MMO Week in Review: Shadowlands postponed
World of Warcraft's Shadowlands delay – to later in 2020 – was by far the biggest news of the week, all but smothering news that Magic Legends' launch has been delayed until next year and HEX is sunsetting outright. But on the bright side, Torchlight III finally has a launch date, Skyforge is launching on […]
EVE Online tests feature to deprioritize 3-D visuals for 'extreme situations'
The oft-repeated lancing of EVE Online as "spreadsheets in space" (which is really more like "too many UI elements in space" in my personal opinion) is soon to get just that little bit more literal. A new feature on the game's test server has added an option that shuts off the 3-D visuals, leaving only […]
The MOP Up: FFXIV blasts out its first remix album
Final Fantasy XIV's soundtrack is downright legendary — and now it's gotten even better, thanks to the game's first "remix" album that was just released. "This work includes 14 songs carefully selected from the adventures of the warriors of light," Square Enix said. "Enjoy the music of FFXIV, which has been reborn in various genres […]
Battle Bards Episode 178: The Division 2
Washington D.C. has fallen to the plague, curiously well-armed agents are everywhere, and intriguing music floats. The Division 2 features a tense and action-packed synth score that distinguishes itself among online games — and is worth an investigation by the Battle Bards. Suit up, because today we're going to the musical dark zone! Battle Bards is […]
Jukebox Heroes: The best of SWTOR's launch soundtrack
I got so excited when Star Wars: The Old Republic included its soundtrack in the collector's edition back at launch. However, we all discovered that this really was only half the OST; the other half was given away for free by BioWare in the days leading up to the game's release. Making a Star Wars […]
Wandering Monster Games Twitter account suddenly surfaces with cryptic Just Survive hints, possibly from Daybreak
Back in July of 2019, Daybreak Games filed a number of curious trademarks that seemed to suggest that the MMO studios under its umbrella were all getting their own individual indentities, a rumor that was formally confirmed in January of this year and the followed up with the purchase of . The only dangling thread […]
One Shots: Watch where you're waving that thing!
Several Christmases ago, my mother actually bought me a giant pirate sword that was very metal and very, very sharp. I instantly became terrified of it and never took it out of its scabbard, having no idea what I'd ever use it for. Vincent? Vincent went another way with his giant sword in FFXIV because he's […]
The Daily Grind: Do you think MMO rogue servers could help with MMO identity issues?
Here's what got me thinking about this. At first, I was going to say that I would eagerly play on a WildStar rogue server because of course I would. But then it struck me that just getting the game running as it was wouldn't fix the issues that the game had where it was 50% a […]
Make My MMO: Wagadu and Ilysia breeze past Kickstarter goals
It's been a positively packed couple of weeks for crowdfunded MMOs new and old. A few of the highlights: Afrofantasy MMO The Wagadu Chronicles entered our lists; it's already fully funded and pushing on with stretch goals. Crowfall patched guild alliances and mounts into its beta. Ashes of Creation showed off underwater mounts. Elite Dangerous […]
Elite: Dangerous' latest community goal has players siding with Eurybia Blue Mafia or the Keltim Empire
Now that Elite: Dangerous has once more brought back community goals, it's time once again for players to pick sides to unlock rewards and shape the game's galaxy. Or at least a small pocket of it. In the goals for October, we find the Keltim Empire attempting to capture an engineer by the name of […]
Star Trek Online's upcoming Experimental Upgrades feature will let players enhance their ships
While Tier 5-U and Tier 6 starships in Star Trek Online are effectively the top shelf of space boat in the game, there will soon be a new system that will let players upgrade those ships to even bigger levels of power. The Experimental Upgrades feature will let players add an additional Device slot, Universal […]
The Stream Team: Doing Conan Exiles Den of the Wolf-brothers vault
Unlike the Exiled Lands, Isle of Siptah has many places Massively OP's MJ has not yet explored. Obviously, that must be remedied! So this survival sandbox Saturday is dedicated to delving into the Den of the Wolf-brothers vault. Sounds lupine-y doesn't it? Join us live at 2:00 p.m. as MJ experiences her very first vault. […]
LOTRO Legendarium: Speculating on the Brawler class
You have to imagine that there's some frustration over at Standing Stone Games this past week. The studio wants us all to be focused on Lord of the Rings Online's fall update, but along comes a leak about a new class for 2021 that stole all of our attention. Honestly, I think that's a bit […]
SWTOR is giving away minipets in honor of Star Wars Squadrons' launch
Star Wars Squadrons, a multiplayer dogfighter from EA, launched yesterday, giving players the ability to engage in their own epic space battles. And instead of feeling threatened by the new player in the field, Star Wars: The Old Republic is welcoming this launch with a promotion of its own. BioWare said that any player who […]
WRUP: Full lyrics to the theme song 'Massively Overpowered (The Elocution of a Bird)' edition
Look at the neat thing we found! It turns out that while clearing out the back of the Massively Overpowered offices because I needed to find a new hiding space for when I cry, I stumbled onto all of the old materials from the 1987 Massively Overpowered animated feature film "Rainbows Are Your Enemies!" Obviously […]
The Daily Grind: Which MMO NPC deserves more screen time?
Many people know that I have a deep affection for Bingo Boffin in Lord of the Rings Online. The well-meaning but sometimes daft Hobbit adventurer starred in a very long quest chain — and yet, it wasn't enough for me. It's been great that he's come back for more tales during the Halloween event, but […]
The Stream Team: Wandering Deimos in Warframe
With Deadlock Protocol done, and since she has met the whole family, Massively OP's MJ is free to wander Warframe's Deimos. The world is just ripe with… interesting things. And boils. And pus pockets. OK, so she'll have to watch her step while she walks around! Or maybe she'll finally find and ride a velocipod. […]
Betawatch: Torchlight III leaves early access to release on October 13
At long last, we know when Torchlight III (nee Frontiers) is launching. It's October 13th! Isn't that exciting? There are also outlined plans for how the head start access is going to work, as well. So we'll finally be bidding a farewell to it on our testing lists, and then it will just be a released game […]
Wakfu launches Agony Unchained while outlining server merging plans
The latest update for Wakfu is off the chain. Or at least agony is off the chain, since it's literally titled Agony Unchained, strongly implying that agony had been chained in some fashion beforehand. Masqueraiders, for example, have received extensive reworks that will hopefully make the process of playing them less agonizing. The Mineral Tower has […]
Multiplayer Roundup: Spellbreak, Astroneer, Runeterra, Apex Legends, OWL, and the Ragnarok battle royale
We're rounding up a bunch of Not-So-Massively multiplayer-but-not-MMORPG news today! Spellbreak: The popular new battle royale rolled out its 1.1 release, chiefly focused on bugs and fixes. Proletariat says that with this patch behind it, it'll be turning its attention to content and gameplay. The game launched on NVIDIA GeForce NOW's platform too. Legends of […]
Frozen Flame adds a new skeletal monster, lets players rent servers, and changes no-building areas
Frozen Flame has a new skeleton. This isn't to suggest that the closed beta of the action survival RPG somehow replaced its internal hardware, but it has added a new skeleton for players to attack in the most recent update; specifically, it's a Nocturnal Skeleton-Guard that spawns at night on the roads outside of the […]
Kingdom Maker is a medieval fantasy mobile MMO of politics, love, war, and subterfuge
Ever wanted to manage a medieval kingdom from your favorite mobile device along with lots of other players? You'll soon be able to when Kingdom Maker releases, a fantasy MMO that promises players a pocket-sized world of "adventure, war, love, money, building, & politics." Kingdom Maker, oddly enough, comes via Global Worldwide, which has its […]
Open beta MMORTS Starborne announces Dissidence expansion with new map, mode, and historical servers
Icelandic developer Solid Clouds announced something this week for Starborne that most MMO betas never see: an expansion. It's called Dissidence, and it's promising quite a bit for the indie MMORTS, including a new handcrafted map, new map effects, new lore, improved UI, a new game mode, new rank categories, and the "one path to […]
The Stream Team: Friday fishing before AQ3D's Taco Day
With all the excitement of AQ3D's Taco Day coming on Sunday the 4th, Massively OP's MJ is going to relax the rest of the weekend. And that includes some Friday fishing! With her pirate ship bobber and a new pole, she's ready to reel in more fish and levels. Join us live at 2:00 p.m. […]
Destiny 2 brings back the Festival of the Lost Halloween event on October 6
Care for some Halloween-y treats in your space wizard FPS? They're coming back once again as Destiny 2 brings back the Festival of the Lost event, running between Tuesday, October 6th, and Tuesday, November 3rd, and available free for all players. This year's event is effectively similar to last year's in that players will have […]
Wild Terra 2 plans new patch, free-play week, and December early access
It's been just a year since we first covered Wild Terra 2, a sequel-slash-do-over for the original Wild Terra that was meant to take the first game's best ideas and coat them in improved graphics and more modern survival sandbox mechanics. This week, Juvty Worlds announced a slew of things for the game, chief among […]
Genshin Impact's international launch is making a big splash outside China
The release of Genshin Impact on PS4, mobile, and PC has not only caught many by surprise but has also captured a lot of attention. According to analysts at Beijing's Qimai Data, the new multiplayer RPG has raked in an estimated $1.84 million USD on iOS alone, and landed more Twitch views on its launch […]
Development of Reckful's MMORPG Everland is on hold pending probate court resolution
Earlier this summer, the gaming community was stunned by the abrupt passing of Byron "Reckful" Bernstein, a popular YouTuber and streamer who was also working on an MMORPG called Everland. At the time of his death, his team asked followers for time to grieve before making decisions on how to proceed with the game. Since […]
Book of Travels posts a video full of in-game moments on a single-player shard
So what does it actually look like when you play Book of Travels? The answer is that we don't know yet, but the latest video from the development team gives you a hint of how it will look with multiple snippets of gameplay put together. Roaming around in a beautiful landscape, investigating, talking, and generally immersing […]
World of Warcraft's Chromie Time auto-disables at level 50; refunds are being offered for Shadowlands
When you level your alts through World of Warcraft content starting when the Shadowlands pre-patch arrives on October 13th, you can do so with Chromie Time allowing you to sync up and experience a full expansion start to finish. Theoretically, anyhow. In practice, it turns out that hitting level 50 will automatically kick you out of Chromie […]
Soulbound Studios insists work on Chronicles of Elyria continues in pre-litigation paperwork response
Back in August, we reported on players filing pre-litigation paperwork to sue Soulbound Studios over Chronicles of Elyria in a class-action lawsuit after hiring a lawyer. This paperwork involved sending letters to both Soulbound Studios and Xsolla, the company responsible for processing payment. As of a couple of days ago, there's been an update on […]
WoW Factor: Shadowlands' delay is a genuinely good thing – for everyone
Well, this was a big old shocker for a Thursday night that's going to screw with a bunch of data! Also, it's a majorly unexpected change that is almost unprecedented in World of Warcraft's history, at least to my memory. Shadowlands is going to be releasing in November or December, and while it's not a […]
Gamigo throws a 20th anniversary bash in all of its MMOs
Have you ever attended a birthday party that was thrown by the birthday boy or girl in question? It's a curious exercise in ego and tailored celebration, but sometimes that can be quite entertaining in and of itself. So welcome to Gamigo's birthday, as thrown by Gamigo. The gaming publisher is celebrating its 20th anniversary […]
Kickstarted MMO card game HEX is closing at the end of the year
It's the 11th hour for HEX, a fascinating title that attempted to blend MMO and card game mechanics together. Also, there were battle bunnies. In any case, the game only has a few months left of operation, as the team announced that it is "required" to shut HEX down on December 31st of this year. […]
The Daily Grind: Do you prefer combat rotations or reactive gameplay in your MMOs?
It's not every day that I stop what I am doing to mentally clap for a poster on Reddit, but user Rolling-in-the-Meeps prompted just that response from me back in August thanks to his post disambiguating "tab-target vs. action combat" and "rotational vs. reactionary." Essentially, he's arguing that what makes a game feel active isn't really […]
The Stream Team: Trouble with troglodytes in Dungeon and Dragons Online
Is Massively OP's MJ turning into a tomb robber? Well, she and her DDO group are going into Garl the Grey's tomb to appropriate it's treasure. The only thing standing in their way is… troglogytes. Lots of troglodytes! Tune in live at 8:00 p.m. for this next D&D night adventure. What: Dungeons & Dragons Online […]
Massively Overthinking: Are isometric MMOs more or less immersive than 3-D?
I was chit-chatting with MOP reader (and prolific tipster!) Panagiotis the other day about Ultima Online's big news when he hit on a topic about isometric MMOs that leaped out at me as being really insightful. "I find the isometric games give a better fantasy feel at the cost of realism. Games with good realistic […]
World of Warcraft Moon Guard players finish a massive roleplaying campaign ahead of Shadowlands
Perhaps you feel that Blizzard is either taking too long to kick off the events leading into World of Warcraft: Shadowlands. or maybe you wish that everything was a bit more personal. Players on Moon Guard certainly wanted something more engaging and personal, but instead of waiting for it to happen, they just organized a […]
Survival MMO Stars End zooms into open beta with redesigned planet environments
About a year ago, we covered a brand-new survival MMO called Stars End, a Firefly-tinged space title that had just blasted its way into Steam early access. It's come a long way from then – in fact, it's come all the way to what it's calling open beta and its milestone 41 update. "The main […]
World of Warcraft delays Shadowlands, pre-patch coming October 13th
We're sorry to bring you some disappointing — but not altogether unexpected — news: Blizzard announced today that it will be delaying World of Warcraft: Shadowlands from its October 27th release date until "later this year." In a post on Twitter, Executive Producer John Hight said that the move is to allow for more time […]
Lord of the Rings Online brings back Hobnanigans through October 4
Hobnanigans! Lord of the Rings Online! October 4th! That's about all the most recent tweet from the game promises, without providing you one whit of information about what Hobnanigans actually is supposed to be beyond time-limited. Fortunately, a bit of searching will reveal that it's really pretty simple, as it's just field hockey… played with live […]
Last Oasis adds the Panda Walker and a new map, prepares to introduce a beta test branch soon
A couple of weeks have slid by, which means there have been a couple of updates for survival sandbox Last Oasis. Last week saw the addition of the Panda Walker, a new vehicle that's custom-built to carry every type of Walker (except another Panda) and has a total of five slots to do so. As […]
Star Trek Online prepares a new task force allowing players to relive the Synth Invasion on Mars
It's a bit funny that Star Trek: Picard takes place in the future of all the actual television series, but in the not-too-distant past of Star Trek Online, meaning that major events like the attack on Utopia Planitia on Mars are all in the rear view of the game's actual timeline. So on that level, […]
EVE Echoes shares its first economic report as the mobile title celebrates 2M players
So, just how are things over on the mobile universe of EVE Echoes? By all accounts, booming, at least if reports from the game's Twitter are any indication. On the subject of booming in-game business, there's the game's first economic report, which shares the expected graphs of data collected from launch until September 29th. According […]
Cyberpunk 2077 drops new commercial starring Keanu Reeves
Cyberpunk 2077 would really like everyone to stop looking at its ongoing crunch fiasco and instead watch this brand-new commercial! It's got Keanu Reeves! Everybody look over there! Do note it really is a commercial, not a trailer; as VG247 notes, folks in the US may spy this one on TV. "Cyberpunk 2077 is an open-world, […]
Fallout 76 invites players to jump on to the test server to build Shelters
It's almost time to head underground in Fallout 76 when it comes to building Shelters. This is the next major feature arriving for the game's C.A.M.P. system, allowing players access to underground spaces from a small utility space to a massive atrium. Players are encouraged to come try out the system on the game's test server […]
Desert Oasis: The worst week I've ever had in Black Desert Online
This week, I was planning a third entry on my adventures in Black Desert Mobile, but a few very exasperating incidents happened to me in Black Desert PC last week, and it just seemed as if everything that could go wrong, did. The universe was telling me something and was making me listen. I just […]
PlanetSide 2 on PC adds new missions, revamps Esamir, and introduces the first campaign with the Shattered Warpgate update
A self-described "massive, multi-faceted" update for PlanetSide 2 has arrived to the PC version of the multiplayer shooter. Say hello to the Shattered Warpgate update, which is actually a catastrophic event in the game's fiction even if the update's name has a sort of bouncy rhyming cadence. As the update's name suggests, there was a […]
Vague Patch Notes: What we mean when we talk about MMO success – and failure
Yesterday, aside from love being such an easy game to play, MOP's Justin graced us with a Daily Grind asking about why it was RIFT didn't do better. I read it and found myself nodding along, saying that the game never really did light the world on fire like its designers wanted. And then I stopped and […]
Co-op village builder Drake Hollow launches today on Steam
For years, we've been told by our mothers and fathers to eat our vegetables. As if that wasn't a great enough burden, now we must defend them. Today sees the launch of Drake Hollow, a cute base building title that can be played solo or with a few friends online. The premise is that, for […]
