MMO Week in Review: Blizzard likes your money after all (August 2, 2015)

August 2, 2015 6:00 PM

Were you too busy gaming this week to pay attention to MMO news? Get caught up every Sunday evening with Massively Overpowered’s Week in Review!

I know I wasn’t the only person worried about Blizzard’s intentions regarding World of Warcraft after its latest patch was revealed as the last serious update for the poorly received Warlords of Draenor cycle; in this very Week in Review column, I even snarked that Blizzard no longer wanted our money. But maybe that worry was for naught. This week, the studio made one of those announcements-about-an-announcement to get the hype and buzz started for WoW’s next expansion. Will it suck, or will it be jammed full of the content MMORPG fans traditionally clamor for? Let the speculation continue, at least until Thursday.

Read on for the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions.

GUILD WARS 2

Guild Wars 2 Heart of Thorns’ first public beta weekend begins August 7th - How about some Guild Wars 2 news to justify the fact that you're awake at the crack of dawn for this Gamescom embargo lift? Yeah! ArenaNet has just announced that the first public beta weekend event for its…

NCsoft Q2 2015: Guild Wars 2 is up, WildStar is down - NCsoft has published its second quarter 2015 financial report, and it's basically a repeat of quarter one. The company attributes its quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year boosts primarily to Blade & Soul's "strong performance" in East Asia and momentum…

Guild Wars 2’s fractal dungeons to become more accessible and challenging - Guild Wars 2 is not planning to neglect its fractal content when Heart of Thorns comes out later this year. The fantasy MMO put up a dev blog today discussing how the team is simultaneously making…

Flameseeker Chronicles: Guild Wars 2 account security advice - Veteran MMO players the whole world over can recount at least a second-hand tale of some poor soul opening his or her favourite MMO one day only to find that the account password has changed. It's at…

Guild Wars 2 fans datamine Warrior and Engineer elite specs - Why wait for ArenaNet to announce the last few elite specializations for Guild Wars 2 when you can just mine for all that information and pull it straight out of the game client? It'd just be…

Guild Wars 2 adds SMS verification, living world season one recap - ArenaNet wants to make sure your Guild Wars 2 account is secure, and apparently just reminding gamers to stop using "PASSWORD123" for every website isn't good enough because we're idiots. That's precisely why the studio is…

Guild Wars 2’s Tempest overhauls warhorn sounds, too - You might be a fan of playing Elementalist in Guild Wars 2 and not be too excited about the Tempest's choice of weapon. War horns do sound kind of annoying, after all. But take heart: Among…

MARVEL HEROES

Announcing the official MOP Marvel Heroes supergroup, Massively Underpowered! - You've probably noticed that several members of the Massively OP staff are obsessed with Marvel Heroes. Well, we thought it was high time to make a supergroup of our own for the MOP and greater gaming…

Marvel Heroes 2016 rebranding is in the works - Remember when Marvel Heroes was just Marvel Heroes? I mean, it still kind of is, at least around these parts where no one refers to it by its official Marvel Heroes 2015 title. Apparently an annualized…

PROJECT GORGON

Project Gorgon nears funding goal, reveals new races [Updated] - It's looking good for the imaginative Project Gorgon, as it has nearly reached its current Kickstarter crowdfunding goal after two past failed campaigns. The indie fantasy MMO crossed $18,000 of fundraising with hopes to shoot past…

Project Gorgon might not wipe before launch, adds Dwarf stretch goal - Big things are afoot for the Project Gorgon Kickstarter. The campaign, which passed its $20,000 crowdfunding goal this past Friday, put up two new stretch goals over the weekend to encourage further donations. At $25K, the…

OTHER TOP STORIES

Nexus Telegraph: Righting the S.S. WildStar - This past week I got the opportunity to ask a few questions about WildStar's new "stat refactoring" patch that's coming this fall. There were several finer points that I wanted clarification on, but the big one…

Skyforge’s first major update, Crucible of the Gods, lands on August 11th - Now that Skyforge is in its open beta phase - a soft launch for all intents and purposes - it's reasonable for players to wonder what comes next. The answer is a massive content update that…

Camelot Unchained wants stealth but not the sucky kind - Today's Camelot Unchained update is a long one, and that's because Mark Jacobs has a lot to cover. He talks about everything from backer benefits to the game's terrain code and, oh yeah, there's a little…

Bashiok bids Blizzard adieu - Blizzard's long-time community manager, Bashiok (known in the earlier days as Drysc), is leaving the studio after more than a decade of wrangling the World of Warcraft forums. Bashiok, who has been a constant figure in…

EverQuest II’s prog server isn’t as fun as the real thing - I've been playing the crap out of EverQuest II for the past week. Funnily enough, the vast majority of said playtime hasn't been on the new progression servers. I hit Stormhold hard when it launched last week, and…

Turbine to announce LotRO server closures on August 3 - Turbine has published a blog post detailing Lord of the Rings Online's upcoming server transfers, server consolidation, and data center move. The company hasn't announced which servers will be affected yet; that information will be released…

Co-op will be limited in Star Citizen’s Squadron 42 [Updated] - Do you love debating over semantics and unstated intent? Because you're going to have a field day with this one. The original Kickstarter page for Star Citizen lists the game's single-player campaign as offering drop-in/drop-out multiplayer…

WildStar forums compromised by exploit, taken down - If you've been wondering where the WildStar forums have gone, you're probably not the only one. Carbine Studios took to Reddit today to explain that it had voluntarily disabled the forums while it is dealing with…

Black Desert publisher opens European office in Amsterdam - So when does the rest of the world get to try out Black Desert? We don't know. But that day seems to be getting closer, as the game's publisher Daum has just opened its new office…

FFXIV, SWTOR, and Guild Wars 2 fall in Raptr’s June rankings - Raptr has published its stats roundup for the month of June. It turns out that people are still playing games online. You can close your browser now, and thanks for the pageview. Oh, you want details? League of…

Tamriel Infinium: Imperial City revitalizes Elder Scrolls Online’s PvP - I've always found it odd that one of Bethesda's biggest showings at a convention every year is QuakeCon. Elder Scrolls Online, especially, has always treated QuakeCon as the best place to make the biggest reveals for…

Pantheon’s Brad McQuaid on mass market MMOs, Smed’s resignation - Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen's Brad McQuaid has a word or two (thousand) to say about the ongoing debate as to what constitutes an MMO and how games should be targeting audiences. And like the man…

Everything you need to know about Neverwinter’s guild strongholds - [AL:NW]It's a good time to be a guild in Neverwinter. That's because on August 11th, every guild -- no matter how large or small -- will get their own massive zone to adventure and build a…

Massively Overthinking: Whither went the classic PvE MMORPG? - Today's Massively Overthinking question was sent via e-pigeon from Kickstarter donor Apollymi. No e-pigeons were hurt in the writing of this article. "Have you heard of any MMOs that will not be PvP-oriented -- by that…

Windows 10 and your favorite MMORPGs - If you're upgrading to Windows 10 this week, congratulations! You're brave! You might be in for a week of tech headaches and busted games! Tech support across multiple games and studios is recommending that you fully update your graphics…

THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS