MMO Week in Review: Back to playing Uncle Owen, this time in SWTOR

Star Wars The Old Republic timed the announcement for its next big thing perfectly for Star Wars Day: This week, the team revealed GU 7.4, Desperate Defiance, with new solo content and a farming system on Dantooine. A real farming system, not the moisture vaporator kind that surely nobody wants to play. (h/t Stormwind. :D)

Meanwhile, we took a hard look at Pax Dei, celebrated City of Heroes’ 20th birthday, counted heads at Daybreak, and grabbed free stuff in Elder Scrolls Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online.

Oh yeah, and it’s not an MMO, but Helldivers 2 lit itself on fire this week.

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

EG7’s 2023 annual report claims Daybreak and SSG collectively count 264 staffers – Swedish gaming conglom EG7 released its annual report this week, and while there isn’t a ton of new-new in it for those of us weirdos who care about Daybreak’s MMORPGs…

WoW Factor: There’s probably never going to be a World of Warcraft ‘Classic Plus’ – As I always do when discussing World of Warcraft (and anything else, really), I am putting my cards on the table here: I am really tired of hearing WoW Classic…

Perfect Ten: 10 times World of Warcraft was killed forever – As many of you reading this may know, World of Warcraft is a game that launched and then immediately died forever. It then proceeded to die forever multiple times. No,…

Star Wars The Old Republic’s GU 7.5, Desperate Defiance, includes a farming system and solo Ventures – We don’t have a hard launch date, but Star Wars The Old Republic’s Update 7.5 has a name and a face, as revealed by this afternoon’s developer stream. Broadsword’s ex-BioWare…

It’s 2024 and the ESA is still fighting game preservation, forecasting a depraved ‘online arcade’ – If you’re a longtime MOP reader, you might remember that back in the late teens, we followed the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s efforts to petition the Library of Congress and US…

Global Chat: How much is Fallout 76 benefiting from Amazon’s Fallout series? – MMO blog Tales of the Aggronaut looked at the recent phenomenon of Amazon’s popular Fallout series and any correlating increase in the games’ populations, including Fallout 76. “We are now…

‘Evergreen titles and robust content pipelines reign supreme,’ says games industry firm Newzoo – We conveniently had a community discussion on the meaning of old-school when it comes to MMOs earlier this week, so consider that required reading for this piece on Newzoo, whose…

Co-op roguelike Rabbit and Steel throws you right into raids without the MMO grind – Have you ever thought to yourself, “Man, I love me some solid MMO-style raiding, but I just wish I didn’t have to engage with all of the leveling, character growth,…

Legends of Aria Classic is running a ‘surprise open beta’ this weekend ahead of its May 9 relaunch – In the middle of April, pretty much everyone in the MMORPG was surprised to learn that Legends of Aria is getting a revival. Aria, of course, was originally Kickstarted as…

Pokemon Go co-developer Very Very Spaceship has been hit with layoffs as the avatar rebellion continues – Pokemon Go’s staff – and outlook – just got a little smaller as this week one of its development studios was hit with major layoffs. We’re talking here about Very…

Massively Overthinking: The loss of ArcheAge – Last week’s admission from Kakao that XLGAMES is pulling the plug on ArcheAge really hit me, and I’m still trying to process why because it was not one of my…

Why I Play: Stardew Valley is still something special – I’d been saving this for myself for weeks now. It was late Saturday when I finally decided it was time to stop waiting and play something that I had been…

Into the Super-Verse: A toast to City of Heroes’ 20th birthday – How does you mark your first true MMO experience? Anarchy Online technically was the first MMO I ever played, although I was on dial-up, clueless, and lost for the couple…

Final Fantasy XIV’s studio and boss are getting a rename in a year of change for Square-Enix – Apparently, Square-Enix has been doing more than replacing its president, moving its offices, losing money, and blathering about blockchain and gen AI: It’s also rearranging the deck chairs of the…

Dungeons and Dragons Online is granting you the free expansion of your choice for the Year of the Dragon – This is too good for a long lead-up, so we’ll cut to the chase: Dungeons and Dragons Online is giving all players an expansion of their choice as part of…

PSA: Elder Scrolls Online is handing out a free house and crown crates this month – Friends, ZeniMax is not messing around with Elder Scrolls Online’s 10th anniversary this year. We’ve seen some pretty big gifts already, including the Orsinium and Thieves Guild DLC packs, but…

Final Fantasy XIV checks in with Dawntrail benchmark updates and release timing – As most players of Final Fantasy XIV already know, the benchmark tool for Dawntrail is getting an update to address player complaints about lighting and character model oddities that might…

Bethesda’s Todd Howard on why crossplay and cross-progression may not happen for Fallout 76 – With interest in Fallout 76 seeing a new high thanks to the just-released TV series, the question of whether the multiplayer title will allow cross-platform play and cross-progression has come…

Square-Enix tells investors to expect $140M in ‘extraordinary losses’ this quarter – We’re about to start getting Q1 financial reports across the games industry, but the teaser from Square-Enix isn’t exactly exuding confidence that it’ll be bringing its investors good news. Square…

Ashes of Creation video shows off its enchanting nighttime ‘magic’ – It still feels like Q3 2024 — and with it, Ashes of Creation’s Alpha Two test — is still a long way off, but Intrepid Studios produced something to make…

World of Tanks beams into Star Trek’s dimension with a new event mode – Naturally, when you think about historical armored and most definitely land-based tanks, your mind will free-associate right to Star Trek. Wargaming was wise, therefore, to capitalize upon this tenuous connection…

Diablo IV’s S4 Loot Reborn launches on May 14th – here’s what’s in it – All right, Diablo IV fans, this is it: the loot overhaul you’ve been waiting for. Blizzard formally announced today that D4’s fourth season – literally dubbed Loot Reborn – kicks…

WoW Classic Cataclysm patch notes are up ahead of tonight’s prepatch launch – So we’ve been over the fact that World of Warcraft fans will find that WoW Classic is rolling plenty of hashtag ch-ch-ch-changes into Cataclysm at this point, but what the…

Nexon is publishing Overgeared-themed Project T MMORPG for PC and mobile – Nexon has had so many “Project” games in development over the years that you’d be forgiven if your eyes glaze over at one more, but maybe it’s worth a second…

‘If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing,’ say gamers reviewbombing the remaining The Crew games – Ubisoft’s self-inflicted wounds continue their slow damage-over-time effects as the company that responded to the Stop Killing Games initiative by killing The Crew 1 even more quickly is now being…

ArcheAge’s player-run rogue servers are booming as the retail MMORPG’s sunset is looming – Now that fans of ArcheAge know for certain that their sandbox will be shutting down in June, there are some who are perhaps looking to the emulation and rogue server…

Fight or Kite: Pax Dei’s alpha is equal parts survival gameplay and grind-fueled crafting – In my experience, I’ve found “survival game” and “grindfest” are synonymous with each other in all but the rarest of cases. There just seems to be a faction of gamers…

Choose My Adventure: Necro Kitty proves to be a reasonable Elder Scrolls Online tank – I’ve had some minor grouping experiences in The Elder Scrolls Online before. I was around for some of the game’s early days when people were running through public delves, steamrolling…

Blizzard recaps #SomeChanges coming in today’s WoW Classic’s Cataclysm prepatch – Everyone’s long since given up on #NoChanges, right? We’ve all just accepted that World of Warcraft Classic was never #NoChanges and was always going to be #SomeChanges and that even…

New World Q&A talks fresh start servers and regaining the trust of the community via quality – New World’s Amazon crew is back with another Forged in Aeternum Q&A this week, headed up by game director Scot Lane and senior gameplay engineer Scott Geiser, who are joined…

Blizzard laid off prolific World of Warcraft writer and lore queen Christie Golden – Among the many people affected by Blizzard’s massive layoffs in 2024 was Christie Golden, the rare games writer whose name a whole lot of MMORPG players will recognize whether or…

Lord of the Rings Online defends its decision to plunge back underground in Update 40 – As Lord of the Rings Online players dig into Update 40’s current test build, many questions have popped up about the new underground regions — including why the studio is…

Wisdom of Nym: It’s OK that your Final Fantasy XIV character is going to look different in Dawntrail – So we’ve all had a chance at this point to play around with the benchmark for the next Final Fantasy XIV expansion, and that includes playing around with the character…

Netmarble (not Nexon) is working on a new Game of Thrones MMO – Update: Wccftech is reporting that the original source conflated Nexon and Netmarble; there is still a Game of Thrones MMO coming, but it’s apparently a Netmarble mobile game. So get…

Ubisoft resolves to launch two Web3 games this year but admits five years of work have yielded nothing – Just in case you were thinking that Ubisoft had stopped huffing the guff of Web3, blockchain, and crypto, allow a VentureBeat interview with blockchain head Nicolas Pouard to rid you…

Albion Online’s European server is fully live and F2P for all players now – here’s the new music video – If it seems as thought we’ve been covering the launch of Albion Online’s Albion Europe server for a really long time, well, that’s because we have. This server has had…

Escape from Tarkov cedes PvE mode to earlier special edition buyers, but only ‘in waves’ and after full release server updates – This past weekend saw Escape from Tarkov start a row with its biggest supporters by paywalling a PvE mode, forcing new buyers to cough up $250 to buy an Unheard…

Helldivers 2 PC players are furious over returning hard requirement to link to a PSN account by June 4 – It would appear that Sony has elected to call down a 500kg bomb strategem on the PC-using playerbase of Helldivers 2, as a previously optional requirement for Steam players to…

Helldivers 2 delists from Steam in non-PSN countries as studio boss admits fault in debacle – Over the weekend we reported on Sony’s decision to reinforce the previously relaxed PlayStation Network account link requirement for PC players of Helldivers 2, which would force PC fans of…

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.

Advertisement