‘Twas another huge week for the MMO industry: Albion Online announced it’s going free-to-play, Blizzard teased news for WoW Classic, Daybreak’s Columbus Nova ties resurfaced, and CCP brought in nearly 4000 combatants for its EVE Aether Wars stunt just ahead of EVEsterdam, from which MOP’s own Brendan Drain has been reporting. MOP’s Eliot Lefebvre has likewise been keeping his pen primed for the FFXIV Tokyo Fanfest! Capping it all off was Google, whose plan for Stadia may yet be a big win for online games (we’ll see!).
It was a big week for us here on MOP too! We launched two brand-new columns (Warframe of Mind and Lawful Neutral), brought back Not So Massively as a long-form column, and added another entry in our still-has-that-new-car-smell superhero MMO column: Into the Superverse. Our new co-writers for Elder Scrolls Online’s Tamriel Infinium and Guild Wars 2’s Flameseeker Chronicles also saw their debuts!
Read on to catch up with the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions today as every Sunday in Massively Overpowered’s Week in Review!THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES
FFXIV Fan Festival Tokyo 2019: Travel to the First with Hrothgar and Dancers - The third and final Final Fantasy XIV fan festival for Shadowbringers kicked off on Friday evening in by North American time schedules. We even liveblogged it! But some of you…
EVEsterdam 2019: EVE players intercept Triglavian war plans - The EVE Online community was surprised recently when billboards across the game were hacked and displayed a threatening video from the Triglavian Collective, a twisted faction recently discovered in Abyssal…
EVEsterdam 2019: EVE Online explorer visits every star system without being killed - When people say that EVE Online is a game that lets you make your own path, they aren't kidding. While CCP Games builds gameplay and maintains the New Eden star…
Guild Wars 2’s Super Adventure Box event returns next week - It's finally happening! Guild Wars 2's Super Adventure Box mode will return next week on March 28th through April 18th, bringing 8bit jumping puzzles back for another go-round of April…
FFXIV Fan Festival Tokyo 2019: Liveblog of the opening keynote - Here we are at long last. If you're anything like me, you've been looking forward to this event since Final Fantasy XIV first delivered its opening keynote in Las Vegas…
Google is launching Stadia, a ‘game platform for everyone’ in a ‘new era of gaming,’ this year - In its presentation from GDC 2019 this afternoon, Google announced Google Stadia: It's not a console but a platform that will run even the most graphics-intense PC games from Google's…
Flameseeker Chronicles: Fear not this night – there is hope for Guild Wars 2’s future - The last two weeks of February were devastating to the Guild Wars 2 community. Guild Wars 2 developer ArenaNet announced the layoffs of nearly one hundred and fifty developers, some…
Into the Super-verse: Five reasons to be excited for City of Titans - When NCsoft closed City of Heroes' doors in 2012, it was anything but a normal MMO closure due to a lack of interest and population. On the contrary, the thriving…
Lawful Neutral: Dancing around Fortnite’s copyright lawsuits - Welcome friends to the inaugural post of Lawful Neutral on Massively OP. I'm Andy, but you know me better as Serrenity, writer of comments too long by half and not…
Daybreak’s definitely-not-owner Columbus Nova is back in national news again - Does it ever seem weird to you when companies involved in gaming show up in big political dramas in the real world? Because it still does to me and I've…
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…
Albion Online goes free-to-play next month as Oberon update rolls out today - After two and a half years of live play and just about a year on Steam, Albion Online will finally move from a buy-to-play title to the ranks of free-to-play…
Reverse Engineering: The super scientific dangers of capturing Pokemon with your phone - I don't mean to alarm anyone, but there is a chance that capturing Pokemon could be the end of civilization as we know it. It could likely bring the apocalypse…
World of Warcraft considers level squish, confirms RP realms for WoW Classic - Following last week's Patch 8.1.5 and prior to today's free play weekend, World of Warcraft's game director emerged for another semi-informational question and answer session on Twitch. Don't get your…
Massively Overthinking: Designed downtime in MMORPGs - In a Daily Grind not long ago, MOP reader Armsbend said something I thought just cried out for discussion. After noting that he had a guild member who used to…
Age of Conan adds semi-permadeath mode, badges, and new race/class combos - It's time to pull Age of Conan out of "maintenance mode" status and back into active development, because Funcom just dropped an update that contains several exciting features for this…
Perfect Ten: MMOs that set themselves up as spiritual successors - As with the larger video game market, sequels aren't unknown in the MMO space. We've seen studios take a stab at following up successful earlier efforts with follow-ups (such as…
Superdata February 2019: EA’s Apex Legends and Anthem crushed it as Blizzard fumbled - If you were wondering exactly how Apex Legends stacks up against Fortnite since the former's debut earlier this year, SuperData's February 2019 global revenue report is where you want to…
Vague Patch Notes: Finding motivation within MMOs - Here's a fun question to ask yourself when you're doing basically anything in an MMO: Why am I doing this? It's usually at once a very easy question to answer…
GDC 2019: Here’s how CCP’s 10,000 player battle tech demo went down - Developer CCP Games currently holds the world record for the largest PvP battle in gaming history, which was awarded in recognition of January 2018’s 6142-player Siege of 9-4 in EVE…
Lady toons are finally in the current Star Citizen alpha test - Hellooooooo, ladies. I'm gonna set aside my rant about how I feel about online games that deprioritize female characters for years of testing and just get on with the fact…
Project Gorgon opens microtransaction shop full of stuff you can’t use yet - Monetization is always a tricky topic in MMOs, especially when it comes to microtransactions, but that's just the territory that Project Gorgon devs are trying to navigate right now, as…
Sea of Thieves turns one, patches in birthday gifts, merc voyages, and Arches tease - Sea of Thieves is turning one year old today and getting an anniversary patch. Today's patch is not the anniversary patch, however. That's coming "a little further down the line."…
Warframe of Mind: Can we catch up in Warframe’s story before TennoCon? - I have mixed feelings about TennoCon 2019. Don't get me wrong -- I am excited as all get out and look forward to going! TennoCon is always an amazing experience;…
MMO Business Roundup: Lucasfilm Games, Anthem sales, MapleStory Fest, and Oculus - Welcome back to another round of the MMO Business Roundup. It's GDC week, so it's no surprise that we've had so many business posts coming across our desks! First up…
Hyperspace Beacon: Which Star Wars Galaxies emulator should I try first? - As a longtime Star Wars fan and former Star Wars Galaxies player, I've known there were plenty of emulators out there ripe for playing on. The code for the game…
Tamriel Infinium: A conversation with The Elder Scrolls Online’s Abnur Tharn - For my first assignment at Massively Overpowered, I wanted to make a statement. No fluff piece or softball interview is good enough for our readers! As my deadline approached, I…
ArcheAge’s ‘Story of Hiram’ update to Relics of Hiram brings new stories, dungeons, and dragon weapons today - It might be spring today, but ArcheAge is getting downright frosty. The sandbox MMO sent players to the Western Hiram Mountains with this week's content update, and the only way…
Survived By passes away on April 19 - Sad news for fans of Survived By today, as the game has announced that it is ending development and planning for a full shutdown on April 19th, 2019. The official post…
WoW Classic dishes on plans for Alterac Valley as Blizzard fundraises for WoW esports - Ah, Alterac Valley. That battleground and I spent thousands of hours together back in the early days of World of Warcraft. I remember its toddler years, back when it took…
BioWare discusses Anthem post-launch: ‘This is all a learning experience for us’ - So, did you agree with our assessment of Anthem as a fun game with a lot of issues? It seems BioWare itself agrees with that assessment, as the latest post-launch discussion…
Choose My Adventure: Fear and loathing in Legends of Aria - As promised, this round of play in Legends of Aria featured greater focus on my combined magic and steel, though I definitely was leaning more into the martial side of…
Gamigo has now confirmed RIFT’s upcoming battle pass - Over the weekend, we covered player datamining that appeared to suggest RIFT, now under the management of Gamigo, is due to receive some sort of battle pass, likely a limited-time…
Not So Massively: Welcoming a new era of online games and gaming - Hello, Massively Overpowered readers! Not So Massively is back, with a new captain at the helm. My name's Tyler. If you're active in the MMO blogosphere (or read Justin's Global…
The Division 2 players datamine Dark Hours information as box sales get off to a slow start - Fans of The Division 2 have started to explore the game in the playing-for-keeps world of launch over the weekend, and the game's subreddit is alight with notices of things like…
EVE Evolved: EVE Online’s storyline is about to go off the rails - The most compelling stories that emerge from EVE Online are usually tales of player-based conflict, dastardly deals, and political intrigue, but the game's core lore and storyline is actually incredibly…
EverQuest turns 20 with new video and infographic as new progression servers arrive - Classic EverQuest turned 20 years old this weekend, with anniversary content (for EverQuest II as well) and two new progression servers. "While we always plan and hope for the best,…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 212: Harry Potter, progression servers, and No MMO’s Sky
The Stream Team: Aiming for Warframe dreams
The Stream Team: Flower picking and other Lord of the Rings Online Spring Festival fun
The Stream Team: SWTOR spring datacron picking
The Stream Team: Capturing Guild Wars 2’s combat kitty mount in WvW
The Stream Team: Stop! Hammer time in Dauntless
The Stream Team: Making memories in Path of Exile’s Synthesis
Every week, get caught up on the MMO genre’s latest news and Massively OP’s best content in our MMO Week in Review! Want more roundups of content? Try Friday’s Betawatch for MMO testing highlights, Saturday’s Make My MMO for MMO crowdfunding updates, and Sunday’s The MOP Up, which mops up all the bits of news we didn’t cover anywhere else.
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