MMO Week in Review: Diablo IV will see you in hell

Diablo IV rolled into its paid beta this weekend, stuttering with queue and performance issues that Blizzard rushed to amend. We’ll have two impressions pieces coming this week, so stay tuned!

Meanwhile, Elder Scrolls Online launched the Scribes of Fate DLC, Star Citizen continued its server struggles, and we remembered WildStar and RIFT.

Read on to catch up with the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions today as every Sunday (since 2010!) in Massively Overpowered’s Week in Review!

THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES

Diablo IV’s first open beta night was slammed with long queues, disconnects, and performance issues – The hottest ticket in gaming town this weekend may be more scorching than you can handle. Diablo IV kicked off its first open beta test yesterday, prompting a horde of…

Diablo IV’s paid closed beta aka ‘early access open beta’ is officially underway – Are you getting your early access open betas mixed up with your open betas and headstarts and actual early access and soft launches? We’re here to help, and you’re gonna…

Elder Scrolls Online’s update 37 and Scribes of Fate DLC are live on PC and Mac today – The first big update for Elder Scrolls Online for 2023 is officially underway today as update 37 and the Scribes of Fate DLC both launch for PC and Mac. The…

Vague Patch Notes: How WildStar’s first dungeon killed me – This is the story of a girl who ran a dungeon in WildStar’s world, and while it looks all right in photographs, I absolutely hated running that. As much as…

Former Trion boss Scott Hartsman illuminates the rise and fall of RIFT – Yesterday, we ran an editorial from MOP’s Tyler focused on his reasoning that MMOs are better off showcasing their own special attributes than tearing down rivals. Among the multiple examples…

MechWarrior Online rebrands as MWO: Legends, crams a new tier of Mech and mini battle pass into cash shop bundles – Piranha Games is heralding “a new dawn” for its giant robot battling MMO MechWarrior Online, as it rebrands the game from MWO: Solaris 7 to MWO: Legends instead, complete with…

EverQuest II community accuses Daybreak of pay-to-win over raid chests – A recent addition to EverQuest II has a portion of its community accusing Daybreak of blatant pay-to-win practices. The issue ties in with a personal loot reward system that was…

LOTRO Legendarium: 16 more fun places to visit in LOTRO’s Minas Tirith – Last week we began our thorough tour through Lord of the Rings Online’s largest city, Minas Tirith, combing through the first three tiers in search of unique sights and interior…

Destiny 2 players mourn the death of Lance Reddick, longtime voice of Commander Zavala – Just a few nights ago, my husband and I were chatting about how good Lance Reddick sounded as Commander Zavala in Destiny 2’s Lightfall. And now, I’m sorry to report,…

Could an AI bot do a better job as a games company CEO than an actual human? – That headline’s not an idle question: Chinese gaming company NetDragon decided to give it a try. Last August, NetDragon, which runs multiple MMOs including Eudemons and Conquer Online, appointed “Ms.…

WoW Factor: Narrative justification for every missing class/race combo in World of Warcraft – As I implied in a recent post about the most recent Ion Hazzikostas interview, the line about making sure that there was a narrative justification for adding “missing” class/race combinations…

Star Citizen offers a statement about 3.18 downtime before discussing 3.19 mission updates – Star Citizen is continuing its planned rollout of video digests like clockwork, which means that there’s a new Inside Star Citizen video that looks ahead to mission features coming in…

Classic EverQuest celebrates 24th birthday with new mission, new quests, and XP bonus – Where were you 24 years ago? I was running through a dark tunnel to go kill skellies outside of Erudin Palace in classic EverQuest, not that anybody called it classic…

WoW Classic’s permadeath community may be prompting Blizzard to create a new ruleset – While the thrill and buzz around WoW Classic has fallen off sharply in the past half-year, there’s a segment that’s actually on the rise thanks to a community initiative that’s…

Massively Overthinking: When is localization itself the kiss of death for an imported MMORPG? – Last week, when I was poking around the internet trying to understand why Amazon was still making excuses for de-sexualizing some Lost Ark characters for the western audience as if…

A Counter-Strike player shelled out six figures for an AK-47 skin because it had flowers and stickers on it – The worth of digital items can very often be attributed to personal preference no matter how much crypto-hawking gremlins would like you to believe otherwise. However, the skin trade of…

Palia’s team has doubled in less than two years as 600K players sign up to test it – Cozy MMO Palia is tooting its very cozy horn over its huge sign-up rate and the doubling of its team since its announcement in 2021. Singularity 6 dropped a press…

VR MMO Zenith drops support for PS VR1 and Quest 1 headsets – Zenith, which still hasn’t fulfilled its Kickstarter promise to fully launch on PC, is already discontinuing functionality for older VR headsets – specifically the PS VR1 and the Quest 1.…

Star Citizen’s partial outage continues, but CIG notes new infrastructure is ‘trending in the right direction’ – The troubles for Star Citizen that were first brought on by alpha 3.18’s release last weekend continue on through this week, as the game is still in the partial outage…

The Riot MMO marches onward, Riot says, following Ghostcrawler’s departure – On this week’s MOP Podcast, Justin wondered aloud whether Riot Games itself had addressed the departure of Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street from his role leading the Riot MMORPG. I had looked…

WoW Classic makes it tougher to roll a Death Knight thanks to ‘malicious behavior’ – Blizzard is rolling back one of its big changes that came with Wrath Classic, and Death Knight fans may not be too happy to hear what it is. The studio…

Ex-Blizzard execs Jen Oneal, J Allen Brack, and John Donham form Magic Soup Games – Now here’s an interesting collab. Yes, it’s yet another “ex-Blizzard people form a new studio and investors give them stacks of money” studio, but it’s the particular people who make…

Perfect Ten: 10 pieces of striking MMO cover art – Earlier this year, MMO Folklorist posted a rather intriguing article about the 10 best MMO box art designs — at least in his opinion. It was a fun read and…

NCSoft unveils a mobile and PC MMORTS codenamed Project G – NCsoft is once again entering an MMO sub-genre at an arguably later point in time, though we also have to admit that there is no great breadth of MMORTS choices…

Neverwinter’s Menzoberranzan launches March 28 ahead of the game’s tenth birthday – Cryptic and Gearbox formally announced that Neverwinter’s Menzoberranzan module will roll out to PC and console on March 28th. Menzoberranzan is the game’s 25th module, and it represents the second…

Headstart for Albion Online’s new Albion East server has officially begun – If you purchased one of Albion Online’s new founder packs, you’re embarking on a new journey today, as you’ll be entering the headstart phase of the game’s Albion East server…

World of Warcraft promises more race-class combos, discusses affixes, cross-faction guilds, and cadence – Do you want more class and race combinations in World of Warcraft? Possibly the additional ones we already know exist, like Night Elf Paladins and Blood Elf Druids? Well, you’re…

Second Life plans to launch a beta for its new mobile viewer later this year – Linden Lab is bringing a Unity-based mobile viewer to its long-running virtual world Second Life, according to a preview the company posted last weekend. “This isn’t the first time we’ve…

Ukraine-based STALKER 2 dev studio has been hacked and blackmailed by a pro-Russian group – We haven’t been tracking the development trajectory of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl very closely, particularly since it’s projecting a December 2023 launch with the addition of multiplayer sometime after…

Lost Ark’s Art of War March update launches tomorrow morning while you sleep – Amazon is hyping up tomorrow’s big patch launch for Lost Ark, the March release dubbed The Art of War. Fittingly, the heart of the patch is the Tulubik Battlefield, a…

Kickstarted VR MMORPG Ilysia will finally enter beta in April after extensive codebase rewrite – It’s been a hot minute since we checked in on Ilysia, the VR MMORPG that was Kickstarted to the tune of $159,000 back in 2020 by Team 21 Studio, but…

Massively on the Go: Why Pokemon Go elite raids fail while Scarlet/Violet tera raids fly – As we recently noted while updating our March Pokemon Go event round-up, Niantic has somehow made the already hated Elite Raids even worse. The single-day, highly specific raids were unevenly…

Choose My Adventure: Embers Adrift defeats me – You know how last week I mentioned I was mad? Well now I’m just disappointed. Mostly in myself, but also in Embers Adrift. To preface, I feel the need to…

Star Citizen apologizes for its messy alpha 3.18 launch as the game progresses to a partial outage state – We’ve been tracking the SNAFU that has been Star Citizen’s alpha 3.18 launch over the past few days, so naturally we’re going to continue checking in, starting with an apology…

APB Reloaded’s 2023 roadmap plans include hosting upgrades, anti-cheat and anti-griefing, and new features – The Herculean effort to drag APB: Reloaded kicking and screaming into the modern age is going to doggedly continue through this year if a 2023 roadmap has anything to say…

After 14 years, Enjin drops guild site building tools in favor of blockchain and NFT tech – It has been a very long time since the name of Enjin crossed our minds. Long-time MMORPG gamers will recognize it as a service that helped guilds form their own…

Wisdom of Nym: Final Fantasy XIV’s patch 6.35 content is a mixed bag – So the patch is here! It brought a whole bunch of content! And the content is… actually kind of a mixed bag, if I’m going to be honest. I wouldn’t…

Afrofantasy MMO The Wagadu Chronicles runs Alpha 3 test this week, with sign-ups still open – It’s a testing week for The Wagadu Chronicles, one of the more distinctive MMOs in development. The Alpha 3 test kicked off today with selective players invited to see the…

The Soapbox: Hating on the competition is no way to promote an MMO – Recently, RIFT was back in the news, offering free subscription time to new and returning players. While I salute Gamigo’s generosity here, whenever the topic of RIFT comes up, I can’t help…

6000 EVE Online players and four alliances went to war over the weekend – Yesterday ended up being a great day for another large-scale EVE Online scrum as over 6,000 players from Imperium, B2, Winter Co, and PanFam alliances joined battle in X47L-Q over…

PSA: Steam’s Spring Sale offers up discounts for MMORPGs and expansions – Are you in the market for a new MMO or MMORPG to play? Then you might be interested to know that the Steam Spring Sale running between now and March…

THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS

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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