ALL THE POSTS
Star Citizen brings new race tracks and a first look at engineering to alpha 3.23’s Arena Commander
While many of the reveals shared by Star Citizen for alpha 3.23 have been focused on the persistent universe portion of the game, the next update is going to be bringing new content to the isolated Arena Commander module as well, and those updates are the focus of this week's Inside Star Citizen episode.
There will be three new experimental...
Into the Super-verse: Why the resurrection of 20-year-old City of Heroes is worth celebrating, even if you don’t play
There's a certain poetry to the fact that this year, on the 20th anniversary of City of Heroes, we can all play the game again on a licensed server. Oh, sure, the rogue servers did not pop into existence this year and in fact had been running for some time before now; that's not the point. It's been two...
Escape from Tarkov causes firestorm by locking PvE mode behind $250 special edition
Battlestate Games has decided that access to a PvE mode for its otherwise PvP-centric shooter Escape from Tarkov is worth a whole lot of money. Specifically $250, as playing the mode will release only with the Unheard Edition of the game.
The pricey bundle packs a bunch of other gubbins like more storage, a unique melee weapon, more slots on...
WoW Factor: Exit BlizzCon, for good this time?
Back in 2021, we learned that there was not going to be a BlizzCon 2022. This did not surprise me, and I penned a whole column that included speculation that this was the beginning of the end for the convention. Indeed, at that point I felt like it was very unlikely we would ever see another BlizzCon at all,...
Dune Awakening teases its movable, taxable, base-buildy but cozy player housing
Fans of Funcom's Conan Exiles will eagerly point to the game's building as one of its strongest features, so it's no surprise that the studio's survival MMORPG Dune Awakening will likewise emphasize player construction. That's obvious in Funcom's latest teaser video on social media, which shows a brief animation of a housing interior, complete with a sci-fi crafting station...
LOTRO continues Update 40 testing with underground side quests and bog-guardian shrinkage
Now that Lord of the Rings Online players have spent a half-year getting to know the alleyways and warrens of Umbar Baharbêl, the studio is preparing to take them underneath this tropical city with Update 40.
The patch, which just went into its second round of testing this week, includes five sections of sidequests in the "Neaths" of Umbar: "You...
The Daily Grind: What’s the most frustrating misperception the general public has about MMORPGs?
MOP reader Orca7 tipped us a funny piece from The Onion from last week that reminds me MMORPGs are still not regarded in the best light by the mainstream public. IRS Under Fire For Blowing $350 Million Developing MMORPG Tax Video Game Called 'Tales Of Revenue', reads the headline on the infamous satire site, which... OK, honestly, that's pretty...
The Stream Team: Searching for Strahd’s story in Dungeons & Dragons Online
Last week, Massively OP's MJ searched for the diary pages of Ireena in DDO's Ravenloft. This time, she's seeking those of Strahd himself! She wants to piece together more of his back story, especially after the blurbs she learned from Baba Lysaga's hut. Will that reveal more of his motivations created through his formative years? Or will it just...
Massively Overthinking: Is there a feature or item in MMORPGs you won’t play without?
I was jolted into a near panic earlier this past weekend when I saw a tweet from Lord of the Rings Online in which Standing Stone Games told players that carry-alls have been disabled. Carry-alls are basically inventory extensions for specific items, like crafting mats and task items. I have around a dozen of them personally; they're one of...
V Rising details gameplay waiting in the Ruins of Mortium, Valheim continues its Ashlands test
This is either a tale of two games that start with the letter V, two games that are working on new zones, or two tardy sandboxes as Bree succinctly put it. Either way, both V Rising and Valheim have some new things to highlight for fans of each respective survivalbox.
We'll begin with V Rising and its latest extremely wordy...
Embers Adrift puts a stop to its content compression plans after player feedback
Last week saw Embers Adrift begin testing of a "content compression" adjustment that would see the MMORPG's max level lowered in order to get more people grouping together and make every level feel more impactful -- all while not squishing stats or changing the required amount of XP to reach each level (and thereby making each level take longer...
World of Warcraft is retiring the Companion App as it looks forward to the Cataclysm Classic conversion
If you're still salty about being asked this ages ago, don't worry, World of Warcraft fans. Blizzard no longer cares if you have a phone. At least not as far as WoW is concerned, because the WoW Companion App is officially being retired when The War Within's pre-patch arrives. That means no more using the app to... well, not...
Lost Ark disqualified and punished Thaemine The First race cheaters
File this one under "this is why we can't have nice things": Apparently, some Lost Ark players thought they'd faff around with cheating the game's current race-to-first, and now they're finding out.
The issue revolves around the Thaemine The First leaderboard; the event essentially pits player groups against each other in a race to clear the hardest difficulty of the...
Elite Dangerous provides an elaborate deep-dive on how Powerplay 2.0’s mechanics and rewards will work
Despite the backdrop of Frontier Developments setting Elite: Dangerous players on fire with talk about cash shop ship bundles, the studio came together for another Frontier Unlocked livestream to talk more about Powerplay 2.0 and how its various interlocking mechanics will work when it goes live.
Players can expand their chosen power's territory by simply doing activities that their chosen...
As Warcraft turns 30, Blizzard has preemptively canceled BlizzCon for 2024
Well, you can read the headline: There's no BlizzCon this year after all, in spite of the fact that this is Warcraft's 30th anniversary and World of Warcraft's 20th and there are actually major releases coming from the studio this year.
"After careful consideration over the last year, we at Blizzard have made the decision not to hold BlizzCon in...
Kickstarted MMORPG-turned-TCG Genfanad gives up, will sunset April 30
ArcheAge isn't the only MMORPG announcing a sunset this week: Kickstarter success Genfanad is apparently closing its doors too.
Genfanad is a browser-based nostalgia-driven indie MMO that was first announced back in 2021 and actually pulled in just under $20,000 on Kickstarter. Developer Rose Tinted Games launched the title in 2022, but it never pulled over 2500 players. Last summer,...
Seafaring survival MMO Age of Water hits Steam early access, addresses premium perks
After a week-long false start, publisher Gaijin Entertainment and developer Three Whales Studio have brought Age of Water into the roiling and (arguably) crowded seas of multiplayer survival sandbox early access games today.
"Civilization as we know it has vanished into the ocean, with everything we know and love laying at the bottom. However, humanity has survived. Brave captains roam...
Vague Patch Notes: When MMO designers build traps for players
So last week, I spent a whole lot of words talking about what "the meta" actually means when it comes to MMOs. Put very simply, the meta is just a description of what the game is like beyond the concepts and into the specifics. I didn't even have the time and space to talk about the difference between how...
ArenaNet shifts more resources to Classic Guild Wars as it turns 19 years old
Just a few weeks ago, the MassivelyOP team gathered round to speculate on what the Classic Guild Wars anniversaries might look like (and what we'd wish them to look like). The game turns 19 this year and 20 next year, meaning that if ArenaNet is going to ramp up into something big to celebrate, now is most definitely the...
Tamriel Infinium: Will Elder Scrolls Online Gold Road’s spell scribing be a gamechanger?
All the way back in 1996, Bethesda introduced an interesting feature with its second Elder Scrolls RPG. Daggerfall included "spellcrafting," a system that allowed players to modify and combine spells to make new ones. As it sounds, spellcrafting was a very sandboxy feature prone to exploitation, yet it proved to be popular enough to continue through the sequels.
When Gold...
