PlanetSide 2 is undergoing another round of upheaval this week as EG7-owned Daybreak announced that it’s transferring development of the game over to EG7-owned Toadman, following news from earlier this year that the IP has been sold to a third party. It’s not entirely clear what’s happened to the Rogue Planet staff at Daybreak who’d been working on the game.
Meanwhile, World of Warcraft opened beta signups for The War Within, Life is Feudal is back, Guild Wars 2’s retro Super Adventure Box is live again, Legends of Aria is getting a revival, Elder Scrolls Online suffered a nasty rollback, and LOTRO is celebrating its 17th birthday.
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
EG7 transfers PlanetSide 2 development from Daybreak to Toadman, posts 2024 roadmap - Ever since Daybreak's February investor report that admitted the company had sold off a "noncore IP for USD 5.9 million" to "[provide] EG7 with further improvement to its liquidity" -…
Former Blizzard boss Mike Ybarra thinks players should be able to tip developers for their work - Now that former Blizzard president Mike Ybarra has free time on his hands, he's apparently spending some of it pondering how to make our late-stage capitalist hellscape of a life…
Casually Classic: Four lessons we’ve learned from WoW Classic’s Season of Discovery so far - As I write this, we're still a long way off from the end of WoW Classic's Season of Discovery. A final stretch of leveling with all of its secrets lies…
Life is Feudal MMO continues its comeback with a relaunch on Steam - In May of 2023, we learned that the MMO portion of Life is Feudal was coming back from its 2021 sunset under the stewardship of Long Tale Games, a company…
Guild Wars 2’s retro Super Adventure Box returns today with World 3 Test Zone updates - Retro music at the ready, folks: It's time to go back to Super Adventure Box in Guild Wars 2 as the one-time April Fools' Day event is back again this…
LOTRO Legendarium: Looking back and ahead at LOTRO’s 17th birthday - At the start of Fellowship of the Ring, Bilbo Baggins famously celebrates his 111th birthday (alongside Frodo's own 33rd birthday). He looks back at a life well lived but also…
Perfect Ten: The 10 types of MMO rotation - Rotations! They're not just just for your tires any more; they're in your MMORPGs, determining what order you should press the shiny buttons on the bottom of your screen in…
Chronicles of Elyria’s Jeromy Walsh holds a ‘fireside chat’ that’s long on promise but short on timelines - Jeromy Walsh, the remaining developer on the multiple pieces of Chronicles of Elyria, is continuing to use his Discord server as a place to talk up plans and ideas, this…
Kickstarted MMORPG Legends of Aria is relaunching as Legends of Aria Classic on May 9 - When last we looked in on Legends of Aria, it was fading fast into unfortunate obscurity. The Kickstarted MMORPG - originally known as Shards Online - had been one of…
Ghost dev Brian Holinka broadly discusses the MMO’s combat model - The name of Brian Holinka will very likely be familiar to MMORPG fans, primarily for his work as lead combat designer for World of Warcraft, so naturally it stands to…
Massively Overthinking: MMOs and ‘fresh piece of gum’ syndrome - Back in March, MOP reader Exarch Cathedra posted a comment to a Daily Grind about daily logins and sticky MMOs that caught my attention, and not just because it was…
Skull & Bones is already on 50% discount two months after launch - After being delayed approximately four thousand times, to the point that we were even making jokes about it to the date it released, how has Ubisoft's piratical online adventure Skull…
Vague Patch Notes: Getting meta in MMORPGs - This week, MOP's Chris ran afoul of the MMO meta when he was going through New World. Only he... didn't, not really. He ran afoul of something that looks a…
City of Heroes Homecoming unveils huge community-driven base building initiative - If you've been enjoying our tours of our favorite City of Heroes supergroup bases and portal hubs on the officially licensed Homecoming servers, then you're in for a treat as…
Entropia Universe announces plans to have an ‘AI president’ manage its MMO - Entropia Universe has not been one to ignore a big shiny bandwagon - remember that this MMO has tried to hawk egg NFTs and seen its players pay eye-watering amounts…
Not So Massively: Godsworn made me break my ‘no early access’ rule - I'm pretty blasé about most monetization in games, but there are a few things that I don't like, and charging for early access is near the top of the list.…
Heroes of the Storm is getting its biggest post-maintenance mode patch yet - After causing a stir with some small patches late last year and earlier in 2024, Blizzard's MOBA Heroes of the Storm is back again with its biggest patch yet since…
World of Warcraft shows off the ways that Warbands will share currency, items, and reputations - Your Warband is going to share everything. Clothes, money, social standing, even boyfriends. That's the big takeaway from the new entry on Warbands from World of Warcraft, which shows off…
Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two Interactive lays off 600 employees and axes game projects - The wave of job cuts flooding the games industry doesn't appear to be slowing down anytime soon, as this time around Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two Interactive has announced it's…
Elder Scrolls Online *might* have all rolled-back accounts unlocked by the end of the week - Earlier this week, Elder Scrolls Online players were annoyed by a nasty bug that duplicated their efforts between the PTS and North American live servers, resulting in downtime for everyone…
Last Oasis, four years in early access, finally releases its modkit and teases season 6 (again) - Last Oasis has been a side-eye magnet in the MMO world for a few years now. The "woodpunk" survival MMORPG had the misfortune to launch into early access in March…
Gaijin’s ocean adventure MMO Age of Water delays early access a week - Gaijin's seafaring survival MMO Age of Water was intended to rolled into the smooth ocean of early access tomorrow, but it's choppy waters instead, as the publisher and studio Three…
Lord of the Rings Online patches up ahead of tomorrow’s hamster event I mean anniversary event - It looks as though Lord of the Rings Online is closing a small loophole that allowed players to fish out a legendary tracery by manipulating the instance settings. Today's Update…
Neverwinter previews Adventures in Wildspace’s new dungeon, heroic encounters, and more - Following a worrying bit of silence and slower development on Neverwinter's front, it's certainly good to see that a huge module is heading our way next week. Currently, Adventures in…
Lost Ark’s Darkness Unleashed is live with the Thaemine Legion Raid and gear transcendence - Amazon has successfully patched Lost Ark's April update as of this morning: Dubbed Darkness Unleashed, this is the patch with the Thaemine Legion Raid, which the studio has been previewing…
New World’s Springtide Bloom is here with new rewards and a host of Slayer Script fixes - New World players are waking up this morning to the 5.0.1 update and the dawn of Springtide Bloom, an event that has quickly become the Most Spring in any MMORPG…
Black Desert just overhauled its gear enhancement system with a major QOL addition, the Ancient Anvil - Black Desert is continuing to bolster its gearing enhancement system, this week with the new Ancient Anvil upgrade live today, meant to improve players' quality-of-life by taking the sting out…
Abyss is open now for playtesting ahead of its early access launch, delayed to May 7 - It wasn't all that long ago that the PvP MMORPG Abyss promised it was going to open testing for free ahead of the game's actual early access launch. Well, the…
Mad World will condense all of its regional servers into one single server April 25 - So hey, how are things going for Mad World? Well, if the OARPG's latest announcement is to be taken at face value, things possibly aren't so sunny considering every regional…
Choose My Adventure: Battling New World tank builds, the wider meta, and personal stubbornness - New World is getting under my skin. I'll better explain myself soon, but before I do, I want to point out that this sudden frustration with the game is likely due…
Fight or Kite: Gigantic is a fantastic MOBA, but it’s missing a bit of Q and A and TLC - Over the last couple of months, I’ve been keeping a cursory eye on the development and release of Gigantic: Rampage Edition - another resurrected MOBA game. I suppose I’m on…
Grand Theft Auto Online hikes its optional monthly subscription fee GTA+ by two bucks - Stealing cars, gunrunning, and building a criminal empire in Grand Theft Auto Online is about to become more expensive. Starting on June 11th for existing subs (and immediately for new…
Metaverse MMO Avalon gets $10M investment, talks up its game features, AI tools, and Web3 - Depending on one's point of view, this news is either the next step forward for Jeffrey Butler's gestating MMO Avalon or proof that investors will throw money at anything if…
Elder Scrolls Online is rolling back a ton of NA accounts after last night’s PTS database fiasco - If you happened to log into the PC NA server for Elder Scrolls Online last night, well, you couldn't log into Elder Scrolls Online last night. That's because a major…
Ubisoft pulls The Crew 1 from player libraries, encourages them to ‘check the store to pursue your adventures’ - Last March was the final bell tolling for multiplayer racer The Crew 1, as Ubisoft completed an announced sunsetting of its servers, effectively making the game unplayable. It looks as…
World of Warcraft opens beta signups for The War Within - The hour of testing has arrived for World of Warcraft's next expansion... well, sort of. The hour of signing up for the hour of testing has arrived. More accurately the…
LawBreakers fans have created an emulator – with Cliff Bleszinski’s stamp of approval - Do you miss Boss Key Productions' team vs. team FPS LawBreakers? If you're among those who were left twisting in the wind after its 2018 shutdown, then you'll perhaps be…
Wisdom of Nym: Benchmarks, better graphics, and bountiful schedules for Final Fantasy XIV - What kind of deal does Final Fantasy XIV have with the Yo-Kai Watch people? For some reason this event keeps not just re-running but actively expanding each time, despite the fact…
Albion Online is shaken to its Foundations with today’s massive territory update - While Albion Online is currently in the middle of open beta for the Albion Europe server - players have just under nine days to go until that server has officially…
Blizzard’s return to China has already counted over two million interested WoW players - After over a year of bad blood following the removal of most all Blizzard's games from China, the World of Warcraft studio is poised to return to the country thanks…
Space exploration sandbox Starship Simulator successfully funds at over $497K - Getting to command, tinker, fix, explore, decorate, and control your own detailed virtual spaceship looks even more promising with the recent news that FleetYard Studios' Starship Simulator successfully funded on…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 465: Remixing Pandaria
The Stream Team: Backseat Streaming checks out Your Only Move is Hustle
The Stream Team: Hunting for the big robot doggos in Helldivers 2
The Stream Team: Fashion distractions and Super Adventure Box in Guild Wars 2
The Stream Team: Daring to do Warframe’s Dante Unbound
The Stream Team: Looking for lore in DDO’s Ravenloft
The Stream Team: A first foray into Planet Crafter multiplayer
The Stream Team: The starting steps of a Necromancer kitty in Elder Scrolls Online
The Stream Team: Answering A Plea from the Woods in AQ3D for Earth Day
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.
