Lockboxes, lootboxes, gambleboxes: Whatever you wanna call ’em, they’ve been on a wild ride the last couple of years, elevated from something only MMORPG players complained about earlier this decade as free-to-play titles took over our genre to a monetization tactic so prevalent across the wider gaming industry such that the likes of US senators are taking notice and making it their favorite talking point.
Meanwhile, we’re gearing up for Guild Wars 2’s War Eternal, keeping an eye on Riot Games post-walkout, wondering who’s getting fired over the Elder Scrolls Online RPG adventure plagiarism mess, and spending all our time in City of Heroes like it’s 2004.
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
US Senator takes aim at lockboxes and pay-to-win with ‘Protecting Children From Abusive Games Act’ - The gamblebox issue isn't dying down any time soon, it appears. As Kotaku first reported, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley has announced he plans to introduce legislation targeting lootboxes and other…
LOTRO Legendarium: My vision for free-to-play version 2.0 - A few weeks ago I embarked on an experiment that I had hoped would make for a fascinating column. Basically, I created a brand-new free-to-play account for Lord of the…
Guild Wars 2’s War Eternal living story episode launches May 14 – here’s the trailer! - [AL:GW2]ArenaNet has this morning announced that the final episode for Guild Wars 2's fourth season of living story content, War Eternal, will officially launch next week on May 14th. As…
Desert Oasis: How AFKing in Black Desert is more productive than you think - You know what I enjoy doing in MMOs? Not doing anything. I fancy myself an AFK enthusiast. Finding a nice, scenic spot to park your character is an art. It's…
City of Heroes Homecoming delays move, plans EU server, offers XP boots, and battles toxicity - Remember how we were all preparing for an outage for the City of Heroes rogue servers run by the Homecoming team this weekend? It's been delayed. "Our move to Canada…
Riot Games developers did indeed walk out in protest last night over the ongoing labor and lawsuit fiasco - On Friday, we reported that Riot Games' latest efforts to stave off a walkout at the popular League of Legends company were likely to fail, and yesterday, we were proven…
Star Citizen’s latest concept ship sale is actually for… motorcycles - When DK tipped me this story, I joked that I could just write "Star Citizen. Motorcycles. $450" and you guys would just go and do your favorite thing in the…
Warhammer Online lives on thanks to a free-to-play private server - Our own Justin Olivetti jokingly referred to our site as "Massively Emulated" in private chat for what should now be patently obvious reasons, so I suppose this story is pretty…
WoW Factor: Guessing at the next World of Warcraft expansion announcement using math - Here's the genesis of this particular article: I saw speculation over on Blizzard Watch that we were about a year too early for a World of Warcraft expansion announcement at BlizzCon.…
Elder Scrolls Online issues an apology over the Elsweyr adventure plagiarism debacle - It was just supposed to be a fun little promo item to help spark excitement for The Elder Scrolls Online's next expansion, but the free Elsweyr adventure has become something of a…
Massively Overthinking: Do you play MMO characters you like – or characters that are objectively good? - Earlier this week, some Massively OP writers were hanging out in team chat talking about favorite City of Heroes powersets from back in the day. I found myself talking about…
Wisdom of Nym: Where is our last area for Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers? - There seems to be something we haven't learned yet about Final Fantasy XIV's next expansion, and if you know anything about me, you know that makes me very curious. [AL:FFXIV]Before you get…
Hyperspace Beacon: SWTOR takes us to Dantooine for the fifth time in a video game - My very first memory of Dantooine was surprisingly its first real appearance in a video game at all. Star Wars Galaxies imagined Dantooine as a purple and green planet with…
Leaderboard: Would you donate for a City of Heroes rogue server? - Last night's public announcement that the City of Heroes Homecoming team was changing its stance on donations and felt "comfortable" accepting them now after previously warning that public donation drives…
Perfect Ten: Disney movies are all MMO experiences - As a general rule, I feel about Disney films the same way other people feel about the MCU films: They're fine, I'll watch one if it's on and it's decent,…
Conan Exiles is launching The Riddle of Steel DLC to honor the 1982 Conan movie - Conan Exiles is due for a fresh round of DLC this week: It's called The Riddle of Steel, and it's specifically an homage to the 1982 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Conan…
Anthem intentionally removes special loot chests and accidentally removes boss loot drops - At this point, the clownshoes are designer label; the most recent update to Anthem removed a special loot chest with unique cosmetics as was originally intended, while it also appears…
EA sees quarterly and yearly revenue dropoffs, plans to port Apex Legends to mobile - Activision-Blizzard wasn't the only company to see a weak start to 2019: EA also saw a drop off in revenue for Q1 2019, with its yearly revenues dropping 4% YOY…
ZeniMax has begun pre-production on a AAA game set in a major new IP - Could the digital wizards behind Elder Scrolls Online have a fresh spell or two hidden up their sleeves? It looks like this may indeed be the case, as ZeniMax Online…
New World is taking its 24-7 alpha offline for implementation of ‘major new features’ - It sounds as if New World is entering a new phase of development, as Amazon Game Studios announced the current version of the alpha, which has been live around the…
Guild Wars 2 defends World Boss Rush event drops as the final Requiem story goes live - Yesterday, Guild Wars 2 kicked off a rather unusual event for the game: its World Boss Beatdown, which promised a "Bonus Box of Goods" from world boss takedowns. ArenaNet even…
KurtzPel addresses issues with the game’s free-to-play balance with a new development letter - It turns out that converting a game from a buy-to-play model to a free-to-play one is somewhat harder than it looks. That's one of the major takeaways from a new…
Choose My Adventure: Getting back in to the groove of Star Wars: The Old Republic - This week's Choose My Adventure piece is a homecoming for me. I was one of the folks who was all in on Star Wars: The Old Republic during its lead-up…
City of Heroes: New servers, Discord drama, and Homecoming gets $6900 in donations in 20 minutes - Just in case you didn't think City of Heroes had enough community rogue servers, here comes another one. The Homecoming team - that's the team with four servers running a…
Massively Uplifting: Destigmatizing mental health in games, celebrating loved ones in LOTRO, Guild Wars 2, and Elite - Spring started splendidly this year. While all may not come up roses in the world at large, plenty of good deeds and uplifting stories have bloomed all over the MMOverse…
The Internet Historian video lays out the sad saga of Fallout 76 - As we well know by now, one of the more exciting and promising developments in the MMO space last year ended up being an unmitigated disaster in the form of…
Wisdom of Nym: Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood in review – leveling content - One of the things that I really do love about Final Fantasy XIV, from relaunch to now, is that it is indisputably a game that begins as it means to go…
Fight or Kite: The case for dueling in Guild Wars 2 - Let me tell you all about one of the most obvious holes in the Guild Wars 2 PvP armor. No, it's not the infrequent balance changes. No, it's not the…
Disney says Dis-nay to acquiring a controlling interest in Nexon - It made sense when we heard the rumor that Disney was interested in acquiring Nexon; the South Korean company has a large number of successful titles in operation, and the…
Fallen Earth is back online after nearly a week of downtime - Standard patch updates for MMOs generally take a day or two at most to apply, but the folks at Fallen Earth appeared to have run in to a bit of…
Gamers warn that the AXS Mobile App needed to enter BlizzCon is ‘spyware level bad’ - Those who are headed to this year's BlizzCon event are being required to use the AXS Mobile App as part of efforts to deter dupes and fraud. A bit of…
RIFT to merge European servers and kill open PvP shard - Scooch over and make room, RIFT European players, because you're about to have company. Gamigo announced on Friday that it will be merging several of its English-speaking European servers on…
Diablo III’s Season of Nightmares arrives this week - When's the last time that you were excited about Diablo III? It's been a pretty quiet spring for the ARPG, but Blizzard is about to make some noise with the…
The Survivalist: The highs and lows of Conan Exiles, one year after launch - In an industry that never seems to see games move out of early access, it feels strange to get to celebrate the first launch anniversary of one. And yet, here…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
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.
