MMO Week in Review: This is (MMO) Halloween

It’s Halloween-eve-eve in the real world, which means it’s Halloween in just about every MMORPG – for a few more days, anyhow.

Meanwhile, Guild Wars 2 unveiled Through the Veil, Pantheon continued pressing 247 on an unhappy community, players mulled over the Diablo IV expansion leak, CIG claimed Squadron 42 is feature complete, we drooled over Final Fantasy XIV’s Viper, and our New World columnist delivered the last of his three-part impressions of Rise of the Angry Earth.

THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES

Halloween events around the MMORPG world, 2023 edition - Can we all just agree that Halloween on a Tuesday is weird? Like, why can't it be Friday or Saturday for some bangin' weekend parties? Who wants to go to…

WoW Factor: The dungeon finder really did muck up World of Warcraft’s leveling – but not the way you’re thinking - So if you missed Justin's recent column, he mentioned how bad leveling feels these days in World of Warcraft and some of the reasons that it can be a better…

World of Warcraft previews the locations and denizens of the Emerald Dream zone opening November 7 - Last week offered World of Warcraft players a peek at some of the events that happen in the Emerald Dream zone, but what about the zone itself? What can players…

Why I Play: Five years in, Fallout 76 has become expansive, flawed, and engrossing - War might never change, but Fallout 76? That sucker has changed a whole lot since its debut five years ago. For as long as I've been into MMORPGs, I've wanted…

Pantheon argues 247 extraction mode is meant to satisfy replayability and runs parallel to MMORPG loops - Our readers already know that things are not going well among backers of Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen, as developer Visionary Realms confirmed the rumors of a 247 side mode…

Vague Patch Notes: Default MMORPG genre features change over time, and that’s OK - I want you to picture a nonexistent MMO in your head right now. Not one that hasn't released yet; one that hasn't even been announced. A totally fictional game unrelated…

Skull and Bones has been delayed for at least the seventh time - Stop me if you've heard this one: Skull and Bones has been delayed again! At the top of the year, the company queued up a sixth delay for the beleaguered…

Star Wars: The Old Republic starts testing Update 7.4 – but not the GTN overhaul - Star Wars: The Old Republic fans are buckling on their lightsabers and holstering their blasters in anticipation of jumping into the next story adventure of this MMO. After talking up…

Diablo IV is free-to-play on PC through Battle.net until Monday - So if you were staring longingly at the free trial for Diablo IV granted to Xbox players earlier this month, you can stop now because it's coming to PC too.…

Massively Overthinking: Are there any MMOs for which a spin-off mode would be welcome? - Pantheon's announcement that its developers are working on spinning out a monetized "247" extraction mode hasn't engendered a whole lot of hope for the future of the Kickstarted game, though…

Foxhole’s Naval Warfare update sets sail for beach invasions and multiplayer ship crewing today - Siege Camp's "massively multiplayer war game" Foxhole has expanded its horizons with today's patch as promised: Naval Warfare is officially live. As we've previously noted, Naval Warfare adds a large-scale…

Diablo IV leak hints at a new class and region for the game’s first big expansion - Blizzard has a reputation for being leakier than a sieve ahead of its reveal events, but the Diablo IV info hitting the internet today isn't so much an own-goal website…

Testing Pantheon’s 247 mode won’t be cheap, according to Visionary Realms’ latest infodrop - Pantheon's proposed "247" spin-off extraction mode has been the subject of much debate already since its leak and confirmation earlier this month, but Visionary Realms isn't giving up on it…

Tarisland’s Ranger looks like the comfiest hunter class fantasy - Considering how popular Hunters were -- and are -- in World of Warcraft, we'd say it stands to reason that Tarisland's Ranger will receive a lot of attention when the…

Wayfinder teases mid-season update 2’s Reaver King as devs tackle performance and events - Wayfinder is gearing up for its next mid-season update, which means the Reaver King is beating down our door: The patch include a batch of new main story quests bidding…

ARK Survival Ascended has finally hit early access on Steam to ‘re-energize the classic-ARK experience’ - If you were growing ever more concerned that ARK Survival Ascended - the sequel to ARK Survival Evolved - was MIA, then you can breathe easier finally, as last night…

Vitae Aeternum: New World Rise of the Angry Earth’s generous endgame and season three - We have now arrived at the final installment of my impressions of New World's first paid expansion, Rise of the Angry Earth. Having already covered new features like mounts and…

Lost Ark’s weekly update overhauls chaos gates, ghost ships, and treasure hunting into a new chaos gate system - Lost Ark fans hungry for the promised revamp to the Chaos Gate system are in for a feast today as Amazon has officially patched it in as of this morning.…

Perfect Ten: Solid MMOs you might be sleeping on in 2023 - For today's list, I wanted to take a different approach to recommending MMORPGs to you. I know we often talk about underrated titles, but that approach doesn't always acknowledge that…

Warframe’s Digital Extremes has a new CEO: Soulframe boss Steve Sinclair - There's been a changing of the guard at Digital Extremes: The Warframe company's founder and CEO, James Schmalz, has stepped down from his CEO role, turning the reins over to…

Palia has launched European servers, and yes, you still play cross-region - Open beta social sandbox MMO Palia officially takes up residence on the Epic Games Store today, but there's bigger news for playability is the new European servers. "Supporting EU servers…

Guild Wars 2’s latest roadmap plots events, balance, and betas well into 2024 - As we noted this morning, ArenaNet has announced Guild Wars 2's next Secrets of the Obscure chapter, Through the Veil, but as it happens the team isn't just stopping there:…

Massively on the Go: Super Mario Bros. Wonder is pretty wonderful - Not every game has to be an MMO. Adding more players in certain contexts really can ruin the experience of a game. But at the same time, anyone who knows…

Vanguard: Saga of Heroes emulator continues to improve, but it’s still in alpha - It's been a year-plus since we last checked in with the Vanguard: Saga of Heroes rogue server project. Since it's been a while, there are some questions that bubble up:…

Fractured relaunches early access on Steam November 8 as team works unpaid - If you've been tinkering around in Fractured Online's renewed playtests this fall, you likely saw this announcement coming: Last night Dynamight Studios told players that it's officially rejoining the ranks…

Guild Wars 2’s Through the Veil and new zone launches November 7, followed by a weapon proliferation beta - If you take a peek at the 2023 calendar with Guild Wars 2 on the brain, you'll realize that it's been two months since Secrets of the Obscure launched, and…

Vitae Aeternum: New World Rise of the Angry Earth’s uneven Elysian Wilds and main story - In my first post covering New World's Rise of the Angry Earth expansion, I laid praise upon the new mounts and riding skill, as well as the flail. Today, I'm…

Wisdom of Nym: Reactions to Final Fantasy XIV’s London Fan Festival - So we've gotten 67% of the way through the fan festival cycle for Final Fantasy XIV, and that means taking a certain degree of stock in how accurate predictions have…

Amazon Prime’s exclusive Fallout TV series confirms a premiere date of April 12 next year - Over the past couple of years we've been keeping track of the upcoming TV series based around Fallout, which was first confirmed in 2020 and got additional details about its…

Former Daybreak artist shares concepts from an unreleased ‘EverQuest X’ project - With plenty of speculation swirling around where Daybreak may take the EverQuest franchise next, one former studio artist gave a glimpse into an alternate reality -- and even a possible…

Star Citizen’s second day of CitizenCon shows updates to character creation, FPS gameplay, flight, and frontier locations - With day two of CitizenCon now closed, everything that's currently in the works for Star Citizen has been shared by CIG, and we're here to once again summarize some of…

CIG says Squadron 42 is ‘feature complete’ and entering polish phase in new gameplay trailer - With all of the noise coming out of CIG's CitizenCon, the studio decided to unveil one last surprise at the closing of the event. A new gameplay trailer heralds that…

Diablo IV serves up ‘Nightmare Fuel’ audio experience in order to induce thematic lucid dreaming - The marketing team behind Diablo IV continues to prove it's either extremely creative or taking some extremely powerful substances. The latest marketing stunt from Blizzard's OARPG is literal Nightmare Fuel,…

BlizzCon’s schedule highlights World of Warcraft but ditches Q&As - With a week to go before this year's BlizzCon, the curiosity, hope, and cynicism are running strong toward the house that Warcraft built. While the specifics of what Blizzard is…

THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS

Massively OP Podcast Episode 442: Harbingers of MMO hype

The Stream Team: Heading to AQ3D’s Pizza Hero Horror Nights

The Stream Team: Attempting some co-op low-gravity furniture building in Kallax

The Stream Team: Pumpkin smashing and chocolate hoarding in Dungeons & Dragons Online’s Night Revels

The Stream Team: Howloween in Super Animal Royale

The Stream Team: Crossing the Party Animals bridge

The Stream Team: Returning to the fire house of Ghostbusters Spirits Unleashed

The Stream Team: Mad King says check out the Stopped Clock Tower in Guild Wars 2!

The Stream Team: Celebrating Path of Exile’s 10th anniversary

The Stream Team: Making fantasy races with mods in Conan Exiles

The Stream Team: Fighting against fear in Final Fantasy XIV’s All Saints’ Wake Halloween event

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.