World of Warcraft had an interesting week, as Blizzard announced some hefty changes in Retail’s next patch and hardcore mode for WoW Classic, which ought to make players happy, though they aren’t likely to quickly forget the dust-up over the company’s bizarre Discord mess, during which it tried to bind community WoW Discords to non-disparagement agreements in perpetuity. Yikes.
Meanwhile, we looked back on WildStar, Wayfinder delayed its beta again, we checked in on New World, Elder Scrolls Online dropped its Necrom trailer, and NCsoft confirmed Throne & Liberty’s delay.
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
Blizzard is finally working on an official hardcore mode for WoW Classic - There are plenty of examples of MMORPG fans coming up with new and innovative ways to enjoy their favorite games, and one such example is the creation of hardcore mode…
Design Mockument: Let’s bring back WildStar, only good this time - The other night, a couple of us were talking in work chat about missing WildStar. I also miss WildStar... or more accurately, I miss some of WildStar. I miss a…
World of Warcraft reveals Fractures in Time update with third Evoker spec and dragon daycare - So far, World of Warcraft's dev team is keeping on track to deliver its ambitious 2023 roadmap and its six updates of varying sizes. The fourth and next such drop…
World of Warcraft reviews Community Discord program following backlash over non-disparagement and tracking software clauses - On May 5th, Blizzard introduced a new feature on the European community site, the Community Discord program for World of Warcraft. The idea seems both straightforward and positive: Since there…
EVE Online has suffered chat outages all week (and they’re still happening) - Hello, EVE Online? It's us, your friends and family. We're knocking on your door because we just want to talk... but no one can talk to you. Wait, that's not…
Square-Enix FY2022: Revenues decline as company remains ‘aggressive’ on blockchain - We continue with the near-endless march of financial reports out of gaming companies in May, and this one is another biggie, as Square-Enix has put out its latest fiscal year…
Riot names A. Dylan Jadeja as its new CEO, taking over the company by by the end of 2023 - Out with the old, in with the... actually not really all that much newer. That's the process that can be ascribed to the change in leadership over at Riot Games,…
World of Warcraft patch 10.1.5 notes are up on the test realm with further unannounced changes - You might think that World of Warcraft would focus on, you know... the new patch it actually released last week. But that's boring; time to focus on patch 10.1.5, Fractures…
Diablo IV’s ‘server slam’ weekend test goes live under the shadow of pay-to-win player grumbling - Come on and jam, and join the server slam! This weekend marks the beginning of the Diablo IV "server slam" stress test weekend, and it's doing so with a little…
Diablo IV’s first season will go live in July with a 90-tier battle pass - Worried that you might blow through all of Diablo IV's offerings in the first week of launch and be left sitting on your dismembered thumbs after that? It sounds like…
NCsoft Q1 2023: NCsoft confirms Throne & Liberty’s delay to back half of 2023 - NCsoft's Q1 2023 financials have arrived, and it wasn't the best quarter for the Korean gaming giant, which saw both mobile and PC games slump to their lowest revenues in…
Some Assembly Required: Red Dead roleplay servers succeed where Red Dead Online failed - One of my all-time favorite single-player game experiences was Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2. The underserved Western genre is beautifully realized in this open-world classic. Unfortunately for MMO fans, the…
LOTRO Legendarium: A look back at Lord of the Rings Online’s Fate of Gundabad - When Lord of the Rings Online released Mines of Moria in November 2008, the expansion became one of the most amusedly divisive in the game's history. Some players, to this…
Little Orbit’s ‘Web 2.5’ platform that lets players sell digital creations is just another blockchain pitch - Last August, Little Orbit, the studio that's known to MMO players as the stewards for APB: Reloaded and Fallen Earth, talked up its blockchain gaming scheme associated with its developing…
Mad World promises ‘new beginning’ with better stability, gameplay tweaks, and ‘less mad’ management - It is now very clear that Mad World's takeoff has been less than good, as developer Jandisoft has been hammering in multiple patches to fix bugs, stability, and other issues…
Final Fantasy XIV confirms May 23 launch date and additional content details for The Dark Throne update - The newest Live Letter from Final Fantasy XIV has just wrapped up, and it is once again full of information regarding the MMORPG's Patch 6.4: The Dark Throne, including a…
UK government body issues order that blocks Microsoft and Activision-Blizzard from ‘acquiring an interest’ in each other - Despite the multi-billion dollar deal between Activision-Blizzard and Microsoft slowly making forward movement in multiple smaller markets and potentially one very large market, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority has…
Massively Overthinking: What’s your monthly MMO budget? - Unless you are fabulously wealthy, you probably maintain some sort of budget for your discretionary expenses, and if MMOs had their way, they'd claim all of it. You'd be spending…
NCsoft’s Aion Classic launches the Revenant class and new Telos zone - Aion Classic's big news this spring has until now been focused on the launch of Classic in Europe under the Gameforge sigil, but this week, NCsoft's North American version of…
VR MMO Ilysia postpones beta again, now indefinitely, over account issues - VR MMO Ilysia is once again suffering a delay, this time for its planned beta, which was meant to begin this weekend. Readers will recall the game was funded on…
Zenith’s Skyward Summit update is live today with a new zone and Cyber Ninja class - VR MMORPG Zenith is officially opening up the Skyward Summit update for players as of today - "the biggest patch [developer RamenVR has] launched to date," according to the presser.…
Blizzard devs lament talent bleed and Diablo IV support capacity following return-to-office mandate - Last month, we reported on a producer for World of Warcraft who expressed his frustration about seeing developers leave Blizzard, saying the team has resorted to “crisis maps” for what…
Vague Patch Notes: You cannot win on pay-to-win - I want you to put a game in your head that you think is pay-to-win. No, you do not have to say it out loud or write it down. For…
Pearl Abyss Q1 2023: Black Desert and EVE Online revenues continue to decline - Pearl Abyss' flurry of promotion and trailer drops this week might have been an early clue that its Q1 wasn't looking so hot, and that does indeed turn out to…
Elder Scrolls Online drops action-packed new trailer for June’s Necrom expansion - Just yesterday, we were noting that it should be time for ZeniMax Online Studios to crank up the hype machine for Necrom, The Elder Scrolls Online's tentpole campaign/expansion for 2023,…
New World yanks some of its seasonal challenges for being too challenging - New World's first seasonal pass hasn't been the smooth, exciting experience that Amazon hoped it would be -- and now the studio is taking action to tamp down on a…
Lord of the Rings Online begins testing Update 36 and the King’s Gondor region - Bullroarer is open for business in Lord of the Rings Online, and this particular run on the test server is a big deal as it's got quite a bit of…
Wayfinder officially delays its closed beta, again, now to May 24 - Yesterday, we covered a second delay to Wayfinder's global closed beta. Today, we're covering a third, as Airship Syndicate has formally bumped the test run another two weeks to May…
Electronic Arts ends 2023 fiscal year with $7.4B in revenue, talks up investment in ‘games as a platform’ - The numbers are in for Electronic Arts' fourth quarter and its overall 2023 fiscal year, and by all accounts, the behemoth is still behemoth-sized. The report's figures count up the…
The EU is apparently set to approve Microsoft’s Activision-Blizzard buyout after all - When the UK's Competition and Markets Authority put the brakes on Microsoft's acquisition of Activision-Blizzard at the end of April, we saw multiple pundits suggest the EU might follow suit.…
Perfect Ten: Romantic ideas for an MMO virtual date - While MMOs may not last forever -- or even a few years, in some cases -- the relationships forged in them can endure long past these games' expiration dates. I…
Lost Ark’s May release is here and ready to slay with the new Slayer class - After what's actually been an excessive amount of preamble - not that we aim to complain about communication and previews, mind you - Lost Ark's May release is finally upon…
Black Desert’s Land of the Morning Light expansion will launch in June – here’s the new trailer - [AL:BDO]Just yesterday, we noted that while we knew Black Desert's Land of the Morning Light was still on the way, we still didn't have a hard date for its launch.…
Peridot, Niantic’s newest Pokemon Go lookalike, is live on iOS and Android today - A year ago, Pokemon Go and Ingress studio Niantic announced a new MMOARG not attached to an existing IP: Peridot. The pitch was that it would involve "caring for, raising,…
Torchlight Infinite officially launches out of early access tonight - It's official launch day for mobile-and-PC Torchlight Infinite, or launch night, rather, as the doors formally open at 8 p.m. EDT this evening. If you gave it a pass back…
Embers Adrift vows to ‘never’ add PvP to the game, promises free play weekend in June - Following the publish of its Shrieks in the Deep patch in late April, Embers Adrift is keeping spring springy with community events in May and the promise of a free…
Choose My Adventure: Adventuring in the Borderlands of Dungeons and Dragons Online - Now this place I remember. I'm pretty sure I've done this before for the site. Or have I done it in my off-time on my own? In any event, the…
Flameseeker Chronicles: What we learned (and didn’t) from Guild Wars 2’s spring 2023 roadmap - The most nerve-wracking thing about being an MMORPG player is uncertainty. MMO players don't like change, and when a change is teased, many of us tend to rush to assume…
Elite Dangerous Update 15 goes live today – here are the patch notes - The time has come for another update to Elite: Dangerous. The 15th update, to be specific, as the Live 4.0/Odyssey edition of the spacefaring sandbox has come down for maintenance…
Star Trek Online’s Unraveled is live for PC players with new episode and TFO - As promised, Star Trek Online's Unraveled launches today - for PC players, that is. The season picks up where Terran Gambit left off, brings Kipleigh Brown back as Admiral Kuumaarke,…
APB Reloaded celebrates five years since acquisition by Little Orbit - APB Reloaded has had one hell of a run. True story, when it launched as All-Points Bulletin in 2010, it was one of the first big launches I helped cover…
Wisdom of Nym: What happens at the end of Final Fantasy XIV’s The Dark Throne? - So here's the situation as we know it right now: Either on May 23rd or May 30th, patch 6.4, The Dark Throne will release for Final Fantasy XIV. As part…
Riot Games’ $100M discrimination settlement payouts officially claimed by over 1500 affected people - This could be considered an epilogue or the final chapter of a long and sordid ordeal for affected employees of Riot Games. Back in 2018, journalists exposed a sexist and toxic…
Vitae Aeternum: A love letter to all that New World does well - When you spend a lot of time in an MMORPG, it can be easy to become bogged down in all of the game's foibles. Even minor hiccups can be amplified…
Albion Online’s Knightfall patch is live with a new dungeon and WASD movement - Albion Online's Knightfall patch has officially arrived to both East and West servers as of this morning. Sandbox Interactive has previously characterized the update as not a massive one but…
10-year-old Camelot Unchained outlines crafting, encumbrance, and NPC AI development - We're past the month of April, and that means another couple of consolidated updates from Camelot Unchained, as it gesticulates in the direction of all kinds of work and progress…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 421: Beyond time and space
The Stream Team: Combing through player-crafted courses in Fall Guys
The Stream Team: It’s One Dame Thing After Another in DDO
The Stream Team: Another round of Republic for finishing SWTOR’s Galactic Loremaster
The Stream Team: Going for gold in the Guardian Games of Destiny 2
The Stream Team: Guild Wars 2’s Entanglements
The Stream Team: Obliterating Orcs in Elder Scrolls Online
The Stream Team: Bringing dem bones in AdventureQuest 3D
The Stream Team: Cruising through creative castles to celebrate Conan Exiles’ anniversary
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.
