The time is here. After a few weeks of fighting against demonic invasions, World of Warcraft players can access the Broken Isles and start taking the fight back to their enemies in Legion. That means artifacts, order halls, 10 more levels, new quests, and all of the stuff you’d expect to find in a brand-new expansion with all sorts of stuff to do.
Players who are looking for information about the dungeons and raids – or even the basics of raiding mechanics – would be well-served by taking a look at a new resource site with the rather intuitive name of HowtoWoW, running down raid basics and specific encounter mechanics in detail. Or perhaps right now you’re mostly worried about all of the new stuff you can log in and play around with right now. We understand both. Catch up on some of our stories about Legion with our roundup just below, and stay tuned for the second and third part of our launch impressions!
First Impressions: The War Within breathes new life into World of Warcraft - After being mostly disappointed with Dragonflight, I was wondering if my decision to return to World of Warcraft for the Worldsoul Saga was a mistake. I'd already pre-ordered The War Within, so I it gave it…
Casually Classic: The five World of Warcraft mods I use as a non-modder playing The War Within - Generally, I don't use mods for MMORPGs. Or most video games. It's not that I take some high-minded principled stand against them; I have absolutely no problem with their existence or the pleasure that others take…
World of Warcraft offers a new animated short for Alleria Windrunner ahead of The War Within - For a long time, if you asked a World of Warcraft fan to identify a Windrunner, you could probably expect to hear "Sylvanas" as the response. But Alleria Windrunner has been kicking around in the game…
WoW Factor: The mulligan problem in World of Warcraft’s narrative - In World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, Illidan Stormrage gets killed. This isn't actually a surprising end for the character. Illidan as a person was someone who was driven in no small part by a sense…
Perfect Ten: Why World of Warcraft’s Legion was a top-tier expansion - While a lot of long-time World of Warcraft players will point to Wrath of the Lich King as the high point of the MMO, I've gradually formed the opinion that -- at least for me --…
Second Wind: Final thoughts on returning to World of Warcraft in 2024, from community to dragonriding - At long last, we've reached the fourth and final part of my series detailing my experiences returing to World of Warcraft after six years away. It's been a mixed bag so far as I sung the…
WoW Factor: The streak The War Within needs to break for World of Warcraft - On November 13th, 2008, World of Warcraft's second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, was released to an eager population. The prior expansion, The Burning Crusade, had been well-received across both general gaming publications and specialist…
Perfect Ten: 10 reasons World of Warcraft is pure cozy comfort - There's something weird and fun that happens in my brain around this time of year, which is that I start to get into a summer mentality that seeks so-called "cozy" gaming experiences for the coming months.…
Second Wind: World of Warcraft’s Dragonflight story dragonflies right off a cliff - We come now to the third part of our four-part Second Wind series on revisiting World of Warcraft after quitting at the end of Legion. This will be the darkest chapter of our exploration of the…
Casually Classic: Three questions I have for WoW Classic’s probable Pandaria - Oh hey, Cataclysm Classic is here. You can absolutely sense the palpable excitement and community buzz over it, much the same way you can sense my sarcasm at writing this paragraph. I mean, does anyone see…
Second Wind: The problem with World of Warcraft’s Dragonflight’s class design - It's time for part two of this four part Second Wind series on revisiting World of Warcraft after many years away. In the first piece, I gushed about the vastly more casual direction the game's endgame…
WoW Factor: Guessing at World of Warcraft’s The War Within’s release date using math - Oh yeah. It's time. I actually have some thoughts to share about World of Warcraft's current Remix leveling event, which are complicated and multilayered and blend both the positive and the negative, but honestly I just…
WoW Factor: How World of Warcraft makes you cheer for removing features - Yesterday, MOP's Justin wrote a column about The Elder Scrolls Online that detailed its key virtues. It's a good column, and one of the things he mentions is that the game does not consistently introduce systems…
Second Wind: World of Warcraft’s radically casual new endgame - Today we're going to be dusting off Second Wind, a column where we revisit MMOs of the past. It's an older column, sir, but it checks out. After quitting World of Warcraft at the end of…
WoW Factor: What’s a Mists of Pandaria remix and why is World of Warcraft doing it? - In hindsight, I feel like I was gentler toward Season of Mastery than I should have been. World of Warcraft has turned everything into that. WoW Classic just went all-in on just launching as many limited-time…
WoW Factor: Blizzard didn’t reveal World of Warcraft sub numbers – it drew a Mystery Line - It will not surprise anyone reading this to learn that there are things which upset me. This is just part of being a human being; there's no greater moral architecture to it than that. The vast…
World of Warcraft GDC presentation claims ‘record post-launch stability and growth’ for Dragonflight - The World of Warcraft community is abuzz about a new Blizzard GDC 2024 presentation that relays some trends -- if not specific numbers -- for the game's population. Blizzard Senior VP John Hight posted an interesting…
WoW Factor: Steve Danuser was not really the problem with World of Warcraft - So I don't want to sit here and say "oh, things were going so great" before the news that Steve Danuser had actually left World of Warcraft a while ago broke because that would be a…
Narrative director Steve Danuser quietly left World of Warcraft last fall - It turns out that World of Warcraft's narrative director left Blizzard last November and no one said anything about it. No, that doesn't mean fans or even the company failed to notice; it just means that…
Casually Classic: When will WoW Classic stop adding expansions? - This spring, the era of Wrath Classic will officially come to an end when the Cataclysm Classic pre-patch hits ahead of the summer launch. With no current option to stay in Wrath's setting and design, the…
WoW Factor: Evaluating World of Warcraft’s 2023 progress and performance - So 2023 is not completely in the rear view yet, but at least in terms of major developments for World of Warcraft we can feel reasonably confident putting this particular year in the past tense. My…
Perfect Ten: The single best expansion from 10 MMOs - Holy crud, do I not know that I'm setting myself up for some major pushback today. Oh, I feel that to my core, friends! After all, people have Opinions about MMO expansions, especially for franchises that…
The Game Archaeologist: Firefall, an MMO tragedy about more than just a bus - Back when I first started writing for Massively and was energetic enough to go on trips to trade shows, I hit up a PAX around 2011 or 2012. As I wandered all the booths on the…
BlizzCon 2023: Everything we learned about The War Within in World of Warcraft’s What’s Next panel - This year's opening ceremony for BlizzCon did not feature the usual kickoff of a new major World of Warcraft reveal followed by a lengthy explanation; instead, the explainer was offloaded to the first panel after the…
WoW Factor: The dungeon finder really did muck up World of Warcraft’s leveling – but not the way you’re thinking - So if you missed Justin's recent column, he mentioned how bad leveling feels these days in World of Warcraft and some of the reasons that it can be a better experience in WoW Classic. I'm not…
WoW Factor: This time will not be different - The other day, I got a nasty email from a World of Warcraft fan. This is not inherently unusual; it happens a couple of times a month, I'd say. And it was almost certainly the exact…
World of Warcraft brings Hallow’s End to Azeroth once again - You are probably not scared of the dark in World of Warcraft and you definitely aren't scared of dragons, because Dragonflight is downright lousy with them. It's dragon o'clock over there. But with Hallow's End returning…
Tencent’s not-a-WoW-clone Tarisland snagged a former World of Warcraft composer for its score - It's not every day that a new MMORPG even talks about its composer or score, let alone sends 'round a press release talking up that composer's accolades, but that's exactly what Tencent is doing for Tarisland…
Previewing New World’s Rise of the Angry Earth expansion: Artifact gear, endgame, crafting, and onward - In my previous Vitae Aeternum column, I covered the big tentpole features of New World's first paid expansion, Rise of the Angry Earth, including the updated zone, new weapon, new housing, and mounts. But there was…
WoW Factor: Potential destinations for the next World of Warcraft expansion - We have a BlizzCon coming up in November. This strikes me as a phenomenally bad idea, like someone proposed it in a meeting to win back the crowd and no one mentioned that it sounded like…
Perfect Ten: Every expansion era of World of Warcraft ranked - For a long time, I have been considering this particular column just because, well, it's an obvious one. If you have a column whose entire premise is listing things and you have enough expansions to rank…
Perfect Ten: We’ll always have Glorbo - Yes, folks, you've all heard the news by now about how Glorbo is finally being added into World of Warcraft. You may, of course, think that this is all just a prank to confuse AI tools…
WoW Factor: Hardcore progression, speedrunning, and closed environments - So in one of the least surprising surprises ever, we're getting official support for hardcore realms in WoW Classic. That's not a bad thing, mind you. While I say that it's not surprising, that's because all…
Blizzard confirms that it’s working on World of Warcraft dragonriding outside of Dragon Isles - You know what's just plain fun? World of Warcraft's dragonriding. It may well be the most well-received expansion feature since Legion's artifact weapons, and ever since players got their hands on these swoopy, swishy dragons, they've…
The Soapbox: Raiding isn’t the problem with World of Warcraft - It is by now clear that World of Warcraft's Dragonflight expansion hasn't exactly set the world on fire. This has set off another round of the MMO community's favourite gameshow, "Why Is World of Warcraft Declining?"…
World of Warcraft Dragonflight readies events, articles, and a cinematic ahead of Embers of Neltharion’s launch - This week in World of Warcraft: Dragonflight is understandably all about the run-up to the Embers of Neltharion update, which means the next few days are mostly going to be about the patch. The week's schedule…
Not So Massively: Second impressions of Diablo IV - My initial impression of the Diablo IV open beta was lukewarm at best, but I did hold some hope that the second beta weekend might change things. This second beta opened up two more classes, the…
WoW Factor: Narrative justification for every missing class/race combo in World of Warcraft - As I implied in a recent post about the most recent Ion Hazzikostas interview, the line about making sure that there was a narrative justification for adding "missing" class/race combinations in World of Warcraft irked me.…
WoW Factor: Does World of Warcraft need more classes? - So how many classes are there in World of Warcraft? There are wrong answers, but there's more than one right answer. If your answer was "13," you are right. There were nine base classes when the…
Legendary World of Warcraft narrator Earl Boen dies at 81 - It's our sad duty today to inform you that Earl Boen passed away this week at the age of 81 after a battle with lung cancer. Now if you're sitting there going, "Wait, who is Earl…
WoW Factor: Why is Dragonflight’s crafting not going over well? - For a long time, World of Warcraft has suffered in the crafting department. Basically every single expansion for the game has promised overhauls and restorations of crafting to a position of utility and prominence, and none…
World of Warcraft posts a roadmap and breakdown of its plans for 2023 - It's impossible. Inconceivable. Unlikely. But it has actually happened. World of Warcraft has actually posted... a roadmap. Granted, said roadmap isn't filled with actual hard dates, but it lays out exactly what's planned for WoW over…
Epic MMO Battles of History: Azeroth vs. Final Fantasy XIV antagonists - Not every single game is comparable to every other game. That's just the reality of things. Comparing every Mega Man game to every Castlevania game doesn't really work; comparing every Mega Man game to every Final…
WoW Factor: The curious treatment of alts in World of Warcraft Dragonflight - So now that first impressions are out of the way and I can focus on other things like making sure that my alts get up to Dragonflight in World of Warcraft, I realized something unusual. It…
First impressions of World of Warcraft Dragonflight, part three: Combat, content, concerns - Eventually, you are going to have to fight something in World of Warcraft: Dragonflight. Of course, by "eventually" I actually mean "more or less immediately" because this is WoW and someone heard MC Chris ranting about…
First impressions of World of Warcraft Dragonflight, part one: Direction and narrative - While it's not really what will serve as a foundational component of my evaluation of World of Warcraft: Dragonflight as a whole, I think the clearest impression of the expansion's overall narrative and focus comes from…
WoW Factor: Updating our World of Warcraft expansion data set with the Dragonflight release date - Aw yeah, who likes math? I like math. I really like math, and you all know it, and you have to consistently sit there and read as I math things out with World of Warcraft expansion…
WoW Factor: The problem with borrowed power was never new systems - There's a bit of cognitive disconnect that I notice is still tripping up some particular fans of World of Warcraft even at this point. Let's put it succinctly: Most people were pretty happy with Artifact Weapons…
World of Warcraft rolls out Season 4 to the live servers and more Dragonflight content to test - So while people are waiting for the next expansion for World of Warcraft, Blizzard is trying something different to keep player interest. Season 4 of Shadowlands content began last night, featuring a new set of M+…
WoW Factor: So what’s the actual prediction on Dragonflight’s quality? - I was briefly considering doing another math column now that we actually have a date when World of Warcraft: Dragonflight started alpha testing, but... well, let's be real, that would be kind of redundant. My first…
WoW Factor: Looking at Dragonflight’s release schedule with math - It's been a really long time since we've gotten to have some math up ins. You know by this point that I really like having math-centric columns when it comes to expansion release dates and what-not,…
WoW Factor: How greater-scope villains harm World of Warcraft’s storytelling - Sargeras was really trying to stop the Void Lords. The Jailer was really fighting against some anonymous bigger enemy. Sylvanas was really trying to help the Jailer because she thought that a dude called "The Jailer"…
WoW Factor: The shrinking landmass of World of Warcraft’s ‘Azeroth’ - Last week in this column, I told y'all a bit of a bluff. Well, all right, that's not true. Last week's column was about what the point of Shadowlands ultimately was when it comes to World…
Perfect Ten: MMO critters so cute it makes your teeth hurt - I vividly remember a conversation I had with my then-girlfriend's parents back in 1996 about the potential of this growing "internet" phenomenon. With my limited understanding, I made it sound downright noble, a Library of Congress…
World of Warcraft’s Steve Danuser promises that big sword in Silithus is still something to keep an eye on - So, uh... hey, remember when Azeroth got stabbed with a sword? It was the end of the last World of Warcraft everyone mostly agreed was good? It was kind of a big deal! Or at least, it seemed…
The Game Archaeologist: Six cancelled MMOs that I wish had launched - In my lengthy tenure writing The Game Archaeologist -- which dates back to May 2010, if you can believe it -- I've covered MMOs that generally fell into three categories. These games are either famous ones…
WoW Factor: World of Warcraft: Dragonflight isn’t going to fix everything that’s broken at Blizzard - I really wanted to write a different column this week. I really did. But wouldn't you know it, Activision-Blizzard had to remind everyone that it's a horrible company along the way, and so here we are.…
The Perfect Ten: 10 MMO NPCs as muffins - You’ve all seen those memes or Twitter threads that try to link celebrities or people to food items or other inanimate objects, but I’m not sure that there’s been anyone who has tried to link up…
World of Warcraft outlines plans for season 4 of Shadowlands item grinding - On April 19th, Blizzard is going to reveal the plans for the next expansion for World of Warcraft. But it doesn't seem that the team expects that to be out any time soon, as it's already…
WoW Factor: Examining the muted reaction to World of Warcraft’s Eternity’s End - If this is what Blizzard listening looks like, folks, now is the time to be concerned for the future of World of Warcraft. All right, that's slightly hyperbolic because the time to be concerned for the future…
World of Warcraft patch 9.1.5 arrives today as Ion Hazzikostas finally pipes up - As Patch 9.1.5 pulls into World of Warcraft's port today, it encounters an MMO that is battered and a studio that is heavily bruised. The game itself has struggled through a lackluster expansion cycle with far…
World of Warcraft previews the Legion Timewalking coming in patch 9.1.5 while promising to make old starter gear available again - The big centerpiece of content coming to World of Warcraft with patch 9.1.5 on November 2nd is actually an event full of old content, because it's time for Legion timewalking to arrive at long last. There's even…
World of Warcraft nerfs several Legion raids for solo play - Let's take a moment to close our eyes and think back to several years ago when Legion was the current landscape of World of Warcraft. Remember when people actually loved the expansion they were in? That…
WoW Classic releases Overlords of Outland, WoW Patch 9.1.5 undergoes additional testing - The watchword of World of Warcraft this week is "patches." Patches of patches of patches. Miles of patches. Patches of all shapes, sizes, and attitudes. WoW Classic got a big one thanks to the release of…
WoW Factor: What do changes in Blizzard management mean for World of Warcraft? - Blizzard is going through some changes at the moment. This is a good thing, as Blizzard has made it clear that it is a gigantic open sewer long filled with vile predators and people who enabled…
Craig Morrison announces his departure from Blizzard - It's time for the departure of yet another name you might recognize from Blizzard, but you might recognize him from other projects as well. Craig Morrison has announced via Twitter that he is no longer at…
WoW Factor: Why Blizzard’s line about story beats is so frustrating - So the most recent roundup of interviews with World of Warcraft's staff deeply hurt me on a fundamental level. Like, this was the sort of hurting that doesn't go away; it just sort of roils in…
Casually Classic: What retail WoW could (re)learn from Burning Crusade Classic’s class progression - Now that we're weeks into Burning Crusade Classic, players are discovering that despite many antiquated design elements, this expansion is still a whole lot of fun with scads of stuff to do. While many (but not…
WoW Factor: We’re waiting how long for Shadowlands’ patch 9.1, now? - So it looks like World of Warcraft's next patch is going up for testing on the week of April 12th. What the heck is happening? At best, this just explains that the reason for such a threadbare presentation…
WoW Factor: What I want to hear from World of Warcraft during BlizzConline - So hey, BlizzConline is coming up very soon, and that means more announcements about World of Warcraft! Within a fairly narrow lineup of possible bits of news, anyhow. Let's be honest, we all know at this point basically…
The best Massively OP community leaderboard polls, 2020 edition - We didn't do quite as many Leaderboard polls this year as in previous years, largely because... well, we've already asked a lot of the obvious questions in our decade-plus online, and on top of that, a…
WoW Factor: The strange diegetics of the Shadowlands - So hey, everyone may be totally immortal right now in World of Warcraft. That seems like a thing we should examine now, huh? I freely admit that this week I just mostly feel like being a little…
The Soapbox: Pet battles are one of the best things WoW ever did (which is why I’ve never played one) - Pokemon first burst onto the scene when I was in elementary school. I've always been lukewarm at best toward anime and "cute" things, so it never really interested me. My friends at the time, however, bought…
The Soapbox: How Pathfinder killed World of Warcraft for me - World of Warcraft: Shadowlands launches today. I will not be playing. Once upon a time, a new WoW expansion would be a major event in my life, but this is the second expansion in a row…
WoW Factor: A wild theory for World of Warcraft’s Shadowlands - I don't have quite as much as I would have expected to say about Shadowlands so close to its launch. Part of that is, of course, timing; the surprise delay sort of disrupted my normal expected cadence.…
Why I Play: Exploring World of Warcraft as a free-to-play game - A few weeks back, the Massively OP staff discussed, among other things, whether World of Warcraft's leveling revamp coupled with its continued endless free trial constitute a change to free to play. I'd lean toward the…
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands explains legendary item crafting, shows off the Maw - Legendary items have been a contentious topic for World of Warcraft players ever since Legion made them easier to acquire. Blizzard's been struggling to figure out the best way to dole out these super-powerful pieces of…
WoW Factor: The World of Warcraft leveling experiences ranked, part one - Now that the pre-patch is here, you can level through any World of Warcraft expansion you'd like in the order your heart desires! But that, of course, brings the question of which one you should start with;…
Perfect Ten: 10 amazing hidden quests in World of Warcraft - Finding quests in World of Warcraft is not exactly what you would call "difficult," as the game famously stuck giant floating exclamation marks over quest givers and slapped notations all over the game map. But what…
World of Warcraft increases reputation gains all September – time to rep grind! - The ticker on World of Warcraft's site is counting down to Shadowlands' October release -- 54 days and counting at this point. With the expansion coming and Patch 9.0 arriving before that, the pressure is on…
WoW Factor: World of Warcraft has no good excuses for not having housing - We are past 15 years on now, and World of Warcraft still lacks housing. This is, frankly, really dumb. And it comes up a lot, and you always have the people working hard in the Fanboy…
World of Warcraft players are noticing some problems with soloing old content in the pre-patch - You may be forgiven for thinking that after doing a massive item level squish twice before, World of Warcraft's developers would have learned how to do so without causing major disruptions to the status quo. You…
World of Warcraft has begun testing Shadowlands’ endgame - While you tread water at Battle for Azeroth's current endgame, World of Warcraft is testing the endgame you'll be experiencing when you arrive there in 2021. Or 2022 - we won't judge your pokey leveling. Over…
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands appears to have PvP world quests returning once more - In World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, players are wandering in the realm of the dead and dealing with afterlife issues. A perfect time to find members of the opposite faction and kill them, right? No? Well, in…
Vague Patch Notes: Don’t alter MMO systems for people who never liked them to begin with - Here's a concept that just would not leave my mind thanks to World of Warcraft, but it's not a bad thing. But in order to talk about that, first I have to talk about horror movies.…
SuperData calls expansions the ‘lifeblood’ for World of Warcraft - I have a thing about graphs without labeled axes. Just yesterday, I was literally making fun of the time Nexon turned in this unitless graph in its investor report. Yay squiggly lines!
Perfect Ten: World of Warcraft’s multicolored elf rainbow - Remember how I managed to get an entire column out of all the different flavors of troll within World of Warcraft? Except I kind of cheated there because it was really nine sorts of troll and…
WoW Factor: How do we make a good Warcraft movie? - Sometimes, dear readers, things simply do not line up. I really have a long piece I'm looking forward to doing, and then Blizzard does something terrible (or wonderful, but terrible is more likely these days) and…
WoW Factor: Behind blue (elf) eyes (in World of Warcraft) - Players were very excited when blue eye options were datamined out for Blood Elves in World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, then less happy when it was confirmed that those were NPC-only eyes and players wouldn't get them. Cue…
Perfect Ten: Actually useful World of Warcraft toys - Pretty much since its inception, World of Warcraft has made a point to include just-for-fun items that were more about personal expression and enjoyment. Later called "toys," these objects helped out with roleplay sessions and keeping…
WoW Factor: World of Warcraft’s class and race restrictions have never made any sense - There are some things that exist in games because they make sense in-universe, and there are some things that exist solely as a game balance mechanism. We all know that from a realism standpoint, the only…
First impressions of Fallout 76 Wastelanders from a true newbie to the game - So I did something completely unexpected: I bought Fallout 76. It wasn't my idea. A few people in my guild had been talking about how much fun it was, especially after the launch of Wastelanders, and…
Massively Overthinking: The oldest MMORPGs we still play - When I was still a teenager in my earliest MMOs, the trend in the communities I ran in was to play MMOs sequentially, due in large part to the fact that there weren't a whole lot…
WoW Factor: Examining Shadowlands’ Warlock, Paladin, and Demon Hunter changes - It's the penultimate column in this particular series! And that's good because if people who used to make World of Warcraft are going to keep going down the "ridiculous comment" road it's only a matter of…
WoW Factor: Examining Shadowlands’ Hunter, Priest, and Mage ability changes - Here we are again, and we've got a new mess of classes that got changed! Although in many ways these are the classes that changed the least relative to their current World of Warcraft implementations; Priests even…
World of Warcraft boosts reputation through May 18 and extends its experience boost - If you've got some lingering reputations you want to raise before Shadowlands arrives in World of Warcraft, you've got some added help in doing that now, as the game is offering a new 100% reputation boost…
WoW Factor: The World of Warcraft expansion tour in review - All right. I've now been on this expansion tour for... well, seven weeks, but it feels like years. Partly because it meant covering a whole lot of World of Warcraft history, which means that there's a…
WoW Factor: The World of Warcraft expansion tour – Battle for Azeroth - Oh no. I'd ask how this happened, but I know how it happened. It happened because I am a gigantic idiot. This expansion tour seemed like a good idea when it started, but I didn't think…
WoW Factor: The World of Warcraft expansion tour – Legion - Ah, good. This one is more fun than last week. As much as the latter half of World of Warcraft expansions heads into more bad than good territory, Legion is a fun expansion to talk about,…
World of Warcraft adds in Legacy Loot mode for Legion raids and dungeons - As the saying goes, it's better late than never. Adding in Legacy Loot for World of Warcraft's prior expansion (Legion) certainly feels late at this point; we're all awaiting the next expansion, and people have been…
WoW Factor: The World of Warcraft expansion tour – Warlords of Draenor - Oh barf. Yes, folks, it... it had to happen. We had to get to this expansion. I know, none of us really want to. World of Warcraft fans don't want to talk about it because they don't want…
WoW Factor: The World of Warcraft expansion tour – The Burning Crusade - So it seems pretty likely at this point that we are going to keep going through the various World of Warcraft expansions with Classic servers for a while now. It's not certain by any means, but that does…
The Daily Grind: Does an MMO’s economy ever stop you from going back? - I've written before about MMO economies and how badly handled inflation can wreck them because it's one of my pet favorite topics, but the last time I really wrote about World of Warcraft's economy specifically was…
Perfect Ten: When celebs crossed paths with MMOs - Even as the world continues to turn to and normalize gaming as a respectable hobby, there's still a lingering stigma of playing online titles as a supremely nerdy thing. Whenever I sense this, I take weird…
WoW Factor: A quick glance back at 2019 for World of Warcraft - So how did this year go for Blizzard Entertainment? Well... badly. You cannot have missed all of that. But it also went badly in lots of more subtle and direct ways aside from the company's massive…
WoW Factor: Speculating on Shadowlands’ release date using math - Gosh, I love doing these math columns. Not just because I enjoy math, although that's definitely a part of it; there's something so satisfying about having the numbers line up. No, it's just because establishing these…
WoW Factor: A brief history of flight (in World of Warcraft) - Flight has been a part of World of Warcraft as long as the game has existed. No, not just flying mounts, even though you could argue that has been, too; flight masters dotting both continents meant that people…
WoW Factor: Battle for Azeroth was a complete waste of time - Well, dear readers, I was totally wrong. All of you predicting that this expansion was a waste of time were right and I was wrong. Long-time readers know that I put my predictions front and center…
Not So Massively: The Blizzard I loved is dead - This week's Not So Massively column was supposed to be a wishlist of things I want from an announcement of Diablo IV. When I pitched that article, I was so excited to delve into all the…
WoW (Classic) Factor: The journal of Nieve Vinther – third entry - The past two weeks have been... frustrating. This frustration is not solely down to the fact that my steps inevitably brought me close to the home of my parents despite my profound efforts to avoid visiting that…
Storyboard: Never forget that all MMO lore is made up - Let's take a trip back to the dewy slopes of June 2006, when Chris Metzen addressed the question of how the lore of the Draenei deviated from the lore that had already been laid out. See,…
Blizzard on World of Warcraft class pruning: ‘We’ve gone too far’ - With everything swirling about WoW Classic's stress test this past week and next week's Rise of Azshara content update in regular World of Warcraft, it is entirely possible that you may have missed a rather significant…
World of Warcraft: Classic dragon griefing, Argus redux, and BFA end boss - Fun fact: Did you know that Blizzard had originally been considering Argus -- the late Legion content update -- as its own full-fledged expansion? While the studio didn't go in this direction, the thought of doing…
WoW Factor: Guessing at the next World of Warcraft expansion announcement using math - Here's the genesis of this particular article: I saw speculation over on Blizzard Watch that we were about a year too early for a World of Warcraft expansion announcement at BlizzCon. That sounded immediately off to me. But…
WoW Factor: Why Legion 2 wouldn’t win back the World of Warcraft crowd - Let's talk about fan expectations and naked fanservice for a bit. In fact, let's start with the Power Nine from Magic: the Gathering, and perhaps the greatest of the batch, the infamous Black Lotus. The Power…
Blizzard decides to skip Gamescom 2019 as part of cost-cutting efforts - The con circuit has always been a sort of expected course for games companies to run, like the Tour de France except with less bicycles and more people trying to get you good and hyped to…
Perfect Ten: MMOs for puzzle lovers - Ever find yourself complaining that all of the PvE content in your MMO is nothing but shooting something in the face or chopping down a tree (in its face)? That mindless combat can be relaxing and…
World of Warcraft continues to speed up Heart of Azeroth level acquisition - Are you still struggling to get your Heart of Azeroth leveled to catch up with the World of Warcraft crowd? The good news is that Blizzard has changed some plans in order to give laggers a…
The Daily Grind: How do you feel about ideas like the cottage rule and class fantasy in MMO design? - Who among our readers played City of Heroes and remembers the cottage rule? The idea was that developers were reluctant to change the fundamentals of specific powers once players were accustomed to them. According to the…
En Masse announces TERA Reloaded on console and spring Twitch Prime promo - Wow, so here comes TERA on a Friday with a big announcement: En Masse has announced TERA Reloaded for console, further catching Xbox One and PlayStation 4 players up with their PC buddies. "TERA: Reloaded is…
WoW Factor: Why people are mad at Battle for Azeroth, part four: Story - The fun thing about bringing up the story of World of Warcraft is that you inevitably have some folks who will immediately crop up and claim that they don't care about the story, therefore it's not a valid…
WoW Factor: Battle for Azeroth’s alternative story experiment - As part of a WoW Factor column experiment relating to our March 2019 article, we've taken a stab at an alternative version of WoW's plotline.
WoW Factor: Why people are mad at Battle for Azeroth, part two: The Heart of Azeroth - We're continuing on in our tour of why people are upset about the current World of Warcraft expansion, and I think it's important to note that most of these systems are in many ways separate from one…
Jukebox Heroes: The 10 greatest MMO soundtracks of all time (as voted by you) - A few weeks ago we witnessed the showdown of the ages (or at least the epoch known as "late January 2019"), as Massively OP readers voted on and debated the best MMO soundtrack of all time.…
WoW Factor: Why people are mad at Battle for Azeroth, part one: Combat - One of the complicated challenges of writing about World of Warcraft is sorting out the stuff that's happening now from the stuff that's been happening the whole time. To use an obvious example, while the game's aversion…
Perfect Ten: The worst MMORPG expansions of all time - A great MMO expansion brings so much to the table: fresh excitement for a game, new classes, innovative features, expanded vistas, additional races, and more. Pull it off right, and studios rake in big bucks while…
Perfect Ten: The biggest MMO surprises of 2018 - Everyone loves surprises, right? Not always. Even good surprises can be a disruption of our comfortable routines, and bad ones can downright ruin a day. Yet surprises keep life interesting -- and keep us tuning in…
Perfect Ten: The biggest MMO news stories of 2018 - With the turn of every new year, I know we are entering unexplored territory in the field of MMO news. No matter what we may predict, it's inevitable that the bizarre left turns and out-of-nowhere stories…
WoW Factor: The smart World of Warcraft stuff from BlizzCon - Let's get something out of the way first and foremost. I am not going to count Warcraft III: Reforged as a smart thing for World of Warcraft, even though it is literally the thing I am…
World of Warcraft’s latest PTR build reduces the experience needed for all levels - Does it just take too dang long to level a World of Warcraft character at this point? Help is on the way in the form of the 8.1 patch on the PTR, which has reduced leveling…
Epic MMO Battles of History: World of Warcraft’s Wrath of the Lich King vs. Legion - It was just a couple of days ago when Bree was sharing that I felt like Wrath of the Lich King was the best World of Warcraft has ever been. But was it actually the best,…
BlizzCon 2018: What the heck happened? - Every year, I cover BlizzCon for Massively Overpowered. This is not new information; you've all seen my liveblogs running every year for quite some time. And the reception of any given year as well as my…
WoW Factor: When long-term progress in World of Warcraft isn’t - "When even the vanishingly tiny playerbase of your game that you've been catering to for years is getting tired... what's going to happen to your game?"
World of Warcraft factionless player Doubleagent hits 120 after years of picking herbs - World of Warcraft "celebrity" player Doubleagent has done it again: leveled to 120 solely on harvesting without ever picking a faction in the eternal WoW war. MMO players will recall that Doubleagent's been playing this way a…
Jukebox Heroes: World of Warcraft Battle for Azeroth’s soundtrack - As a fan of video game music, I get ridiculously excited when it comes time for World of Warcraft to release a new expansion. I know this means we are about to be gifted a wealth…
WoW Factor: Examining excitement, accomplishment, and elitism in Battle for Azeroth - It's been a while, and for good reason. But now that we're nearly three months into Battle for Azeroth, the World of Warcraft community as a whole has had some time to lose that "we finally…
Vague Patch Notes: World of Warcraft, math, and making choices ‘interesting’ in MMOs - So if you somehow managed to miss it, let me recap:Â World of Warcraft's community manager Lore recently gave some feedback on the many complaints people have had about the Azerite armor in Battle for Azeroth. It…
Perfect Ten: My favorite MMORPG names - Stuff in MMOs has names. That's... like, a defining feature. We all know that. These games have titles, and they have expansions, and they have races and classes and... you get the idea. Names. Some of…
World of Warcraft Battle for Azeroth sells ‘more than 3.4 million’ copies for a ‘day-one sales record’ for WoW - We were just grumbling on this week's MOP Podcast about not having any idea how well World of Warcraft's Battle for Azeroth had sold - and having to rely on "well, a lot of bloggers went…
First impressions of World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth, part 4: Conclusions - Part four covers expansion odds and ends plus the conclusion to our series: the problem with Azerite, progression, and why the expansion isn't bad, just weakly executed.
A fluffy casual’s starting perspective on World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth - Let me tell you a bit about me and how I play MMORPGs. Between two jobs and a family, my gaming time is relegated to the deep evening hours where peace descends upon our household. If…
World of Warcraft’s voice actor roundup, R. Lee Ermey tribute, and Horde identity crisis - World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth has elicited a lot of praise from the community for its superb voice acting. Blizzard Watch put together a roundup of some of the key characters and their human counterparts,…
First impressions of World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth, part 2: Content - Part two covers expansion content: the storyline, the new zones, the War Campaign, questing, rewards, Inscription, professions, dungeons, and environments.
First impressions of World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth, part 1: Mechanics - Part one covers chiefly the expansion's mechanics: the basics of leveling, the Heart of Azeroth, level scaling, Azerite powers, combat, spec changes, War Mode, and the campaign.
World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth tackles launch issues, sees first level 120, and activates companion app - All things considered, yesterday saw a fairly smooth global rollout for World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth. But while many realms were up and players enjoying the seventh expansion for the MMO, some servers saw chronic…
The Daily Grind: Did you go back to World of Warcraft for Battle for Azeroth? - Did they getcha? Did they suck you in again for another go-round? I have a flurry of guildies in World of Warcraft right now thanks to Battle for Azeroth, and yet I haven't been enticed to…
World of Warcraft quietly disables the group finder auto-accept on the eve of Battle for Azeroth - Happy Battle for Azeroth Day, everyone! Starting tonight, World of Warcraft's newest expansion will release globally and players will evacuate the Broken Isles en masse for fresh content. And while this should be a time of…
WoW Factor: World of Warcraft’s market saturation and the pull of vague memories - Here's something a little different: Usually, before I write a World of Warcraft column (or any column), my assumptions and data are pretty firm before I put them down on paper, else I wouldn't be writing…
WoW Factor: World of Warcraft’s Battle for Azeroth feels like Cataclysm all over again - It took me a long time to identify what felt off about World of Warcraft's upcoming expansion. Something was definitely bothering me, but the thing was is that we know exactly what an expansion with the…
World of Warcraft Hunters launch #SaveHati campaign - With this week's World of Warcraft pre-expansion patch, Blizzard has made one group of players deeply unhappy by putting down their pet dog. Some -- but not all -- Beast Master Hunters are mourning the loss…
World of Warcraft answers pressing prepatch questions in its latest video Q&A - The prepatch for World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth is out now, but the expansion is still a bit further off, so players have questions about it. For that matter, players have questions about the changes…
World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth pre-patch arrives on July 17 - Say goodbye to your artifacts and hello to War Mode, because World of Warcraft's expansion pre-patch is almost here. When July 17th rolls around, players will no longer be able to earn artifact power or have…
Ion Hazzikostas on World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth’s design philosophy - If you felt like World of Warcraft: Legion hit the random chance button too hard (likely as one of the many players who waited for a random legendary for a spec that never dropped), you will…
World of Warcraft begins to retire artifact weapons in preparation for Battle for Azeroth - Players who have logged into World of Warcraft since yesterday have discovered that doomsday has finally arrived for their artifact weapons. Yes, these weapons that they have spent so much time leveling up in Legion are…
World of Warcraft spins down WoW Mobile Armory app for expansion - It's time to clear out another one of the World of Warcraft apps that have been dwelling on your phone. Following the retirement of the mobile auction house app this past spring, Blizzard has now announced…
World of Warcraft releases pre-expansion novel, nixes Blood Trolls allied race rumors - We're just (presumably) weeks away from the Battle for Azeroth pre-patch, and World of Warcraft fanatics everywhere are starving for a hit of the new expansion. To capitalize off of this period of time, Blizzard has…
World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth looks at Magni and slashes tank threat generation - Players who feel like tanking is too straightforward in World of Warcraft will definitely have to do more stuff in Battle for Azeroth. Whether or not that's more fun is a different story, but tanks are…
World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth allied race unlock requirements, Mythic+ seasons, and more - News is flying fast and furious as World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth's beta test continues. Let's catch up on a few details, shall we? We now know the achievements required for unlocking the Dark Iron…
World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth’s flight requirements listed, Kul Tiran Druid acquatic forms discovered - Enjoy your friendly skies now, flyboys and flygirls, because World of Warcraft is prepared to ground you once again in its next expansion. And while everyone knew that we'd have to hoof it for a while…
World of Warcraft DDOSer sentenced to a year in prison, Blizzard chats about Battle for Azeroth’s latest round of faction wars - Blizzard is not messing around with DDOS attacks. The BBC has a piece out on a World of Warcraft player from Romania, Calin Mateias, who was apparently extradited to California, charged with conducting a denial of service…
Activision-Blizzard Q1 2018: WoW is actually outperforming expectations – time for a fourth yacht or no? - Reporting on Activision-Blizzard's endless piles of money is about as much fun as reporting on how fifty-bajillion-zillion people are playing fork knife. No, I said that wrong; it's about as much fun as taking a fork…
World of Warcraft Q&A covers tier sets and Azerite armor with Artifact power - If the mere mention of the words "Artifact Power" now send you into apoplectic rage in relation to World of Warcraft, we have bad news for you: Azerite Power has been redubbed Artifact Power, and yes,…
WoW Factor: Speculative classes for the future of WoW - If Allied Races show us anything, it's that World of Warcraft is really in no danger of running out of new races to throw at us. This particular system is adding nearly twice as many new…
The Game Archaeologist: Lineage - If we judged MMOs by their numbers alone -- and I'm not suggesting we do so -- then the original Lineage would be the crowing rooster strutting about the hen house. It's also been one of…
WoW Factor: Updating data in the wake of Battle for Azeroth’s release announcement - Hooray, we have a release date for World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth instead of just a release window! And contrary to what many skeptics (myself included) expected to get, it is actually quite a bit…
World of Warcraft reveals Battle for Azeroth plans - The information dam seems to have broken with World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth, and we are all about to be swept away in the flood. At a press event at the studio this week, Blizzard…
World of Warcraft is retiring its remote auction house — but don’t panic just yet - If you've gotten used to perusing and trading on World of Warcraft's auction house from the mobile app, brace yourself for some slightly shocking news. Blizzard announced that it will be taking the WoW Remote Auction…
World of Warcraft player knocks out every achievement over six years - For most of us, achievement systems in MMORPGs are either ignorable annoyances, occasional goals, or amusing distractions. For World of Warcraft player Xirev, they became an obsession. The Swedish player, who mains a Blood Elf Fire…
Jukebox Heroes: World of Warcraft’s best music, part 5 - And here we arrive at last in our multi-week countdown to the final seven. It has been a fun and delightful journey through World of Warcraft's soundtrack, and I have eagerly anticipated getting to the end…
WoW Factor: Allied races and a dearth of class choices - Last week, we got confirmation that Kul Tiran Humans and Mag'har Orcs are coming to the Allied Race roster for World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth. We don't know when, but I have a bit of…
Jukebox Heroes: World of Warcraft’s best music, part 4 - We are getting right down to it in our look at the top 32 best World of Warcraft tracks. In today's column, we'll be breaking into the top 10 with some of my absolute favorite pieces…
WoW Factor: Examining the composition of the Horde - Last week, we looked at the composition of the Alliance in World of Warcraft. This week, we're looking at the Horde. Makes sense, doesn't it? If you missed the prior column, catch up and get back…
WoW Factor: Examining the composition of the Alliance - Watching as speculation and mining swirls around the Mag'har as a future allied race, I can't help but start thinking about the bigger picture in World of Warcraft. Because soon we'll be able to make another…
Jukebox Heroes: World of Warcraft’s best music, part 3 - In our third part of this five-part countdown of World of Warcraft's best music (at least, you know, in my opinion), we'll be heading into the teens and some of the most iconic music of the…
WoW Factor: Why can’t Blizzard stop messing with everything? - It's funny to me that people had such an aggressive reaction to the changes coming to Hunter pets and damage formulas in Battle for Azeroth. The latter in particular should be both invisible and completely immaterial…
World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth jacks up its system requirements from Legion - The old joke that World of Warcraft can run on just about anything including your toaster is no longer true. Let's just say that if your toaster is planning to install Battle for Azeroth later this year,…
World of Warcraft hasn’t told us how it’s going to handle Battle for Azeroth retail CE upgrades - This past week has been a flurry of activity among World of Warcraft fans as they raced to pre-order the Battle for Azeroth expansion and unlock all of those new allied races. But one pressing question…
WoW Factor: So Battle for Azeroth is out for pre-order - Well, folks, I hope you've made your pre-purchases of World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth and started playing your allied races. I found out about the opening of pre-purchases when I was busy being out of…
Perfect Ten: Ten more World of Warcraft races fans would like to play - Sometimes, you write a column more or less as a mental exercise, and then World of Warcraft drops an expansion pre-purchase that makes it all feel highly relevant. The world of Azeroth is a world of…
World of Warcraft hosts a massive roleplaying event to celebrate the defeat of the Legion - If you think about World of Warcraft's Moon Guard server, you probably make some jokes about ERP in Goldshire and move on with your life. But there's a lot more to the server than that, as…
World of Warcraft Battle for Azeroth collectors editions, game datamining - When can we start playing allied races in World of Warcraft? Probably as soon as we can pre-purchase Battle for Azeroth, based on current expectation. And when will that be? We just don't know. What we…
WoW Factor: The debate over World of Warcraft’s refer-a-friend nerf - Ah, another day and another thing to enrage people in World of Warcraft. Last time, it was that the Allied Race unlocks might (will) require you to actually play the endgame a bit. This time, it's…
World of Warcraft lays out its class adjustment paradigm for Battle for Azeroth - When Legion was on the way, World of Warcraft had a whole series of explanations about the broad and varied changes coming to every single class and spec. Some of them were relatively minor (Frost Mage),…
Jukebox Heroes: World of Warcraft’s best music, part 1 - A week ago, I started to engage in an interesting thought experiment. I started jotting down what I thought were the best World of Warcraft music tracks to see if, I don't know, I could come…
Fulfill your postal fantasies in World of Warcraft’s secret quest chain - Blizzard has a habit of sneaking in semi-secret content into its patches for the community to discover, and this time around, it's all about mail. Snail mail, that is. In a video game. World of Warcraft's…
World of Warcraft Refer-a-Friend experience boost gutted to match Heirloom leveling speed - So, were all of the experience boosts you had in World of Warcraft there to get your character to max level as quickly as possible, or were they there to ensure that you didn't have to…
WoW Factor: Guessing at Battle for Azeroth’s release date using math - The "when will Battle for Azeroth" speculation train is rolling once again because it looks like patch 7.3.5 is just around the corner. We haven't actually been told when that's landing yet, of course, but the…
WoW Factor: The fate of the class orders post-Legion, part 2 - Back before the winter break, I took a look at how the various class orders are going to handle the increased conflict between the Horde and the Alliance. The short version is "in a variety of…
WoW Factor: Do World of Warcraft’s allied race requirements make sense? - We still do not know exactly when World of Warcraft will make allied races playable. What we do know is that it sure as heck looks like it's going to happen before the next expansion is…
Blizzard throws a holiday sale for World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Diablo III, and more - Have a few extra bucks that Santa and his corporate elves haven't pried from your wallet this month? Blizzard would like to tempt you to pick up one of its titles that are on sale from…
Perfect Ten: The MMOs with the best value at the start of 2018 - Let's talk about value. A couple of weeks back, I did an article on the healthiest games at the end of the year; today, I'm talking about the best value for the money. Isn't that the…
Winter Veil brings frosty fun to World of Warcraft - Abominable Greenches, kissing under the mistletoe, fruitcake, and snowball fights: Winter Veil must be here. World of Warcraft has been building up its holiday festival for years and years now, so there is more than enough…
The Game Archaeologist: Revisiting the first three months of World of Warcraft - Were you there? Many of us were. Many weren't. Either way, November 23rd, 2004 was a watershed date for the MMORPG industry and one watched and experienced by millions of gamers. It was on this day…
WoW Factor: The fate of WoW’s class orders post-Legion, part 1 - In the lull between expansions, I've been hard at work bringing my alts up to the level cap, unlocking all of the class mounts, picking up the occasional appearance that I really want from the Mage…
WoW Factor: Reconsidering the next few months of World of Warcraft - There's a lot of information coming out about patch 7.3.5 at this point. Not everything, of course, and a lot of it is based more on datamining than actual stuff that has been announced. But it…
WoW Factor: Why are we going back to factional squabbles after the end of Antorus? - Antorus is out now, and if you want to see the cinematic that ends the very long-running story about the Burning Legion and Sargeras, well, that's easy to do. It's kind of spoiler-filled, though, so I'm…
World of Warcraft’s 7.3.5 begins testing as allied race, environment, and zone scaling spoilers abound - So the latest raid for World of Warcraft is out now, but perhaps you don't have a regular raid group. What will you do while waiting for the content to be available? Perhaps you'll try out…
World of Warcraft’s spoilery raid cinematic sets the scene for Battle for Azeroth - Beware, gentle reader, for World of Warcraft story spoilers lurk after the break! With the rollout of the Antorus raid over the next few weeks, World of Warcraft fans are finally being treated to the conclusion of…
World of Warcraft previews the Burning Throne - Next week, players can start entering the raid that closes out the first storyline ever explored in the World of Warcraft universe. The raid on Antorus, the Burning Throne, is a strike against the heart of…
World of Warcraft lead doesn’t want to talk about Classic, but confirms ‘vanilla means vanilla’ - Right out of the gate in the recent World of Warcraft Q&A, Game Director Ion Hazzikostas said that WoW Classic wasn't going to be the focal point of discussion, as the team is only "at the…
World of Warcraft Classic CMs talk class balance while the forums melt down - It's a really weird and interesting time to be a World of Warcraft fan. While the announcement of WoW Classic has revitalized discussion about the launch version of the MMO, it seems just about nobody can…
World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth will have no personal boats, no big class overhauls, and no lockboxes - It's hard to imagine that anyone is going to be upset about the idea of no lockboxes in World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth. Sure, Blizzard makes use of them in several other games, but at…
WoW Factor: Is World of Warcraft’s Battle for Azeroth fixing Legion’s many problems? - Back in May, I wrote a whole article about why I was leaving World of Warcraft behind. All of the reasons I had back then? Still valid. Fact is, I'm still proud of that column (to…
Perfect Ten: A list of all the MMORPGs I supposedly hate - Did you know about all the MMOs I hate? I sure as heck didn't! I mean, I knew there were a few games I hated (Scarlet Blade, Alganon) and some that I have pretty poor feelings…
WoW Factor: What we still don’t know about World of Warcraft’s Battle for Azeroth - There are lots of things that I'm genuinely excited about when it comes to the next World of Warcraft expansion. Battle for Azeroth has a premise that gives me reasons to be hopeful, systems that seem…
WoW Factor: World of Warcraft’s Battle for Azeroth has a weak conflict for a strong focus - The last time I saw this many people asking "why?" about a new World of Warcraft expansion was at the announcement of Mists of Pandaria. I agreed then, too; the idea of bringing in the Pandaren…
WoW Factor: Understanding World of Warcraft’s upcoming Heart of Azeroth system - The release of World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth is going to bring with it a lot of core system changes. This is neither surprising nor unwelcome. We've also been warned for ages that we won't…
BlizzCon 2017: World of Warcraft announces Battle for Azeroth expansion - Enough of World of Warcraft's two biggest factions palling together on adventures across time and space -- war has come to this game once more. Blizzard announced World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth at BlizzCon today…
Activision-Blizzard Q3 2017: Destiny 2 tops console charts, WoW monthly users are ‘stable’ - If you were expecting big news out of Activision-Blizzard's Q3 2017 financial report... sorry to disappoint you, but you've probably heard the big news before, and that's the news that Destiny 2 is doing pretty well.…
WoW Factor: Speculating about World of Warcraft’s next expansion - It's really, really weird to me to think that we're getting an announcement about a new World of Warcraft expansion next week. Admittedly, we haven't been told the details yet, but let's be real here: The…
World of Warcraft (briefly) shows off the 8.0 expansion in testing - Can we officially declare the next World of Warcraft expansion announced yet? Technically, no. But the game's beta version testing very briefly turned to 8.0 yesterday, as screenshotted by a quick-moving Reddit user. For those of…
Perfect Ten: Why no one should recommend World of Warcraft ever - Last week, MOP's Justin (friend to man and beast alike) posted his list of MMOs he would recommend people play. It was a pretty good list! It wasn't the list I would have written, but that's…
How one YouTuber navigates World of Warcraft burnout - Feeling a little singed and toasty after playing World of Warcraft so long? When you log into Legion these days, is it a case of been-there-looted-that? Welcome to the realm of burnout, population you. Fortunately, you're…
World of Warcraft confirms a next expansion reveal at BlizzCon in new video - Let's be fair, World of Warcraft's recap of 2017 doesn't outright say that the game's next expansion will be revealed at BlizzCon. But if you don't want to take a trip down memory lane, that's the…
The Daily Grind: What would an old MMO have to do to win you back? - Something odd hit me recently. As I was sitting and planning my MMO play schedules, I realized that whatever announcements about expansions we get from World of Warcraft, I'm really not sure if I'll go back.…
SuperData August 2017 revenue report: PUBG bumps WoW, disrupting PC market - SuperData's August 2017 global revenue report confirms what anybody even casually watching PUBG already knows: The upstart game that's kicking butt on Steam is the literal definition of industry disruptor. Over on the PC side, PlayerUnknown's…
World of Warcraft hotfixes include an account-wide Argus unlock - How many alts do you have on World of Warcraft? Be honest, we won't judge you (and can't hear you anyway). Because unless the number is "zero" you probably have already had enough of unlocking Argus…
Prepare yourself for World of Warcraft ilevel 1000 legendaries - World of Warcraft: Legion isn't quite finished yet. The green-tinged expansion has a few tricks left up its sleeve before players' attention turns completely to the next chapter of the MMO's lifecycle. In addition opening up…
World of Warcraft’s Argus hasn’t got flying – and it never will - So, had you been hoping that at some point World of Warcraft would let you fly in the final zone of Legion? Best give up that hope. The official word is in from community manager Oryx…
The Daily Grind: What do you think of World of Warcraft’s Shadows of Argus so far? - It's been a little over a week since World of Warcrafteers (that's a term, right?) jettisoned the world of Azeroth for that of Argus, the Legion-blasted realm that represents one of the largest content updates for…
World of Warcraft tokens reach record prices thanks to Destiny 2 - [AL:D2]Remember back in World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor, when a shave and a haircut cost you a nickel and a WoW token was selling for about 35,000 gold? Those days are long over, my friend,…
World of Warcraft rockets to Argus in patch 7.3 today - At last year's BlizzCon, when Blizzard first announced World of Warcraft fans would someday be trekking to Argus, it seemed so distant to many of us that the narrative that bubbled up was more about whether…
World of Warcraft slashes Legion’s price ahead of 7.3 Shadows of Argus - Displaying a level of pomp and hype that is normally reserved for an MMO expansion or perhaps the impending visit from the Queen of England, World of Warcraft is going all-out with the release of this…
World of Warcraft shows off the Seat of the Triumvirate dungeon on Argus - When players land on Argus in World of Warcraft's next major patch, they will be walking through a place with plenty of history and loads of Legion presence. But that's not to say that the Legion…
Everything you need to know about World of Warcraft 7.3: Shadows of Argus - In keeping with its bizarrely predictable pattern of releasing a major update every 77 days during the Legion expansion cycle, Blizzard is about ready to push World of Warcraft Patch 7.3 live on Tuesday, August 29th.…
The Daily Grind: Will Blizzard announce the next World of Warcraft expansion at BlizzCon 2017? - With World of Warcraft's 7.3 Shadows of Argus mega-patch launching next week, speculation in the community has turned once again to what comes after Argus. WoW-watchers are wondering about the planned timeline since Blizzard has actually kept…
Activision-Blizzard Q2 2017: Destiny 2 outperforms Destiny, WoW ‘time spent’ improves over 2016 - We could practically copypasta last quarter's Activision-Blizzard report to this one and nobody would notice. That's because once again, it's the Blizzard segment of the company driving the revenue flow; Blizz's incomes rose 4% year-over-year to account…
Check out World of Warcraft’s 7.3 scenario in full video format - Along with everything else coming to World of Warcraft in patch 7.3, players will also have a new scenario to introduce the lore explanation for taking the fight to the Burning Legion directly. Not that you…
Check out previews of two areas coming in World of Warcraft patch 7.3 - If you've missed the memo, World of Warcraft is taking players to Argus in patch 7.3. That's the former home of the Draenei, a stronghold of the Burning Legion, and probably not a great place to…
LOTRO Legendarium: Mordor’s pre-order is flat-out ridiculous - [AL:LOTRO]Outrageous. Ridiculous. Exciting. Exploitative. Controversial. This past week's announcement of Lord of the Rings Online: Mordor's launch date and pre-order packages set ablaze discussions and arguments among the community, both in-game and without. World chat was…
Datamining generates World of Warcraft expansion rumors - Players have datamined a bit out of World of Warcraft's most recent test realm patch that hints at the destination of the next expansion, with what appear to be pieces of leveling gear and even some voice…
World of Warcraft’s Argus will transport you around the galaxy - The flood of information concerning World of Warcraft's Patch 7.3 and Argus continues to wash over the community as testing proceeds, starting with a new Ion Hazzikostas interview that revealed many interesting facts about the MMO's…
World of Warcraft looks to be importing Diablo III’s solo rifts - As a studio, Blizzard certainly isn't against liberally "borrowing" others good ideas and making them its own, so it stands to reason that the studio has no problem with stealing from itself. Icy Veins notes that…
Get spoiled with a trip to World of Warcraft’s Argus - The excitement is real and the threat is strong: World of Warcraft players are spearheading a counter-invasion to the Legion world of Argus in Patch 7.3. The content update went onto the test servers earlier this…
World of Warcraft starts testing Argus and Patch 7.3 - While the World of Warcraft raiding community soldiers on through the new Tomb of Sargeras and everyone else curses their luck at legendary item drops, Blizzard has activated Patch 7.3 on the test server. This is…
Battle Bards Episode 100: Centennial spectacular! - After four years and over 700 MMORPG music tracks, the Battle Bards have arrived at their 100th show! For this centennial spectacular, Syl, Steff, and Syp reminisce about the most notable shows, their best soundtrack discoveries,…
World of Warcraft pulls the trigger on class mounts - Ready, set, go get those class mounts, you World of Warcraft fanatics! The studio has unlocked the ability to get these highly desired class-specific mounts, and now there's nothing standing in your way to get one.…
Start earning your World of Warcraft class mount next week - For those keeping track at home, World of Warcraft's Patch 7.2 came out this past March, and yet here it is June and all of the features from said patch have yet to be unlocked. Happily,…
World of Warcraft previews the upcoming Tomb of Sargeras opening - The entirety of World of Warcraft: Legion has been building up to a fight inside of the Tomb of Sargeras. It's the nexus of the eponymous Legion invasion, and it's the obvious destination for Azeroth's defenders…
The Daily Grind: How much of an MMO must you play to issue good criticism? - World of Warcraft Community Manager Ornyx sparked a bit of a wildfire on the game's forums this past week as in response to a player criticizing Legion's lack of content, he snarked, "I assume you're trying…
World of Warcraft publishes new character profile system - The old World of Warcraft Armory -- now the Profile Page -- has a big update today, and while Blizzard says "the new Profiles look just as good on your phone, tablet or desktop," PC users are…
WoW Factor: Breaking up is surprisingly easy to do - The classic break-up line is "it's not you, it's me." It is, of course, usually a lie, and it often gets followed up shortly afterward with a line that makes it clear that it is really…
World of Warcraft walks back claim that 7.2 is the ‘biggest patch ever’ - In a livestream Q&A session, World of Warcraft's Ion Hazzikostas admitted that the studio probably shouldn't have slapped the label of "biggest patch ever" on Patch 7.2. The game director said that this was an objective measurement…
World of Warcraft’s Dog makes the journey from garrison to Dalaran - World of Warcraft garrisons these days are a sad, lonely place. They're still there, of course, languishing on Draenor as a monument to yet another Blizzard feature introduced and abandoned in the span of a single expansion.…
World of Warcraft’s Hazzikostas on content creep and the future of the game - Hey, it turns out that designing long-term MMORPGs that aren't pump-and-dump schemes is hard! That's the takeaway from a new PC Gamer interview with Blizzard's Ion Hazzikostas, during which the World of Warcraft game director admits…
World of Warcraft eases up on flight requirements - Great news today for World of Warcraft players stressed out over the last batch of requirements to regain their pilot's license. Blizzard announced on the forums that it is making the achievement easier in order to…
World of Warcraft activates the mage tower, starts looking ahead to Patch 7.2.5 - Now that Patch 7.2 is out for World of Warcraft, what's next on Blizzard's plate? Other than last night's hotfixes, that is. The studio isn't talking (yet) about the anticipated Patch 7.3, but it has started…
Why World of Warcraft’s item level scaling is really, really, dumb - This has been a very stupid week. I know this because any other week, World of Warcraft completely destroying the reason for acquiring new gear would stand out as the stupidest thing I’d heard all week.…
World of Warcraft implements undocumented item level scaling in patch 7.2 - The reward scaling in World of Warcraft has always been pretty straightforward. At the start of the expansion, everything at max level is a pretty close match for you; by the end of the expansion, all…
WoW Factor: The good and the bad of World of Warcraft’s patch 7.2 date - Boy, this is a time I am glad to be wrong. I was outright worried that Blizzard was going to hold patch 7.2 for a much longer span of time, but no, it's hitting World of…
The Daily Grind: Will World of Warcraft hold its 7.2 patch until June? - On October 24th, World of Warcraft launched patch 7.1, which contained a lot of not-quite-ready-for-launch Legion features and a bit of content. Since then, the game hasn't really launched any content. Sure, patch 7.1.5 launched in…
World of Warcraft previews the Broken Shore experience for patch 7.2 - The Broken Shore in World of Warcraft is no one's idea of a vacation hangout. For one thing, it's covered in demons; for another, it's the site of a pretty horrendous defeat for all of Azeroth's…
World of Warcraft steps into the desecrated Cathedral of Eternal Night - The story of World of Warcraft: Legion is only just ramping up, as players prepare to move on to the Broken Shore to continue to fight against the Legion. Part of that fight will take place…
World of Warcraft makes regaining flight a bit easier - There's a spot of good news for World of Warcraft players looking to regain their pilot's license in Legion. Blizzard clarified a couple of points on the forums regarding Patch 7.2 that shows how this achievement is…
The Daily Grind: Does World of Warcraft need another new class? - During this week's podcast, Justin expressed some frustration over his efforts to enjoy an alt in World of Warcraft. All of his characters, he said, just didn't feel the same, and he wasn't loving them. In…
WoW Factor: Where do we go after WoW Legion? - So at the risk of being dinged for spoiling the current World of Warcraft expansion, let me say this: Azeroth is not going to be destroyed or completely overtaken by the Burning Legion. That's a given.…
World of Warcraft Q&A covers legendaries, artifact power, and relics; Blizz nixes 7.2 PvP changes - If you missed it, yesterday World of Warcraft Game Director Ion Hazzikostas sat down for another one of his lengthy community question-and-answer sessions. While no groundbreaking revelations came out over the stream, Hazzikostas did spend a good…
WoW Factor: Examining World of Warcraft’s 7.2 update - Patch 7.2 is the first real content patch that we've gotten for World of Warcraft post-Legion. Obviously, 7.1 wasn't devoid of content, but it was far more a patch about nudging in the things that just…
Legion assaults will keep World of Warcraft players on their toes - World of Warcraft's demonic invasions and world quests are pregnant, and that baby is coming with Patch 7.2 in the form of legion assaults. Yesterday, Blizzard gave a short preview of the new legion assault system…
Blizzard will integrate EU English realm with EU Spanish realm group queues next week - Earlier this week, Blizzard told EU players that it will essentially be integrating World of Warcraft's English-speaking EU grouping queues with Spanish realm queues. Community Manager Aerythlea explained to players that Spanish realm queues for Ashran…
WoW Factor: The state of professions in Legion - The state of World of Warcraft's professions in Legion is a weird one because it's obvious how much work has gone into crafting for the expansion. So much of it is nice and effective work; it's…
World of Warcraft helps you get your pilot’s license for Legion - Remember how a while back Blizzard told fans that it was looking at eliminating flying from all World of Warcraft expansions going forward? Yeah, so that went down as one of the more bone-headed statements the studio…
World of Warcraft turns its attention to Patch 7.2 - Now that the excitement over the launch of Patch 7.1.5 and Nighthold has died down somewhat, World of Warcraft's team is gearing up for testing on the next big content update for the fantasy MMO. "We'll…
Nostalrius has decided handing its WoW emu code to Elysium wasn’t such a good idea after all - So here's a twist in the Nostalrius saga that we didn't see coming: The group has changed its mind about supporting its code on the Elysium servers and in fact has asked Elysium to stop using…
WoW Factor: New classes in a post-Legion world - So World of Warcraft patch 7.1.5 is out now... but I'm going to be honest, that doesn't feel like much of anything. It's there, it's all playable, but it feels kind of... perfunctory? There's not a…
World of Warcraft heralds the coming of Patch 7.1.5 - It looks likely that World of Warcraft's Patch 7.1.5 -- a surprisingly packed "in-between" update -- will be coming very soon now. It's always a good sign of an imminent update when the devs bring out…
Perfect Ten: The best MMORPG updates and expansions of 2016 (that aren’t Legion) - Sometimes you have to exclude something from a list. I could, for example, praise World of Warcraft: Legion for being a really good expansion yet again... but I already did that. Heck, we already did that.…
World of Warcraft opens a portal to Diablo’s cow level - World of Warcraft is horning in on one of the most famous Easter eggs in the Diablo franchise: the cow level. As part of the Diablo 20th anniversary event, WoW players can mooove into a bovine-infested…
World of Warcraft previews the Nighthold raid - The elves of Suramar hold a font of great power, and under Grand Magistrix Elisande they have thrown their lot in with the Burning Legion. Anyone who has stepped into Suramar in World of Warcraft knows…
The most popular MMORPG conversations of 2016 - Last week, we posted a rundown of the most popular MMORPG articles of 2016, calculated strictly by the number of pageviews they got. Today, we're going to take a look at the most popular articles of 2016 as…
WoW Factor: A wishlist for 2017 in World of Warcraft - This year has been a pile of garbage and I'll be glad it's over. It's not that I'm convinced 2017 will be any better than 2016, mind you; it's just that I'll be glad that 2016…
MMO Year in Review: New Eden free-for-all (November 2016) - This year, we’re taking a time-machine back through our MMO coverage, month by month, to hit the highlights and frame our journey before we head into 2017. Early in November, EVE Online's Ascension expansion ushered in a…
The best Massively OP MMO polls of 2016 - Every week for the last few years, we've expanded on our "Daily Grind" theme with a Leaderboard poll. I've had a blast taking over Leaderboard; Daily Grinds always get lovely qualitative answers, but numbers! tallies! bar graphs!…
Massively OP’s Best of 2016 Awards: MMORPG of the Year - Massively Overpowered's end-of-the-year 2016 awards continue today with our award for MMORPG the Year, which was awarded to Final Fantasy XIV last year. Recall that in 2014, we couldn't reach consensus on an MMO of the year. In fact,…
MMO Year in Review: We are Legion (August 2016) - This year, we’re taking a time-machine back through our MMO coverage, month by month, to hit the highlights and frame our journey before we head into 2017. World of Warcraft ran away with the month of…
Massively OP’s 2016 Blooper Awards: Worst MMORPG Jargon of the Year - Massively OP's end-of-the-year awards continue today with our blooper award for Worst MMORPG Jargon of 2016. And the winner is... "Class Fantasy" World of Warcraft has been pushing "class fantasy" since before Legion, and in concept, it should…
Massively OP’s Best of 2016 Awards: Best MMORPG Expansion or Update of 2016 - Massively Overpowered's end-of-the-year 2016 awards continue today with our award for Best MMORPG Expansion or Update of 2016, which was awarded to Guild Wars 2's Heart of Thorns last year. Like last year, 2016 had many to choose from!…
Massively OP’s Best of 2016 Awards: MMORPG Studio of the Year - Massively Overpowered's end-of-the-year 2016 awards continue today with our award for Best MMORPG Studio of 2016, which was awarded to Square-Enix last year. We asked our writers to consider major MMORPG studios in 2016, not just their pet favorites,…
Massively OP’s Best of 2016 Awards: Best MMORPG Holiday Event of 2016 - Massively Overpowered's end-of-the-year 2016 awards continue today with our award for the MMORPG with the Best Holiday Event of 2016, which is yet another new award for us this year, and we have readers Agemyth and Mylicia to thank…
Jukebox Heroes: The 2016 Online VGM Awards - With all of the award madness going on at Massively OP this month, it's the perfect time to unveil the 2016 Online VGM Awards! It's been a great year of soundtracks from our favorite MMOs, and…
The new Nostalrius emulator suffered six DDOS attacks on launch day - Apparently some folks are taking the relaunch of the Nostalrius servers very badly: Team Elysium, the group behind the newest World of Warcraft emulator, say that on launch day, it was suffering a total of six simultaneous…
WoW Factor: 2016 in review for World of Warcraft - Talking about World of Warcraft in 2016 is really different because the game had two different years this year. And unfortunately for anyone trying to develop a comprehensive picture of the past year (yo), we're on…
Massively OP’s Best of 2016 Awards: Most Improved MMORPG of 2016 - Massively Overpowered's end-of-the-year 2016 awards continue today with our award for Most Improved MMORPG of 2016, which was awarded to WildStar last year. All MMOs, regardless of release date, were eligible for this award, provided they made improvements this year. Don't…
Ask Mo: Scoring last year’s Massively OP MMORPG predictions - As we do every year, today we're going to squint back a year, into the depths of a Massively Overthinking from the tail end of 2015 when we issued our predictions for 2016. Sure, sure, it's…
Perfect Ten: The healthiest live MMORPGs at the end of 2016 - About a year and a half ago, my colleague, co-worker, and friend to man and beast alike Justin compiled a list of the healthiest live MMOs at the time. Since then, every single one of those…
Jukebox Heroes: Massively OP’s guide to grabbing 120+ MMO soundtracks - One of the most common questions that I'm asked from my adoring throngs on the street is, "Justin, where oh where can I get some of these marvelous MMO soundtracks that you talk about all of…
Perfect Ten: The biggest MMORPG stories of 2016 - As we start to come to grips with the fact that we will be turning over the calendar into 2017 in one short month, it might just be for the best. In the real world, 2016…
World of Warcraft players petition Blizzard for Warlock changes - Are you playing a Warlock in World of Warcraft: Legion? If so, you've probably seen and experienced a lot of frustration from that class and its community over the changes and playstyle of the Warlock in…
World of Warcraft player dings 110 without picking a faction - Back in March 2015, we reported on a World of Warcraft player who decided that when the game tried to make his Pandaran character choose a faction, he would pursue a third option: neutrality. For the…
Massively OP’s 2016 gift guide for the Blizzard fanatic - The holidays are almost here! Seriously, they're rushing forward at a rate of two seconds per second, or something. Which means that it's time to start buying gifts for the Blizzard fan in your life, and…
Perfect Ten: Messed-up aspects of MMORPGs we mindlessly accept - When we engage in the collective fantasy of playing MMORPGs, we accept certain structures and tropes that have been in place since the early days of pen-and-paper RPGs. There are elements of MMOs -- such as…
Battle Bards Episode 86: World of Warcraft: Legion - With all of the unbridled love for World of Warcraft’s soundtrack on Battle Bards, historically, you know that we couldn’t let a new expansion score go without commentary. In this show, the three co-hosts tackle the…
World of Warcraft’s post-BlizzCon debrief - It's safe to say that Ion Hazzikostas has emerged as the face of World of Warcraft's development team, particularly following his rundown of all of the MMO's upcoming content at BlizzCon. Well, now Hazzikostas is back…
The Daily Grind: What was your favorite part of BlizzCon? - BlizzCon 2016 was really hit-and-miss from my perspective. On the one hand, there was some really great stuff in there, like the discussion of World of Warcraft's next patch. On the other hand, there was some…
BlizzCon 2016: World of Warcraft’s Legion design panel liveblog - How did we end up here? This World of Warcraft expansion is crawling with demons. It smells like brimstone. No, really, how did we end up with Legion? What went right, what went wrong, and what…
BlizzCon 2016: WoW’s Tomb of Sargeras and beyond to Argus - World of Warcraft's "What's Next" panel this evening more than made up for the game's lackluster mention during the BlizzCon opening ceremonies earlier in the day. Newly minted Game Director Ion Hazzikostas took the stage to…
BlizzCon 2016: World of Warcraft’s What’s Next liveblog - The future of World of Warcraft involves a lot of green fire. Of course, the present involves a lot of green fire, that's sort of what Legion is all about. But it's also about... well, other…
WoW Factor: BlizzCon betting odds - My original plan this week was to talk a little bit about patch 7.1, but two things have made that less than possible. The first is that a rather nasty depression jag has kept me from…
Activision-Blizzard Q3 2016: Blizzard claims ‘biggest quarterly online player community in its history’ - Activision-Blizzard's Q3 2016 financial report PR just released, surprising no one with record-setting piles of money and success. "The Activision and Blizzard segments had record combined third-quarter performance with $1.10B in net revenues, a 15% increase…
Blizzard responds to feedback on World of Warcraft’s hidden artifact appearances - There are a lot of artifact appearances in World of Warcraft: Legion, at least in theory. If you're not into pushing forward with PvP or PvE progression beyond queued content, you're not going to be earning…
Here’s everything you can expect from BlizzCon 2016 next week - Every year, BlizzCon arrives. And every year, Bree and I sit down and liveblog about the most pertinent event for our readers to follow along at home because we love you. We just don't love you…
World of Warcraft releases Patch 7.1: Return to Karazhan today - O frabjous day, Patch 7.1: Return to Karazhan has arrived in World of Warcraft! The content update marks World of Warcraft's first patch in the Legion cycle, coming less than two months after the expansion's launch.…
Blizzard isn’t announcing WoW legacy servers at BlizzCon - Blizzard's J. Allen Brack has a post on the official forums tonight that ought to temper expectations players might have about World of Warcraft vanilla servers and a possible BlizzCon announcement. "We’ve seen some talk among…
Leaderboard: Will Blizzard ever port World of Warcraft to console? - This past summer in a Daily Grind, we were discussing the issue of "dumbing down" in MMORPGs, specifically in World of Warcraft, when a couple of our readers pointed out that Legion's "streamlining" might not be…
Prepare yourself for World of Warcraft Patch 7.1 with this survival guide - We are only a few short days away from World of Warcraft's 7.1 update, Return to Karazhan. Legion's first post-release content patch will bring a lot to the game, including new PvE quest lines, changes to PvP rewards,…
WoW Factor: Sargeras, the Legion, and World of Warcraft lore on the cosmic scale - Patch 7.1 is just around the corner for World of Warcraft, and it makes me just a little bit anxious. Why? Because the expansion has been out for a pretty short span of time, that's why,…
World of Warcraft throws even more Suramar content at you in 7.1 - Just when you think you might see the light at the end of Suramar's long, long content tunnel, a team of Blizzard corps of software engineers shows up to extend its length even further. Actually, more…
Return to Karazhan in World of Warcraft on October 25 - Blizzard announced this afternoon that World of Warcraft's first major post-Legion patch, 7.1: Return to Karazhan, will launch on October 25th. During this afternoon's livestream, newly minted Game Director Ion Hazzikostas told players to expect the…
World of Warcraft’s Ion Hazzikostas replaces Tom Chilton as game director - Blizzard is losing yet another veteran developer from the World of Warcraft team today: Tom "Kalgan" Chilton, who says he's staying on with the company and "focusing on another project" but turning over the game director…
Epic MMO Battles of History: World of Warcraft vs. Final Fantasy XIV - You know what I usually hate? Superhero fight discussions. Any fight discussion, really. Asking "who would win in a fight between Superman and the Hulk" always has the same two answers: whoever the writers want to…
Leaderboard: How many subs do you think WoW has right now? - This past week, Blizzard denied a quote from a Polish print magazine attributing a post-Legion 10.1 million subscription count for World of Warcraft to Tom Chilton. Blizzard did not outright deny the number, only rebutting the…
WoW Factor: A WoW Legion wishlist - Legion is humming along nicely as we near the two-month mark. It's still got that decent balance of having enough to do that you're unlikely to get bored without so much to do that it's easy…
World of Warcraft plans to ease up (slightly) on Legion’s reputation system in Patch 7.1 - There's no question that World of Warcraft: Legion came with one heck of a reputation grind. What would an expansion be otherwise, right? But for players a little frustrated at having to climb the reputation mountain…
Superdata: WoW now charges a full monthly sub in China - Superdata's digital games market report for August 2016 landed in our inbox today. Those of you who've been consistently frustrated and confused over the way Superdata bins games might be happy to know that the research…
The Daily Grind: How long should the MMORPG genre’s hardest raids take to beat? - This week, after World of Warcraft: Legion's mythic Emerald Nightmare raid launched, a Russian hardcore guild called Exorsus had the raid cleared within 18 hours. The final boss took them just two. According to PCGamesN, the…
Blizzard clarifies World of Warcraft quests that can’t be cleared in LFR - The World of Warcraft community was in a bit of a tizzy yesterday when it collectively discovered that you couldn't complete a quest chain involving raids in the Raid Finder version of the content, followed by…
You can’t get raid quest items from LFR in World of Warcraft: Legion - The lack of a queue option for Mythic dungeons in World of Warcraft hasn't sat well with many people, but it appears that's not all you're locked out of if you prefer to queue for your…
World of Warcraft: Legion opens up more Emerald Nightmare options today - Do you want to be the very best, like no one was before? Then you'll probably want to take on the Mythic difficulty in World of Warcraft: Legion's Emerald Nightmare when it opens... today. Yes, that's…
World of Warcraft brings players up to speed on artifact weapons - As we're now almost a month in World of Warcraft: Legion, it stands to reason that the artifact weapon system is an old hat to many top-level players. However, there's always the real possibility that players…
WoW Factor: The state of WoW’s dungeons and how we got here - I've still been having a blast in Legion over the past few weeks. Nithogg might have been unkind to me by offering me no loot on two separate characters, but that's not going to derail my…
World of Warcraft welcomes Brewfest back to the game - The brewmasters of World of Warcraft's Brewfest have long kept up their silent vigil, but they return to the cities once more. Their mission: Deliver enough liquor to the residents of Azeroth so that everyone forgets…
What to do in World of Warcraft when you’re level 110 - Let's start with something simple and straightforward: When you hit level 110 in World of Warcraft: Legion, you aren't done. At all. Even if you have no interest in raiding whatsoever, you have a ton of…
Leaderboard: What’s the very best zone added in WoW Legion? - Last week, Massively OP's World of Warcraft columnist, Eliot Lefebvre, came damn close to coaxing me back to WoW with his piece rating Legion's zones. It was Highmountain that almost got me; as a primarily Alliance…
WoW Factor: Assessing the zones of WoW Legion’s Broken Isles - I've now made my way through all of the zones in World of Warcraft: Legion twice. There's something to be written about that, which I think is at once a success and a failing of design.…
World of Warcraft opens testing for patch 7.1, Mythic Keystones coming next week - The team behind World of Warcraft: Legion is wasting no time. The expansion didn't even launch a month ago, but patch 7.1 is already hitting the test realm, giving players a peek of the new content…
World of Warcraft hotfixes bugs and tweaks some gameplay balance - World of Warcraft players are still adapting to the novelty of Legion, but the current play environment isn't entirely finished. It's still being tweaked by degrees with the most recent hotfixes, which clear up certain bugs…
Jukebox Heroes: The best of World of Warcraft Legion’s soundtrack - For soundtrack junkies such as myself, the release of a new World of Warcraft expansion is always extra-special for reasons that go beyond mere gameplay. Blizzard is always incredibly faithful in treating its music as an…
WoW Factor: Assessing WoW after two weeks of Legion - All right, so it's actually closer to a week and a half. I'm torn between an eye-rolling "it's only been a week and a half" and a sort of disbelieving "it's only been a week and…
World of Warcraft players figure out the mystery of a long-lost hippogryph - One of World of Warcraft: Legion's most secretive mounts has been discovered by the community. After some sleuthing, players have figured out the process to attaining the reins of the Long-Forgotten Hippogryph -- and while it's…
World of Warcraft Legion sells 3.3M copies, hits highest concurrency since Cataclysm - What do you do when you have sworn off bragging about your playerbase size and subscription numbers? You brag about expansion copies sold and concurrency. And Blizzard has done just that this morning for World of Warcraft.…
World of Warcraft answers player questions regarding the new Legion companion app - World of Warcraft players can now make use of the Legion companion app, allowing players to manage missions and followers remotely. It's the best way to keep up on small maintenance tasks while not actually sitting…
World of Warcraft: Legion companion app is now available - Want to manage your World of Warcraft class order hall missions but don't have the time or access to log into the game? Now you can handle all of this from the convenience of your smart…
Leaderboard: Where does Legion fit in the ranking of WoW’s expansions? - Poll after poll has shown that World of Warcraft players generally consider Wrath of the Lich King to be the very best WoW expansion. But what about after that? OK, Burning Crusade usually comes in second.…
PAX West 2016: WoW’s Legion Companion App and Return to Karazhan - During the World of Warcraft panel at PAX West today, Blizzard revealed that it's rolling out a new mobile toy for the game called the Legion Companion App that basically does all the stuff you would…
First impressions of World of Warcraft: Legion, part three - One of the things that bothered me about Warlords of Draenor was how bad it felt to play. It was unexpected. I don't inherently have anything against ability pruning; heck, I consider it a necessary aspect…
The Daily Grind: How would you judge WoW Legion’s launch? - MMORPG launches seldom go to plan. Trainwrecks are inevitable. Never spend a vacation day on an MMO release date -- that's the conventional wisdom. And yet World of Warcraft: Legion has rolled out pretty darn well,…
World of Warcraft lets players experiment with classes before boosting - Players paralyzed with indecision over which class to boost to level 100 in World of Warcraft now have a way to sort out their choice before committing to a decision. Blizzard announced today that it is…
World of Warcraft previews the max-level zone of Suramar - Four out of the five big new zones in Legion can be entered at any level and will scale up or down appropriately. But World of Warcraft players who wish to enter Suramar will need to…
First impressions of World of Warcraft: Legion, part two - When last we left off, the world was screwed. World of Warcraft: Legion doesn't tell you that you're facing a huge threat, it just shows up, kicks in the door, ruins things around you, and then…
Someone is already 110 in WoW Legion, plus faction roadblocks for old Druids - If you were a Druid eagerly looking forward to World of Warcraft: Legion who also had a particularly odd set of pre-expansion decisions, you found yourself in a bit of a pickle when the game launched.…
The Daily Grind: What are your first impressions of Legion? - Well, it's here. World of Warcraft: Legion has been out in the US for five hours now (more for Europeans!), which in internet time is more than enough to come up with a comprehensive opinion that judges just…
First impressions of World of Warcraft: Legion, part one - It was around the time that I was burning my way through drakes that I found myself nodding in appreciation. This was it, I thought. This was the itch that I'd been missing for so long.…
World of Warcraft: Legion launch trailer and launch schedule - Tick, tock. World of Warcraft's Legion expansion drops in eight hours for EU players, 17 in the US -- which of course is the middle of the night. Are you prepared? And more importantly, are you staying…
World of Warcraft’s Stormheim stars you in a Norse epic - If you are fascinated with World of Warcraft's winged Vrykrul, then your first stop in the Legion leveling process should definitely be Stormheim. The development team promises that players will be able to learn a lot…
WoW Factor: Sticking the landing of the Legion expansion - Next week, folks, it's go time. The expansion arrives, and so forth. My impressions of the expansion will start going out on Monday, but odds are high that you already know what they're going to be,…
World of Warcraft offers up an introductory course on artifact weapons - Artifact weapons are no doubt one of the tentpole features of World of Warcraft: Legion, yet as a new system, there's bound to be confusion and uncertainty about how they work. To help educate the unwashed…
World of Warcraft pumps up invasions, posts Legion dungeon schedule - Times, they are a-changin' in World of Warcraft. As the game sits on the cusp of launching Legion, Blizzard has given the cyber demons permission to ramp up their attacks across Azeroth. Invasion frequency has been…
World of Warcraft shows off the World Quest system - When you reach level 110 in World of Warcraft: Legion, you've got a new sort of content awaiting you. They're not daily quests or weekly quests, they're not bonus objectives, they're not limited-time events, but they're…
Gamescom 2016: World of Warcraft brings out the hard content three weeks after Legion’s launch - For some players, the real fun of World of Warcraft: Legion won't start until a month after its August 30th launch. At the Legion-plus-three-weeks mark, Blizzard will unlock its more challenging endgame content, including the Emerald…
WoW Factor: Fighting against the Legion and the end of the world - I honestly don't know what the Burning Legion's strategy is in World of Warcraft right now when it comes to picking places to invade. Azshara, sure, that makes sense. Tanaris, all right, it's near a bunch…
World of Warcraft further tweaks invasion XP, gives a sneak ‘peak’ of Highmountain - More fine-tuning of World of Warcraft's demon invasions is coming today, as Blizzard said that it is making a couple of fixes to how XP is being doled out after mobs are killed. Apparently there are bugs that…
Gamescom 2016: WoW Legion’s first patch, Return to Karazhan, will include 5-man Kara - At the Legion Cafe event at Gamescom today, Blizzard confirmed that World of Warcraft: Legion's first patch (7.1) will include an epic five-player dungeon ("almost a raid") version of Karazhan. The devs also addressed their plan…
Blizzard makes radical adjustments to World of Warcraft invasion XP - What's scarier than demonic invasions raining down all across Azeroth? According to some players, it's when Blizzard removes incentive for fighting said invasions. Yesterday's World of Warcraft hotfix made a couple of significant changes to the…
Gamescom 2016: Blizzard plans to show off Legion and new maps for Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm - Unless you're living in some sort of video game-proof hole, you are probably aware that the mighty Gamescom is kicking off tomorrow and running through the weekend. It's one of the biggest trade shows of the…
World of Warcraft: Legion’s Azsuna is a ‘broken land’ - It's kind of a little strange to be reading zone previews of expansion areas, as you know that what is largely unknown and foreign to you now will become the familiar stomping grounds of you by…
The Daily Grind: How do you decide when MMORPG class revisions have gone too far? - A bunch of my guildies flocked back to World of Warcraft during its pre-Legion festivities. One of them mentioned in passing that he'd been toying with a frost mage alt and thought it was even more…
WoW Factor: The storm upon the Broken Shore - I sometimes get asked why I don't do more stuff within betas when I have access to them. To answer that, all I can really do is point to the experience of the Broken Shore scenario…
The other faction’s Broken Shore cinematic in World of Warcraft can offer some lore revelations - If you've only done the Broken Shore scenario on one faction in World of Warcraft, you're missing out. Sure, you know what's going on in your faction, but you might have missed some important details about…
World of Warcraft previews two of the dungeons of Legion - A lot is changing when World of Warcraft: Legion launches, but dungeons will work the way they always have. Of course, they will be new dungeons, necessitating new approaches for players who jump in to the…
Jukebox Heroes: World of Warcraft’s main music themes - Inspired by a news post that a dashing Massively OP writer penned a few weeks back, I thought that it might be an interesting exercise in nostalgia to revisit all of the main themes for World…
Here’s a few pointers for the World of Warcraft: Legion events - The advent of Demon Hunters in World of Warcraft wasn't the only event that happened yesterday in the game. Regardless of interest in the new class, players could experience the first Broken Shores scenario and tackle the numerous…
World of Warcraft hotfixes loot and item issues - The Burning Legion is invading Azeroth, Demon Hunters are showing up, everything is chaos and nothing makes sense at all. A lot of that is intentional right now. Some of it is not, and thus World…
You can play a Demon Hunter in World of Warcraft today - Demon Hunters go live in today's pre-Legion World of Warcraft patch, at least if you've already pre-ordered the expansion. The concomitant demon invasions begin today as well. Massively OP's Matt Daniel toured the Demon Hunter while…
World of Warcraft walks you through two of its new Legion dungeons - Like a snake shedding its old skin in favor of the new, so too are World of Warcraft players wriggling with excitement over ditching the Warlords of Draenor dungeons that they've run a million times for…
World of Warcraft’s Harbingers video and the story of Illidan - We have a lot of questions for Illidan, who is making a star performance return in World of Warcraft: Legion. Why so mad, bro? How can you see through your blindfold? Do you bump into doorways…
World of Warcraft shows off its Legion leveling experience - The leveling experience of World of Warcraft: Legion is going to be rather different from previous expansions, starting with the fact that the answer to "what level is this zone" is always "your level." Yes, every…
Perfect Ten: The ten things I look forward to with MMO launches - It's not long now until World of Warcraft: Legion launches, which is all that I've been waiting for now for a while. Sure, technically I could have experienced everything in the game so far in the…
World of Warcraft continues its audio drama and prepares for the final Harbingers episode - It's less than a week until players get to start exploring the Demon Hunter class in World of Warcraft, ahead of the launch of the Legion expansion. So it makes sense that the final animated Harbingers…
World of Warcraft continues the Tomb of Sargeras audio drama - You didn't think that the first venture into the Tomb of Sargeras would be the end for World of Warcraft's audio drama prequel to Legion, did you? Because it wasn't. The second part of the audio…
Immerse yourself in some good World of Warcraft audio drama - Oh, did you click on this post hoping for a tour through some juicy World of Warcraft community drama, perhaps tackling the latest controversy to come out of the game? Nope! Instead of players getting salty,…
World of Warcraft trailer touts Legion features, locations - Blizzard has just posted up another World of Warcraft: Legion video, this one an "extended look" at the zones, dungeons, artifact system, combat animations, world quests, honor system, class halls, and champion followers on the way at…
Guild Chat: Recruiting for your MMORPG guild ahead of WoW Legion - Welcome along to Guild Chat, my column in which I join forces with commenters to help a reader in need with a guild-related concern. This edition's submission is all about recruitment: Although many editions of Guild…
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 Blizzard Watch, the Burning Legion demonic…
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 a fair bit myself. It's still…
World of Warcraft’s new action camera causes motion sickness in some players - An experimental action camera mode added in World of Warcraft's last patch gave players a little more than they bargained for, as it has apparently triggered motion sickness among some of its viewers. Blizzard noted that…
World of Warcraft’s Khadgar seeks a weapon to fight the Burning Legion - Fretting about the coming Burning Legion seems to be the new pastime of most characters in World of Warcraft these days. They're never happy unless they're miserable, really. As we while away the final month before…
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 Hunter, who taunted players with the…
World of Warcraft drops more pre-Legion lore at SDCC ’16 - There's going to be quite a bit of lore in World of Warcraft to lead up to the release of Legion, but not every story is one that players would necessarily experience directly. You're going to…
Check out every World of Warcraft loading screen from 2004 to 2016 - Here's your dose of World of Warcraft nostalgia for today: All seven login screens for the game, from the original 2004 edition to this month's Legion facade. Considering how long the community got acquainted with each…
Check out World of Warcraft’s old and new spell animations - The big pre-patch for World of Warcraft's next expansion is finally here, meaning that everyone's specs have changed, everyone's abilities have changed, and bugs are cropping up. Those bugs are being squashed with the first few…
Here’s your World of Warcraft: Legion pre-expansion patch survival guide - While you might make it just fine in life without a "survival guide" to an MMORPG patch, why take that risk? In preparation for tomorrow's World of Warcraft: Legion pre-expansion patch, Blizzard released such a guide…
The Soapbox: Calling an MMO launch a launch - It's launch. Can we collectively accept that? Marketing, developers, and players alike? Launch is launch. When your game launches, it has launched. If I can reach another decade on this planet without ever hearing the term…
World of Warcraft preps Legion pre-patch for July 19, previews transmog 2.0 - World of Warcraft's Legion pre-patch is on the way as promised: on July 19th, to be exact. The patch will include the new transmogrification system as well as numerous changes to classes and talents. Coming later this…
Feast your eyes upon another World of Warcraft: Legion comic book - How are your World of Warcraft: Legion preparations coming? Everyone in the community seems to have his or her own to-do list for the expansion, and we imagine that for some, getting to know the lore and backstory…
WoW Factor: Titanforged items and content relevance - If you've missed discussion of it elsewhere (including on this here site, even), World of Warcraft is rolling out a new system for item upgrades in Legion. Item drops from any given source can "explode" upwards,…
Perfect Ten: The most exciting MMO developments yet to come in 2016 - In the annals of MMORPG history, 2016 might well go down as a very odd duck of a year. While on the surface it might not seem like there is a lot happening with big-name IPs,…
World of Warcraft outlines the demonic invasion hitting Azeroth - The Burning Legion is coming to World of Warcraft, and players have to fight them off. Sure, we're not going to be able to do that for good before Legion arrives, since it would be kind…
World of Warcraft is introducing a silence penalty with the Legion prepatch - Hello, trade chat, my old friend; I'm turning you back on again. Because the team on World of Warcraft has addressed your issues at last, so the players who were filling you with spam will not…
Leaderboard: Are you preparing for WoW Legion? - Legion is coming. Last week, Blizzard began pushing out the pre-patch for pre-launch events for World of Warcraft's Legion expansion. That means Demon Hunters are really truly right around the corner, followed by the in-game lore…
World of Warcraft teases the Legion pre-patch - When will World of Warcraft players experience the Legion pre-patch? Despite the fact that the opening lines of the most recent development dispatch promise to share more about when to expect it, we still do not…
World of Warcraft: Legion Q&A addresses the lore and balancing of artifacts - Artifacts are a big deal in World of Warcraft: Legion, which is why the most recent live developer question and answer session was all about artifacts and class halls. These iconic weapons give players new abilities…
New World of Warcraft comic goes over the arrival of the Burning Legion in Suramar - Being the Grand Magistrix of Suramar seems like a pretty great gig for the majority of your rule. For one thing, you have power over time. For another, you rule over a deathless magically empowered miracle…
WoW’s patch preloading begins ahead of Legion beta launch test today - World of Warcraft players, get ready to hurry up and wait: A massive 20-gb patch has begin preloading in Battle.net, heralding the pre-launch 7.0 patch for Legion. Just don't get too excited; as Redditors caution, there's…
World of Warcraft asks players to hunt demons for Legion beta keys - We now know what World of Warcraft was teasing for players the other day. The bad news for those of you hoping for a pre-Legion event is that it's not the pre-patch or a demon invasion.…
Is World of Warcraft kicking off a pre-Legion event today? - Wake up, World of Warcraft players, because you may be pressed into service against the irksome demons today. Last night, Blizzard sent out a cryptic tweet with the title "Demon Bounties" that indicated something was happening today: "We're…
WoW Factor: The hope I have for Legion - Every week, in Final Fantasy XI, the three main player nations are competing in a form of passive PvP known as conquest. The nation with the most influence in a given region (achieved primarily by killing…
What the Titanforged gear will mean for World of Warcraft: Legion - World of Warcraft players recently got an eyeful of information about Titanforged items and how the game's item levels will work through Legion (and possibly beyond). That isn't such a huge deal, really; it just explains how…
World of Warcraft devs want to bring more flavor to professions in Legion - A new expansion is as good an excuse as any to stir the pot and make big changes to an MMO, since players are already in the mode to adapt. Blizzard is tossing in several adjustments…
World of Warcraft: Legion’s expansion cycle will be longer with more patches - Remember all of those times that Blizzard said that it was going to speed up the rate at which it produced World of Warcraft expansions? Well, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, the studio has finally given…
World of Warcraft: Legion’s pre-expansion patch hits the test server - While World of Warcraft players will have to wait until the very end of August to dive into the new expansion, a major event and update is coming before that to keep the summer interesting. We…
World of Warcraft: Legion is getting an animated Illidan short - Considering that Illidan Stormrage is the origin of all of the Demon Hunters double-jumping around in World of Warcraft: Legion you wouldn't be surprised to learn that he's a pretty important lore figure. Blizzard revealed yesterday…
World of Warcraft’s talent reshuffle is meant to bring ‘more meaningful choice’ to players - We trust it hasn't escaped your attention that your current World of Warcraft talent build won't be surviving Legion's launch intact. The talent system is but one of many that Blizzard's never-quite-satisfied designers are retweaking, reshuffling,…
WoW Factor: How to get ready for the Legion pre-patch - As of the time that I'm writing this, we don't know when the Legion pre-patch will hit World of Warcraft. I had to double-check that; these days, I'm never sure any longer. You would think that…
World of Warcraft now bundles Warlords of Draenor in with base game - There comes a time in every boy or girl's life where changes start happening. Yes, it might be scary, but it's also exciting because it indicates that an important transition is underway. We speak, of course,…
World of Warcraft will have no gold costs on rearranging talents but will limit it to certain areas - There is no actual gold cost for swapping around your specs or talents in the next World of Warcraft expansion. That's gone. You want to be Shadow one minute and Discipline the next? Go for it.…
World of Warcraft will unlock Gnome Hunters before the expansion launch - World of Warcraft's next new race/class combination will be playable before Legion launches. Blizzard announced yesterday that players will be able to roll (or change into) Gnome Hunters when Legion's pre-expansion patch comes around later this…
World of Warcraft begins Legion’s beta testing - Alpha? That's so early 2016, you guys. Starting today, World of Warcraft: Legion is all about its beta test, which will run until the expansion's launch at the end of August. The beta is purportedly a…
Stormwind Park will (finally) be rebuilt in World of Warcraft: Legion - For the past six years, World of Warcraft's Stormwind Park has been a smoking crater in the otherwise beautiful city thanks to Deathwing. Players have wondered for a while now when the area would be rebuilt…
World of Warcraft: Legion is bumping the gold cap up to nearly 10 million - Are you a high roller in World of Warcraft? Do you frequently make it rain on lesser players? Do you see things that cost tens of thousands of gold and think, "Darn, that's cheap?" Do you…
World of Warcraft previews the design of World Quests for Legion - The next expansion for World of Warcraft is trying something different for endgame. It's not the sprawling dailies of Mists of Pandaria, and it's not the open-world reputation grinding and general dearth of Warlords of Draenor.…
Blizzard to WoW testers: Class orders will not be like garrison missions - If you've paid any attention to World of Warcraft during its present expansion cycle, you are probably aware that Garrisons have not exactly been warmly beloved as an addition to the game. Now that the next…
Get a look at both sides of World of Warcraft: Legion’s Illidan - Datamining and expansion exploring continues unabated for World of Warcraft: Legion. Wowhead has several previews of new models posted, including a look at Illidan in normal and dark modes. The site also posted a look at…
April Fools’ Day around the MMOverse, 2016 edition - Happy April Fools' Day, and remember not to believe anything you read on the internet today! We're stepping outside of our own BuzzFeed-headline prank for a moment to deliver a quick look at some of the…
WoW’s latest Legion build includes Brewmaster spec, new class hall campaigns - Last night's World of Warcraft Legion alpha patch is a small one on the whole, but Monk players will be pleased: the Brewmaster spec is ready for testing, though Blizzard notes it's a tad overpowered, and…
WoW Factor: The problem with Garrisons isn’t Garrisons - When World of Warcraft rolls away from the inexplicable inclusion of alternate Draenor for good, it will also mean bidding farewell to the elements of Draenor, and I imagine most everyone will respond to that with…
Rumor: BlizzCon 2016 aims for November 4-5 - When is this year's BlizzCon? We don't know. It hasn't even been officially announced yet. But the eagle-eyed folks over at MMO Champion spotted a brief revision to the official BlizzCon page claiming that this year…
Rumor: Retailers pegging World of Warcraft: Legion’s release as June 30th - The cycle has begun. Every time a World of Warcraft expansion doesn't have a fixed release date, retailers begin assigning a release date to the expansion, and people watch carefully because they might know something we…
World of Warcraft outlines the state of PvP in the Legion alpha - The big change coming to World of Warcraft's PvP in Legion is a brand-new honor system, and like anything else that's been changed wholesale for the expansion, it needs to be properly tested. The developers have…
WoW Factor: Levels and legends in the Legion alpha - The alpha testing for World of Warcraft's next expansion rolls on, with the vague hope that we might actually have a beta tag by the end of March. I mean, we almost have all of the…
New and tweaked class specs arrive in WoW’s latest Legion build - The testing for World of Warcraft's next expansion is almost finished adding new specs for players to try out as the latest Legion test build has added Assassination Rogue and Frost Mage into the mix. That's…
World of Warcraft updates its expansion alpha and opens up PvP testing - One of the big elements being introduced to World of Warcraft when Legion goes live is an entirely revamped PvP system, rebuilt from the ground up to change the acquisition of talents and abilities over time.…
World of Warcraft: Legion has higher system requirements than previous expansions - If you've been assuming that World of Warcraft: Legion will run just fine on your current machine, you might want to take a minute to reassess that thought. According to Blizzard, the system requirements for the…
Watch a run-through of WoW: Legion’s Maw of Souls dungeon - When World of Warcraft: Legion arrives some time this summer, players will be able to jump into nine brand-new five-man dungeons. So what kind of mind-blowing instance design does Blizzard have in store for its fans?…
Activision-Blizzard Q4 2015: WoW sees ‘growth,’ Legion still on track for summer - Activision-Blizzard has posted its Q4 2015 financial report, touting record digital revenues up 20% year over year, thanks in part to game exports to Chinese audiences, but revenues were down quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year. CEO Bobby Kotick says…
WoW Factor: Why Legion’s alpha/beta label is a hair worth splitting - The Legion alpha is back, and it is still an alpha. And I want to to stress, not for the first time, that I am not applying that label to it. I am not declaring that…
WoW’s latest Legion alpha build revises talent loadouts, glyphs - The alpha testing for World of Warcraft's next expansion is rolling along and getting just a little bit bigger. Another build has been deployed, and while it doesn't include any new areas or a level cap…
WoW Legion makes major changes to specializations and transmog sets - Are you tired of dealing with dual specs in World of Warcraft? It was revealed at BlizzCon that the existing spec system was going to change so that players could freely switch between specs, a feature…
You’re going to have to purchase World of Warcraft: Legion twice for early access and a physical collector’s edition - Remember all of the absurdity about World of Warcraft's collector's edition with Warlords of Draenor? That was ridiculous. Basically, if you wanted to pre-order the collector's edition for the physical goodies but also wanted the digital…
WoW Factor: The importance of class fantasies - Here's a fun thought exercise for you all: explain the differences between Fire Mages and Destruction Warlocks in World of Warcraft. But before you do so, let's make things a little more interesting by saying that…
World of Warcraft’s design philosophy for tanks and healers in Legion - Good news, World of Warcraft tanks - you'll be taking more damage in Legion! And that really could be the good news, depending upon how you look at a lengthy diatribe about the philosophy of tanking…
World of Warcraft: Legion’s alpha will be back online today - Good news to those of you testing World of Warcraft's next expansion - the alpha for Legion will be coming back online today! No word on exactly when, but it's a known fact: https://twitter.com/Arvaanas/status/687337059573350400 You may…
World of Warcraft’s Legion testing will return with a new build and new content - There's still no word on exactly when the test servers for World of Warcraft: Legion will come back online following the winter break, but we can at least be certain that when they do come back…
WoW Legion aims to flatten the PvP gear curve - Last night, Blizzard posted a dev blog to explain just how World of Warcraft Legion plans to drive a wrecking ball into the game's existing PvP paradigm. For starters, honor and conquest currencies are being replaced…
WoW Factor: Legion testing is an exercise in absurd decisions - One of my favorite bits from The Office is when Michael is having his budget explained to him. You don't need to know the context; the funniest bit is right on YouTube, as it's explained to…
Check out World of Warcraft’s upcoming class halls - One of the major new features of next year's World of Warcraft: Legion is the class hall system. As the name suggests, class halls offer thematic spaces tailored to specific professions. Players of either faction (but of…
Check out the new Druid bear forms from World of Warcraft’s Legion alpha - What is the number one threat to Azeroth? Bears. That's why Druids can turn into bears, after all. The new World of Warcraft expansion brings in further customization for Druid forms, and you can see these…
WoW Factor: The look of the Legion class previews - Last week was a pretty fun ride, I have to say. Leaving aside everything else we had to chew on after a weekend's worth of BlizzCon, the World of Warcraft team really went to town with…
World of Warcraft dramatizes the level 100 boost process - Like the last expansion, World of Warcraft's upcoming Legion expansion will let players skip the tedious process of leveling up through old content and just focus on the new content if they'd like. So what does…
World of Warcraft celebrates 11 years of operation - Whether your opinions on World of Warcraft are positive or negative, you can't deny that reaching 11 years of operation is quite the accomplishment. The game is celebrating the achievement with presents for the players, as…
WoW preps patch 6.2.3, teases Gnome Hunters - Ready to timewalk back to the days of World of Warcraft's third expansion? Or are you just looking forward to being able to use Valor points to upgrade your pants a few times? Both desires will…
WoW Factor: In the wake of BlizzCon’s Legion content - Well, folks, we're officially living in a post-BlizzCon world. Until the next one. The point is, we're done with that convention, and all that's left is considering what is coming next for World of Warcraft and…
World of Warcraft wraps up its Legion class previews with Druid and Rogue - There are a lot of leather-wearing classes in World of Warcraft at this point, and two of them are sharing the last round of class previews. Druids and Rogues are bringing up the tail end, but…
World of Warcraft outlines the changes coming to Monk - Monks are the only baseline class that's been added to World of Warcraft since the game's launch - two hero classes have been added on, but Monk is a base class that starts from level 1…
World of Warcraft outlines the changes coming to Shaman and Warrior in Legion - Big changes are coming to every single class in World of Warcraft when the next expansion goes live. The official site has already shown off six of the game's extant 11 classes, but the series of…
World of Warcraft outlines the Death Knight changes coming in Legion - The next World of Warcraft expansion is adding the game's second hero class to the lineup, but that doesn't mean the first one has been forgotten. Death Knights have been around for six years now, but…
World of Warcraft Mages won’t change radically in Legion - Blizzard has released a new dev blog previewing the changes in store for Mages in World of Warcraft's upcoming Legion expansion. Mages are "in a very strong place compared to most classes," Blizzard says, while noting that…
World of Warcraft begins its examination of class design with Hunters and Priests - One of the facts repeated throughout BlizzCon was that classes and class fantasies will be getting overhauled in World of Warcraft's next expansion. So what does that mean? Well, there wasn't time during the panels for…
The Daily Grind: Did BlizzCon deliver on your expectations? - It's not exactly a stretch to say that Blizzard Entertainment casts a long shadow over the field of online gaming. World of Warcraft remains an absolute juggernaut of the MMO field despite its recent history of…
BlizzCon 2015: World of Warcraft Q&A liveblog - It's the tail end of BlizzCon, and World of Warcraft players have Legion questions. Players probably had questions at the start of the convention, too, but now were' to the point that those questions can actually get answered. Yes,…
BlizzCon 2015: World of Warcraft Legion systems panel liveblog - How is transmogrifying items going to change with World of Warcraft's Legion expansion? What are the restrictions on transmogrifying artifacts? How do the artifacts work? What changes are being brought to abilities in order to balance PvP with…
World of Warcraft: Legion overview panel recap - There's an expansion in the works for World of Warcraft. That's not news. It's the details of that expansion that fans have been anxiously awaiting ever since the expansion was first announced in August. Now that…
BlizzCon 2015 opening ceremony recap, Warcraft movie trailer - BlizzCon 2015 kicks off with its opening ceremony at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. PST) today, and Massively OP liveblogged the festivities down in the comments. Now that it's over, we've updated the end of this post with…
Rumor: WoW Legion due on or before September 21st, 2016 - BlizzCon is starting up later today, but a couple of leaks are already making the rounds. World of Warcraft players poking around the structure of the Battle.net site allegedly uncovered a background image revealing a launch…
WoW Factor: A decade of Blizzard’s bad habits - The funny thing about World of Warcraft - and I should note here that I'm using "funny" in this case as a synonym for "odd" rather than "hilarious" - is that the game has been around…
BlizzCon posts its two-day event schedule - BlizzCon 2015 is less than a month away, and fans of World of Warcraft, Diablo III, Hearthstone, StarCraft II, Overwatch, and Heroes of the Storm have much to look forward to when the convention opens. To…
WoW Factor: A wishlist for World of Warcraft’s Legion expansion - We're going to find out a lot about World of Warcraft:Â Legion in November. Not just because I expect that'll be around the time we get our beta announcement and date, which may even be as soon…
WoW Factor: Between now and Legion - I'm going to be very surprised if we see World of Warcraft:Â Legion before June 2016. The odds are good that a beta announcement is coming in November, and roughly seven months of beta seems fairly normal.…
Here are a ton of tidbits about World of Warcraft: Legion - You've got questions about World of Warcraft: Legion. Of course you do. And Blizzard knows that it's got you on the hook, which is why the studio is going to make you anticipate every drip and…
World of Warcraft welcomes players back to the skies - It's been a good while since World of Warcraft players have been able to fly in high-level zones, but as of today the skies are the limit for Warlords of Draenor pilots. Patch 6.2.2 turns on…
WoW Factor: Wild guessing about Demon Hunters - So what's the deal with World of Warcraft's Demon Hunter? We just don't know yet. But the space to speculate is pretty awesome. I mentioned in my last column that in some ways, Legion feels like…
Gamescom 2015: More details on World of Warcraft: Legion - It's only been a day since the announcement of World of Warcraft: Legion, but fans are already eager to learn more about the expansion. Fan site Icy Veins was able to get a quick interview with…
WoW Factor: Analyzing Legion with a critical eye - All right, let me just say for the record that when it comes to this expansion, my speculation last week was meant as just that. But it turns out that I was right on the money,…
World of Warcraft announces Legion expansion with Demon Hunter class, Broken Isles continent; beta this year - The liveblog is after the cut. Here are the highlights! Blizzard has just announced World of Warcraft's next expansion: Legion. Blizzard's Tom Chilton says that the initial video is "connecting tissue" between Warlords of Draenor and…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_bdvyWv_aQ
Source: HowtoWoW.net via VG24/7
