This last chunk of August might just be the peak of the summer for the MMORPG genre: Not only did Guild Wars 2 release the first quadrant of its annual expansion, dubbed Janthir Wilds, but World of Warcraft launched early access for its War Within expansion. Plus The Elder Scrolls Online rolled out update 43. And did we mention it was Gamescom?
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
Guild Wars 2’s Janthir Wilds expansion officially launches with player housing today - Fellow MMO housing fans, furbish up your design skills because we're going to Janthir Wilds today.[AL:GW2] Yes, Guild Wars 2's latest expansion officially rolls out today. Janthir Wilds is B2P…
Elder Scrolls Online’s update 43 is here and we are so ready to tour all of your homes - Elder Scrolls Online players, set your launcher patchers to go because update 43 is officially live as of this afternoon - at least if you're on PC or Mac, anyway.…
Gamescom 2024 Opening Night Live(blog): Dune Awakening launches on PC early next year - Gamescom 2024 in Cologne, Germany, is about to begin with Geoff Keighley's Opening Night Live spectacle, a two-hour parade of trailers, advertisements, and ideally, new game announcements that kick off…
World of Warcraft’s The War Within headstart is live – prepare for a long spoiler-dodging weekend - Depending on how much you shelled out for World of Warcraft's newest expansion, this is either the best or longest weekend of the year for you. Early access for The…
Vague Patch Notes: The problem with numbers in MMORPGs - I recently saw a post on the official World of Warcraft forums noting that if not for the game's almost infamous level squish, players would be at level 150 at…
NCsoft Q2 2024: NCsoft says it’s not shifting focus away from MMORPGs - In the chaos of August financial releases and Gamescom, we overlooked NCsoft's Q2 2024 financial release, so we're tackling it now. Unfortunately, it's not great news overall for the company,…
Amazon boss: ‘We’re still trying to find the hook’ for the new Lord of the Rings MMO - With 10 titles currently in development, Amazon Games Studio is clearly hoping to diversify into success before sinking into unprofitability. One of the bigger titles that the studio is banking…
WoW Factor: Leaving World of Warcraft’s Dragon Isles for good - Vallin didn't like boats. Lots of Dwarves did, he knew he was the outlier in that regard, but he had never cared for them. And so it was that even…
LOTRO Legendarium: The quiet failure of LOTRO’s birding hobby - The past month of Lord of the Rings Online's operation has been one of the busier summer months in this game's history. Update 41 arrived at the tail-end of July,…
Black Desert brings Seoul to PC September 12, tweaks boats on console, adds treasure material exchange on mobile - This week has certainly been a busy one for games all over the place (spare a thought for Bree and send her tea and cozy plushies) and that's certainly no…
Unleashed Games confirms its MMO Haven will be used for additional titles made with generative AI - In the beginning half of the year, we started covering Haven, a developing MMORPG from Unleashed Games that promised gameplay beats familiar to those who grew up with games like…
Heroes of Might and Magic Olden Era is a prequel to the classic turn-based RPG with multiplayer features - Care for a blast from the past? How about something that's olden? Then you're ready for Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era, the official prequel to the seminal turn-based…
Fallout 76 video previews Milepost Zero’s features and confirms a September release - Fans of Fallout 76 likely already read about the features for the upcoming Milepost Zero update, but have you watched them told to you in a video from Creative Director…
They are so ugly they are cute: Palia adds potato pods and more in its next big beta update - It hasn't even been a month since Palia's last update, but the beta cozy MMO is already teasing its next patch. Daybreak-owned Singularity 6 (which still sounds wild to me)…
Massively Overthinking: Frames of reference in MMORPGs - Last week on the MMORPG subreddit, there was a heated discussion about terminology in MMORPGs (terminology we'll probably talk about in a separate thread at some point because it's one…
Elder Scrolls Online teases PvP-centric update 44 in roadmap at Gamescom - Elder Scrolls Online is having a big week: Not only did it just launch update 43 with its sweet home tours feature, but now it's dropped an updated roadmap at…
Skull & Bones arrives on Steam today as Season 3 Into the Dragon’s Wake goes live - Ubisoft is full-speed ahead with Skull and Bones' third season, which is officially live as of this afternoon. Dubbed Into the Dragon's Wake, the East Asian-themed season sets players to…
SkyVerse is a new Bohemia-pubbed Minecraft-esque multiplayer survival sandbox - Of everything that's been newly announced during Gamescom so far, Bohemia Interactive's SkyVerse caught my attention quickest as a the type of cute voxelbox trying to push the Minecraft subgenre…
Soulframe releases a flashy gameplay teaser trailer from its preludes build at Gamescom - Soulframe is currently in its "preludes" phase - the five-dollar term Digital Extremes uses to refer to a test build - and it looks as if those tests are mighty…
Funcom-published co-op sandbox Aloft targets a fall 2024 release - The well of creativity for survival sandboxes hasn't dried up yet, for better or for worse, and Funcom is determined to get in on that action before player interest moves…
New World restarts its 34-episode Discovering Aeternum video series, running through December - If you've been buried in Gamescom news as we have been, you may also have missed that Amazon is rolling out a new video series for New World, specifically intended…
NetEase’s adorable cozy game Floatopia invites you to ‘live your best life in the sky’ - One of the bright lights of Gamescom's Opening Night Live was the reveal of a new NetEase multiplayer title called Floatopia that is clearly coming for the Animal Crossing franchise's…
Nexon’s ARC Raiders, no longer F2P, gears up for fall test and 2025 launch - At Gamescom's Opening Night Live last night, Nexon's Embark Studios did more than drop a trailer for ARC Raiders: It also set an ambitious launch window and a pricing plan.…
Nightingale releases new Realms Rebuilt trailer and patch date at Gamescom - Tencent's Inflexion Games has been talking up a major new update for early access multiplayer survivalbox Nightingale over the last couple of weeks. Dubbed Realms Rebuilt, the update promises to…
Tarisland reveals its icy first season, Blight Dragon Elegy, coming in October - As promised, Tencent has dropped a roadmap for Tarisland at Gamescom today, finally letting players know what to expect over the next couple of months following a surprisingly quiet launch…
Amazon and Glowmade announce King of Meat, a goofy co-op dungeon-runner - If you've been keeping an ear pointed at the rumor mill, you probably knew that Amazon was working on multiple new titles - and one of them just got an…
Perfect Ten: The best MMOs from the years before we started counting - You know what bothers me? Our annual awards recap. We always list all of the games that we've given awards to in the past, and we've given out many awards…
Chris Metzen discusses writing changes and goals for the Worldsoul Saga in World of Warcraft - Chris Metzen wants to blow up a planet or two in World of Warcraft. This is not actually unique to the setting, of course; the game even features zones set…
Once Human players are reportedly being erroneously banned thanks to a premium currency bug - There appears to be an upsetting problem that's sweeping a select number of Once Human players. According to posts on Reddit, threads on Steam, and several Discord messages, players are…
SWTOR brings more date night missions and Galactic Seasons 7 with this week’s Update 7.5.1 - While it can't compete with all of the huge MMO expansion releases this week, Star Wars: The Old Republic does have a decent late-summer offering for its loyal playerbase. Update…
MOARPG Path of Exile 2 begins early access on November 15 - At this afternoon's Opening Night Live show at Gamescom 2024, Grinding Gear Games formally announced that early access for Path of Exile 2 is slated for November 15th. In other…
New World will be a featured IP in Amazon’s new Secret Level animated series - During this afternoon's Opening Night Live at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, Amazon's Prime Video label announced Secret Level, a "new adult-animated anthology series" specifically featuring video games. And naturally, among…
Fight or Kite: Necesse is a cute retro survival game for Minecraft and Terraria fans - I’ve never been one to make very good use of Steam wishlists – or any wishlists, for that matter. I’m weird in that way, I suppose. But I’ve been trying…
Choose My Adventure: Fractured Online starts off unremarkably but comfortably - I always start off with a lot of concern whenever I enter a sandbox MMORPG for Choose My Adventure. Mostly because these games are almost always murder blenders and having…
Laniatus-owned Idea Fabrik claims The Repopulation is back online, renews assault on former contractor - It's been quite some time since The Repopulation was in our collective radar, but that was because development of the game was ended in January 2023 according to TGS Tech,…
Wisdom of Nym: Speculating on Final Fantasy XIV’s Allied Societies for Dawntrail - We've gone through a lot of different names for what are now being called Allied Societies in Final Fantasy XIV, but I think this one finally captures both what the…
Embracer Q1 2024: Sales and company debt lower while the LOTR MMO gets a mention - If you were hoping for some form of revelation for Embracer Group's slate of MMOs to come out of the company's April-to-June investor report for 2024, you should probably temper…
Ashes of Creation boosts its alpha access bundle offerings following gamer uproar - If you were among those who raised your eyebrows at the three-figure prices that Ashes of Creation was charging for access to its upcoming Alpha Two test, then you might…
World of Warcraft officially joins in on the War Within spoiler party with major story cutscenes - Yesterday we pointed out how headstart for World of Warcraft: The War Within was already seeing players who were actively spoiling the story ahead of the expansion's formal launch. Well,…
Corepunk wipes its Alpha 4 a second time, says it’ll keep this build online through the end of October - Following a second full wipe of its fourth alpha to address a character bug, Corepunk's Artificial Core said that it hopes to continually run the remainder of this test through…
Brighter Shores announces early access launch date of November 5 - A couple of months ago, the devs behind RuneScape-inspired MMORPG Brighter Shores said that the game was on track for an early access release in the third quarter of this…
Zenith’s final content update before maintenance mode will arrive at the end of August - It's now the official final countdown for VR MMO Zenith, as developer Ramen VR has confirmed that Season 4: Golden Isles, aka the final update before the game will enter…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 481: Pre-Gamescom MMO mini podcast
Battle Bards Episode 233: Epic fight music
The Stream Team: Diving in AQ3D’s Deep Sea Grotto
The Stream Team: Peeking into the closed beta of hide-and-seek shooter Midnight Murder Club
The Stream Team: Acid Wit in Dungeons & Dragons Online
The Stream Team: Tackling ship engineering in Elite Dangerous
The Stream Team: Entering Guild Wars 2’s Janthir Wilds
The Stream Team: Seeing some Warframe sights as Saryn Prime
The Stream Team: More work and less play in Planet Crafter
The Stream Team: If it’s Sunday, it’s 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.
