The first episode of Guild Wars 2’s post-End-of-Dragons not-a-living-story season rolled out this week, sending players back to Cantha with the crew to solve a mystery in Gyala Delve.
Meanwhile, Destiny 2’s Lightfall expansion released, we got a look at upcoming MMO sandbox Pax Dei, Bless Global failed its Steam crypto racket, and we explored the impact Section 230 has on MMORPGs.
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
Flameseeker Chronicles: Guild Wars 2’s What Lies Beneath, the next End of Dragons story, has launched - Happy anniversary to Guild Wars 2's End of Dragons expansion! Can you believe it has been a whole year? In some ways I feel like I'm still learning what End…
Meet Pax Dei, a well-funded open-world social sandbox built to ‘true MMO scale’ - Back in 2021, we caught wind of a new Microsoft-backed MMO called Pax Dei from studio Mainframe Industries, which had been busy raising huge sacks of cash from investors like…
WoW Factor: World of Warcraft is just coasting down the mountain - In November 1994, Marvel Comics launched a new comic book spin-off from the main X-Men series. Generation X, written by Scott Lobdell, was in many ways a return to a…
Lawful Neutral: What MMO gamers need to know about Section 230 - You might have seen something in the news last week about a thing called Section 230 and lots of panic over the "end of the internet" as a result of…
Following another weak quarter, Square-Enix will replace Yosuke Matsuda as president - Yosuke Matsuda is finally on his way out of Square-Enix: The company's Board of Directors announced early this morning that Matsuda will step down as president, to be replaced with…
Vague Patch Notes: Why I’m anticipating Blue Protocol - My anticipation for Blue Protocol is something that I cannot adequately explain because at the end of the day it's more based around a feeling than it is actual evidence.…
LOTRO Legendarium: Six unpopular opinions about Lord of the Rings Online - Just because you're a fan of a particular franchise or game doesn't mean that you always concur with the larger groupthink. It's always a fun exercise when you give yourself…
Bless Global is already delisted on Steam after trying to push crypto racket - Did we expect anything different? Not really. Just days after Bless Global relaunched the franchise for the umpteenth time on Steam, the MMO was delisted from Valve's platform. Maybe this…
Hitman series developer IO Interactive teases its work on an upcoming online fantasy RPG - Gamers are likely familiar with the studio IO Interactive as the one behind several games in the Hitman franchise, but it looks as if the studio is now heading to…
Mortal Online 2 brings the thunder, fire, ice, and rock with its new Elementalist magic school - It's hard to deny the classic allure of the elements-weaving magic caster in a fantasy setting, and this evergreen trope is now available in Mortal Online 2 thanks to the…
The FTC grants Microsoft’s request for Sony docs as leaks say the EU will approve ABK merger - Remember back when Sony accused Microsoft of "harassment" for requesting internal documents from Sony that would aid Microsoft in defending its Activision-Blizzard merger before the Federal Trade Commission this summer?…
Square-Enix’s Babylon’s Fall went out with the wimpiest of whimpers - How do you imagine your favorite online service game going dark? Hopefully it's with bittersweet parties among the faithful community and massive end-of-game events that serve to put an exclamation…
Embers Adrift’s newest dev video plays up its largest patch to date - The Embers Adrift developer team is taking a victory lap around its biggest patch to date even as it revs up for the March update to come. In a new…
Massively Overthinking: How should MMOs handle in-game criming? - A week or so ago, I fell down a rabbit hole when writing up an ArcheAge post. Kakao was handing out joke titles for absurd achievements like racking up the…
Post-Gamigo, X-LEGEND has big expansion plans for Aura Kingdom and Grand Fantasia - Back in December, Gamigo announced that it was closing down multiple MMOs on its roster, transferring some of them back to their original developers. Among those games were Aura Kingdom…
World of Warcraft previews the new adventures on the Forbidden Reach in patch 10.0.7 - Raszageth is gone in World of Warcraft. She's not here any more. But her legacy lives on... specifically, her legacy of being the reason you couldn't just head back to…
Elder Scrolls Online announces plans for an in-person fan event in April - It seems as if lots of MMORPGs are getting fan events, and we don't necessarily hate it (though COVID is still very much a thing, and so players should still…
Mad World is on track to launch ‘before June,’ isn’t worried about Diablo IV - Mad World has been cooking for a long time; it was originally intended to launch in 2018, then 2020, then 2022. "We are 99.9% confident in releasing the game within…
Chronicles of Elyria boss justifies website rebuilding, communication, and re-opening the Discord - Last month, Soulbound Studios' Jeromy Walsh wrote another long-form address discussing the merging of design documents for Kingdoms of Elyria and its erstwhile (i.e., originally Kickstarted) game Chronicles of Elyria,…
EA lays off hundreds of Apex Legends QA testers - Over 200 quality assurance testers for Apex Legends were abruptly fired by Electronic Arts this week, Kotaku reports. The pink slips were handed out to the entire Baton Rouge testing…
Bless Global is back again, this time on mobile and Steam as a shambling blockchain horror - I'm sorry to report this morning that Bless is back and at it again. Oh, that sounds cruel if you don't know the history, so let me recap: Bless Online…
Blue Protocol’s benchmark tool and character creator have been released - Do you want to know if your computer can handle Blue Protocol? Do you want to try out creating a character within the game's creation engine? Do you read Japanese?…
Avalon is the latest blockchain metaverse project from old-school MMO devs - I know, I know, another one of these metaverse-blockchain-Web3 startups, but this one is one that MMORPG fans will want to at least take note of because of who precisely…
Perfect Ten: 10 small Guild Wars 2 details that make it special - I find that there's this special window of time that happens when you return to an old favorite MMO that shouldn't be missed. It's only about the first week or…
Final Fantasy XIV opens another ticket lottery for the London Fan Festival in October - European fans, were you feeling left out of the Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival Vegas hoopla? No longer: Square-Enix took the wraps off the London Fan Festival this morning, and…
Korean Elyon fans have already created a rogue server of the shuttered MMORPG - Fans of Elyon in both Korea and the west were basically being kicked out of the MMORPG by Kakao Games, with a December sunset in our portion of the globe…
Massively on the Go: Pokemon GO’s Hoenn Tours had the lowest value of all tours to date - While I thought Pokemon Go's Las Vegas Hoenn Tour was bad, the Global one was somehow worse. Now, to be clear, there is a difference between "services rendered" and "fun."…
Destiny 2’s Lightfall and Season of Defiance are officially live - It's finally here: Destiny 2's Lightfall expansion is officially live as of this afternoon, on every dang platform the game works on, along with the Season of Defiance.[AL:D2] "Lightfall is…
Funcom’s Dune Awakening teases exploration, survival, and ‘bespoke’ crafting - Way back in 2019, Funcom inked a deal to build a DUNE survival game, but just how MMO-like the game would be has remained an open question. In 2020, Funcom…
Choose My Adventure: New tutorials and old habits see Destiny 2’s hooks set in - I'm going to admit it to myself: In spite of my misgivings about what awaits me at the endgame, I can feel myself getting wrapped up in Destiny 2 all…
The Front is a new survival shooter coming in 2023 with 10 ‘distinct survival indices’ to track - Heads-up, folks, we got a new MMO acronym comin' in hot: survival-open-world-crafting aka SOC. Will it stick? Well, Samar Studio's new "SOC" called The Front sure hopes so, but it…
Not So Massively: Impressions of Century Age of Ashes’ new PvE mode - Back in 2021, I took a look at an early version of dragon-riding arena shooter Century: Age of Ashes. I found that its core gameplay held promise, but the game…
Wisdom of Nym: Where is Final Fantasy XIV’s story going post-6.3? - As we all know, at this point Final Fantasy XIV is the story of Zero and how we all absolutely want her to live happily with at least 30 cats.…
Former Wildstar devs call Wayfinder ‘the second coming’ of the sunsetted MMORPG - Are you excited for Wayfinder? Good for you because it's more fun to like things than to hate on them. You know who else is excited? Some of the former…
Ashes of Creation offers a deeper look at its updated UI elements and the steps taken to make them - Last month, Ashes of Creation did offer a look at some UI elements, but its last preview video was primarily about tank classes. This time around, its latest development video…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 411: The way to Wayfinder
Battle Bards Episode 222: World of Warcraft Dragonflight
The Stream Team: Returning to the wild and wooly world of Chimeraland
The Stream Team: Black Desert celebrates seven years
The Stream Team: Catching King Makai in AdventureQuest 3D
The Stream Team: Taking our first steps into Destiny 2’s Lightfall expansion
The Stream Team: Hunting down Dungeons & Dragons Online’s Haywire again
The Stream Team: Getting the drops on Guild Wars 2 freebies
The Stream Team: Celebrating Little Ladies’ Day and learning a new dance in Final Fantasy XIV
The Stream Team: What Lies Beneath Guild Wars 2
The Stream Team: Quest log clearing in Elder Scrolls Online
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.
