Let’s just stipulate right here that Final Fantasy XIV knows how to freaking throw down a fan festival. Patch info, expansion info, juicy teases, no mobile junk, and no condescension. Oh yeah, and the devs are also the band. If you’ve missed Eliot’s in-person coverage of the Vegas event, you’ve missed out indeed.
Of course, other stuff also happened this week; for example, we saw big content drops for Black Desert, EverQuest II, Secret World Legends, ArcheAge, EVE Online, and TERA, plus Hellgate is back and Fallout 76 officially opened its doors. And we got a look at Path of Exile’s next big thing, and we’ll have more info from the Hi-Rez Expo this week too.
Read on to catch up with the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions today as every Sunday in Massively Overpowered’s Week in Review!THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES
FFXIV Fan Festival 2018: Shadowbringers promises new story, new regions, and new jobs - The plan was to fan a spark into a flame, but now it's getting dark, so who'll remember your name? (Apologies to Lin-Manuel Miranda for that.) Yes, it turns out…
LOTRO Legendarium: Starting on a legendary journey - Part of me was laughing at myself. Here I was, a grown man, shuffling around my weekly schedule to come home in the middle of the day to play an…
Path of Exile’s Betrayal brings back Bestiary, Incursion, and Delve plus better housing - Every time Grinding Gear games puts out a new update or expansion for Path of Exile - and they come like clockwork - it creates a conundrum for me. Each new…
Hi-Rez Expo 2018: King Arthur and Merlin join SMITE’s lineup - SMITE doesn't restrict itself to only ancient deities from various pantheons for its lineup of combatants - it also draws on those giants of myth and legend who wield god-like…
Fallout 76’s launch marks the start of a post-nuclear multiplayer adventure - The latest chapter in the popular Fallout series is finally here, as Fallout 76 has launched globally. This prequel game brings a different take on the franchise with multiplayer and…
WoW Factor: The smart World of Warcraft stuff from BlizzCon - Let's get something out of the way first and foremost. I am not going to count Warcraft III: Reforged as a smart thing for World of Warcraft, even though it…
FFXIV Fan Festival 2018: Details from the press conference with Naoki Yoshida - In contrast to the high-octane trailer that had opened the day, the final event for the first day of the Final Fantasy XIV fan festival was quiet and subdued. Of course,…
H1Z1’s esports league is basically toast, ESPN reports - It looks like H1Z1's Pro League isn't gonna make it. ESPN is reporting this evening that the esports league teams received a letter from Jace Hall informing them that "the 2nd…
Hellgate is back on Steam and buyable, but without Tokyo or multiplayer - The Hellgate is open for business. Again. Really and truly. HanbitSoft has been milking the Hellgate London cow for the better part of a decade now, bringing it back time…
World of Warcraft celebrates its 14th anniversary with a historic event - It might be hard to believe, but this year marks the 14th anniversary since Blizzard changed the landscape of the MMO genre with the release of World of Warcraft back…
This is the cheeky player program that trivializes Fallout 76’s nuke code decryption - Hey, did you think all of Fallout 76's problems would magically disappear once it launched? Welp, you were wrong. As Bethsoft plays whack-a-mole with exploits during the transition from soft…
The Daily Grind: Would you play a Wheel of Time MMO? - During this week's podcast, we happened to mention the sprawling Wheel of Time series, a TV adaptation of which is currently being worked on by Amazon, no doubt in the…
World of Warcraft puts another ring on Azerite armor’s finger - We are starting to worry that Blizzard's solution for everything wrong in World of Warcraft's latest expansion is to throw another ring on the Azerite armor screen. While players can…
Vague Patch Notes: When World of Warcraft breaks off your friendship - I spent a bunch of time post-BlizzCon thinking about why World of Warcraft personally bothered me. Not why its design pitfalls bothered me; that's easy to understand, and frankly, it's…
Hyperspace Beacon: Everything you need to know about Star Wars The Old Republic’s guild changes - Since the launch of the game, guilds have been a real weakness for Star Wars: The Old Republic. For the longest time, I have felt that the developers at SWTOR…
Leaderboard: Is a ‘WoW Immortal’ a very real possibility? - During this week's podcast, Justin made a joke about the potential for a "WoW Immortal" that... doesn't seem like such a joke, especially given Allen Adham's comments about working on…
Check out the trailer for Torchlight Frontiers’ Forged class - Oh yeah, you know a game is about to start really moving with its alphas when it starts dropping keys, business model blogs, and trailers left and right. Today, PWE…
Brad McQuaid’s MMO Pantheon has snapped up Trion’s Linda ‘Brasse’ Carlson - Did you wonder where Linda "Brasse" Carlson was going to end up post-Trion Worlds' implosion? Because you had to know she'd end up somewhere; she's a force of nature in…
Perfect Ten: MMOs that cater to the time-limited player - Every once in a while we receive emails here at Massively OP that share a similar sentiment. Usually that boils down to, "I love MMOs, I want to play MMOs,…
The Elder Scrolls Online slows down combat updates to focus on the shape of combat - There's been a lot of work done in The Elder Scrolls Online over the years to make combat feel better. Anyone who played the game's combat at launch and then…
Black Desert’s long-awaited Drieghan expansion is live - [AL:BDO]Here we go folks: Black Desert's Drieghan expansion is finally here and live as of today in the western PC version of the game. Pearl Abyss and Kakao are even…
Secret World Legends’ Dark Agartha is open - Have you ever been ambling through Agartha in Secret World Legends and thought that the place seems oddly foreboding and sinister? The good news is that it's not; there are…
Tad Williams’ Otherland MMO rebrands as Otherland Next with Fire Isle expansion, social sandbox mode - Way back in March, Otherland announced a big expansion called Fire Isle, themed around Chinese mythology and launching summer 2018. It didn't quite make that summer window, but it is…
TERA’s Fiery Featherweights patch is live with Elin Brawlers, Bahaar’s Sanctum, and the EP system - [AL:TERA]En Masse has gone live today with Fiery Featherweights, TERA's latest PC content update. Most notably, it boasts the playable Elin Brawler, a new level 65 5-man dungeon stuffed full…
Fallout 76 beta: You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave - Did you think it was possible for the bugs plaguing the no-wipe beta of Fallout 76 to get any worse? O ye, of little faith. Don't you know it can…
Torchlight Frontiers’ free-to-play model rejects pay-to-win and gambling schemes - Given that Torchlight Frontiers is being published under Perfect World Entertainment, you're probably not going to be shocked to hear that the MMO will run with a free-to-play business model.…
ArcheAge’s Relics of Hiram update is finally launching, three weeks late, under Gamigo’s banner - [AL:Arche]It's bittersweet now, we suppose, but the 5.0 Relics of Hiram update is officially going live for ArcheAge players in the west today, with server up slated for 4 p.m.…
Analysts say Diablo Immortal will bring financial success despite fan outrage - Arguably the biggest thing to come out of BlizzCon 2018 was the sheer amount of unadulterated rage solicited by the announcement of Blizzard's upcoming mobile title Diablo Immortal. In fact,…
Superhero MMORPGs mourn the passing of comics legend Stan Lee - Geeks of all stripes are mourning the passing of Stan Lee today, perhaps no one more than gamers who live and breathe superhero MMOs. Over on the DC Universe Online…
FFXIV Fan Festival 2018: Naoki Yoshida explains patch 4.5 and Blue Mage in the newest live letter - After Friday's keynote, Naoki Yoshida made it fairly clear that Final Fantasy XIV fans would not hear anything further about the contents planned for the game's third expansion, Shadowbringers, through the rest…
FFXIV Fan Festival 2018: Q&A with Producer and Director Naoki Yoshida - The question and answer portion of the Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival actually came before the Letter from the Producer, and as a result it was pinned in a spot wherein…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 196: Shire consequences
Battle Bards Episode 132: Steampunk
The Stream Team: More getting lost in ARK: Extinction
The Stream Team: Healing and leveling in Final Fantasy XIV
The Stream Team: Turkey Time in MapleStory 2
The Stream Team: Finishing SWTOR’s story
The Stream Team: Launching into EverQuest II’s Chaos Descending
The Stream Team: Getting ready for HRX with SMITE
AND FROM OUR FRIENDS AT BLIZZARD WATCH
• Did somebody say [Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker]?
• Wrath of the Lich King turns 10 years old
• We spent the past week playing WoW Classic
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.
