Dune Awakening confirmed its monetization system this week, revealing a $50 box price and a paid headstart that has apparently started a brand-new fuss over the term “early access.” Fun!
Meanwhile, we got our hands on Warframe’s Techrot Encore, Guild Wars 2 delayed its 2025 expansion, and EverQuest is turning 26 years old. Plus, we’re keeping an eye on Stars Reach, whose Kickstarter is set to end this week.
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
First Impressions: Undermine(d) continues World of Warcraft’s winning streak - As my colleague Justin said in his piece on World of Warcraft's recent Undermine(d) patch, comedic content in MMOs can be divisive. I'm someone who usually prefers that things be…
LOTRO resumes 64-bit server transfers, but only to the roleplay servers as it works on ‘peak population concerns’ - The trials, travails, and transfers of Lord of the Rings Online continue as the playerbase continues to move over to the four new 64-bit servers. Standing Stone Games' devs said…
Guild Wars 2 delays its unrevealed 2025 expansion from August to October - Guild Wars 2's schedule has been off a smidge all year - and it's about to get another smidge worse. "While we've released our last two expansions in August, we've…
Dune Awakening confirms $50 box price with DLC and a direct launch with no early access - Before you know it, the May 20th launch date for survival MMO Dune: Awakening will be upon us all, but perhaps you were wondering what Funcom is going to be…
Why I Play: Monster Hunter Wilds still has its hooks in me after 70 hours and 70 hunter ranks - I have been gleefully submitting to full-on Monster Hunter Wilds brainrot. The past couple of weeks have seen myself, my friends, and my family diving into Capcom's big critter slaying…
Crosswind is a brand-new ‘age of piracy’ survival MMO that just docked on Steam - There's a giant caveat attached to the game we're about to feature this afternoon: Developer Crosswind Crew is calling Crosswind an MMO, but it's most definitely a survival MMO and…
Warframe of Mind: First impressions of Techrot Encore - Here is the initial column I wrote about the most recent Warframe patch in its totality: On Tuesday, I did not have Secondary Merciless on my Regulators. On Wednesday, I…
Perfect Ten: Short but mighty playable MMO races - I like short races in MMOs. Not exclusively, but if there is an option to go small or go home, you can bet that I'll at least have one seriously…
Casually Classic: Are the new WoW Classic servers actually a Burning Crusade ‘waiting room?’ - When Blizzard abruptly announced last November that it was launching the 20th anniversary servers -- WoW Classic Classic -- the studio gave many assurances that these fresh realms would be…
Vague Patch Notes: If you have my money, you’d better have my video game - So over the last couple of weeks Lord of the Rings Online has made itself quite a mess to clean up. It's not the kind of screwup that ends like…
Massively Overthinking: Are you tired of survival gameplay in MMORPGs? - When we were deep-diving Aloft earlier this year, MOP commenter Jon Wax said something that caught my attention. He thought the game looked neat, but the "scav loop" has just…
LOTRO Legendarium: The virtuous world of Middle-earth - There are plenty of fantasy brands out there to suit any preference. If you arranged them on a spectrum, you might start at cozy fantasy at one end and go…
The First Descendant celebrates surviving a bad Metacritic score by teasing season 3: The Breakthrough - At GDC this week, Nexon ran a session on what it's characterizing as the redemption arc of The First Descendant, the MMO-ish looter-shooter that launched last summer, or "Shooty with…
Mortal Online 2 tests chat overhauls, optimizations, and rideable bush pigs in latest PTR build - What's missing from your time in Mortal Online 2? Is it some improvements to the in-game chat? Some performance boosts and optimizations to the backend? Or is it the ability…
Not So Massively: Crusader Kings 3 carves its own path in the grand strategy genre - The list of games that fill the multiplayer medieval conquest and political court vassal relationship/resource management simulator niche is unsurprisingly short. In fact, it’s a genre that I never even…
Final Fantasy XIV posts the preliminary patch notes for Seekers of Eternity - The process of slowly teasing out patch notes for a major update has become a very normal thing for Final Fantasy XIV at this point; first comes the preliminary patch…
Pokemon Go’s director emphasizes stability under Scopely: ‘Everybody’s coming along for the ride if they want to’ - If you were worried that Niantic selling Pokemon Go to Scopely would lead to everything Pokemon Going To Hell - and if MOP's Andrew's measured read on the situation didn't…
Black Desert sneezed and the Atoraxxion: Orzekea update came out - Get ready for a new Scrabble word champion because Black Desert released Atoraxxion: Orzekea today with the climax of its Ancient Stronghold saga. The March 20th patch opens up the…
Fight or Kite: PvPvE extraction game Legacy Steel and Sorcery is already showing promise in early access - Love 'em, hate 'em, or pine for the good old days, we are most certainly in the age of extraction RPGs. Just as spring brings with it the warm weather…
Pantheon Rise of the Fallen discusses PvP, preps for server merges and ‘periodic updates’ - Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen's news toddler has tripped on the sidewalk and cut open its knee, oozing out all sorts of information and probably crying really loudly at the…
EverQuest II’s GU128, Lure of Darkness, begins open testing next week - If you can remember back to January, when Daybreak released full 2025 roadmaps for the EverQuest franchise, you might recall that EverQuest II set out an ambitious spring in particularly,…
Last Epoch delays Tombs of the Erased to April 17 to avoid competing with Path of Exile 2’s April 4 update - If you are living in the larger ecosystem of what one may term "Diablo-likes," there is currently a very big and very heavy gorilla that no one wants to compete…
Blockchain MMO EVE Frontier’s next ‘hackathon’ will award attendees travel vouchers and Fanfest tix - During its past testing, CCP Games' blockchain survival MMO EVE Frontier held a so-called "hackathon" event where players were invited to modify the game and make third-party tools for it.…
PlanetSide2 is finally merging its NA servers in April – here’s how to help pick the new names - Remember how PlanetSide 2 successfully merged its EU servers last year, prompting calls - begging, really - for a similar NA server merge? And then remember how the team had…
Fallout 76’s Ghoul Within and Season 20 Glow of the Ghoul are live today with – you guessed it – playable Ghouls - Time for a ghoul-up in Fallout 76: Today, all Wastelanders can finally enjoy proper Ghoulification. I didn't just make that word up. That's what Bethsoft is calling it! "To begin…
Choose My Adventure: Blade & Soul NEO’s Assassin class and story fights finally show their teeth - For the most part, my time in Blade & Soul NEO has been interesting enough in terms of fights but not so intense that I really felt threatened. As I…
Microsoft backtracks on its idea to use its generative AI Copilot to help Overwatch 2 players get good - Welcome to the age when gaming companies have constructed entire AI departments that are desperate to prove themselves relevant. That's why Microsoft was pushing the possible use of Copilot AI,…
Lineage 2’s Project Wolf launches April 15 with a new werewolf class - NCsoft's NC America has turned its gaze toward Lineage II this week with the announcement of a major April update. It's called Project Wolf, and it's coming April 15th for…
ARK Survival Ascended’s Lost Colony keeps teasing a link to ARK 2 – but there’s still no sequel release timing - Studio Wildcard continues to be very cagey about its release timing for major additions to dino survivalbox ARK: Survival Ascended. Readers might recall that a roadmap post from January briefly…
The RuneScape Archive Project is paying a $500 bounty to folks who can dig up old versions of OSRS - Some of our readers might recall a show known as Cash in the Attic, which basically filmed experts finding rare treasures in people's houses, selling them at auction, and handing…
Wisdom of Nym: Last-minute thoughts before the release of Final Fantasy XIV’s Seekers of Eternity - Based on the live letter and the trailer for the next Final Fantasy XIV patch, I definitely feel at least somewhat less served than I have been thus far in…
EverQuest lavishes buffs and gifts upon players for its 26th anniversary - Believe it or not, the 26th anniversary of EverQuest is upon us, celebrating the original launch of the MMORPG on March 16th, 1999. And this '90s child has something to…
Over the weekend, Stars Reach crowdfunding topped $600K and unlocked the rollerblading Fae species - With just a little over a week to go in its crowdfunding campaign, Raph Koster's sci-fi sandbox Stars Reach crossed the $600,000 threshold on Saturday -- and in so doing…
Guild Wars 2 previews April 15’s balance patch and its focus on PvE and WvW tweaks - Get your favorite clutchin' pearls ready and prepare your fingers for knee-jerk reaction posts because Guild Wars 2 has once again provided preview patch notes for another balance update that's…
PvPvE extraction RPG Seekers of Skyveil will sunset just weeks after its early access launch - If it seemed to you as if the boards of the PvPvE extraction game bandwagon were rickety, your instinct appears to be right, as one such game has already fallen…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 510: Defiance defies the odds
The Stream Team: Making a return to the casual queue of Marvel Rivals
The Stream Team: Murder, Red Rain, and fun as a fire elemental in Dungeons & Dragons Online
The Stream Team: Backseat Streaming enters Genshin Impact’s Spiral Abyss
The Stream Team: Stomping through more of the story in co-op MechWarrior 5 Clans
The Stream Team: The start of Guild Wars 2’s Repentance
The Stream Team: Warframe anniversary alerts and searching for gold
The Stream Team: Looting Lord Malrick in AdventureQuest 3D
The Stream Team: Fun with farming in ICARUS
The Stream Team: How great is the great sword 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.
