Bree Royce
Editor-in-Chief
Bree is an unrepentant escapist with a predilection for MMOs. When not compulsively proofreading cereal boxes and newspapers, she can be found modding, PvPing on the auction hall, and touring the Next Big Thing with her guild on a quest for the elusive perfect game.
Working As Intended and Ask Mo are her pet op-ed columns, but she also pens Daily Grinds and compiles Massively Overthinking, the Week in Review, and Make My MMO. You can hear her ramble about MMOs every week on the Massively OP podcast. If you're nice, she'll even talk about something other than Star Wars Galaxies.
Personal blog: SkycandyTwitter: @nbrianna
Favorite MMOs: Star Wars Galaxies, City of Heroes, Lord of the Rings Online, Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2, Ultima Online
Massively Overthinking: If an MMO item is buyable with gold, does that excuse its presence in the cash shop?
This week's Overthinking topic comes from longtime MOP reader and commenter Sally Bowls. It's about monetization, but it's a nuanced argument we don't see...
Rumor: Z1 Battle Royale, H1Z1’s PC version, seems to be in big trouble as devs confirm layoffs
Note: We'll be updating this piece at the end with the latest, and we've also put out a second piece here with NantG's statement.
It...
MMO Business Roundup: Prince Harry vs Fortnite, China’s big thaw, Gamigo’s new acquisition, and industry transparency
Welcome back to another edition of the MMO Business Roundup, random bits of industry news that are interesting but probably not worth their own...
Grab a key for a Wild Terra armored boar mount courtesy of Juvty Worlds and MOP
Earlier this winter, Juvty Worlds announced it was taking its isometric sandbox MMO Wild Terra free-to-play. Since then, it's unleashed multiple events - St.Wodwose's...
Indie sandbox MMO Fractured will finally enter alpha one this month
Indie sandbox MMO Fractured is moving another step down the development line: It's just announced the start of its alpha next week.
"The first testing...
BioWare internal memo vows to address studio disarray, says Kotaku’s Anthem exposé was ‘traumatizing’
On Tuesday this week, Kotaku published a devastating exposé of BioWare, interviewing 19 people in the know to reveal a state of "crisis" in...
QC Games says it’s ‘winding down internal operations on Breach’
It looks as if Breach is in trouble, folks - or at least the company behind it is. In a message to players today,...
Grab a Eudemons Online media pack in honor of its newly launched server, Elysium
Long-running free-to-play MMO Eudemons Online is rolling out an update today, complete with retooled newbie quests and a brand-new server called Elysium. Naturally, the...
Respawn says it’s working on the bug that wiped Apex Legends accounts this afternoon
I'm sure everybody reading here has a horror story of somehow seeing an account wiped, but I can't remember the last time it happened...
RIFT’s battle pass will run $9.99 and dole out rewards for doing dailies
Remember when Gamigo asked the community what it thought about the RIFT battle pass without actually telling anybody what was in said battle pass?...
OrbusVR Reborn launches on April 23, will be an Oculus Quest launch title
You know, the MMORPG genre doesn't really get many virtual reality games, which is a shame - who doesn't want the holodeck? But there...
Black Desert goes Out of the Woods on PC, adds four classes and PvP modes on Xbox One
If you're hoping for another update on the botched Black Desert banwave, alas, there hasn't been one - we're in exactly the same place...
The Repopulation’s latest dev update covers work on the game server and art optimization
You gotta admire any MMO studio that puts out real news on April 1st, knowing the jokes and questions it will provoke, but that's...
Kotaku’s Anthem exposé unmasks a studio in ‘crisis’ – and BioWare’s response is alarming
Kotaku has another lengthy expose up today, this one homing in on Anthem. Author Jason Schreier interviewed 19 Anthem (and Anthem-adjacent) developers to paint...
Guild Wars 2 staff are reorganizing into ‘fully staffed content teams’ as ArenaNet outlines future content
Guild Wars 2 has been in a bit of limbo this winter. Following mass layoffs at ArenaNet, the cancellation of two additional games, and...
The Daily Grind: Do you still get excited about upcoming MMORPGs?
It was the late aughts. My husband and I had scraped together money to fly to London for a meet-up with our Europe-based guildies....
Star Wars Galaxies Legends emulator put out a huge March update trying to fix player cities
The April Fools' Day event isn't the only thing that's recently gone live in the fan-favorite Star Wars Galaxies emulator known as Legends. While...
SpatialOS interview suggests tech can handle 20K MMO players in a ‘relatively low-fidelity but seamless world’
Even SpatialOS seems grim about the outlook for western MMOs. MMO players will recall that Improbable's SpatialOS is a "distributed computing platform for building...
Guild Wars 2 is giving away another season four episode, A Bug in the System, starting tomorrow
Week two of ArenaNet's return to Tyria push in Guild Wars 2 begins tomorrow, and it's coming with another freebie: the second episode of...
AQ3D’s 8bit NES Kickstarter is not a joke – it’s ‘the hottest game from 1985… created in 2019!’
Gonna be honest, when MJ linked this Kickstarter to me, I actually went straight to the April Fools' Day roundup and added it. I...
