Happy quarterly financials week! Aren’t we having fun! We got numbers numbers numbers from a whole bunch of MMO companies this week, including Daybreak, NCsoft, Square-Enix, Kakao, Krafton, Nexon, and Pearl Abyss. I never want to listen to another financial call again.
Meanwhile, Star Trek Online launched Unveiled, Black Desert launched flying mounts, Blade & Soul NEO launched predownloading, and Amazon launched server merges for both New World and Throne & Liberty. And of course, we celebrated MassivelyOP’s 10th birthday since going indie (aka independence day!) with a stream/podcast and some reminiscing too.
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
MMO Hype Train: Rooting for Project Gorgon in light of tremendous loss - In a different timeline, I think I would've been one of those players who entered the MMO space through Asheron's Call. I remember going to Media Play in the early 2000s…
WoW Factor: World of Warcraft’s housing design is exactly what we need - I haven't weighed in on this tiny little insignificant World of Warcraft housing news since it dropped last November, mostly because I've been waiting to hear more concrete details. Now that…
NCsoft Q4 2024: Guild Wars 2 and Blade & Soul are doing great, with Aion 2 waiting in the wings - The MMO company financial news just keeps coming this week as now we've got NCsoft's Q4 2024 financial report, and no, this one isn't the prettiest picture either. The report…
Star Trek Online’s 33rd season, Unveiled, is live today for the game’s 15th birthday - As promised, Star Trek Online's Unveiled season - the MMORPG's 33rd since launch - is officially live on PC today, only a smidge past the game's 15th anniversary. The new…
Pearl Abyss Q4 2024: PA is obscuring EVE Online and Black Desert revenues in its best quarter all year - Pearl Abyss ended its 2024 financial year on a high-ish note - a welcome surprise after a year of muddling-through - but also a confusing one. In its Q4 investor report,…
Not So Massively: Checking up on StarCraft II’s would-be successors - For some time now, MassivelyOP's Not So Massively column has been keeping an eye on the crop of upcoming real time strategy games that seek to continue the legacy of…
Lord of the Rings Online dev Q&A talks about class revamps, kinship refresh, and the next roadmap - When two chatty Lord of the Rings Online veteran developers get together for a livestream to talk shop, everything and anything is on the table for discussion. That's what happened…
Nexon Q4 2024: MapleStory and MapleStory Worlds offset FC and The First Descendant’s shortfalls - Ladies and gentlebeings, I give you the latest contender for Mystery Chart of 2025! It's Nexon's growth chart for Q4 2024, which seems to be missing some important numbers over…
Warframe of Mind: How to prioritize your Warframe Belly of the Beast rerun - If you somehow missed that Operation: Belly of the Beast is back in Warframe at the moment, what with the alerts popping up repeatedly... I don't know what to tell…
Star Citizen elaborates on its new cadence and plot-based content release plans - Last week, Star Citizen talked about changes to its content cadence and a primary focus away from adding features and toward introducing content and improving stability. That plan is also…
Korean court finds Dark and Darker studio infringed Nexon’s trade secrets - Over the last couple of years, we've been covering the seemingly endless lawsuit drama between Nexon and Ironmace over Dark and Darker. Nexon accused Dark and Darker studio Ironmace of…
Massively Overthinking: Reminiscing on 10 years of MassivelyOP - We're celebrating our Independence Day - our 10th birthday since launching as an indie site after the demise of OG Massively - so this week's Massively Overthinking, the roundtable column…
Black Desert is literally launching flying mounts for Valentine’s Day - Pearl Abyss may be up to shenanigans with its latest financial report, but Black Desert's patch is deadly serious, as the global PC version of the game has introduced flying…
Brighter Shores offers a progress report on the combat profession merge and systems - Last month, Brighter Shores confirmed that its zone-specific combat professions design was on the chopping block and would be replaced by a combat profession merge. The devs at Fen Research…
Vague Patch Notes: Understanding what you understand in MMOs - One of the most dangerous and yet often-used phrases to say to anyone when it comes to pretty much any media is to claim that someone just doesn't get it.…
Overwatch 2 unveils new perks system, third-person game mode, new heroes, and the return of lockboxes - It would appear that the blowout success of another team vs. team hero shooter has helped prompt Overwatch 2 out of stagnation and into action as last night's Blizzard stream…
Throne & Liberty starts server merge transfers and its Valentine’s Day celebration with the latest patch - Do you find server merges romantic? They're kind of like a marriage, except instead of being between people, they're between servers? No? Sorry, folks, that's the best we got when…
Don’t expect a Diablo IV expansion this year: Blizzard now says it’s aiming for 2026 - Changing its mind is a downright Blizzard tradition in these here parts, so let's not act too surprised that the studio decided to go back on its previous commitment to…
Blockchain ‘space survival MMO’ EVE Frontier will offer a 10-day free trial on February 14 - EVE Frontier, the so-called "space survival MMO" blockchain game that CCP Games doesn't want people to call a blockchain game even though it's a game that's on the blockchain, is…
Legacy Steel & Sorcery, an extraction-focused ‘mini MMORPG’ from former WoW devs, just hit early access - As promised, extraction RPG Legacy Steel & Sorcery is officially hitting early access today, and it's one we've paid a bit more attention to specifically because it's built by devs…
Kakao Q4 2024: Mobile drives revenue dip as Kakao queues up ArcheAge Chronicles and Chrono Odyssey - Kakao Games did not have the best quarter, and the "why" is complicated. According to the Korean games giant's Q4 2024 financials, its PC segment was the only games segment…
Working As Intended: Playing house – er, apartment – in SWG Legends - This week, I'm starting up a new miniseries called Playing House here in the Working As Intended column, and it's entirely the fault of a tweet from Star Wars Galaxies…
Perfect Ten: 10 MMO games, events, and ideas hitting the decade mark in 2025 - A decade is a long time. It's kind of weird that we don't think much about games or shows or whatever hitting the decade mark. It feels relatively automatic for…
Riders of Icarus, which once had 1M western players, is riding into the sunset under Valofe’s banners - A week ago, we covered the odd news that Valofe's Riders of Icarus had abruptly canceled its plans to merge down the North American and European servers. It was the…
New World is merging its PC servers again, with 28 servers total affected this time - Just two months after the last New World server merge, Amazon is already doing another one. Last night, the company announced it'll take 18 of its PC servers and squish…
World of Warcraft’s Undermine(d) is going live February 25 - Ready to drive cars around, work for a cartel, and wander the city streets? No, World of Warcraft is not sending you to New York City circa 1953, it's sending…
Square-Enix’s latest financial results are meh, but Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail kept the MMO division afloat - Square-Enix has released its financial report for the nine-month period covering Q1 to Q3 of its current financial year (which ends March 2025), and the bad news is that on…
The Riot MMO just lost yet another key staffer, this time its technical director - Don't panic, but another top dev has moved on from Riot Game's Runeterra MMO, what we usually refer to around here as the Riot MMO. A little backstory is in…
Choose My Adventure: Mulling over the many (many!) playable variants of Aion - This past weekend didn't see me touch Aion at all for Choose My Adventure - partially because I have had some projects line up in front of me, but mostly…
Marvel Rivals walks back plans for its mid-season ranked reset after facing withering player outrage - Fans of ranked play in Marvel Rivals are likely breathing a sigh of relief and wiping their extremely sweaty brows after NetEase changed course on a planned rank reset for…
Roblox Corp is apparently under an ‘active and ongoing investigation’ by the SEC - This is either an ominous portent for Roblox or a major government agency trying to look tough. Either way, what has been discovered is the fact that the US Securities…
Guild Wars 2 readies today’s balance update, followed by next Janthir Wilds chapter March 11 - Readers might remember that the Guild Wars 2's roadmap has been a little off-kilter ever since the balance update was moved out of January and into February. Well, today is…
Stars Reach has delayed its Kickstarter to get more testers in ahead of the campaign - If you've been anxiously awaiting the Stars Reach Kickstarter - or just watching how it goes - then you probably know it was supposed to launch yesterday. You might also…
You can predownload Blade & Soul NEO today: Here’s everything we learned at the press event - NCsoft isn't calling Blade & Soul NEO this, but "B&S Classic Plus" is the fastest way I can communicate to core MMORPG players just what exactly this new version of…
Diablo luminary David Brevik argues fast levels and loot in modern ARPGs ‘cheapen the experience’ - Why do you play ARPGs? Is it to face swaths of monsters to mow them down and get showered in digital gore and shiny loot? Well, if that's your preferred…
Temtem continues to defend its final content patch as ‘the completion of a journey that began eight years ago’ - A couple of weeks ago, Crema Games marked two million total users for its creature collecting MMO Temtem by spending some of its time defending the decision to put the…
DECA games finally addresses Star Trek Online playerbase following Cryptic’s forced exit - Ever since Embracer announced that it was moving Cryptic's MMORPG operations from Cryptic to smol bean European studio DECA, the playerbases of Star Trek Online, Neverwinter, and Champions Online have…
APB Reloaded and Fallen Earth are still offline after a week – and it may be a lot more - The "unexpected downtime" that hit Little Orbit's Fallen Earth and APB Reloaded on February 3rd continues into its second week -- and the studio has no idea when it might…
Wisdom of Nym: Examining Final Fantasy XIV’s first Seekers of Eternity live letter - Sometimes vibes just turn kinda bad. It just happens. Despite my natural state of things these days, I also have good days and bad ones. There are times I just…
EG7 Q3 2024: Palia hits console this spring as EverQuest, LOTRO drive Daybreak revenue - EG7 - that's the Swedish games conglom that bought up Daybreak and then kinda got taken over by Daybreak, amusingly - released its year-end and Q4 2024 financial reports just…
Pantheon’s CEO takes responsibility for problematically chummy staff-community relationship - Last week, we covered Visionary Realms' investigation into one of its own developers after Pantheon players accused said developer of guild favoritism. According to the now-rebutted allegations, VR's technical director…
Meta: Celebrate our Independence Day as MassivelyOP officially turns 10 years old - It is time - time to celebrate the birth of Mo! It seems like just barely yesterday little Mo came on the scene, a slightly bumbling but herioc mascot for…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 505: Honoring MOP’s Independence Day
The Stream Team: Returning to Nexon’s The First Descendant
The Stream Team: In the Flesh in Dungeons & Dragons Online
The Stream Team: Strolling through the Cemetery of the Eternals in Path of Exile 2
The Stream Team: The further adventures of two mech jockeys in MechWarrior 5 Clans
The Stream Team: A Guild Wars 2 Trip to the Circus
The Stream Team: MOP’s 10th anniversary Mo Mania celebration stream
The Stream Team: A look at Star Trek Online’s next Kings & Queens chapter, Axiom
The Stream Team: One last open beta test hunt in Monster Hunter Wilds
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.
