Elder Scrolls Online stunned – even panicked – many MMO players this week with the revelation that it’s cutting its cadence back and canceling the expansion-esque annual chapters that have anchored the game since 2017’s Morrowind. While devs say there will still be content (and plenty of fixing-up of the base game, which does sorely need it), gamers are now worried about what the new seasonal model will portend in terms of monetization.
Meanwhile, we grimly admitted that Dauntless’ mess is as bad as it looks, got simultaneously nervous and excited for LOTRO’s roadmap, looked forward to WoW’s Undermined patch, and welcomed a preliminary version of Star Citizen’s alpha 4.0.
Plus, we’ve continued handing out our annual awards; this week, we delivered awards for the biggest blunder, best trend, best new class, biggest disappointment, best studio, stormiest future, and best PvP. The Golden Yachties have begun as well! Happy Christmas, MMO gamers – don’t miss all the big winter holidays going on in MMOs right now!
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
Elder Scrolls Online ends its chapter-based cadence in favor of a seasonal model in 2025 - We've been speculating for the last few weeks on what would be in the Elder Scrolls Online end-of-the-year letter and whether it would portend a change-up to the game's content…
WoW Factor: The pros and cons of stripping timer requirements from World of Warcraft’s Mythic+ runs - So the other day, an interesting topic came up in our feeds: Apparently, at least if you go by the survey, World of Warcraft's designers are thinking about stripping out…
The Soapbox: The Dauntless Awakening update is just as bad as advertised for veteran players - I was hoping against hope that I wouldn't have to write that headline. I've been a Dauntless fan and player for many years now, getting into the game during its…
MassivelyOP’s 2024 Awards: Biggest MMO Disappointment - Welcome back to Massively Overpowered's formal end-of-the-year awards! Today's award is for the Biggest MMO Disappointment, which was awarded to Digital Extremes abandoning Wayfinder last year. Disappointments can be games, launches,…
Vitae Aeternum: Analyzing New World’s 2025 ‘living roadmap’ - Covering New World's new "living roadmap" for 2025 seems like something I should have gotten to sooner, but in my defence I've been battling one of the worst flus of…
MassivelyOP’s 2024 Awards: Best PvP MMO - Welcome back to Massively Overpowered's formal end-of-the-year awards! Today's award is for the Best PvP MMO, which was awarded to Albion Online last year. We halted this older award after 2017…
Lord of the Rings Online’s 2025 roadmap includes an expansion and new 64-bit servers - I'm sorry but what is this - a Lord of the Rings Online roadmap published before Christmas?! I might still be scarred from the year we didn't get a roadmap…
MassivelyOP’s 2024 Awards: MMO with the Stormiest Future - Welcome back to Massively Overpowered's formal end-of-the-year awards! Today's award is for the MMO with the Stormiest Future, which was awarded to Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen last year. Years…
Dune Awakening shares closed beta stats and answers questions about PvP death and Landsraad benefits - The final Dune: Awakening newsletter for this year is online, and as one might expect, it's mostly a retrospective of the year that was in terms of the developing survival…
Elite Dangerous begins its holiday event and talks space colonization as the Thargoid War ends - There is a whole lot of curiosity about Elite: Dangerous' upcoming colonization feature (as one might expect), which means that Frontier Developments had plenty of questions that it tried to…
There’s still no ETA for the return of Corepunk’s servers, but there are test shards up now - We probably don't need to reiterate what dreadfully bad luck it is to have your early access MMORPG offline the whole week before Christmas, but that's the situation that's confronted…
MassivelyOP’s 2024 Awards: MMO Studio of the Year - Welcome back to Massively Overpowered's formal end-of-the-year awards! Today's award is for the MMO Studio of the Year, which was awarded to Standing Stone Games last year. We asked our…
World of Warcraft previews the features of its Undermined update as Winter Veil brings the Christmas spirit - The time is almost here when World of Warcraft players will get to experience Goblin Nar Shadaa, aka the city of Undermine, in patch 11.1. That means it's time for…
Winter holiday events around the MMORPG world, 2024 edition - As the year winds down, it's a good time to throw another log on the virtual fireplace, heat up your favorite beverage, and settle in with an MMO holiday event...…
Star Citizen alpha 4.0 releases as a ‘preview’ version that runs parallel to the ongoing alpha 3.24.3 - CIG promised over and over that Star Citizen would get its alpha 4.0 release before the end of this year, and technically speaking, it delivered that goal: The new alpha…
Massively Overthinking: Our MMO predictions for 2025 - This might just be my favorite roundtable of the year: It's time to lay down our predictions for the MMORPG genre for 2025. And as usual, we have to add…
Ghost promises it’s an MMO and not a lobby title, discusses wider gameplay and design plans - With the Ghost MMO project wrapping up its development in 2024, it's time once again for the devs at Fantastic Pixel Castle to come together and talk about it in…
New World’s PvP seasonal worlds and season 7 launch January 21 - At the end of November, Amazon finally released a roadmap for New World, revealing its plan to launch the PvP-themed season 7 early in 2025. As of today, we have…
Casually Classic: Putting a cap on WoW Classic’s crazy 2024 run - While it got overshadowed by World of Warcraft's 20th anniversary this year, WoW Classic's fifth birthday was a thing that happened as well. It couldn't have taken place in a…
Vague Patch Notes: MMORPG accelerationism is a stupid sucker’s game - The most recent Warframe update starts with a solid chunk of story, and the story that it tells is that of a time loop. And without spoiling exactly what happens…
Amazon already greenlit a second season of its videogame-themed Secret Level series - We've given two takes on Amazon's Secret Level TV series so far, specifically on the New World episode, as it was the core MMORPG represented in the show. I thought…
Once Human 2025 roadmap promises Visional Wheel system, new scenarios, and mobile launch - NetEase-owned Starry Studio looks to have some big plans for the survival MMO Once Human in 2025. That's the message being offered from the studio in a 30 minute-long year-end…
Ashes of Creation starts up the second phase of Alpha Two this weekend - So how glorious are you feeling these days? We know that Ashes of Creation loves to call its community glorious, and this glorious Friday the game is gloriously starting the…
Lost Ark’s Winter Soloist update is live with a solo mode expansion and the new ‘destined protection’ system - Lost Ark's big winter update, Winter Soloist, is officially here today, and that's not a reference to music: It's the introduction to an infusion of content for the game's solo…
End-of-Year Eleven: The biggest MMO stories of 2024 - So here's the disclaimer I put in front of this column every year when I do it (we alternate them): The biggest surprises list (which was last week) is the…
Vitae Aeternum: New World’s Secret Level episode and Amazon’s odd priorities - Last week, Amazon's Prime Video launched its Secret Level anthology series of short animated episodes based on a variety of games. Included in this is The Once and Future King,…
Blizzard’s 2024 infographic is light on useful info, but gamers did play 8.34B hours in Blizz games this year - Blizzard president Johanna Faries penned a dev blog to the Blizzard community last night, with kind words for players and developers alongside one of those infographics that offer a lot…
MassivelyOP’s 2024 Awards: Best New MMO Class - Welcome back to Massively Overpowered's formal end-of-the-year awards! Today's award is for the Best New MMO Class, which was awarded to Elder Scrolls Online's Arcanist last year. The award is…
Helldivers 2 makes fans mad with pricing for its limited-time Killzone collab cash shop offerings - Don't look now, but Helldivers 2 has stepped in it with its playerbase again: A new offering added to the in-game cash shop today blended the co-op shooter with the…
Co-op skyship survivalbox Echoes of Elysium will be published by Snail Games - Remember Echoes of Elysium, the multiplayer survivalbox coming from Loric Games? It's one of multiple co-op skyship-themed sandboxes we've been watching for the last few years, and in fact, this past…
World of Warcraft’s Siren Isle update goes live this evening with a new zone and Plunderstorm - Is World of Warcraft's Siren Isle named that because there's a bird native to the island that has a call which sounds like "WEEE-OOOO" and it screams a lot? Is…
Tarisland celebrates the holidays with snowball fights, buff-granting cookies, and an ice giant December 18 - Tarisland will not be ignoring the Christmas season in its first year of life, but that's not a surprise considering Tencent promised a seasonal event this month. Now players have…
World of Warcraft is surveying players on removing the Mythic+ timer and replacing it with a death counter - In any sort of combat-focused gameplay, the player character is generally seeking to not die. (Also during non-combat-focused gameplay, to be fair, but the number of times that characters in Cooking…
Working As Intended: The hits and misses of our 2024 MMO predictions - Later this week, we're going to be offering up our traditional predictions for the MMO genre in 2025, but before we do that, we have to look at our predictions…
MassivelyOP’s 2024 Awards: Best MMO Trend - Welcome back to Massively Overpowered's formal end-of-the-year awards! Today's award is for the Best MMO Trend, which was awarded to the silver lining of MMO delays last year. This award…
Final Fantasy XIV patches in Chaotic Cloud of Darkness, custom deliveries, and more Hildibrand quests - If you're looking forward to seeing how a nigh-indestructible inspector is doing, fighting an even harder form of a raid boss, or handing crafted stuff over to a lion mom,…
Star Wars Galaxies Restoration’s new playable species, combat tree revamp, and Life Day are live - When Star Wars Galaxies rogue server SWG Restoration announced a major customization and combat tree overhaul earlier this month, we didn't imagine it was launching so soon. But in fact,…
Dauntless details plans to change rewards, progression, and gear after Awakening’s player backlash - Both gamers and our own writers agree that the Dauntless Awakening update is just plain awful, with limited weapon options, hamstrung build crafting features, and overly aggressive monetization practices like…
Wisdom of Nym: Reflecting on Final Fantasy XIV’s custom delivery clients - Tomorrow's patch will mark the latest in the long line of custom delivery clients in Final Fantasy XIV, but oddly enough I don't think I've ever really talked much about…
Sandbox MMORPG The Quinfall announces early access release date of January 25 - Over the past several months we've been covering The Quinfall, Vawraek Technology's open world sandbox MMORPG, which made its arrival to gamers' notice in one of the most worrying ways…
Albion Online plans updates to economy, Outlands, and release timing in 2025 - It's been a packed year for the PvP sandbox Albion Online, and what better way to look back at the year that was than with game director Robin Henkys sitting…
MassivelyOP’s 2024 Awards: Biggest MMO Blunder - Welcome back to Massively Overpowered's formal end-of-the-year awards! Today's award is for the Biggest MMO Blunder, which was awarded to Overwatch's MMO-esque-PvE bungle. (Yes, we do sometimes extend this award…
Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen’s early access launch weekend saw over 2300 concurrent Steam players - After years of development, tragedy, course changes, and a few moments of controversy, Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen is now out in the wild as an early access title. So…
Star Wars: The Old Republic touts 2024’s modernization efforts, updates, and Mac beta - Compared to some of the cadence of the big dogs in the MMO genre, Star Wars: The Old Republic might not be producing the same sheer volume of content, but…
Ashes of Creation previews new dungeon, new races, and player housing added in Alpha Two phase two - It's a sequel to a sequel to an alpha! OK, not really, but Ashes of Creation is indeed moving forward to phase two of its Alpha Two, and as that…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 498: Pantheon’s power play
The Stream Team: Drilling Deeper and hunting Yuletide Elves in Deep Rock Galactic for the holidays
The Stream Team: On the 13th anniversary, SWTOR gave to me…
The Stream Team: Cozy winter vibin’ in the Holiday Homestead of Palia
The Stream Team: Night Falls on Stormreach in Dungeons & Dragons Online
The Stream Team: Astroneer’s Glitchwalkers vs Project C.H.E.E.R.
The Stream Team: Taking on the Illuminate with a battle buddy in Helldivers 2
The Stream Team: The cat’s heist in Guild Wars 2
The Stream Team: The secret behind Elder Scrolls Online’s When the Ground Shook
The Stream Team: Soaking up the Christmas cheer in Final Fantasy XIV’s Starlight celebration
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.
