The MMO whose untimely demise we called the biggest disappointment of 2024 is getting another chance: This week, we learned that the revised version of Blue Protocol – going by Blue Protocol Star Resonance – won’t be limited to mobile play in China, as it’s coming to the west on PC later this year.
Meanwhile, we took a look at horse mystery MMO Equinox Homecoming, enjoyed the heck out of PvP MMO Warborne Above Ashes, took a dip in Cubic Odyssey, and continued our deep-dive into the problems of the gacha MMO subgenre. Oh yeah, and Star Citizen flexed its pay-to-win muscles for some predictable drama.
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
Blue Protocol is apparently coming westward as Blue Protocol Star Resonance on PC in 2025 - The cancelation of Blue Protocol in the west and the subsequent demise of the Japanese MMORPG overseas was one of the low points of 2024; in fact, we called it…
LOTRO Legendarium: The pros and cons of Lord of the Rings Online’s four newbie zones - When you're starting out in an MMO world, it's nice to have choices -- especially if you plan to roll up an army of alts one day and don't want…
MMO Hype Train: Equinox Homecoming’s rough start still holds potential if it can go the distance - It's easy -- and free! -- to get excited about upcoming titles, but when a new MMO arrives, the choice whether or not to try it is surprisingly nuanced. Sometimes…
Fractured Online is going offline until 2026 for yet another reboot - Stop me if you've heard this one: Fractured is going offline for a reboot. Not, it's not 2023. It's 2025. And it's happening again. Bright and early this morning, Fractured's new…
Fight or Kite: Warborne Above Ashes blends fantasy and post-apoc for a structured PvP world - A couple of months ago, around the same time Havenhold caught my attention, another game also began to ping on my radar: Warborne Above Ashes. Both games hit a lot…
World of Warcraft admits to dropping the quality bar and misreading player activity with patch 11.1.5 - This past April saw World of Warcraft score an own-goal with the release of patch 11.1.5, which rankled players with its time-gated content and huge number of bugs. And while that…
Apple’s legal intransigence forces Fortnite off the appstore globally as Epic Games again asks the courts to intervene - Last week we reported on apparent Apple stonewalling in regard to Fortnite's return to the US App Store, as the corporation appeared to be shuffling its feet in the usually…
First Impressions: Cubic Odyssey smothers its potential under too much progression - A survival sandbox having too much progression might sound like an odd complaint. After all, don't you want a lot of things to work toward? But the problem that I…
NCsoft Q1 2025: Guild Wars 2’s Janthir Wilds bump is over, Aion 2 is finally getting a reveal date - Spring financial week continues here on MOP, as we now have the NCsoft quarterly report for Q1 2025. And it wasn't a great quarter, frankly: The company saw revenue drop…
Gachapwned: How gacha mechanics use pity and free content to encourage spending money - In the first Gachapwned column here on MassivelyOP, I outlined the history of the term "gacha" while establishing the rules that have to be in place for something to be…
Cross-platform action MMO Crystal of Atlan announces May 28 launch date – and a new publisher - Looking for a fast-paced anime MMO with a whole lot of hot button action and crazy combos? Nuverse's Crystal of Atlan has all that and some magipunk theming besides, and…
Star Citizen’s new cash shop offerings provoked fresh pay-to-win and predatory monetization accusations - The Invictus Launch Week free-fly event of Star Citizen is usually meant to be a time of celebration; a way to try out ships and see newly released vehicles. However,…
Massively Overthinking: What will the MMORPG genre look like in 2030? - If you had asked me in 2020 what the MMO genre would look like in 2025, I'm not sure how I would've answered. It was 2020, first all, which was…
Whatever happened to Airship Syndicate’s Wayfinder? - Wayfinder has not had an easy life. Originally meant as an ongoing multiplayer game, it was abruptly ditched by its publisher, Digital Extremes, and was forced to go independent. Studio…
Hotta’s new multiplayer gacha RPG, Neverness to Everness, opens global beta signups - Not quite a year ago, Perfect World's Hotta Studios announced yet another multiplayer gacha game, this one with an even more ridiculous name than usual: Neverness to Everness. It had…
Pearl Abyss Q1 2025: Black Desert Mobile’s Chinese endeavor is over - Last weekend, we ran the numbers on Black Desert and EVE Online, thanks to some gap-filling on Q4 2024 made possible by Pearl Abyss's annual figures released for the Iceland…
Vague Patch Notes: What makes MMO monetization predatory? - I am really, really excited to be writing our limited series over in Gachapwned because I feel it's going to be an interesting deep-dive into a lot of fields that…
Throne and Liberty adds a spectator mode to war games in this week’s patch - Throne and Liberty's update this week is a small one but a mighty one as it adds a feature we love around here: a spectator mode. Specifically, this spectator mode…
Apple’s apparent stalling forces Epic Games to delay a Fortnite patch as its App Store submission dangles - There are children, there are petulant children, and then there are tech executives, apparently: Readers might remember that Epic Games was in the process of bringing Fortnite back to the…
Square-Enix FY2024: Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail helped offset revenues dips - Today, Square-Enix has published its financial results for the fiscal year behind us - that is, the one that ended at the end of March - and those results are…
Dark and Darker Mobile is getting a rebrand to Abyss of Dungeons in June - If you always looked at the name "Dark and Darker" and instead thought "Dumb and Dumber," then maybe you weren't alone because Krafton has apparently decided to do a total…
Nexon Q1 2025: MapleStory and Mabinogi Mobile are keeping The First Descendant afloat - Nexon has clocked another solid quarter in Q1, with revenue of ¥113.9B ($777.7M US) - up 5% compared to this same quarter last year. The company in particular credited its…
Palia is already teasing its next content update – and an animal husbandry system - With Elderwood finally live, Palia's dev team is finally piping up about the roadmap into the future. No, it's not the roadmap itself, but it's a little tease about what's…
Perfect Ten: 10 reasons Elder Scrolls Online’s questing system is so dang compelling - Probably my favorite part of returning to any old favorite MMORPG is that honeymoon period of rediscovery when I get to see the game fresh and revel in its strengths…
Microsoft lays off approximately 6000 workers after a sunny third quarter earnings report - Even if the company's funny line goes up and stock value swells, employee livelihoods are still not safe: Microsoft is putting another large group of its employees out to pasture,…
Bungie has been called out for plagiarizing art – again – this time for Marathon - The upcoming PvPvE extraction FPS Marathon has a pretty distinct art aesthetic of stark neons and blacks, but apparently that wasn't distinct enough to stop an artist from recognizing her…
Over a hundred thousand Dune Awakening players got swallowed by the sandworm - We usually roll our eyes when studios offer infographics in lieu of useful numbers like "how many people actually played," but in the case of Dune Awakening, we kinda know…
Electronic Arts’ return-to-office mandate spurs confusion and worry among games workers - The employees of Electronic Arts - the ones still remaining after recent mass layoffs, anyway - are facing another problem from the developer and publisher: a return-to-office mandate that has…
Stars Reach invests in its economy and work on the 24/7 test server in its latest dev video - While it might not be as flashy as blowing up chunks of the landscape and building skyscrapers, the economy is an essential part of any MMO, especially a sandbox like…
Palworld is launching its Tides of Terraria patch and crossover this summer - Can the monsters of Terraria be your pals? They can in Palworld, since in that game "pal" specifically refers to a kind of monster that lives in your pocket. A sort…
Lord of the Rings Online delays the Sting server again, now to May 21, as it addresses missing items - It sounds wild, but Lord of the Rings Online players are still feeling the after-effects of the spring transfer situation, as one of the new 64-bit servers still hasn't opened,…
Enshrouded has launched its sixth update of early access: The Thralls of Twilight - Keen Games Studio has a warning for Enshrouded players: The Thralls of Twilight patch that just released is loaded with bugs. No, not the techy kind; the disgusting creepy-crawly kind.…
Palia’s Elderwood launches this afternoon with a new zone and a welcome mat for console players - As promised, Palia's Elderwood expansion has finally arrived to the cozy mini-MMO as of this afternoon - and the beta game has finally arrived to PS5 and Xbox X|S players…
Pax Dei is finally talking about its incoming optional subscription model - When Mainframe Industries told Pax Dei players last week that it had undergone a round of significant layoffs but still intended to see the game through, left unspoken was how…
Choose My Adventure: Navigating a custom airship and the rising challenges of Lost Skies - So yeah, I went hard into Lost Skies again. And it's all my fault because the voting public almost immediately decided on what should happen next, and I took that…
New World’s Season of the Divide launches today with the new OPR map and the barbershop - New World fans are preparing for the launch of Season of the Divide this morning as the servers went down at 8 a.m. EDT this morning with a planned return…
Whatever happened to Tencent’s PC and mobile MMORPG Tarisland? - While we here at the MOP offices might remember Tarisland for its baby bump curse of vengeance, it's also supposed to be a mobile and PC MMORPG that Tencent was…
Dune Awakening beta concurrency crests 37K after pre-order access shift - Yep, we're once again keeping an eye on every thing that's happening in Dune: Awakening. OK, not every thing, just most of the things. The interesting and important things. Like…
Wisdom of Nym: Final Fantasy XIV will not go to another shard like in Shadowbringers - So there's only so much space in the header of a column, but I want to make it very clear what I mean right away. Final Fantasy XIV will never…
Equinox Homecoming highlights current and upcoming content as players point out an undercooked build - It's not everyday an MMO like Equinox: Homecoming comes along, so obviously there was a lot of interest and excitement for its early access release both among gamers and among…
PAX East 2025: Final Fantasy XI and XIV crosses over into Magic the Gathering - It's perhaps one of the most significant crossovers to ever happen to Magic the Gathering, at least if you're an MMORPG player: This June, the popular trading card game is…
PlanetSide 2 marks continued server improvements, upcoming Infiltrator changes and new directives - When Toadman Interactive/Daybreak (aka ToadBreak) merged the NA servers of PlanetSide 2, it did so extremely poorly, electing to move the more performative Emerald server into the lag-stricken Connery server…
Star Citizen will make future ship components buyable in-game on day one, current items buyable in June - Earlier this week, Star Citizen decided to absolutely tap dance in it by selling ship components like weapon kits, bomb racks, and stat-boosting blades in the cash shop first and…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 518: Too much horsing around
The Stream Team: Co-op story mech fighting in MechWarrior 5 Clans
The Stream Team: Starting Dungeons & Dragons Online’s The Soul-Splitter story
The Stream Team: Backseat Streaming returns to Return to Moria
The Stream Team: First steps into Elite Dangerous’ Powerplay system
The Stream Team: Eyes on Lake Doric in Guild Wars 2
The Stream Team: ‘We need to talk’ in Warframe 1999
The Stream Team: Cracking open treasure maps and hopefully treasure chests 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.
