating…
Chronicles of Elyria’s Jeromy Walsh: ‘Learn from my mistakes’ - To say that Chronicles of Elyria boarded the drama train a while back with a long-distance ticket is a bit of an understatement (and a strange analogy). The implosion of…
Massively on the Go: Pokemon Go’s Niantic does damage control as player spending weakens - Last week was a rough week for Pokemon Go and Niantic. The company tried to sweep the release and reversal of viewable pokemon's distance under the rug by more globally…
Choose My Adventure: A Warhammer Online Return of Reckoning reunion with a dash of WAAAGH - It's criminal that there aren't as many Warhammer games that use the Orks. They're my favorite group in the game purely because they just like to fight. I assume there's…
The Daily Grind: How do *you* pronounce ‘MMORPG’? - OK, so here's a fun Daily Grind for a holiday when most of our readers aren't at work! Let's talk about how to pronounce our genre, and this is a…
Wisdom of Nym: Pandæmonium’s flop in Final Fantasy XIV - Raid series in Final Fantasy XIV have had a complicated history from a story standpoint. The Binding Coil of Bahamut was an interesting attempt, but it ultimately tries to serve…
The Realm Online’s corporate buyer surfaces with a bizarre website and studio partner - Over the course of June, we learned the sad news that player-led developer Realm Worlds would be shutting down the current version of The Realm Online; the group told players…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 428: Guild Wars 2 spills its secrets
The Stream Team: Coming back to the seamless world of Craftopia
The Stream Team: Finding friends and foes in Dungeons & Dragons
The Stream Team: Wading into the large scale front lines of BattleBit Remastered
The Stream Team: The end of Echoes of the Past in Guild Wars 2
The Stream Team: Search and rescue in Elder Scrolls Online
The Stream Team: Exploring Voss’ Old Wounds in SWTOR
The Stream Team: Testing knowledge of the various locations in Final Fantasy XIV
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.
