MMO Week in Review: How to help Project Gorgon and its devs

This week in MMO land, we covered distressing news: Eric Heimburg and Sandra Powers, the husband-and-wife duo behind beloved indie MMO Project Gorgon, admitted that medical travails (Powers is fighting cancer) and associated money troubles were forcing the game into a low-development era. If you’re considering helping Elder Game and Gorgon, they do have a donation page and shop; in fact, players have been figuring out ways to shower them with money all weekend. The MMO’s Discord has been chronicling some of the massive donations (which, we need to point out, the Heimburgs were not actively soliciting) as the players are partying in game. I’m not crying, you’re crying.

We’re rooting for both the game and the Heimburg/Powers family!

Meanwhile, the MMO news just kept coming: Guild Wars 2 launched Through the Veil, Lord of the Rings Online released Corsairs of Umbar, World of Warcraft dropped Guardians of the Dream, and New World announced Eternal Frost, plus Wayfinder was cut loose from Digital Extremes and the Overwatch League appears dead in the water.

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

‘We’re out of money’: Project Gorgon moves to part-time development to keep its server lights on – An announcement from the three-person dev team behind Project: Gorgon pulls no punches, as Elder Game admits to players in no uncertain terms that the money needed to keep up…

WoW Factor: World of Warcraft’s The War Within actually sounds promising on paper – So now we know what’s coming next. World of Warcraft: The War Within is our next expansion, and… you know, that’s not really a great title. It’s not an atrocious…

Flameseeker Chronicles: Hands-on with Guild Wars 2 Through the Veil’s Inner Nayos and convergences – Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure was a bit of a different expansion in that it wasn’t one big chunk of content dropped on us all at once, but…

Lord of the Rings Online releases its ninth expansion, Corsairs of Umbar, today – Grab your Hobbit-brand sunscreen, find your most flattering cosmetic swimsuit for your Elf, and head down to the tropical south for Lord of the Rings Online’s latest expansion. Corsairs of…

The Overwatch League appears to be dead after six seasons – The Overwatch League appears to have lived up to its nickname, as it’s yet another Overwatch L in light of the news that it appears to be dead. Engadget is…

Wayfinder suffers layoffs as Digital Extremes transfers the game fully to Airship Syndicate – Wayfinder hasn’t even properly launched out of early access and it’s already suffering layoffs. According to Polygon’s unnamed sources, Tencent-owned Digital Extremes laid off “at least 20 people” focused heavily…

ArcheAge 2 confirms another delay and a focus from large-scale factional PvP to small group PvE and guild PvP – It appears that servers aren’t the only things constricting in ArcheAge: The game’s sequel is also going to be shrinking its general focus, as Kakao Games confirmed in its quarterly…

LOTRO Legendarium: Corsairs of Umbar and the three ways we consume expansions – Happy new expansion week in Lord of the Rings Online! It’s surreal to finally be at the capstone of LOTRO’s ambitious 2023 roadmap, not to mention the first full-bodied expansion…

Vague Patch Notes: BlizzCon 2023 wasn’t a disaster, but it needed to be better – The last live BlizzCon in 2019 was not a great show, but it was fundamentally a hype festival for Blizzard just like they’ve all been. At the time, the reputation…

Raph Koster has been warning about the death of games innovation longer than most MMOs have been alive – Veteran MMO developer Raph Koster is no stranger to talking about money in gaming. Our own readers will recall that all the way back in 2017, Koster, known for his…

Destiny 2 resolves to ‘get back up’ as it confirms Season of the Wish for November 28 – A common refrain heard in the story missions of Destiny 2 is “Eyes up, Guardian” – a call to stand once again after being waylaid by challenge, loss, or tragedy.…

PSA: Star Trek Online is slashing the price of its lifetime subscription deal through December 14 – If you just can’t get enough of that Star Trek Online and want to get all of the exclusive perks available to lifetime subscriptions like playing a Liberated Borg or…

Massively Overthinking: Did BlizzCon do what it needed to do? – Given the last couple of years, which have been inarguably rocky for both the company and its games, Blizzard needed a big win at last weekend’s BlizzCon, its first live…

EverQuest II celebrates 19th birthday and $216K Extra Life fundraising with in-game events – Don’t look now because you’ll only feel old: EverQuest II is officially 19, and if you do some quick napkin math, it means that EverQuest is on track to be…

Nexon Q3 2023: Nexon’s getting a new CEO as its PC MMOs like MapleStory drive absurd revenue growth – Owen Mahoney is out at Nexon – and Junghun Lee is in. That’s the key bit of news coming out of the company’s Q3 financial report today, as Nexon’s board…

NCsoft Q3 2023: Mobile MMOs, not the classic PC titles, are dragging NCsoft down – If you were hoping that NCsoft’s financials might perk up in Q3 after a full year of downward incline, I’m afraid I’ll be disappointing you with some unpleasant graphs here…

Pearl Abyss Q3 2023: Black Desert’s Land of the Morning Light pulled PA out of its slump – MOP readers might recall that three months ago, the news for Pearl Abyss was looking a bit on the grim side, as the Korean gaming company’s financial report for Q2…

The Soapbox: Will Diablo IV’s Vessel of Hatred be a sufficient answer for Path of Exile 2? – Everyone loves a good enrage timer, right? It puts pressure on everyone involved in a raid or boss fight to pull their weight and play well enough to ensure the…

Throne & Liberty elaborates on monetization and PvP concerns following its showcase video – Last week saw Throne & Liberty dish up its promised launch showcase video, which granted potential players around the globe a look at several features of the incoming MMORPG. Following…

Tarisland previews the Battle of Ancash raid and reintroduces the Warrior class ahead of November 15 closed beta – We’re just under a week away from the next closed beta test of Tarisland, and that means that Tencent is spooling up the hype engine as it offers potential testers…

Greg Street’s Fantastic Pixel Castle hints at the possibilities of its ‘Ghost’ MMO in hour-long Q&A – Will Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street’s new Fantastic Pixel Castle be able to bring the goods when it comes to developing an MMORPG? Ever since the studio and its first project, code-named…

The Epic Games Store is apparently still not profitable for Epic Games – It’s now been five years since Epic Games launched the Epic Games store with an eye toward dethroning Steam, as epitomized by the fact that it’s been branded by doing…

Xbox announces plans for AI-based gamedev tools that generate game dialogue and quests ‘at scale’ – The invasion of generative AI text and large language model (LLM) tools like ChatGPT into game development and design has gotten the backing of a particularly large player, as Microsoft…

Funcom’s Dune Awakening sound design is inspired by the Villeneuve movies – No, Dune ain’t done – but Funcom is letting you have a little listen. The Dune Awakening developers dropped a new dev blog this morning focused on the game’s sound…

Perfect Ten: The single best expansion from 10 MMOs – Holy crud, do I not know that I’m setting myself up for some major pushback today. Oh, I feel that to my core, friends! After all, people have Opinions about…

Albion Online is switching to a seasonal quarterly content cadence with smaller, faster updates – With Wild Blood just recently settling into the Albion Online patch archive, Sandbox Interactive is already moving on to talking about the game’s next big thing. SBI’s Robin Henkys gets…

Kickstarted MMORPG sandbox Fractured Online relaunches early access on Steam today – We say this with nothing but kindness in our hearts: The return of Fractured Online is not something most people would’ve bet on at the top of 2023, but it’s…

World of Warcraft’s Guardians of the Dream launches today (albeit with delays) – If you aren’t looking forward to World of Warcraft: The War Within, the good news is that there’s a fair chunk of Dragonflight left to get through first. If you…

Blizzard president confirms a focus on mobile and live service games, briefly discusses studio’s ‘new era’ – The tide of change is continuing to slip its way across the shores of Blizzard, which is the general tone of a BlizzCon interview with president Mike Ybarra, who discussed…

Choose My Adventure: Swamps, spicy fights, story, and technical issues in New World – Just in case anyone was worried, no, I didn’t abandon Choose My Adventure; I was just busied by reporting on a space game and an extremely important thought experiment about…

Neverwinter’s Spelljammer module sends players into Wildspace with today’s launch – As promised, today is patch day for Cryptic’s Neverwinter, in spite of the shadow of studio layoffs hanging over the company thanks to Embracer’s destructive bumbling: Spelljammer is officially here.…

Pantheon Rise of the Fallen claims ‘solid forward momentum’ thanks to art change and 247 extraction mode – It looks as if Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen is in “show don’t tell” mode for its much-maligned 247 extraction test mode, as Visionary Realms offered up a sunny pre-alpha…

Vitae Aeternum: Five MMO tips for New World Rise of the Angry Earth newbies – With the hype around Rise of the Angry Earth, a lot of players are starting or restarting their journey in New World. In my two years of play, I’ve noticed…

The Wagadu Chronicles confirms a Steam early access launch date of December 4 – Afrofantasy sandbox MMORPG The Wagadu Chronicles has been talking up plans for early access this year, from opening its Steam page to showing off a gameplay trailer, but developer Twin…

Blizzard suggests World of Warcraft is ‘pretty well positioned’ for a console port – World of Warcraft coming to consoles almost seems like a no-brainer, considering MMORPGs being playable on a gamepad is hardly beyond the pale – and that’s even before Blizzard got…

New World announces season 4, aka Eternal Frost, launching December 12 – New World has just unveiled its next big thing after Rise of the Angry Earth: It’s the game’s fourth season, dubbed Eternal Frost, and it’s on deck for December 12th.…

Casually Classic: BlizzCon took WoW Classic into the ‘plus’ era – While the three-expansion revelation of World of Warcraft’s Worldsoul Saga stole the show at BlizzCon this past weekend, I was even more excited — and nervous! — to hear what…

Wisdom of Nym: Illuminating Final Fantasy XIV’s 6.51 patch – As a general rule, Final Fantasy XIV does not offer much for players to do during the first minor patch after a major one. They tend to come out pretty…

World of Warcraft will develop ‘Saga’ expansions in parallel, addresses War Within’s headstart controversy – Even after hearing everything that Blizzard had to say about World of Warcraft’s Worldsoul Saga in general and next year’s The War Within expansion in particular, you’re understandably likely to…

WoW Classic won’t be keeping Wrath Classic realms, debates what to do with Season of Discovery characters – The reverberations from all of WoW Classic’s announcements at this past weekend’s BlizzCon continue to be felt across the MMO community. And for every detail that the studio shared, two…

Pax Dei announces ‘Home Valley’ alpha for next week, focusing on player housing – During its stream this afternoon, Mainframe Industries announced that it’s kicking off the “first large-scale” alpha for sandbox MMORPG Pax Dei. It’s set to launch on November 14th and run…

Blizzard’s art savant Samwise Didier is retiring after more than three decades at the studio – Thirty-two years is a heckuva run at any studio, especially when you’ve been one of the artistic inspirations for some of that studio’s most iconic characters and races. This is…

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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