Any other week, the news that Amazon Games Studios has joined up with Leyou on a previously announced Lord of the Rings MMORPG would easily crowd out any other contenders for biggest news. But this week, Amazon must share with other corporate shufflings, as we learned Daybreak shuttered Player Studio and has been busy this summer filing trademarks for what look like new studios, as well as registering a new Daybreak Game Studios LLC.
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
That new Lord of the Rings MMORPG is still happening, now with Amazon’s New World team on board - Hey remember last September when Athlon Games - owned by Leyou Technologies, which also owns Warframe studio Digital Extremes - announced that it was working on a new "free-to-play massively…
Trademarks hint at big changes for Daybreak Game Company - Could Daybreak Game Company be about to split into two -- or more -- studios? Recent trademark filings on behalf of Daybreak suggest that the MMO company might be moving…
After suggesting it’d save Player Studio, Daybreak has quietly shuttered it for EverQuest instead - Back in March, Daybreak appointed a new Producer for its long-running Player Studio program - that's the system that allowed players to create and submit in-game content for multiple Daybreak…
Daybreak spent June creating even more new companies than we thought - This week, we've been covering some strange moves over at MMORPG company Daybreak, the studio long ago comfortably nestled under Sony's hierarchy as SOE but now owned by external investors.…
Flameseeker Chronicles: Guild Wars 2’s Living World is a barrier to entry - I have really liked Guild Wars 2’s story in the last few years. Quite honestly, I wasn’t crazy about a lot of the base game’s story; the way ArenaNet did…
EVE Evolved: EVE Online’s comms blackout will lead to absolute anarchy - All hell is about to break loose in EVE Online for the territorial alliances waging wars in the depths of space following some the craziest weeks in the game's long…
Wisdom of Nym: The subtle mechanical shifts in Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers - A lot of mechanics changed with the latest Final Fantasy XIV expansion. You probably don't need me to tell you that, but there are the bigger changes like the individual…
Perfect Ten: Reasons why I quit your MMORPG - We have all been there with subscription MMORPGs, where we go to unsubscribe and after a mild guilt trip, the cancellation screen asks us to provide feedback as to why…
WoW Factor: What would a factionless World of Warcraft look like? - You know, part of me honestly figured that the speculation around World of Warcraft abandoning the faction split would have died out months ago once we all remembered that Blizzard…
TennoCon 2019: A longer look at space, ships, and squads in Empyrean, Warframe’s not-an-expansion - You've come a long way, Warframe. The once-looter shooter continues to expand, not just in number of Warframes and equipment but in overall scope and depth. It expanded the story…
LOTRO Legendarium: Five essential roleplaying tools for living in Lord of the Rings Online’s Middle-earth - While you can and will find roleplaying active in many MMOs, there's something very conducive to Lord of the Rings Online's design and community that makes the scene especially robust…
Lawful Neutral: Dance studios, canvas bags, and ‘false advertising’ in the MMO industry - As I was writing our Lawful Neutral expose of Nerd Kingdom a few weeks ago, I was pretty bothered by the conduct of the company. For an MMO studio that…
Massively Overthinking: What would you want out of a potential WoW sequel? - It's a rare MMO player who's never played World of Warcraft, which makes this particular summer an interesting one for the whole genre. Even if you've long since left WoW…
RuneScape studio Jagex contradicts claim that its Chinese owner resold it - OK, so maybe Jagex hasn't been sold again, yet. The backstory: Earlier this year, we covered the news that RuneScape developer Jagex was being put up for sale by the Chinese…
Vague Patch Notes: Why live MMOs struggle to onboard new players - There are, at the time I write this, two basic approaches for getting new players up to speed in existing MMOs. Both of them are terrible for different reasons, both…
Take a tour of a chunk of World of Warcraft remade in Unreal Engine 4 - There are a lot of landscapes in World of Warcraft that players can't readily forget. The cliffs, valleys, and scrubland of Durotar. The surreal twisting trunks of Ashenvale. The drifting…
MMO Starbase will let players rent, build, and design their own apartments and space stations - Starbase has been killing it with videos ever since its May announcement. Finnish dev Frozenbyte characterizes the game as a "massively multiplayer online game with gameplay focused on building and…
Black Desert addresses community requests as PC releases Altar of Blood and Xbox One adds Ninjas - In the wake of Black Desert's Heidel Ball event last month, Pearl Abyss has dropped a set of player-submitted suggestions with dev answers to them, all focused on improving the…
Tracing the lineage of the modern MMORPG - Do you ever wonder where the MMORPG was born? If you said, "The internet, duh," you're technically correct but also a huge smartass. But it turns out that its birthplace…
MMO Burnout: Sinking boats (and sleeping with the fishes) in World of Warships - As they crept along at a mere 15 knots, the commander kept a close eye on the horizon. He signaled to turn the craft, a Fubuki class destroyer, so that…
Albion Online’s Percival update is live with new solo random dungeons and customization perks - It's patch day for Albion Online, as the big summer update, dubbed Percival, has been unleashed on the live servers. Sandbox Interactive notes it's the game's seventh major update since…
No Man’s Sky boss on why placating players with prattle rather than proof doesn’t work - Sometimes, as media, and surely as players, we wish a studio would just... stop talking. Just be quiet. Nothing you say is going to help, so just zip up your…
The new item level season in World of Warcraft starts today - The musical Rent suggests measuring a year in seasons of love, which doesn't seem particularly easy to quantify. World of Warcraft, meanwhile, measures a year in seasons of item level…
Choose My Adventure: Behold! The MOP Hunter-Killer arrives to the City of Heroes - A new automaton of outrageous and awesome ability has arrived! This pint-sized power plant bears skills never seen by human eyes! A far-flung futuristic feat of science, technology, and the…
Neverwinter’s Uprising module launches August 13 with a new Gith race and lowbie experience - [AL:NW]Happy Tuesday, who wants some new Neverwinter content? Fans will be waiting until August 13th for the game's next big thing to drop for PC, but it is indeed coming,…
Naoki Yoshida wants to collab with Blizzard to bring Diablo and WoW to Final Fantasy XIV - As any Final Fantasy XIV fan can tell you, the game is known for its bevy of crossover events that range from the logical, such as crossovers with other games…
TennoCon 2019: Warframe’s NightWave Series 2 and Wukong Prime go live, with new ‘Frames and skins incoming - Much of TennoCon 2019 is showing off what will come in the future for Warframe, but two announcements were for the here and now. Nightwave Season 2 and Wukong Prime…
Not So Massively: Gaming genre elitism isn’t a good look on anyone - As I noted when I first took over the Not So Massively column this past spring, we live in a time of great change for the gaming world. We're seeing…
Catching up with City of Heroes’ Homecoming rogue servers as NCsoft negotiations continue - It's been a while since we checked in on the flourishing City of Heroes rogue server community, but it's been busy indeed, with multiple servers springing up and even returning…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 228: Justin, interrupted
Battle Bards Episode 148: Composer spotlight on Inon Zur
The Stream Team: Joining Elder Scrolls Online’s Dark Brotherhood
The Stream Team: We’re gonna rob a bank in City of Heroes Homecoming
The Stream Team: Trove turns two times two!
The Stream Team: Soaking up some Lord of the Rings summer festival
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.
