MMO Week in Review: Cataclysm II

World of Warcraft has been rent asunder with Cataclysm – again – as this week the expansion cracked open WoW Classic.

Meanwhile, we worried about Blue Protocol, looked forward to Dune Awakening, welcomed EverQuest’s Teek and Tormax, and saw single-player modes come for Nightingale, Wayfinder, and Islands of Insight.

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

WoW Classic Cataclysm formally launches tonight as Blizzard tunes WoW Remix – The countdown is on: At 6 p.m. EDT tonight, the gates of Cataclysm will be thrown open for World of Warcraft Classic fans – whether they’re eager for it or…

WoW Factor: Story Difficulty is a bad idea and a good idea all rolled into one – Back during Wrath of the Lich King, I remember people asking for a story difficulty for raids in World of Warcraft because if the developers were going to keep cramming…

Vague Patch Notes: Why I am no longer anticipating Blue Protocol – Last year, I was pretty jazzed about Blue Protocol. I’ve actually been pretty jazzed about it for a while, but last year it looked like it had the wind at…

Second Wind: The problem with World of Warcraft’s Dragonflight’s class design – It’s time for part two of this four part Second Wind series on revisiting World of Warcraft after many years away. In the first piece, I gushed about the vastly…

Massively Overthinking: Does challenging solo content belong in MMORPGs? – Star Wars The Old Republic’s plan to implement new solo challenge content called Ventures in its Desperate Defiance patch raised more than one eyebrow around the MMORPG genre. There are…

The Game Archaeologist: Runes of Magic, an MMO that made millions disappear – In more ways than one, the year 2004 was a pivotal one for the MMORPG community. Even as games like City of Heroes, EverQuest II, and World of Warcraft were…

Perfect Ten: My top 10 favorite MMOs across two decades – Normally in these Perfect Ten lists, I’m very outward-facing. I like to create lists that are as helpful or amusing as possible for others looking for certain MMOs. But today…

Destiny 2 outlines Final Shape’s armor and ability updates and a new Pathfinder UI – Destiny 2 continues to unleash a torrent of hyper-granular details about its Final Shape expansion this week, with dev blogs, weekly newsletter information, and two long trailers (sorry, ViDocs) pouring…

Tarisland previews the male elven Bard in its latest class deep-dive video – Welp, I forgot Tarisland has Bards, and now it has my attention again with its deep-dive of the Bard class – one of the best things setting it apart from…

Shroud of the Avatar execs expand on Slayscape, a procedurally generated battle royale RPG – Last March we reported on the discovery of Pangaea, a development studio formed by existing execs of Shroud of the Avatar’s Catnip Games — specifically Chris Spears and Starr Long…

Co-op raiding roguelike Rabbit & Steel celebrates passing 100,000 copies sold – When you’re a solo indie developer, it’s hard to know when a game is going to resonate with a potential audience, especially when that game is already kind of a…

Helldivers 2 CEO steps down into a lead developer role and outlines his general vision for improvements – The name of Johan Pilestedt has been one of the more memorable ones for fans of Helldivers 2, particularly for his candid level of communication and interaction with the playerbase…

Overwatch 2 is killing its Hero Mastery Gauntlet PvE mode at the end of season 10 – Blizzard is apparently taking an axe to yet another PvE-esque mode in Overwatch 2 as it winds down Hero Mastery Gauntlet for good at the end of Season 10, a…

Dune Awakening reportedly begins sending out closed beta invites – While Dune: Awakening appears to have failed to strike the hot iron of the recent movie’s popularity, it is making something akin to forward momentum, as fans on the MMORPG…

EverQuest launches Teek and Tormax, a new pair of time-locked expansion servers for subscribers – The O.G. EverQuest is at it again, as the classic MMO launched a pair of highly anticipated new time-locked progression (TLP) shards this week for subscribers. This marks the first…

World of Warcraft will finally implement story mode raids starting with The War Within – It’s taken a mighty long time to get here and years upon years of players begging for it, but come this fall, World of Warcraft will finally add a story…

Puzzle MMO Islands of Insight is getting an offline mode ‘in the coming months’ – Are we witnessing the death of games as a service? Probably not, but we’re definitely witnessing the shrinking of a segment of games that probably didn’t need to be a…

Co-op multiplayer RPG Wuthering Waves makes its global release on PC and mobile tonight – Earlier this month we first caught wind of Wuthering Waves, a co-op RPG for PC and mobile devices from Kuro Games set in a sci-fantasy world with plenty of anime…

Overwatch 2 is once again crowdfunding its OWCS esports prize pool with a skin bundle – Blizzard appears to be making another attempt at crowdfunding an esports competition as it’s selling a skin bundle to Overwatch 2 players in order to fund the 2024 OWCS Dallas…

Nightingale’s offline mode and QOL-laden 0.3 update are now live – If you were waiting for Nightingale’s offline mode to go live before jumping into the early access survivalbox, today is your day, as the 0.3 update for what Tencent’s Inflexion…

Embers Adrift previews new dungeons, new raid, and a beetle creature arriving May 28 – It’s said that April showers bring May flowers, but in the case of Embers Adrift, the month of May — specifically May 28th — is bringing a bunch of new…

Legends of Aria Classic lays out massive June overhaul patch, postpones subscription – Legends of Aria Classic is squarely in the “a surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one” tier for 2024 as its original developer snatched it from the brink of…

Escape from Tarkov studio offers special edition compensation in the form of a single-use $50 coupon – Escape from Tarkov developer Battlestate Games just can’t stop shooting itself in the foot over its PvE mode debacle. As a refresher, the studio announced that access to this mode…

Lost Ark’s May update, Chaos Rising, is live today with the Hanumatan trial guardian raid – If you feel chaos rising today, don’t worry – it’s just Lost Ark’s May update. Chaos Rising is lighter on content, owing to the fact that players are still working…

Palia is prepping an economy patch to smooth out gold generation and skills – With two major rounds of layoffs and a severely shrunken team – not to mention the fiasco with its beta status – Palia has entered the tier of multiplayer game…

Black Desert revamps Node Wars and ports the North American servers today – Black Desert’s promised Node Wars revamp is upon us this week even as the North American servers are on a journey to a new home in the central US. First,…

For Science: Fandom’s survey shows a majority of gamers play to unwind and de-stress – I know you’ll all be shocked to learn that people play games to have fun and chill out, but in the current industry, sometimes it’s helpful to be reminded of…

Tarisland says male mages and female paladins are the next step in gender-unlocking – We’re down to the last of Tencent’s announced dev blogs for Tarisland focusing on how the studio has tweaked the game between the last test and the impending technical test…

Choose My Adventure: The Undaunted skill line chase introduces frustration in The Elder Scrolls Online – “Get the Undaunted skill line.” “Unlock Undaunted.” “You should be getting the Undaunted skills.” “Make sure you’ve got Undaunted unlocked!” This has been the prevailing wisdom hoisted at me during…

Corepunk proposes its 500,000 test hopefuls comment for a chance at 10,000 alpha 2 invites – If you thought you were signed up for the Corepunk beta, you might have a little more legwork to do to ensure you actually get a crack at it. Artificial…

Sand is an open-world PvPvE game where players build stompy robot bases to explore an alien planet – As one poorly directed actor of a sci-fi film noted, sand has a whole bunch of drawbacks including its unpleasant texture and its propensity to get in places it shouldn’t.…

Amazon Games opens new studio in Romania to support ‘ambitious long-term roadmap’ – As large parts of the games industry contract, Amazon Games is buying the dip and expanding with a new game dev studio in Bucharest, Romania, led by former Ubisoft Bucharest…

EVE Online blockchain spinoff Project Awakening begins Phase III and ‘hackathon’ testing today – CCP Games is continuing to push forward with Project Awakening, the blockchain side piece/spinoff of EVE Online, as the game is launching into its next test phase today, May 21st,…

Bellwright touts 200K unit sales and high concurrency following ‘terrifying’ release – It’s been roughly a month or so since the multiplayer medieval survivalbox Bellwright made it into early access, and it looks as if Donkey Crew have captured a lot of…

Wisdom of Nym: What we learned about Final Fantasy XIV’s Viper, Pictomancer, and job updates from the live letter – We do not yet know as much as you think about how the Final Fantasy XIV jobs are going to look in Dawntrail. I do not say this because somehow…

Abyss Online devs warn gamers not to buy the game right now owing to ‘absolute chaos’ in early access – “We warn all to not purchase our game until these game breaking bugs are behind us.” If your eyes are bugging out reading that memo from the developers of the…

Lawsuit accuses Activision and Facebook of partial blame in deadly 2022 school mass shooting – The 2022 mass shooting that took place at Robb Elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, is one of the most shameful events in the US on many different fronts, but there’s…

Current Wayfinder owners can beta test the big Echoes revamp right now – Yesterday afternoon saw Wayfinder developer Airship Syndicate hold a special livestream (on Twitter of all places) to talk up its upcoming Echoes update. That livestream came with a bit 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.

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