It’s been a meta week for MMOs: We posted our E3 awards, counted up the good MMOs in the Steam summer sale, kept an eye on the latest leg in the spyware scandal, and booed the WHO’s attempt to stigmatize gaming.
Meanwhile, WoW offered a rare freebie weekend, and the Guild Wars 2 community is finally getting new content this week.
Read on for the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions.
THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES
Massively Overthinking: Massively OP’s E3 2018 awards - We've finished rolling out all of our E3 2018 content this year, save a few last stragglers coming this weekend, so now we've chosen our favorites out of what we…
The MMOs of the Steam Summer 2018 Sale - Valve's summer Steam sale is here, complete with a space theme. Here's what's notable in the pile this year and a bit beyond Steam too! Error... error... error. On Steam...…
Blizzard appears to be reactivating old WoW accounts – go check yours [Confirmed!] - If you have a dormant World of Warcraft account, best give it a check: Redditors are reporting that their accounts are currently activated without subbing. While some gamers are expecting…
Elder Scrolls Online offers Steam downtime compensation as review-bombing hits ‘mostly negative’ - [AL:ESO]Earlier this week, we covered the messy business between Elder Scrolls Online and Steam - specifically, that Steam logins for the game have been toast for the last couple of weekends,…
Guild Wars 2’s next episode, Long Live the Lich, launches June 26 – here’s the trailer (finally!) - [AL:GW2]Who had June 26th for Guild Wars 2's next big thing? Oh, everyone? Because we had gobs of time to speculate in the delay deadzone? Right right. Yes, ArenaNet just…
Video game industry groups across the globe reject WHO’s ‘gaming disorder’ classification - As we noted yesterday, the World Health Organization has gone ahead with the inclusion of "gaming disorder" in the publication of its most recent edition of its disease classification manual,…
Chaos Theory: A guide to Secret World Legend’s first MEGAversary - [AL:SWL]Next week marks one year down for Secret World Legends, but the party has already started! From June 20th through July 17th, 2018, players can smash piñatas, scoop up goodies…
EVE Online sells a bundle of ‘Venture’ skins for 120 Plex, poking fun at Star Citizen - [AL:EVE]Someone at CCP Games is obviously having quite a lot of fun with the latest EVE Online skin bundle. The bundle of skins for the Venture ship might not seem…
Champions Online slashes prices on freeform characters, three for 60 bucks - [AL:Champ]At the beginning of June, PWE announced big changes for Champions Online: It was planning to drop the game's optional monthly subscription in favor of a one-time purchase premium pack.…
E3 2018: Hands-on with Descent, the future of space mining - Fallout 76Â wasn't the only Interplay throwback at E3 2018:Â Descent, one of the games that defined the six degrees of freedom genre, is no longer underground. That is, the former title…
E3 2018: Hands-on with ReEvolve, Perfect World’s new mobile sandbox MMORPG - Remember how we learned that Perfect World would be showing off some new games at E3? Well, things happen at conventions like this - they don't always go to plan.…
Valve turns off lootboxes in the Netherlands for DOTA 2 and CounterStrike: Global Offensive - If you were in any way hoping that the Dutch Gaming Authority's ruling about lockboxes would lead to a worldwide shift, it seems that's not quite what's happening. Valve was…
E3 2018: Hands-on with the superb (and hopefully Switch-bound) Black Desert Mobile - While I've had kind words to say about the potential for mobile in the past - particularly MMOARGs - I just haven't been able to get into mobile MMORPGs. The…
Star Citizen deep-dives its new grouping mechanics in a shortish Around the Verse - According to this week's Star Citizen Around the Verse, the team's been hard at work on facial rigging, mining, audio effects (yes, pew pew sounds), chat integration, ship power, overland…
E3 2018: Hands-on with Mavericks, the MMO battle royale hybrid - Automaton Games CEO James Thompson came along with Improbable, Bill Roper, and Mavericks to this year's E3, where I got a second chance to see how everything in the battle…
Bethsoft alleges Behaviour and WB ripped off Fallout Shelter in the new Westworld mobile game - A trio of companies known best to our audience for their MMOs are gearing up for a big court battle in the streets of Sweetwater. Bethsoft is apparently suing Behaviour…
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has lost nearly half of its players since January as Sanhok map goes live - Alas, poor PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, we've entered the second phase of your musician biopic when the fans start leaving. Sure, the game was riding high in January with 3.2 million concurrent…
The Crew 2 jolts into open beta with the help of Red Bull as Steam reviews hit ‘mostly negative’ - There's the waving flag for The Crew 2's open beta test, so get out on the track this weekend and take the multiplayer's vehicles for a drive before it's all…
Black Desert partners up with controversial exploiter, community explodes - [AL:BDO]The Black Desert community is up in arms this week after Pearl Abyss highlighted one of the game's Twitch streamers as a "featured partner." So what is the big deal…
Hyperspace Beacon: Future plot points for SWTOR and other unanswered lore questions - [AL:TOR]Last night, BioWare Creative Director Charles Boyd and Community Manager Eric Musco were guests on the Passionately Casual Podcast to discuss the lore of Star Wars: The Old Republic. And since I host…
Anarchy Online teases upcoming 17th anniversary event - Happy 17th birthday, Anarchy Online! Seventeen years ago this month, Funcom first stepped out onto the MMORPG scene and "launched" this sci-fi title. We are legally obligated to put that…
Shroud of the Avatar suffers layoffs, saying ‘right-sizing’ is needed ahead of episode 2 - It appears as if Portalarium is suffering some layoffs and downsizing in the wake of the launch of Shroud of the Avatar: The studio's Starr Long admits to "adjusting [the]…
The Flower of Knighthood Kickstarter has been cancelled - Launching a Kickstarter is always a nerve-wracking experience. (Believe us, we know about it.) But then there are times when you see evidence that perhaps your Kickstarter is not going…
Smed weighs in on Sony’s historical PlayStation crossplay hangups - Sony's managed to piss off a whole lotta gamers over its unwillingness to play ball on Fortnite. As we covered last week, the PlayStation 4 giant has refused to allow…
PUBG admits to reusing assets but argues that doesn’t make it an asset flip - Tired of hearing the words "asset flip"? PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is too. Apparently at E3 last week, PUBG creator Brendan Greene gently joked that he "want[ed] to kill" people who claim…
E3 2018: Well-earned hype for Rend’s pets, construction, modding, and PvPvE - When I met Frostkeep Studios' CEO Jeremy Wood and crew at GDC earlier this year, I walked away impressed. I finally felt like I understood why other MOP staff are…
More MMOs pledge to fully remove Red Shell spyware, including Secret World Legends - At the beginning of June, we covered The Elder Scrolls Online's implementation of spyware program Red Shell, which is designed to track specific information about players and PCs logging into…
Bless Online cuts back its influencer program following conduct mishaps - Neowiz is on a downsizing streak for its Bless Online emissary program, reducing the number of player ambassadors (read: influencers) for the game as some have violated the studio's code…
E3 2018: A second look at Trion’s Defiance 2050 reboot - GDC 2018 back in March was good to Defiance 2050, at least in terms of making people aware of the goals of the game. It doesn't necessarily mean people like…
The World Health Organization advances its ‘gaming disorder’ classification in spite of heavy criticism - The World Health Organization has gone ahead with the inclusion of "gaming disorder" in the publication of its most recent edition of its disease classification manual. It's expected to be…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 175: Virtual heartbreakers
The Stream Team: A look at Warframe’s Limbo Prime
The Stream Team: Cooking up chaos in Cuisine Royale
The Stream Team: First anniversary shenanigans in Secret World Legends
The Stream Team: Celebrating the start of summer in the second half of AQ3D’s Dragons Graveyard
The Stream Team: A first look at Bless Online
The Stream Team: Conan Exiles’ Palace of the Witch Queen
The Stream Team: Battle Royale, SMITE adventures style
The Stream Team: Temples or levels, that is the Path of Exiles question
The Stream Team: Building a base in Outpost Zero
AND FROM OUR FRIENDS AT BLIZZARD WATCH
What was WoW Legion’s best feature?
Survival Hunters in WoW’s Battle for Azeroth
Battle for Azeroth’s Warfronts are epic in scale but ultimately feel hollow
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 little bits of news we didn’t cover anywhere else.
