Even with the absence of E3 this June, gaming is doing just fine: This week, MMO players saw the launch of Elite’s fleet carriers, ArcheAge’s Garden of the Gods, Torchlight III’s early access, and No Man’s Sky crossplay, plus we got an overview of where Phantasy Star Online 2 is going and when we’ll be in New World’s beta.
Oh, and EVE Online is on fire.
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
Amazon’s New World sails for closed beta in July before its August launch - While it wasn't ready for primetime this past spring, New World is prepared to make a big splash when it arrives later this summer. Amazon Game Studios announced during the…
PC Gaming Show: Torchlight III just hit early access, New World’s beta begins in July - PC Gamer's PC Gaming Show is upon us today, and good news for MMO fans: We're actually expecting several fun reveals, from the likes of New World, Torchlight III, Funcom,…
WoW Factor: How World of Warcraft’s elite progression obsession hurts progression players too - Here's a statement that I think few people will disagree with:Â World of Warcraft has increasingly focused on raiding and high-end progression as the only important part of the game. This…
EVE Evolved: EVE Online’s asset safety bait and switch was a colossal mistake - Imagine if you logged back into your favourite MMO after a few months away to find that your character's gear was gone or valuable items were missing from the bank.…
LOTRO Legendarium: 6 tips for fun and profitable deed hunting - Just because you've hit the level cap or come to the end of available quests in Lord of the Rings Online doesn't mean you've run out of content to do.…
Tamriel Infinium: Launch impressions of Elder Scrolls Online’s Greymoor chapter - As I sat down to take in the most recent content release for the Elder Scrolls Online, Greymoor, I was awash with a sense of anticipation. For gamers, including me,…
ArcheAge’s controversial Garden of the Gods expansions is live today - It should be a happy day for ArcheAge and ArcheAge Unchained, as the duo's latest expansion, Garden of the Gods, is going live. But this game is cursed, you guys,…
Star Citizen kicks off its ‘Alien Week’ with lore, contests, and ship sales as it passes $300M crowdfunding - It's like Shark Week but with digital extraterrestrial life! Or more specifically, it's much like the game's St. Patrick's Day celebration. In any event, Star Citizen is celebrating Alien Week,…
Phantasy Star Online 2 posts content roadmap and promises more PC platforms - Have you already blasted and slashed your way through all of the content that Phantasy Star Online 2 has to offer? We're a little dubious that this would be the…
ARK: Survival Evolved celebrates five years, makes Crystal Isles map official, becomes latest free EGS game - It's birthday time for ARK: Survival Evolved and its players, which is just one of several announcements made on the game's latest Community Crunch post, which outlines what's happening for…
Warframe launches Deadlock Protocol, previews Protea and new Jackal, shifts TennoCon to August - Just in case three days' time is too long for you to remember what Warframe is up to, consider this a reminder that the Deadlock Protocol is now available for…
Leaderboard: Star Wars Galaxies vs. Star Wars The Old Republic - Yesterday, I read on Twitter that Star Wars The Old Republic has, as of this week, been live longer than Star Wars Galaxies was. I literally had to run the…
Blizzard and Bethsoft donate for racial justice, Riot parts ways with troubling exec, and Raph Koster writes a song - We've got a few more gaming-related Black Lives Matter stories to share this morning. Riot Games: First up, yesterday we reported that Riot Games was investigating its Global Head of…
Riot Games places exec on leave while investigating awful social media post - Nobody's surprised to learn that the corporate culture at the tippy-top of Riot Games still has "bad apples," right? After the huge sexual harassment and discrimination scandal that's been rolling…
Massively Overthinking: Do you keep MMOs installed for the login freebies? - MOP reader Styopa proposed this fun topic for Massively Overthinking this week, prompted, he said, by Standing Stone Games' recent promotions for Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and…
PlayStation 5 launch titles include Destiny 2, Warframe, and Fortnite, with GTAO coming next year - Sad about E3? Yeah, OK, nobody but E3 is really that sad about E3. But it's still summer convention season, and we still want to hear about all the new…
Warhammer Online rogue server Return of Reckoning celebrates sixth birthday with new scenario - Are you aware that it's been six and a half years since Warhammer Online ended its official run? What might be even more astounding to you is learning that the…
Raph Koster’s Playable Worlds studio raises an additional $10 million in funding - We still know nothing about what the first project out of Raph Koster's new studio, Playable Worlds, will actually look like. But we do know that the studio is raising…
Wisdom of Nym: Exit Final Fantasy XIV fan festival, pursued by a virus - So... yeah, we're not getting our fan festival for Final Fantasy XIV in San Diego. You probably saw that by now. (And if you're wondering why I'm talking about this now rather…
Lost Ark announces a registration date for Japanese closed beta, shows off a guild territory feature for Season 2 - The outward expansion of MMOARPG Lost Ark has taken another big step forward. The game's official Japanese Twitter account has announced that Thursday, June 25th, will be the date when…
There’s a new dating site specifically for gamers called Joystick - You're gonna be tempted to giggle at this one, so instead I'm going to start this post by pointing out that I know kind of a long list of people…
No Man’s Sky impements full PC and console crossplay starting tomorrow - When Hello Games announces new stuff for No Man's Sky, two things are usually true: They're huge, and they're soon. And today's announcement from the team fulfills both rules, as…
New World previews its crafting system and player housing decoration - Yesterday's New World dev blog was all about character development and progression, and it was a bit of a let down for folks who were hoping for something revolutionary. Today's…
Desert Oasis: Exploring Black Desert’s mysterious O’dylitta region - With the Heidel ball now a memory, there's much to look forward to in Black Desert Online. Along with a new class and a variety of other features, players can look…
Perfect Ten: The most fun pre-launch MMO runs - You know what's really fun? The build-up to an MMO's release, especially when you're really invested in that particular game. Some of my fondest memories in the MMO space come…
The Soapbox: Yes, here - This guest Soapbox was commissioned through MassivelyOP's original Kickstarter back in 2015; the writer has chosen to remain anonymous. The opinions in guest Soapboxes traditionally represent the views of our…
Star Trek Online promises Romulan boosting while fan podcast calls for a boycott of the game in support of Black Lives Matter - The developers behind Star Trek Online are letting players boost up a Romulan. A new level boost pack coming soon allows you to start a Romulan character at level 65,…
Destiny 2 announces three expansions, including Beyond Light, and launches Season of Arrivals - [AL:D2]Bungie ran a whopper of a Destiny 2 reveal stream today, announcing literally all the things. OK, just four or so of the things, but they're big things! First and…
Amazon’s New World character progression will seem comfortably familiar to MMO fans - Listen up, all you bad boys and rude girls: Amazon Games' New World is seriously still slated for launch on August 25th, and if you're one of the five people…
Choose My Adventure: EVE Online is already a bad time - I knew there was a reason I wasn't looking forward to this one. [AL:EVE]I've dipped my toes into this piranha pool before. I first played EVE Online during Apocrypha, and…
Elite Dangerous’ Fleet Carriers update is live today on PC and console - It didn't quite make its original launch time this morning, but it is nevertheless patch day for Frontier's Elite Dangerous, as the long-awaited Fleet Carriers update lumbers its way onto…
EVE Online pirate pillages $60K worth of items from a shutdown Citadel - Last week we reported on a new kind of thievery happening in EVE Online thanks to a recent update which causes unpowered Citadels to go abandoned and make whatever goodies…
Wisdom of Nym: The ‘problem jobs’ of Final Fantasy XIV’s Shadowbringers - When Final Fantasy XIV launched Shadowbringers, every job had issues, but most of them were fairly minor. That was not universally the case, to the point that four jobs were…
English lawmakers may classify lockboxes as straight-up gambling - Video game studios that feature lockboxes in their titles are sitting very uncomfortably this week as England decides whether or not to make their lives a whole lot more difficult.…
Not So Massively: I like survival mechanics, not survival games - When I played We Happy Few, one of the things that surprised me the most was how much I enjoyed the survival mechanics. I worried they might be annoying, but…
SMITE suspends 5,000 accounts due to racist chat - The chat box of an MMO was never meant to be a safe haven for racists, but with the protests across the US calling for racial equality after the murder…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 275: What truly matters
The Stream Team: A look at ARK’s new Crystal Isles map
The Stream Team: Diving into Warframe’s Deadlock Protocol
The Stream Team: Cue the crafting in Dungeons and Dragons Online
The Stream Team: A day of AdventureQuest 3D live events
The Stream Team: Starting Trove’s Splendid Summer Event
The Stream Team: Elder Scrolls Online adventures with a vampire sidekick
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.
