World of Warcraft players got an extra dose of fireworks for Lunar New Year this week as NetEase clapped back at Blizzard, which apparently offered to extend the Chinese WoW license at the very last minute and then pouted when NetEase said no, having already laid off the team and destroyed its Warcraft orc statue. Unfortunately for the players, that means Blizzard’s games sunset tomorrow.
Meanwhile, we peered at Tencent’s WoW clone Tarisland, giggled at the latest War Thunder military docs leaks (plural), dipped into Final Fantasy XIV’s Gods Revel, Lands Tremble, mourned job losses for thousands of industry workers, and observed Ubisoft’s workforce prepare to strike following the company’s latest fiasco.
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
Lord of the Rings Online’s 2023 roadmap teases Corsairs of Umbar expansion theme - Earlier this week, we remarked on the MOP Podcast how it was to see Daybreak's EverQuest and EverQuest II roadmaps - and wouldn't it be nicer if Lord of the…
LOTRO Legendarium: Reacting to LOTRO’s 2023 roadmap - Do you remember the years of the past when we'd be waiting well into March or even later for a Lord of the Rings Online producer's letter that would give…
GDC’s State of the Games Industry survey once again demonstrates dev skepticism for metaverse and blockchain hokum - This year's State of the Game Industry from GDC - its 11th since beginning the project - delivers a range of insights from the 2300 game devs surveyed. Let's dig…
Old School RuneScape player reportedly makes off with nearly $120K in cash thanks to an exploit - Exploits are a problem. Gold farming is a problem. Combine those two and you've got a giga-problem, and you've also got a story out of Old School RuneScape where one…
Square Enix-published Marvel’s Avengers is ending official support this fall - Even the force of one of the mightiest IPs of the world couldn't save Marvel's Avengers from a disappointing turnout and underwhelming reception. On Friday, Crystal Dynamics announced that it…
Riot Games lays off 46 workers, adding to this month’s tech toll - Riot Games is the latest games industry megacorp to issue layoffs this week, though they're smaller in number than the thousands of workers shed by the likes of Microsoft and…
Gamigo shuffles out RIFT’s old Hellbugs event for the Lunar New Year weekend - Gamigo's been a bit of a mess the last couple of months, and by all accounts RIFT's last community manager was let go earlier this winter, so I certainly wasn't…
Lunar New Year events and sales across the MMO universe - Well, the MMO genre has finally done it: It's finally given us enough Lunar New Year events to make a roundup worthwhile. Lunar New Year isn't technically until Sunday, but…
Bored Ape Yacht Club’s upcoming ‘skill-based mint’ NFT game sparks a speculation market - While there are many of us normal humans who don't participate in a wildly speculative and volatile market powered by FOMO, art theft, environmental damage, and pyramid scheme-style con-artistry, there…
WoW Classic advances Wrath of the Lich King to Phase 2 - The second phase of Wrath Classic went live today with the debut of Secrets of Ulduar. The update for WoW Classic issues in an upgraded version of an old favorite…
One of Ubisoft’s canceled games was a PvP team battle arena dubbed Project Q - In covering Ubisoft's ongoing clownshow - the mass-game cancelations, the sixth delay of Skull & Bones, the CEO gaffe, and the impending worker strike - we noted that Ubisoft has…
Massively Overthinking: What were your three most-played MMOs in 2022? - Last year, we did a piece on what we expected our top three MMOs of 2022 to be. We'll do that again next week, but for this week's Massively Overthinking,…
Vindictus celebrates 13th birthday with release of celestial Charon hero - Would you believe me if I told you that Nexon's Vindictus turns 13 years old this weekend? It's true, and as of this week, the company has released a new…
Class action law firm probes Diablo Immortal over false advertising claims - This is a story about a gem in Diablo Immortal known as the Blessing of the Worthy, an item that could only be found and upgraded in cash shop bundles…
Osiris New Dawn formally departs early access for launch, having sold 600K copies - If you blinked, you missed it: Multiplayer survival sandbox Osiris New Dawn quietly moved from early access to launch this week. It wasn't a complete shock, as studio Fenix Fire…
Ship of Heroes looks back at last year, notes creation of a Steam page and upcoming beta test registration - By all accounts, Ship of Heroes had a busy 2022 when you look over the game's retrospective blog post. The devs recount the variety of updates made last year, including…
Vague Patch Notes: Fractured Online deserved better, even if you think it looked bad - When it comes to upcoming MMOs, there's always a sense of uncertainty in terms of what the final product is going to look like. You cannot actually tell me that…
Elder Scrolls Online teasers hint at Hermaeus Mora’s presence in the 2023 storyline - With layoffs looming, a new cadence plan, and a big reveal set for next week, The Elder Scrolls Online team is having one hell of a January, helped not one…
Ubisoft’s CEO apologizes for responsibility dodge but fails to mollify strikers - Yesterday, we reported on the impending Ubisoft Paris worker strike and associated demands for better compensation and reduced work hours, provoked by CEO Yvrs Guillemot's responsibility-shirking comments that seemed to…
Halo Infinite and Elder Scrolls Online teams were hit by Microsoft’s 10,000-person layoff - Yesterday's Microsoft layoffs were just as bad as anticipated - 10,000 jobs slashed in one day - and it gets worse for gamers, as apparently a sizable chunk of those…
The Daily Grind: What’s your favorite abandoned MMO system? - Some MMOs are really good about refining and updating systems introduced early in the game's lifespan, and while they may not be perfect, you can expect 90% of the game's systems…
War Thunder players have now leaked military documents a grand total of five times to win forum arguments - So at MOP we include roundups at the bottoms of some of our articles when we have a lot of similar topics or related background context. You know what we…
NetEase slams Blizzard China’s last-minute WoW proposal as ‘brash, unseemly and commercially illogical’ - Earlier this week, Blizzard China took to social media to suggest to Chinese World of Warcraft players that NetEase is to blame for the game's impending shutdown. Now, NetEase is…
Perfect Ten: Why it’s better than ever to be an MMO fan in 2023 - Welcome to 2023! You probably didn't need that heads-up, but you're getting it even still. I'm quite excited about the year to come in MMO gaming, and I hope you…
Lost Ark tackles quality-of-life improvements in today’s The Witcher collab patch - Those of you crying out for weird crossovers will be pleased to know that The Witcher franchise has invaded Lost Ark's western version today as promised. "Players will unravel mysteries…
EU Parliament adopts resolution to regulate games industry harms from lockboxes to manipulative design - Call them lockboxes, lootboxes, gambleboxes, or gachapon: The European Parliament has voted overwhelmingly to adopt a resolution "ensuring a safe online environment for online video game users" - and that…
Ubisoft Paris will strike on January 27 following CEO’s responsibility-shifting - If Ubisoft thought that slashing more games, delaying others (like Skull & Bones), and promising "increased cautiousness over the coming years" would stave off a revolt among investors and workers,…
Microsoft and Unity collectively shed over 10,000 employees in latest round of tech layoffs - Another round of layoffs are coming to both Microsoft and Unity. Both tech companies are dropping more employees from their respective workforces, with Unity cutting 300 employees and Microsoft said…
Get a first peek at Tencent’s new Chinese WoW clone, Tarisland - I know you'll be shocked to hear it, but people like World of Warcraft enough to try to clone it! Oh, what's that? We have hundreds of such clones already?…
Fractured should be back in February as Gamigo shrinks to just a quarter of its 2020 portfolio - Last month, Gamigo suffered a round of layoffs, axed multiple MMOs (dispatching them to other publishers), and stealth-deleted Fractured from its website - Fractured, of course, being the Kickstarted sandbox…
It has once again been zero days since a War Thunder player used military documents to win a forum fight - When we highlighted how War Thunder players had used classified military documents to argue their cases an astonishing three times during our roundup of weird MMO stories from 2022, one…
Choose My Adventure: Nightfall might end up being the superior classic Guild Wars starting experience - I was pretty sure I was going to go into Factions after last week's Choose My Adventure, but a final surge in voting saw my Classic Guild Wars path shift…
Interview: Annex is a ‘romantic gold-rush’ MMO set in a post-post-apocalyptic world - Last November, we reported on a new Icelandic game studio and the hints of its upcoming MMORPG project by ex-CCP developers. Arctic Theory, as it's called, is working on a…
Blizzard claims NetEase rejected a license extension to keep Chinese games (including WoW) up another six months - When Blizzard and NetEase announced the dissolution of their long-running publishing partnership in China - and the sunset of almost all of Blizzard's games in the region - back in…
Fans are reviving – and localizing – the long-shuttered Dragon’s Dogma MMO from Japan - Most people likely only know about Dragon's Dogma as the source of a rad song that's been featured in memes. Few folks probably know about the original RPG and even…
Wisdom of Nym: First impressions of Final Fantasy XIV’s Gods Revel, Lands Tremble content - So patch 6.3 is live in Final Fantasy XIV, and as always, that means a hefty does of new content and even more on deck for later. Seriously, it feels…
Former Lord of the Rings Online producer illuminates the MMO industry’s pay problem - In last week's Massively Overthinking roundtable on the weird MMO trainwrecks that nobody noticed in 2022, MOP's Justin brought up one I had forgotten: the hasty departure of the rather…
Vitae Aeternum: New World should do more with its housing - I find the history of player housing in New World a strange one. Prior to launch, I had the impression housing was being treated as one of the main selling…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 405: Give me throne or give me liberty
The Stream Team: Taking a quick return trip to Remnant From the Ashes
The Stream Team: Going on an AQ3D Tailor Scout adventure
The Stream Team: Going out for some basic Behemoth hunts in Dauntless
The Stream Team: Eye Know Whodunnit in Dungeons & Dragons Online
The Stream Team: Corellian adventures continue in SWTOR
The Stream Team: Backseat Streaming walks through more of Final Fantasy XIV’s various delves
The Stream Team: Starting Guild Wars 2’s Living World Season 1 for the first time
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.
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