Maybe you didn’t, but a whoooooole lot of people have been trying out Lost Ark this weekend following the delayed launch of the game on Friday – including us. In fact, the game capped out at 1,325,305 concurrent players on Saturday. Meanwhile, World of Warcraft picked February 22nd for Eternity’s End’s launch, and LOTRO’s fate is unknown amid the Lord of the Rings rights sale.
Read on to catch up with the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions today as every Sunday (since 2010!) in Massively Overpowered’s Week in Review!THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES
Hands-on: Lost Ark is a solid MMO that falls just short of true greatness - After years of waiting, the MMOARPG Lost Ark launches in the west today, at least for those who bought founder's packs. The rest of us will be waiting a few…
World of Warcraft Eternity’s End is finally going live February 22 - Blizzard has finally put a date on World of Warcraft's 9.2 Eternity's End: February 22nd. The update was originally unveiled back in November, right around the time normally reserved for…
Lost Ark eclipses 1.3M players in its second full day of launch as it continues to manage global server load - We are now past day two of the free-to-play launch of MMOARPG Lost Ark and the game continues to make headlines. Over the course of the last 24 hours, the…
Lord of the Rings gaming rights are going up for sale – what will this mean for LOTRO? - Hobbits everywhere woke up yesterday to signs across the Shire declaring that it was for sale. And not just that neighborhood, either; all of the rights to make video games…
Just months after supposed angel investment, indie MMO TitanReach has ceased development – again - Raise your hand along with us if you saw this one coming: Indie MMO TitanReach has apparently ceased operation just half a year after receiving a supposed massive cash injection.…
Choose My Adventure: Zenith opened me to new dimensions of MMO interactivity and weirdness - After picking up an Oculus Quest 2 in the interest of expanding our coverage (and as a present to myself and others in my apartment, if I’m honest with myself),…
Massively Overthinking: What else could Blizzard do to fix World of Warcraft? - Last time in Massively Overthinking, our writers and readers sure did have a lot of good ideas to fix New World that Amazon won't listen to. Wanna do it again,…
Ultima Online is aiming to launch UO New Legacy in 2022 - As promised, publish 112, with its plethora of event and anniversary rewards, released to the production servers of Ultima Online earlier this week, but that isn't what this post is…
WoW Factor: Winds of Change, a speculative WoW expansion exercise - We still have no idea what the next expansion for World of Warcraft will look like, which is kind of absurd. We didn't even have a release date for patch 9.2…
Lost Ark’s launch has been mired in delays and issues, but it’s live now - (We're updating this post with the latest news on the delay and the launch as it happens. The original article follows!) Yesterday, we noted that Lost Ark was unintentionally spewing…
Lost Ark promises to manage server limits and queues as over 1M players arrive for free-to-play launch - As those who have been following along already know, the free-to-play launch of Lost Ark was an unsurprisingly bumpy ride, with a multi-hour delay, server takedowns to investigate missing characters,…
Guild Wars 2 vows to keep its End of Dragons endgame ‘fresh and rewarding’ - With a new expansion comes a new endgame -- or, in the case of the horizontally-inclined Guild Wars 2, an expanded one. As End of Dragons' launch date approaches, ArenaNet…
Mortal Online 2 launches alternate mainlands as part of ongoing server population management efforts - This past Thursday saw Mortal Online 2 introduce a patch, deploying the previously discussed temporary instances of the Myrland continent, which readers will recall is part of Star Vault's attempts…
WAPO’s latest Bobby Kotick article lays bare his vindictive litigation history - Rumor is, the secret final boss of Diablo IV will be a creature far more vile and Faustian than Diablo himself. And in a surely unrelated topic, the Washington Post…
World of Warcraft attempts to diversify its player council as Microsoft prioritizes Activision-Blizzard corporate culture - The player council for World of Warcraft has already been formed and provided feedback, but Blizzard has made it clear that the initial lineup was not the extent of what it…
Over a hundred New World servers are affected by today’s merge round - The merges continue over in Amazon's New World as the company contends with its shrinking playerbase: Where last fall the game peaked at over 900,000 concurrent, it's now down to…
Palia ‘ready to begin alpha testing’ but won’t commit to a start date - Did you know that you can't spell Palia without "pal?" And this upcoming "cozy" lifesim MMO might be your best friend indeed if it sends an alpha invite to your…
Vague Patch Notes: Looking back on the MassivelyOP magic, seven years in - As of tomorrow, we're seven years out from the launch of this site. This means that we're actually into the point when I've been working here longer than I worked…
Perfect Ten: Ten reasons your MMORPG creates a bad first impression - While MMOs may ask us to experience them for the long haul, first impressions still count. And if those impressions aren't favorable right out the gate, it's not likely that…
Get your barbarian on as Conan Chop Chop finally launches on all platforms March 1 - Three years ago, our hearts were captured by Funcom's April Fools' Day tease of a fast-paced, stick-figure Conan the Barbarian slashing away in a roguelite game aptly called Conan Chop…
New World had to disable its Valentine’s cosmetics over… crash bugs - Lost Ark may be Amazon's new baby, but that doesn't mean New World is being entirely neglected, even with an ever-ensmallening playerbase. This week, New World added a new item…
Over half a million people showed up at the same time to play Lost Ark’s headstart last night - In spite of its rocky start on Steam, Lost Ark has already rocketed to (almost) the top of the charts, even before its free-to-play launch. Last night, day one of…
Ashes of Creation promises an upcoming look at character creation, talks about griefing - For those who prefer a monthly summary of game development instead of day-to-day revelations, Ashes of Creation made the January newsletter available for your perusal. The previous month was full…
Krafton and Bluehole announce a partnership to create NFT avatars to sell in a future metaverse - The classic set of questions for journalists, investigators, and general critical thinkers to ask is the Five Ws: who, what, when, where, and why. The vast majority of these questions…
ArcheAge developer XLGames unveils an NFT-filled game launching in July called ArcheWorld - At a media event for Bora, a blockchain and NFT "ecosystem" (isn't that an ironic use of that word), ArcheAge developer XLGames unveiled plans for a new game that's just…
Lost Ark’s headstart begins today at noon – here’s the new trailer and patch notes - (We've updated the end of this article with the latest on the download issues.) It's launch day for Lost Ark, sort of, as headstart is set to begin at noon…
Fight or Kite: Rocket League Sideswipe is the perfect mobile game - For the last month or so, I’ve been half-man, half-Rocket League Sideswipe. It’s no exaggeration to say that I’ve spent far more than an acceptable level of time playing a…
Wisdom of Nym: Speculating on the next few bits of Final Fantasy XIV content - Let's start with something that's important: At this point, and for most of my future speculation, I'm going to make an assumption that may or may not be correct. Essentially,…
LOTRO Legendarium: Lord of the Rings Online must extract itself from its currency quagmire - Lord of the Rings Online began 2022 on a most curious note: an abrupt and not-very-well-explained announcement of significant changes to the game's biggest currencies. In the day or so…
Path of Exile hits a record peak concurrency with Siege of the Atlas - While many online games slowly ramp down over time, it seems that Path of Exile keeps coming up with new ways to climb to ever-greater heights. The online action RPG,…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 359: Tearing down the faction wall
The Stream Team: Heroically blowing up other robots in Galahad 3093’s open beta
The Stream Team: Celebrating Lunar New Year in AdventureQuest 3D
The Stream Team: Destroying desert dangers in Global Agenda
The Stream Team: Joining in on the head start launch of Lost Ark
The Stream Team: Talking Neverwinter Dragonbone Vale with Cryptic
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.
