Happy holidays, everyone! Bobby Kotick departs Activision-Blizzard this week, The Day Before announced an official sunset, Guild Wars 2 is plotting expansions into at least 2025, and a million MMOs are in the midst of holiday festivities and sales.
We’ve also continued doling out awards for biggest surprise, best classic MMO, best studio, biggest story, stormiest future, Not-So-Massively game of the year, and indie MMO of the year too. We’ve got five more coming this week, including our GOTY!
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
Bobby Kotick finally departs Activision-Blizzard next week, but Microsoft will keep some of his execs - Bobby Kotick - a man who somehow hung onto his job even after The Wall Street Journal published the revelation that he'd threatened to have his assistant murdered, a man…
Jukebox Heroes: A yuletide soundtrack for a gaming holiday - The winter night hushed to a halt to allow the wind to whisper. "Take heart, my friends," she crooned over snow-capped hills and frozen lakes. "For just when everything has…
MassivelyOP’s 2023 Awards: Indie MMO of the Year - Welcome back to Massively Overpowered's formal end-of-the-year awards! Today's award is for the Indie MMO of the Year, which was awarded to Zenith last year. All indie MMOs, crowdfunded or not,…
MassivelyOP’s 2023 Awards: Not-So-Massively Game of the Year - Welcome back to Massively Overpowered's formal end-of-the-year awards! Today's award is for the Not-So-Massively Game of the Year, which was awarded jointly to MultiVersus and V Rising last year. The games…
Fight or Kite: Multiplayer games to play over the holidays with friends and foes, 2023 edition - Tis the season, everyone! Grab your loot and get ready. I hope you have a little bit extra time to yourselves or at least some time to play games with…
MassivelyOP’s 2023 Awards: MMO with the Stormiest Future - Welcome back to Massively Overpowered's formal end-of-the-year awards! Today's award is for the MMO with the Stormiest Future, which was awarded to Shroud of the Avatar and Garriott's crypto MMOÂ last…
Guild Wars 2’s ArenaNet is working on expansions for both 2024 and 2025 already - Guild Wars 2 is ending 2023 with a traditional dev blog recapping the year and looking ahead to what will be the game's fifth expansion - and the one after…
Jagex’s RuneScape-flavored RuneFest returns in 2024 after a four-year hiatus - Hey, remember back when Jagex ran RuneFest for RuneScape players? You might not. The last one was all the way back in 2019, but of course 2020 wrecked everything good…
The Day Before Steam keys go for three figures on the grey market as Fntastic announces server closures - We all thought that news from The Day Before was going to end too, but the whole sordid story of this zombie extraction shooter apparently has one more page to…
MMORPG and multiplayer seasonal sales on Steam and beyond, winter 2023 edition - It's that time of year again: the time when we trek over to Steam with our wallets open to see what kind of damage we can do. Oh, and it's…
War Thunder fans leak yet more ‘restricted’ military info - What is it about War Thunder that attracts military hardware fanatics with no discernment in their discussion? Maybe there's something gone bad in their MREs. Whatever it may be, the…
Massively Overthinking: Our favorite MOP articles of 2023 - Every year, we pick out a bunch of narrative arcs and stories that dominated the headlines and emotions of the MMORPG genre, and it gets an award. Actually a couple…
Palia is officially coming to Steam in 2024 - If you want to get more people interested in your video game, having said video game be on Steam is a good place to start. That's just common sense. You…
From the Depths: World of Warships teases key mechanics changes to subs and aircraft carriers - World of Warships is a title that seems to be under constant scrutiny for community interactions, aggressive monetization, and the deployment of random mechanics and FOMO to generate revenue instead…
LOTRO’s executive producer hints at 2024 plans with more Umbar zones and new legendary servers - Lord of the Rings Online players won't have to wait until early 2024's producer's letter to find out all of the details of what's coming to this MMO. That's because…
PlanetSide 2 is considering everything from class reworks to server merges in 2024 - PlanetSide 2 has had a bit of a rocky year, swinging from the heights of a 20th anniversary of the franchise to the lows of losing a key developer and…
Vague Patch Notes: It’s never cheating in MMOs when you do it - My friend from Final Fantasy XI was, understandably, upset. He had just been suspended for a week, and he had been warned that continued violations would result in longer suspensions…
Fallout 76 is heading to Shenandoah National Park in 2024 - Even as Fallout 76 struts down the boardwalk of its December Atlantic City DLC, the team at Bethesda has its sights set on something closer to Appalachia for the new…
MassivelyOP’s 2023 Awards: MMO Story of the Year - Welcome back to Massively Overpowered's formal end-of-the-year awards! Today's award is for the MMO Story of the Year, which was awarded to the unfortunate rise of blockchain MMOs last year. This…
Pantheon boss on canceled 247 mode: ‘The community quite literally freaked out’ - With December almost wrapping up, Visionary Realms CEO Chris Rowan is taking a moment to pen a retrospective of the year that was for Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen, where…
Star Wars The Old Republic celebrates 12th anniversary, recaps 2023, and teases GU 7.4.1 and 7.5 - It's been a really big year for Star Wars: The Old Republic, so it's a bit conspicuous that the biggest thing that happened to the game this year - the…
Winter holiday events around the MMORPG world, 2023 edition - 'Tis the season, once again, for end-of-year roundups and the ever-lovable event roundup, and you know that we've got one for you hear for all the holiday events happening across…
End-of-Year Eleven: The best MMO expansions and updates of 2023 - If you want to look at the overall health of the MMORPG industry, one vital heartbeat that must not be missed is continual development. Sometimes, even, a fancy patch or…
MassivelyOP’s 2023 Awards: MMO Studio of the Year - Welcome back to Massively Overpowered's formal end-of-the-year awards! Today's award is for the MMO Studio of the Year, which was awarded to ArenaNet last year. We asked our writers to consider…
Ashes of Creation confirms Alpha Two for third quarter of 2024, shows off the updated Ranger - It's like Alpha One but with seconds, or at least a number two beside it: Intrepid Studios announced near the end of its most recent livestream that Ashes of Creation's…
Lost Ark’s updated elixir system and Ivory Tower abyssal dungeon are live in today’s release - As promised, Lost Ark's got one more update for players before the end of the year as the second part of the December patch has arrived. "The Ivory Tower Abyssal…
World of Warcraft 2024 roadmaps herald summer War Within beta and Cataclysm Classic - We're just about at the end of 2023, and that means World of Warcraft's various server sets are looking forward to what will be happening in 2024. Executive producer Holly…
Kritika Online is coming back for the fourth time, this time under the stewardship of Valofe - Kritika Online seems to keep coming back like a bad penny. The anime action combat MMO: First landed on western shores in 2017 until En Masse shut it down two…
QA employees accuse Activision-Blizzard of a ‘soft layoff’ after studios mandate a return to offices in January - Activision-Blizzard is once again electing to mistreat its QA employees according to a statement from the A Better ABK proto-union, which accuses the company of engaging a "soft layoff" after…
Choose My Adventure: The joy of performing menial tasks in Project Gorgon - The problem I have with sandbox MMORPGs is the thing that most people herald as their greatest strength: their unguided nature. The ability to go where you want, do what…
Fallen Earth’s Unity remake has been ‘in full development’ for six months now - It's been a very long and quiet stretch of time since we heard Little Orbit talk anything about Fallen Earth. But the studio suddenly broke its silence recently to spend…
A fresh first impressions: Checking out Palia for the first time on Switch - Outside of MMORPGs, life sims are probably the most-played genre in my household. I originally bought Stardew Valley for my wife a few years ago as something we could do…
MassivelyOP’s 2023 Awards: Best Classic MMO - Welcome back to Massively Overpowered's formal end-of-the-year awards! Today's award is for the Best Classic MMO, which was awarded to Lord of the Rings Online last year. We've been running this…
Lost Ark’s early 2024 roadmap includes the Breaker class (male Scrapper) in March - Don't you hate when you're forced to read an entire roadmap for a video game like some kind of animal? Can't someone else do it? The good news is that…
Revelation Online will sunset on March 13, 2024 - The year 2023 has a few more things to take from the MMO industry, apparently: Revelation Online is heading to sunset. MY.GAMES and NetEase made the announcement this morning without…
New World outlines a partial roadmap for the first few months of 2024 - Did MOP's Tyler nail his New World predictions laid out in Vitae Aeternum this morning? Well, it's hard to say, as Amazon dropped a "what's next" video for New World…
Wisdom of Nym: What I definitely do not want to see in Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail - We don't have very long left to go before the next Final Fantasy XIV fan festival; there's even a countdown clock on the official site that's ticking down pretty steadily.…
Vitae Aeternum: Predicting New World’s 2024 roadmap - Every year, the Massively Overpowered staff gathers to make predictions for the year to come in MMORPGs. But I have so many thoughts on what story beats and gameplay features…
‘Aquatic adventure MMO’ Age of Water readies an early access release in the first quarter of 2024 - It's been the hottest of minutes since we heard from Age of Water, the self-described "aquatic adventure MMO" set in a flooded post-apocalypse from publisher Gaijin Entertainment and developer Three…
MassivelyOP’s 2023 Awards: Biggest MMO Surprise - Welcome back to Massively Overpowered's formal end-of-the-year awards! Today's award is for the Biggest MMO Surprise, which was awarded to TERA's sunset last year. This category is meant to offer something…
Greg Street’s Ghost MMO heralds 2024 focus on prototyping combat, classes, art, and player-owned land - Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street is probably one of the few people who can get off calling his MMO project Ghost without coming off as screechingly arrogant (just gently barking levels of…
China’s government drafts new restrictions on gaming time, spending and login rewards, and lockboxes - The Chinese government has decided to once more consider a tightening of the thumbscrews on gaming, as regulators in the country have issued a draft of new rules that are…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 450: Sour cream in caves
The Stream Team: The first AQ3D Frostval with EggMog
The Stream Team: Feeding the need to randomly roam in Project Gorgon
The Stream Team: Chilling in Neverwinter’s holiday village for Winter Solstice
The Stream Team: Enjoying some festive spirit and games with a friend in Tower Unite
The Stream Team: Wanting that Wintersday birb plushie in Guild Wars 2
The Stream Team: Undercover in Elder Scrolls Online, with beards
The Stream Team: Celebrating ugly Christmas SWTORs
The Stream Team: Spending Christmas Eve with family and friends 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.
