The Stream Team: Facing Path of Exile's Ultimatum for the first time
After it had such a rocky launch, Massively OP's MJ is glad she waited to jump into Path of Exile's new Ultimatum league for the first time. But she can't hold out forever, so she's ready to jump in. Will things be more settled now? and just how much will she risk? Tune in live […]
Wurm Online previews its upcoming animal update with donkeys
Tired of plodding around in Wurm Online on a cow? Then we've got good news for you because here come donkeys. Yes, with the game's upcoming animal update, donkeys will be available for players and can serve as mounts for non-premium players. There's also the distinct possibility that your horses and donkeys can wind up […]
The Cycle previews its updated UI design
Fans of The Cycle will get to enjoy a new and improved UI in the not-too-distant future, and the latest development diary on the game is all about showing off what's changing with the user interface while also discussing some concurrent gameplay and system-wide changes. For example, the game's seasonal pass is being reworked to […]
Destiny 2 brings back the Guardian Games on April 20 with revamped scoring and a new playlist
Life in Destiny 2 already feels pretty competitive, what with all of the PvP and world first raid races and running to the highest Power levels possible, but now that competition is getting another layer added on as the Guardian Games are returning this coming Tuesday, April 20th. For those who missed out on how […]
Aion EU opens Pangaea, adds the Labyrinth, and reworks Legion contribution in Update 7.9
If it feels like you've seen this headline before it's because you kind of have, except this time around the previously announced update to the EU version of Aion is now officially live for players of the region. Of course, the content that's arriving in Update 7.9 isn't different: There's still a new instance in […]
MapleStory is opening the luxurious Hotel Maple to celebrate its 16th anniversary
No, unfortunately for fans of MapleStory, the Hotel Maple is not going to be a thing in meatspace. What it is going to be is the location for the MMO's 16th anniversary event, offering up some glitz, glamor, and a taste of the high life. In-game anyway. Entering the Hotel Maple requires players to have […]
ArcheAge developer XL Games announces mobile sandbox MMO Moonlight Sculptor
Developer XL Games, which readers will know are the folks behind ArcheAge, and publisher Kakao Games are set to unleash a new mobile sandbox MMORPG onto the world. Say hello to Moonlight Sculptor, a new MMO based on the light novel The Legendary Moonlight Sculptor, which is arriving to the globe in May 2021 and […]
Kickstarted VR MMORPG Ilysia is finally nearing alpha
Last fall, we covered the successful Kickstarter of VR MMORPG Ilysia, which pulled in over $150,000 to become the second-biggest Kickstarted MMO of 2020 (topped only by Wagadu Chronicles). Team 21 Studio studio pitched Ilysia as a traditional MMO "inspired by classic MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft and EverQuest" where gamers can "experience the […]
Sony changes course and announces the PlayStation 3 and PSP Vita stores will remain operational
Remember at the end of March when Sony announced that the PlayStation 3, PSP, and PSP Vita stores would shut down this year? Fans were pretty unhappy, especially as it meant that buying things like DLC and otherwise rare games would suddenly get a lot harder. And in the wake of the response, Sony has […]
Fight or Kite: My mobile MMO experience peaked in 2008 with Parallel Kingdom
It's a distant memory now, but in 2008 I played a mobile MMO that completely and totally had me hooked. I remember sitting on the bus, on my way to class, phone in hand and eyes glued to the map. Click here and smash this deer there. Suddenly, my nemesis appeared, which in this game […]
Albion Online buffs matchmaking, loot, and accessibility for its new hellgates
It's patch day for Albion Online, and if you were one of the players fussed over the state of the hellgates introduced in the base Call to Arms patch, then you're going to be happy with the changes today, as it tweaks matchmaking, makes the gates more accessible to more players, and buffs their rewards. […]
Wisdom of Nym: First impressions of Final Fantasy XIV's 5.5 content
This is a bit of an unusual case. I can't think of any patch in recent memory that's been so split between the quality of its content and the quality of its storytelling, to the point that I almost considered changing how I usually split up this particular column. Ultimately, I decided to go with […]
Book of Travels explains how gear improves your journeys
For most MMOs, a player's gear is a collection of stat points that accumulate to increase combat effectiveness. But for Book of Travels, gear is far more varied and useful than providing swordplay assists. In the game's latest dev blog, the team explains how items, artifacts, and objects will improve your journey in a myriad […]
Genshin Impact arrives to PS5, adds player housing, and brings new quests in April 28 update
Next week's update is bringing quite a bit to Genshin Impact players. On Wednesday, April 28th, the multiplayer RPG will introduce the usual goodies like new story quests involving Zhongli and Noelle, some new characters to shoot for like the Cryo-powered claymore user Eula and the Pyro-wielding Yanfei, and some new enemies to face in […]
Elder Scrolls Online elaborates on Update 30's tweaked proc sets and champion system
While Elder Scrolls Online's Update 30 is still a little ways out, ZeniMax wants to prepare players for a couple of significant combat adjustments that will come with the patch. The first of these involves addressing overpowered "proc sets" in PvP that are prioritizing gear over builds. The studio will be changing such gear to […]
Swords of Legends Online shows off its Spearmaster class
If you're looking forward to Swords of Legends Online but want to be contrary about what sort of weaponry you use to poke at things even though the game is named after swords, may we suggest… spears? That's the whole trick behind the Spearmaster class, the latest one to be revealed. What does it do? […]
Dual Universe promises less tedium, more meaningful PvP, and prettier graphics in latest dev blog
Followers of Dual Universe have been fed a series of dev blogs outlining the future of the in-development sci-fi building sandbox, with the first two posts talking about the team size of Novaquark and the second discussing dev costs. In the third and final post of the series, we get a look at where development […]
Lord of the Rings Online introduces a line of Bilbo Baggins quests
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! It's a LOTRO patch day! That's right: Update 29.5 arrived on the servers rather early in the week, bringing with it a brand-new level-agnostic questline called The Further Adventures of Bilbo Baggins. All players can grab these 10 missions for free this week (non-subscribers are going to have to pay […]
The Daily Grind: What's the most unique experience mechanic in MMOs?
Bhagpuss over on MMO blog Inventory Full recently penned a piece about an experience mechanic in EverQuest II that I had completely forgotten existed: experience vials. They essentially allow players to store up experience and move it to other toons. That part isn't super unique; Ultima Online, for example, has long had a similar mechanic […]
MMO Week in Review: So LOTRO is breathing easier right about now
It's pretty rare that a story that broke over the weekend is the most interesting thing to have happened all week unless it's a treat from Daybreak, but we've got one for you: Yesterday, Amazon admitted that it and Tencent-owned Leyou have canceled the Lord of the Rings MMORPG that they've been working on for […]
MMO Synergy: The Offspring, NERF, Monopoly, and Evangelion
Who doesn't love a good round of corporate synergy? No, no, don't answer that, just cruise on to the next sentence. Today we're going to round up a few interesting crossovers and promotions between online games and other entities. We'll start with the relatively new Dragon Raja, an Archosaur title that's hoping to ride the […]
The MOP Up: Apex Legends racks up 100 million players
For some games, the key metric to brag by is the total number of players that have come in through one's doors. And if we're to look at this number alone, then Apex Legends has a great reason to boast this month, as the title just crossed 100 million total users. More plans for the […]
Perfect World Games unveils Perfect New World, a new PC, mobile, and console MMO set to launch globally
Apparently, there's going to be a lot more Perfect World going on sometime in the near (or distant) future. During a Perfect World Game Strategy press conference, Perfect World Games announced the release of Perfect New World, a new MMORPG based on the Perfect World IP that's coming to consoles, PC, and mobile internationally. The […]
Global Chat: Is fast travel a boon or a bust for MMORPGs?
While I let you chew on that slightly clickbaity title there, I urge you to check out an essay on Bits & Pieces about the history of fast travel in video games (which, of course, includes MMOs). "Certainly the languid pace of travel in a game like World of Warcraft before its expansions, as well as other […]
Former designer for WoW, StarCraft II, and Diablo IV announces his departure from Blizzard
If you're a fan of live or developing Blizzard titles like Diablo IV, World of Warcraft, or StarCraft II, you were also perhaps a fan of developer David Kim, who worked as a lead systems designer, principle game designer, and game balance designer of those titles respectively. With that in mind, Kim's 14-year tenure has […]
One Shots: Spring is sprung
You seriously are not prepared for the onslaught of pure spring colors waiting for you after the break, so just make sure you have a loved one ready to catch you as you fall backwards in shock. Spring is sprung, and Vincent has captured its full glory in Final Fantasy XIV as part of what […]
The Daily Grind: Which MMO suffers the worst patch-day issues?
So Final Fantasy XIV's latest patch literally broke the ability to visit players on other servers, which is sort of an inauspicious start when the game is literally planning to make that feature even more far-ranging with the next expansion. Still, this is by far the unusual outcome, not the standard one. And the days […]
Corepunk's second Q&A session reveals a strange take on PvP design
The questions keep coming for fantasy-scifi MMORPG Corepunk, and the devs keep dishing answers back. For a second week in a row, Artificial Core compiled a whole bunch of fan questions for the upcoming MMO and answered them to varying degrees of satisfaction. Topics with this Q&A included guild size limits, enchanting, backpack sizes, cross-server […]
TERA and PUBG publisher Krafton files for preliminary approval of its IPO in South Korea
At the beginning of the year, we pointed out that Krafton, the games publisher that handles titles like TERA and PUBG, was getting ready to go public soon. The company has since moved one step closer to that reality as it has filed for its preliminary approval in South Korea. The new IPO stands to […]
Amazon and Leyou have canceled that unfinished Lord of the Rings MMO
For the last few years, we've been covering a new Lord of the Rings MMO that was a collaboration between Tencent's Leyou Technologies and Amazon Game Studios. Back in November, leaked documents showed that the game was meant to be in playable prototype form by this coming June, with a closed beta in the fall […]
Path of Exile addresses messy Ultimatum launch, says giving streamers queue priority was a mistake
In a week that should be full of heady excitement for Path of Exile players, thanks to the release of the Ultimatum league, the mood has taken a turn for the worse due to a messy rollout and a decision to cater to prominent streamers over the rest of the playerbase, which has royally ticked […]
The Stream Team: Sidetracked from AdventureQuest 3D's Sandsea story
A new area for Massively OP's MJ to explore? You better believe she got sidetracked with that! That means there's still more to the AQ3D Sandsea story that MJ needs to do (she didn't get far, after all!), and she aims to keep herself from being pulled away from it this time. Really. Nothing will […]
Lord of the Rings Online addresses performance issues, LIs, and custom difficulty
Lord of the Rings Online decided to put together a Q&A with the executive producer Rob "Severlin" Ciccolini this past Friday, offering up a chance for players to get answers on pretty much any general questions they had regarding the MMORPG. A number of questions discussed technical and performance issues such as loading lag, chat […]
WRUP: The rest of the year of meme trends in advance edition
May: Pictures of eggs that have caught fire with captions about why the egg is on fire, ranging from "my clothes are still wet" to "my cat dislikes me." June: A new viral app that makes your face look like a goat's face takes the internet by storm for one week until it turns out […]
The Daily Grind: What key advice would you give to first-timers in your MMO?
I know that whenever I head into an MMO for the first time (or after a long absence), I always make it a priority to look up threads and lists that players have made along the lines of "Things I wish I had known" or "Tips for new players" or "Hey dummy, don't do this […]
The Stream Team: The atmosphere of Warframe's Call of the Tempestarii
There's a new quest available just for Railjack captains in Warframe, called Call of the Tempestarii. In it, Massively OP's MJ gets to take on the role of Sevagoth, the dark helmsman. How could she pass that up?! Luckily, she now has her own Railjack, so she'll be embarking on this very atmospheric story quest […]
Betawatch: Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis plans a global beta for May
For ages, Phantasy Star Online 2 was in the province of games that simply didn't exist on these shores, but now last year those fortunes were reversed, and now the New Genesis update/sequel/reboot is getting a global beta test on May 14th. Around the world, indeed. Other beta news: Last week, we first heard about […]
Siege Survival: Gloria Victis gets a new trailer and developer-narrated gameplay footage
Remember Siege Survival: Gloria Victis? Well, you should; it's the spinoff to the eponymous Gloria Victis that focuses on managing your way out of a siege scenario (by surviving it) that's en route to early access. And there's some tasty new tidbits for the game in the form of two new trailers, with the first […]
Sea of Thieves introduces trade routes, Forts of Fortune, and new cosmetic rewards in season two
The second season of Sea of Thieves officially launched yesterday, bringing with it a variety of new cosmetics to chase after, new events, and some new gameplay elements for pirates looking to do a little more honest work in the form of Merchant Alliance Trade Routes, which sees players purchasing Commodity Crates, finding out where […]
Fallout 76 brings back Armor Ace for Season 4 and shares its latest community calendar
While the next Fallout 76 update will require some locking and loading according to its name, there's also a little something more coming when the update arrives on April 27th: a new season featuring everyone's favorite G.I. Joe standees, Armor Ace and the Power Patrol. Dubbed Cold Steel, season 4 will offer up a fresh […]
Star Wars Galaxies Legends finally puts a date on the City in the Clouds expansion: May the fourth
Rogue server Star Wars Galaxies Legends has been teasing its Bespin expansion, called City in the Clouds, for literally years now. It was supposed to launch in early 2021, and you could definitely argue that early 2021 is almost over since we're already in the second quadrant and fast approaching the middle third. In any […]
No, Square-Enix is not looking to be bought out
Time to relax a little, people. A report last night had the internet in a tizzy after it suggested that Square-Enix had multiple other firms looking into acquiring the company, but Square-Enix shut that rumor down this morning by stating outright that the company has not been involved in any talks about selling, has no […]
Guild Wars 2 players are having a Toga Party on April 24 to raise MS awareness and charity funds
Time for a bit of feel-good philanthropy with Guild Wars 2 as the stage. On Saturday, April 24th, players are invited to an MS Toga Party in Divinity's Reach being held by Gamers Giving Back, with the goals of raising awareness of multiple sclerosis and raising funds for the MS Society of Canada, with all […]
Swords of Legends Online's latest class preview video features the Summoner
Whether it's wielding the mystical power of an extremely aggressive fox friend or healing allies with the power of sparkle butterflies, the latest class preview video from Swords of Legends Online has it all as it offers a look at the Summoner class in action. A class that's attuned with the natural world, the Summoner […]
Path of Exile Ultimatum league is now live
Path of Exile friends, I hope you have blocked off your weekend and stocked your fridge because Ultimatum is very definitely happening to you tonight. As this post goes live, the servers have just come down to begin patching and preloading. They're expected to be back up around 4 p.m. EDT with the update. Our […]
Black Desert offers a sneak peek at the Sage's Awakening arriving to PC April 21
If you thought the Sage class that was recently introduced to Black Desert did some damage using magical cubes, just wait until you see what it can do with some magical lightning. That's the general thrust of the Sage's Awakening, which trades in a magical box for a lightning-infused spear known as a Kibelius and […]
Stick and Rudder: Elite Dangerous Odyssey's second alpha phase had more FPS goodness and even more bugs
The whole that made up the second phase of Elite Dangerous Odyssey's alpha testing could easily be broken up into two parts: Frontline Solutions and the related combat zone gameplay, and being able to join friends for whatever other things we wanted without the use of Holo-Me. In my experience, the former felt a little […]
DC Universe Online's freebie World of Flashpoint episode is live for all players
After a hefty downtime yesterday, DC Universe Online pushed its latest episode, World of Flashpoint, live – for everyone – allowing even free-to-play players a crack at the new daily and weekly missions as well the capped-off raid. "Inspired by the iconic Flashpoint storyline, World of Flashpoint opens a window into this altered timeline. The […]
Raph Koster expounds on MMO fun, retention, and cynicism in the genre
MMORPG developer Raph Koster has been having words about the MMO industry ahead of the reveal of the MMO that his new studio Playable Worlds is working on. Really, kind of a lot of words. This latest piece is all about ensuring that you're having the fun. Koster notes the conflict between what players want […]
World of Warcraft details exactly how adjustments to drops and mechanics will work in The Burning Crusade Classic
So, if you were wondering how exactly WoW Classic would handle the changes implemented over the course of The Burning Crusade, your questions have now been answered officially. The short version? It's a lot like the original WoW Classic in that various stages of attunement, mechanics, and reputation requirements will remain as their launch version […]
