MMO Week in Review: I’m as out of clever The Day Before titles as the game is out of money

The Day Before utterly imploded this week after just a weekend online, admitting on Monday that the game had failed financially and that the studio would be forced to close, all following catastrophic refunds and reviews owing to what players argue was false advertising about the nature of the game. Shit happens, indeed.

Meanwhile, Activision-Blizzard finally settled the multi-year sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuit lodged against it, Palia landed on the Switch, and E3 kicked the bucket. Again.

Plus we’ve continued our awards rollout, crowning the best PvP MMO, best and worst business model, biggest disappointment, best trend, most improved MMO, and biggest blunder.

THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES

Activision-Blizzard settles its 2021 California Civil Rights department lawsuit for $50M - Who here wanted one final reminder before the end of the year that we live in a cursed capitalist hellscape where justice can be bought and paid for if you…

Massively on the Go: Palia’s Nintendo Switch version works on the go, but it’s still better at home - Let me start off by saying this isn't going to be yet another impressions piece on Palia. We've already had three of those, and Tyler, Justin, and Ben all made…

MassivelyOP’s 2023 Awards: Best PvP MMO - Welcome back to Massively Overpowered's formal end-of-the-year awards! Today's award is for the Best PvP MMO, which was awarded to Albion Online last year. We halted this older award after 2017…

LOTRO Legendarium: Recapping Lord of the Rings Online’s crazy-busy 2023 - Sixteen pages. Sixteen pages is how far back I had to flip through Lord of the Rings Online's news feed here at Massively OP to get to the very start…

MassivelyOP’s 2023 Awards: Worst MMO Business Model - Welcome back to Massively Overpowered's formal end-of-the-year awards! Today's award is for the Worst MMO Business Model, which was awarded to Diablo Immortal last year. This award is intended to recognize…

Battle Bards Episode 230: The music of Palia - Ready to get your cozy on? Syp and Syl take you into the relatively new life sim Palia to explore its down-home-on-the-player-farm tunes. Is this a little TOO laid-back and…

WoW Factor: The real reason World of Warcraft’s Cataclysm world revamp was awful - 'Tis the season for all of us, once again, to talk about the deeply unpleasant and disappointing expansion that was World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, which will soon be upon us…

MassivelyOP’s 2023 Awards: Biggest MMO Disappointment - Welcome back to Massively Overpowered's formal end-of-the-year awards! Today's award is for the Biggest MMO Disappointment, which was awarded to SWTOR's Legacy of the Sith last year. Disappointments can be games,…

Tarisland addresses genderlocking and pay-to-win, boosts raiding over crafting - Following Tarisland's second closed beta, Tencent has resurfaced with another dev blog exploring player feedback - and what the company aims to do about it in terms of adjusting the…

Ubisoft’s 2014 racing game The Crew 1 is sunsetting in March 2024 - 2023 has one more thing to take away from the greater MMO genre: Ubisoft is sunsetting The Crew, the original game in the driving franchise. "Today, The Crew 1, including…

Massively Overthinking: Our MMO predictions for 2024 - It's time once again for the MOP staff and readers to engage in our favorite end-of-the-year MMO: collectively guessing what's going to happen next year. Yes, this Massively Overthinking will…

ArcheAge releases its first big patch post-Unchained as the Battle of Mistmerrow returns - Don't count ArcheAge down and out just because it's hot off a massive merge and sunset of ArcheAge Unchained: XLGAMES and Kakao have just released the game's December update, which…

Elder Scrolls Online is planning a year-long series of 10th anniversary events in 12 countries - "The Elder Scrolls Online Celebrates 10-Years in The Netherlands," ZeniMax Online Studios' new press release declares. Don't worry it's celebrating 10 years everywhere else too. (English is a trap for…

Vague Patch Notes: What you can’t forget in MMOs - Years ago, I had a relationship with someone I met in Final Fantasy XI. It wasn't a good or solid relationship by any stretch of the imagination, and quite frankly…

Palia has launched into free-to-play early access on the Nintendo Switch as of today - It's launch day for Singularity 6's cozy MMO Palia - a launch day of a sort, anyhow, as the early access title joins the Nintendo Switch. The game is free-to-play…

MassivelyOP’s 2023 Awards: Best MMO Business Model - Welcome back to Massively Overpowered's formal end-of-the-year awards! Today's award is for the Best MMO Business Model, which was awarded to Guild Wars 2 last year. The award is intended to…

Wayfinder has stealth-launched a gigantic patch ahead of its winter holiday event Friday - Fancy a bit o' Christmas in Airship Syndicate's Wayfinder? Good because it's happening Friday. In fact, there's a little preview open already, as last night, the studio - touting its…

EVE Online adds new ice refinery heists and AIR daily goals, calls its first Vanguard test ‘a massive success’ - Havoc continues to reign and expand in EVE Online, as the spaceship gankbox has made a couple of additions related to the recent update that adds more things for piratical…

The Survivalist: A toast to Conan Exiles’ new taverns, launching this week’s Age of War Chapter III - You know that feeling when you get something you really want? Something you've been waiting for? Conan Exiles is giving that to me -- times two! Wait, make that three.…

Warframe’s Whispers in the Walls is live with new story and its 55th ‘frame, Qorvex - As promised, Warframe's massive Whispers in the Walls update is live today, free for everyone regardless of platform. "The Update takes players soaring back to the desolate planet Deimos to…

Casually Classic: The seven most important things that happened in WoW Classic this year - What did Blizzard assume would happen with WoW Classic when it rolled out this legacy version of the MMO in 2019? I honestly have no idea, but I can bet…

Lost Ark’s Voldis continent and winter holiday events are live in today’s patch - Amazon's going two for two on the holiday events in its MMOs today - first for New World, and now for Lost Ark, where the Voldis Wonderland update is officially…

End-of-Year Eleven: The biggest MMO stories of 2023 - Some years, it's hard to really cut a distinction between the biggest stories of a year and the biggest surprises. There can be a lot of overlap. There's always going…

MassivelyOP’s 2023 Awards: Best MMO Trend - Welcome back to Massively Overpowered's formal end-of-the-year awards! Today's award is for the Best MMO Trend, which was awarded to games industry unionization last year. This award is meant to highlight…

New World’s Eternal Frost is finally live as Amazon’s Scot Lane becomes a storytelling puppet for Christmas - New World's Eternal Frost update is finally here after a bit of a nailbiter wait. Readers will recall that on Monday, Amazon announced that the patch wouldn't make its Tuesday…

Daybreak announces Year of Darkpaw to celebrate EverQuest and EverQuest II in 2024 - With both of its EverQuest franchise expansions for 2023 out the door, Daybreak's Darkpaw Games is already queueing up the teases for EverQuest 1's 25th birthday and EverQuest II's 20th…

The Daily Grind: Should all MMOs offer an arachnophobia mode? - The other day my daughter was telling me about a game she was playing that had an "arachnophobia mode." She isn't scared of spiders, mind you, but she was curious…

Guild Wars 2’s Wintersday lights up Divinity’s Reach through January 2 - "Happy Kryptis to all, and to all a good night!" ArenaNet declared while opening the Guild Wars 2 Wintersday events as of this afternoon and turning on the Christmas sparklies.[AL:GW2]…

Warframe of Mind: The wonders of Whispers in the Walls, launching December 13 - It's almost here! Warframe's anticipated Whispers in the Walls is launching tomorrow, and I'll finally get to delve in. After learning more about it this past August at TennoCon 2023,…

Hyperspace Beacon: SWTOR’s strange and fascinating journey through 2023 - There's a shot right at the end of Empire Strikes Back that's always struck me as the most profound in the entire franchise. The good guys spent a bulk of…

MassivelyOP’s 2023 Awards: Most Improved MMO - Welcome back to Massively Overpowered's formal end-of-the-year awards! Today's award is for the Most Improved MMO, which was awarded to New World last year. All live MMOs, regardless of release…

It’s game over for E3 as the ESA declares the tradeshow officially dead - Time to scramble around and tweak any awards that mention the death of E3 as a possibility as it's now a certainty: The Entertainment Software Association has officially declared the…

Epic wins its lawsuit against Google as jury finds Google Play engaged in monopolist practices - The long-running lawsuit between Epic and Google has been decided, and it's been a slam dunk win for Epic Games: A jury found that the Google Play store and its…

‘Shit happens,’ The Day Before devs tell disgruntled players as mass-refunds continue - We're into day six of The Day Before drama, which certainly doesn't embroil any of you, as our readers were too clever to buy a game that couldn't possibly meet…

The Day Before dev studio announces its closure, claims the game ‘failed financially’ - It hasn't even been a week between the early access release of The Day Before and today, but supposedly the game's launch has been bad enough that developer Fntastic has…

Classic MMO Istaria Chronicles of the Gifted (aka Horizons) celebrates 20 years of operation with new video - Istaria: Chronicles of the Gifted aka Horizons is the classic MMORPG that keeps on truckin' even though it flies below most genre fans' radars; you might recall that we wondered…

Wisdom of Nym: Still talking about Final Fantasy XIV after 13 years - This column's title is not a typo: I have been writing about Final Fantasy XIV in a weekly column for... at least 13 years now. Back during 1.0 is when…

MassivelyOP’s 2023 Awards: Biggest MMO Blunder - Welcome back to Massively Overpowered's formal end-of-the-year awards! Today's award is for the Biggest MMO Blunder, which was awarded to Blizzard's exit from China last year. This award isn’t exactly fun,…

The Day Before devs downplay original massively multiplayer pitch as playerbase and reviews plummet - When survival shooter The Day Before made its scheduled but disastrous early access launch, multiple players pointed out a wealth of issues with the title, but one of the more…

Black Desert reveals new classes, new Land of the Morning Light region, and gameplay adjustments - This year's Calpheon Ball event for Black Desert promised to be another showcase full of reveals, and it most definitely delivered as Pearl Abyss introduced a new region in the…

Valve issues gift-wrapped permabans to Dota 2 cheaters and smurfs this holiday season - The holiday season has arrived to the MOBA world of Dota 2, bringing gifts to all of its players. However, certain players who have been found cheating or smurfing (in…

Naughty Dog cancels The Last of Us Online owing to ‘the massive scope of [its] ambition’ - Naughty Dog - a studio that's primarily known for its single-player titles - was looking to enter our sphere of the gaming world when it announced plans for multiplayer for…

THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS

Massively OP Podcast Episode 449: We didn’t start the Light No Fire

The Stream Team: The first AQ3D Frostval with EggMog

The Stream Team: Exploring the Coasts of Croakia DLC in Fae Farm’s latest update

The Stream Team: Blowing up a blockade in Dungeons & Dragons Online

The Stream Team: Backseat Streaming hitches a ride with a tank or two in War Thunder

The Stream Team: Walkin’ in Q’s Winter Wonderland in Star Trek Online

The Stream Team: Guild Wars 2 turtle hatching and skyscale raising

The Stream Team: A family sailing journey across Sea of Thieves’ safer seas

The Stream Team: Frosty the Warframe and the 11th Mastery Rank test

The Stream Team: Enjoying another Starlight holiday 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.