The first episode of the third season of Guild Wars 2’s living world story launched this week. Out of the Shadows brings along with it a revamped, pirate-themed PvP map and a fractal. Even if you’re busy with one of the other many content releases going on this midsummer, don’t forget you can still bank this episode to play it when you wanna. Yay, content!
Read on for the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions.
POKEMON GO
Pokemon Go: Building bridges, crashing cars, and whitehat hacking
Pokemon Go: Drones, Tesla autopilot, finding Ditto, and dirty cheaters
Pokemon Go: Swatting, Fukushima, pay-to-win, and accessory delays
Pokemon Go: A Vegas shootout, trolling the White House, and 50M Google Play downloads
Pokemon Go: Stock plummet, trolling, design fails, and crossing the Canadian border
THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES
Flameseeker Chronicles: Guild Wars 2’s new Living Story has launched - [AL:GW2]Wowee, is it ever a massive day in the life of my favourite MMO! If you log in right now, you'll notice three greatly anticipated additions to Guild Wars 2 as…
World of Warcraft unlocks Demon Hunters on August 9 - Demon Hunters, start your engines! Blizzard announced this afternoon that it will be unlocking the newest class on August 9th for players who have pre-purchased World of Warcraft: Legion. According to…
Rhode Island investigators will not criminally charge 38 Studios - Neither Curt Schilling's 38 Studios nor the state of Rhode Island will be subjected to criminal charges after years of investigation into the bankruptcy case. Rhode Island's State Police Superintendent…
BioWare to close all game forums except SWTOR’s - BioWare is shutting down its game forums... except those for Star Wars: The Old Republic. The studio told fans of its Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and legacy franchises the bad…
WoW Factor: The Legion prepatch brings the storm front - On some level, it honestly feels weird to be excited by this patch in World of Warcraft. There's no new stuff to actually do, and I'm running up against that…
Mark Kern to Ember followers: ‘I feel a profound sense of responsibility for what happened to Firefall’ - In the wake of the apparent complete emptying of the Red 5 Studios offices this week, former Firefall founder Mark Kern is forging ahead on his own reimagining of the…
Star Trek Online starts selling incredibly expensive outfits - [AL:STO]Looking for a recipe for instant Star Trek Online community controversy? Add something, anything to the in-game store. Bam. You're welcome. This week's particular brouhaha centers around a few new…
Gotta catch all of Landmark’s cosmetic pets - If you were just thinking, I really need my own antlered bunny to follow me around in Landmark, you've hit the jackpot! No, seriously -- you might want to consider…
Revelation Online drops a blademaster trailer - My.com and Netease have a new video out today, one of the prettiest yet for the upcoming Revelation Online. This one is a trailer for the Blademaster class. "The Blademaster…
Star Citizen’s new season of Around the Verse shakes up the format - Season three of Star Citizen's long-running Around the Verse series is kicking off this week with a special guest: Chris Roberts himself. Roberts joins regular host Sandi Gardiner to introduce…
Nexon chairman steps down following corruption indictment - Kim Jung-ju is one of the richest men in South Korea and co-founder of Nexon. He also was chairman at Nexon, but he has stepped down following an indictment by…
Hearthstone’s new adventure is called One Night in Karazhan - Early this morning, Blizzard formally announced Hearthstone's next adventure: One Night in Karazhan. Yep, tuggin' on the ol' WoW nostalgia heartstrings! If you're a fan of Hearthstone's cheesier DLC, you're…
Massively Overthinking: Starting over with MMORPGs - This week's Massively Overthinking topic is from a reader named Yasser, who asked us: "If you had to pick one MMO to experience all over again as a new player,…
First impressions of World of Warcraft: Legion’s Demon Hunter - Nearly 10 years ago, the opening cinematic for World of Warcraft’s second expansion The Burning Crusade heralded the return of misguided anti-hero turned madman (madelf?) Illidan Stormrage, the first Demon…
Shroud of the Avatar raised over $130,000 last night; the not-a-launch launches today - Shroud of the Avatar's telethon yesterday raised over $130,000, Portalarium's Richard Garriott told twitter today. "Best single day ever," he wrote. "Thank you VERY much for your support. We greatly…
Fan-made StarCraft Universe goes into open beta, plans late August release - I don't think any of us is under the delusion that Blizzard is secretly working on a StarCraft MMO, no matter how insanely awesome that sounds. Fortunately, there's a fan project that's…
Tamriel Infinium: Exploring the lore behind Elder Scrolls Online’s Shadows of the Hist - I’m ashamed to admit that the Argonians are probably my least favorite of all the Elder Scrolls Online races. Perhaps this can be traced back to the Trandoshans in Stars Wars,…
The Battle of Odessen, the final chapter of SWTOR’s KOTFE, arrives August 11 - [AL:TOR]It was always going to come down to this. It's time to bring an end to Star Wars: The Old Republic's latest expansion story, and that means that players will be…
No Man’s Sky drops ‘Survive’ trailer - It's been an up-and-down week for No Man's Sky, developers for which this week announced it wouldn't require a PlayStation Plus sub and admitted it was being delayed -- again…
Tencent reveals Transformers Online, a team-based Chinese shooter - Do you lie awake at night and think that what would really compete with Overwatch is a team-based shooter based on Transformers? Apparently, the brain trust at Tencent thought exactly…
Destiny delivers its final update to ‘legacy’ consoles - Before Destiny places its Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions in their own maintenance mode bubble, the online game has one final gift for the so-called "legacy" consoles: a patch. Actually, today's…
Man drives a car into Nexon’s headquarters - So... last week we reminded you all that you should not threaten to hurt people over a video game. You also should not actually hurt someone over a video game.…
Rumor: Firefall’s Red 5 Studios has suffered mass layoffs - Former Red 5 Studios employees are suggesting the company is in big trouble today. Community Manager FadedPez has apparently been discharged from the studio. https://twitter.com/FadedPez/status/757697647075467264 Matt DeWald was a producer on…
Virtus Gaming hopes to be the next big thing for MMORPG communities - Last week, we were contacted by the purveyor of a new online gaming social media platform called Virtus Gaming. Drew Duncan's his name, and he's got a vision for the…
Wisdom of Nym: Speculating about leveling in Final Fantasy XIV’s future - Speculating about the next Final Fantasy XIV expansion is something that I engage in quite a bit, but the fact is that there's an area of the expansion that I…
Black Desert Online’s Korean version adds in a new region and underwater combat - Now that Black Desert Online has landed in North America and is humming along nicely, it's sometimes easy to forget that the game has several more updates waiting in the…
Defiance ditches its brand-new auction house - Easy come, easy go: Just two months after Defiance added a game-wide auction house, the title is now removing it entirely. According to Trion Worlds, the decision was made after…
EVE Evolved: When was EVE Online’s golden age? - [AL:EVE]In the latest Massively Overthinking article, our Patreon patron Duane got us thinking about whether the golden age of the MMO industry has passed or MMOs are actually in a better position today than they've ever…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 75: Future oracles
The Stream Team: A first look at Livelock
The Stream Team: Growing killer boats ARK: Survival Evolved
The Stream Team: Sneaking into Riders of Icarus’ frozen update
The Stream Team: Elder Scrolls Online’s Cradle of Shadows with ZeniMax
The Stream Team: Trying out Morvran in Chronicle: RuneScape Legends
The Stream Team: Back at the Black Desert quest grind
The Stream Team: Playing Ying in Paladins
The Stream Team: Preparing Storm for Marvel Heroes’ Cosmic Midtown
AND FROM OUR FRIENDS AT BLIZZARD WATCH
Warcraft movie arriving on DVD and Blu-ray in September
Thrall’s balls! New emotes added to WoW in Legion pre-patch
Know Your Lore: Gul’dan and Warlords of Draenor
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 little bits of news we didn’t cover anywhere else.
