MMO Week in Review: The week Bethesda got bought
Welp, it definitely wasn't a boring week over here in the world of online games. It all kicked off on Monday, when Microsoft announced it had bought ZeniMax, Bethsoft, and Elder Scrolls Online's ZeniMax Online Studios. Plus, we covered Ultima Online New Legacy, new afrofantasy MMO The Wagadu Chronicles, LOTRO's upcoming DLC and rumored new […]
EVE Online talks about recent updates, SKIN bundles, and a relaxed banning policy in a video
EVE Online has put out yet another Pulse video newsletter, scooping together the most recent updates to the spaceship sandbox in one condensed bite of information. And this time around, it doesn't feature the running "gag" of one of the devs being blown up by a random enemy. The video draws together the most recent […]
The MOP Up: Life Beyond beefs up building
Life Beyond's recent patch is a spot of good news for budding builders: "With this release, buildings get free energy so you don't have to add fuel to the AI Core. Additionally, constructions don't need to be finalized manually!" And this is just the beginning of the rest of the news! Read on for a roundup of […]
Animal Crossing: New Horizons brings pumpkin patches and more customization for Halloween
While we still don't have my beloved gyroids with a release date, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is bringing a September 30 update with features we haven't seen in previous main series games: growing pumpkins year-round and body paint. You'll also have the usual seasonal DIYs to find and create, seasonal clothing/costumes, candy-giving for Jack during the Halloween night event […]
Global Chat: Would it be easier than assumed for World of Warcraft to do housing?
Piggy-backing on our column on World of Warcraft's lack of housing, MMO blog GamingSF argued that the game actually has a lot of the components for housing in place already. "WoW has so much lavish detail in its interiors and so many different architectural styles across all these years; art assets that are already in […]
Fallout 76 previews upcoming PTS content, outlines a hotfix, and rolls on with Meat Week
Fallout 76 has kicked out yet another Inside the Vault jam with a little bundle of updates coming for the title, especially for those who are eager to see the game's test server open up once more. Yes, the game's PTS opens next week and will fixate on the C.A.M.P. Shelters feature. Shelters are instanced […]
One Shots: Amnesia and shipwrecks at level one
Utakata's shot of a "quiet earth" in Blade and Soul here is not from the starting area (I'm assuming!), but it definitely makes me think of all of the MMOs that seem to think that the only way to start your character out on a journey is to shipwreck them and give them a good […]
The Daily Grind: What has your biggest MMO Kickstarter disappointment been to date?
The complete non-starter of Pathfinder Online did not surprise me. It was about what I expected, and it always struck me as one of those ideas people seemed to believe for reasons that never made a ton of sense to me. But I did back the project, because there was supposed to be a fun book that […]
Jukebox Heroes: The best of Granado Espada's soundtrack
So here's an impossible task that lies before me right now: picking one musical genre that defines Granado Espada's score. I can't. It simply cannot be done. I've listened to a lot of soundtracks, my friends, and this game's score is literally all over the place. I don't know how or why the composers chose […]
Phantasy Star Online 2 delivered a glut of New Genesis gameplay goodness
Latch your rods and cones onto this one, boys and girls, because Phantasy Star Online 2 is showing how it's going to get a whole lot more pretty come next year. At the Tokyo Game Show this week, SEGA demoed gameplay from the sweeping New Genesis update — and it's all the eye candy you […]
The Game Archaeologist: The short ride of Auto Assault
When you think of post-apocalyptic video games, what comes to mind? Most likely it's a crawl through a bombed-out or zombiefied landscape as you might find in The Last of Us or Fallout 4. However, there's a side branch of the post-apoc genre that I like to call the "Mad Max strain." This is where […]
The Stream Team: A friendly tour of Conan Exiles' Isle of Siptah
When her friends say they have places they want take Massively OP's MJ to in Conan Exiles, should she be worried? Are these places of beauty and danger, or just death galore? At least one has been revealed as a freshly built trading post, so there is some hope MJ might survive this little trip […]
World of Warcraft hypes this weekend's Arena World Championship finals
The final event for World of Warcraft's PvP esports scene is on the horizon. This Saturday, September 26th (aka today) marks the finals for the Arena World Championship to determine which team is the best in the NA and EU regions and who will claim their share of a $500K prize pool. The first series […]
'One of the biggest updates ever' is coming to Secret World Legends
There's nothing like dropping the news on a late Friday afternoon that a direly neglected MMORPG is getting a massive update in the near future to wake you up. We've seen so little movement on Secret World Legends over the past two years that one would be forgiven to assume that the game was effectively […]
WRUP: How the articles get made (a look behind the magic) edition
First and foremost, you need to find a bird. Are you writing this down? You find a bird. You find a bird. You. Find. A bird. You find a bird. A bird! Bird! Bird bird bird bird bird bird! You! Yes, you! The person reading this right now! No, don't look over there! No, don't […]
The Daily Grind: Do you like pop-up objectives in MMOs?
Thinking back to my first days in WildStar, I think my brain went on sensory overload due to all of the Stuff that kept happening as you adventured across maps. You had your regular quests, sure, but there were also path objectives that appeared, challenges that popped up, and public quests that ran their course. […]
Betawatch: Crucible keeps working on the Heart of the Hive
Ah, Crucible, you entered our lives so quickly and then exited equally quickly… but only back to beta. You might think this is unnecessary to restate, but the game did just drop a big patch with a whole lot of changes to its one remaining gameplay mode, Heart of the Hive. So that's pretty significant, […]
Occupy White Walls now allows artists to upload their own creations with the Open update — for a fee
The multiplayer art museum of Occupy White Walls just got a whole lot more personal with the release of the Open update, which now allows artists to upload their own creations to the game for distribution to the title's audience for a one-time fee of $9 per upload. The devs at Stikipixels propose that this […]
Wurm Online teases UI and mission changes ahead of next week's roadmap reveal
The most recent dispatch from the Wurm Online team does not actually contain a full roadmap for the game's development updates; that's expected to roll out next week. But it does contain a number of plans and areas that the team is focusing on, starting with fixing uneven creature spawns and empty coffers in a patch […]
Crossout's Six Frags is the car MMO amusement park I never knew I needed
So here's something I did not expect to be writing about: Massive auto MMOFPS Crossout has added an amusement park in today's patch. It's called Six Frags, you guys. Six. Frags. "Welcome to the Amusement Park update, everyone! Complete the tasks of the new season, level up and get unique objects with which can be […]
City of Heroes players have released a security-centric, server-inclusive launcher called Sunrise
Back in 2019, when the City of Heroes community was still squabbling over who got to be in charge of what once a copy of the game's code was leaked from a secret server to the world, there were a few groups that buckled down and started doing the hard work of securing the game […]
Craftopia will dial back its update frequency in the interest of adding more content and managing time
If you've been following the update cadence of Craftopia, you'll note that it's been kicking out patches practically every single day, adding things like new sound effects, enemies, and building items, fixing multiplayer bugs and adding features like split XP, improving translations, adjusting various skills and spells, and attacking a host of critical bugs. In […]
Grim Dawn adds new locations, monsters, rewards, and Monster Totems in its latest update
The map of Grim Dawn in a quite literal sense as ARPG's newest version update opens up new side areas that were previously blocked off for players to delve in to. Naturally, these new areas house a host of new foes to face like new minibosses and a new Celestial Monster Totem themed after the […]
The Stream Team: AdventureQuest 3D's new Crimson Corsair quest
Any quest that starts with a pirate named Gunpowder Mary has got to be interesting, right? That's what Massively OP's MJ thinks. AQ3D just added a new quest called Crimson Corsair, and just as any good pirate adventure should, it ends with loot. Once completed, the quest opens a new in-game gold shop full of […]
VR MMORPG Ilysia releases an updated trailer and a final list of Kickstarter stretch goals as it preps for alpha
Earlier in the month we cast our eyes to Ilysia, an in-development VR MMORPG that promised to bring back "the glory days of MMORPGs again." Much of its feature set looks like standard MMO fare with crafting, fighting, fishing, pet battling, and exploration on offer, just in the unique gameplay format of virtual reality. The […]
Krafton continues its massive corporate consolidation with PUBG Corp amalgamation
If you've been watching all the Bluehole and Krafton and TERA and En Masse tomfoolery this past month, you've surely wondered what the heck is going on over there. And every day, it seems we get another piece of figuring out the puzzle. Today's piece is Krafton's announcement that it's merging its substudio PUBG Corporation […]
Afrofantasy MMO The Wagadu Chronicles hits Kickstarter target, adds navigation stretch goal
Earlier this week, we covered the launch of the Kickstarter for a new MMO The Wagadu Chronicles. Built by diversity-minded developer Twin Drums and based in Berlin, Germany, the game is a PC/Mac MMORPG with an afrofantasy setting and a serious focus on the "roleplaying" part of our favorite acronym. While the game is backed […]
Netmarble opens global preregistration for hybrid mobile MMO A3: Still Alive
We've covered A3 Still Alive a couple of times in the last year, but today, Netmarble has officially confirmed that the game is definitely happening, definitely happening on mobile, and definitely coming to our neck of the woods. As we've previously noted, the game is based on the Korean MMO called A3, but this game […]
EVE Online's Unpopular 'resource distribution' plan, plus the messy 49u battle and Japanese localization
Earlier today, EVE Online studio CCP Games released a dev blog on the next leg of its resource distribution plan. The studio aims to "create room for a better geographical distribution of minerals," shifting ore spawn types and quantities in an effort to push people into more dangerous, low-security areas of the game for harvesting […]
WoW Factor: The stuff I'm genuinely excited for in World of Warcraft Shadowlands
For the first time in the past three expansions, I am not in the beta for World of Warcraft's next expansion. This is fine. It's fine. I'm fine. As a result, all I can do in terms of evaluating the next expansion is look at systems already discussed and what has been previewed, and as I […]
Inside Star Citizen closes its summer broadcasts with a close look at 3.11's cargo decks and feature set
It's the final broadcast for this quarter's series of videos from Star Citizen, and this one is closing out with a deeper look at the features coming in alpha 3.11, kicking off first with a closer look at the cargo decks that will be arriving with the patch. Readers will recall that this location has […]
Leaderboard: Are you tempted by Ultima Online's New Legacy server?
So here's a fun fact for you: While vanilla, legacy, and progression servers have been all the rage for the last five years or so, even taking our "trending" award in 2018, there are a few MMOs out there that have been running such alternate servers for a very long time. One of them is […]
Whatever happened to Population Zero?
A month ago, we checked in on Population Zero, a survival MMORPG that hit early access back in May. It was a rocky launch, and I think it's fair to say that literally everyone made the obvious jokes as the game's population did indeed eventually drop down to zero. In August, we noted that the […]
Guild Wars 2 fractal event seeks to bond the community together
Fractals: Either you get them or you don't. Either you do them or you don't. Either you flunk out of fourth grade math or you don't. Wait, that's fractions. Fractals are Guild Wars 2's challenging and ascended-rewarding dungeons that are getting a special event that starts next week. "From September 29th to October 6th, completing […]
The Daily Grind: What's the most useful crafting profession in your MMO?
While I'm never much one to craft in MMOs, that's usually because I don't see most crafting professions as beneficial in relation to how much time I would have to spend training them up. If I do happen upon a crafting prof that is actually useful in my game — useful during all of its […]
The Stream Team: Beating Bartholomew Blackdagger in Neverwinter
The pirate fort in Neverwinter's Pirate's Skyhold was underwhelming, so Massively OP's MJ wants to kick it up a notch or two. Cue the zone's end dungeon, Pirate King's Retreat! Surely a pirate king could pose a bit more of a challenge to MJ and her group? And bonus, they get to help put the […]
Massively Overthinking: MMO voids that haven't been filled
I swear, so many of the posts I bookmark on Reddit to muse on later wind up deleted, and today I've got another one, but hey, I at least liked the topic! The now-deleted user wondered aloud about the most obscure MMOs in the genre, games with hardly anyone playing but full of heart. "Do […]
Crucible's latest beta patch brings major improvements to characters and the Heart of the Hive
The latest beta patch for Crucible is all about delivering on one of the game's stated major design goals when moving back into beta with a refocus on the Heart of the Hive mode. Players will notice a number of major changes, starting with the map refocused and rebalanced to provide more "rings" of danger moving […]
Not So Massively Roundup: Destiny 2, Spellbreak, Vigor, Valorant, Frostpoint, Shadow Arena, and PUBG's BLACKPINK collab
Welcome to a quick roundup of some news from the Not-So-Massively world! Destiny 2: Bungie posted a trailer and a detailed dev blog on Destiny 2's dynamic weather and storms on Europa, all in the leadup to the Beyond Light expansion. "The team tested features like slowing player movement, altering grenade paths, and even knocking […]
Lost Ark confirms the Reaper class launches on Korean servers September 29
Yup, we're still waiting on Lost Ark's arrival to western shores, but we can still at least peek over to the goings-on for the Korean version of the game. In that vein we have word of a launch date for the new Reaper class, which is confirmed for Tuesday, September 29th, complete with a big […]
Conan Exiles applies balance changes and plugs a hole in the map on PC, optimizes memory use on Xbox
Have you been falling through a hole in the world of Conan Exiles? Apparently, that's been an experience players on PC have been having in a section of the map near Scavenger Coast, but as of a recent hotfix, that hole has been sewn shut. The hotfix has also made a number of changes to […]
MUD network and roleplaying repository Skotos celebrates 20th anniversary with retirement
While many old-school MMORPG players came from MUDs, I didn't: I didn't even know they existed until several years into playing Ultima Online and EverQuest, so when I did, I went a little bit nuts digging through piles of ideas that had predated everything I knew. And one of the MUD groups I found was […]
Albion Online makes improvements to mobile and the Black Market in latest patch
Albion Online has addressed a couple of little but no less important issues in its most recent patch, namely to the mobile version of the game and to the Black Market: The latter will now retain the name of the crafter who made items that can be found in the market as well as end […]
World of Warcraft shows off customization changes coming with the Shadowlands pre-patch
Every World of Warcraft fan knows that the Shadowlands pre-patch remains locked in a future of indeterminate date, forever happening "soon" without an actual announcement. But it's clear that it's going to be quite soon based on the new preview of customization options and the new interface on the official site. Once the patch finally arrives, […]
The Division 2 launches Season 3 and Title Update 11, announces another free weekend and Twitch drops
Whether you're chasing a rogue agent or climbing up the floors of a skyscraper, the recent update for The Division 2 has plenty of things for players to take on with the arrival of Title Update 11 and Season 3, the latter of which has more information on objective timing with a calendar detailing what's […]
Broadsword just announced Ultima Online: New Legacy on its 23rd birthday
We're updating this post with the big news down at the bottom! All year, Broadsword's been teasing something big for Ultima Online, which we've been assuming just has to be the long-delayed Steam launch. And we do mean long-delayed: As we've previously noted, the game was greenlit for Steam in 2014, back when Steam greenlighting […]
City of Heroes rebuild project SEGS expects to have an alpha by the end of the year
Back in the long long ago, before last year's City of Heroes revival, there was a group trying to bring back the game not as a copy and not as a brand-new spiritual successor but as a legal rewrite of the game's core that could plug into the assets players already own – and wouldn't […]
Vague Patch Notes: Why stan an MMO with nothing to show for itself?
We need to talk about Star Citizen, folks. But maybe not in the way you might be thinking. Not about the game's development, which is dragging on with no end in sight and no effective scope management; that's just a set of facts. No, we need to talk about the fact that I assure you that […]
Lineage II celebrates 6,000 days of uptime with server boosts and free goodies
Usually, most MMOs elect to mark their game's lifespan through yearly milestones, but the fact that Lineage II has been online for 6,000 days is certainly nothing to sneeze at and is reason enough to mark the occasion with some free goodies for players. The celebration runs between now and October 14th and will be […]
SuperData August 2020: Fall Guys dethroned League of Legends, pushed WoW to its lowest rank in over a year
SuperData's August global revenue report for the games industry has more than a few eyebrow-raisers this week. On the PC side of things, World of Warcraft West has fallen all the way to 10th place, its lowest relative position since June 2019, when it re-entered the lists at 10th after a few months off it […]
