MMO Week in Review: Looks like Amazon LOTR MMO is back on the menu

A new MMO was born this week – or reborn, really – as Amazon announced its second attempt at a Lord of the Rings MMORPG (and then managed to “we’re not in Azeroth anymore” at the extant MMO LOTRO, to the irritation of the prospective Amazon fanbase).

Meanwhile, Tarisland promised global launch later this year, Bossa announced Worlds Adrift 2 Lost Skies, Jack Emmert’s new NetEase studio announced a Warhammer 40k game, Nightingale was delayed yet again, and Blizzard did Blizzard things by canceling most of Overwatch 2’s promised PvE content and then bafflingly appearing to cop to having fibbed about it since before launch.

Apologies for this post being five minutes late tonight; we were having a sincere but very stupid debate over the worst meme to use as the title for this article as the best one – about second LOTR – was already taken.

Finally, if you’re following MMO beta news, swing by our newly revamped Betawatch column, which got a huge upgrade this past 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

Amazon has revived its Lord of the Rings MMORPG, now collaborating with Embracer – Amazon and Embracer announced this morning that they’re building a new MMORPG based on The Lord of the Rings. To understand what the heck is happening with this story, you…

Amazon Games VP throws shade at LOTRO over new Lord of the Rings project – With the recent announcement of a new Lord of the Rings MMO in development by Amazon Games, one would expect the newcomer to follow the typical protocol by being gracious…

Overwatch 2 officially cancels most of its PvE content moving forward – Hey, remember when Overwatch basically went into deep freeze to deliver on all of the awesome content that Overwatch 2 was going to have? Yeah, so it turns out that…

WoW Factor: Tarisland and the cargo cult of World of Warcraft – We’ve all made jokes about Tarisland being “we have World of Warcraft at home.” That’s just a fun thing to make jokes about, and that’s all well and good. But…

EG7 Q1 2023: EG7 pulled in a record $54M last quarter, and Daybreak is a huge chunk of it – Enad Global 7 aka EG7, the company that owns Daybreak, Standing Stone Games, and Piranha Games and is effectively still being run by Daybreak leadership, had a very good quarter…

Casually Classic: Six problems Blizzard has to solve for WoW Classic’s official hardcore mode – Hey, look at that: Blizzard’s going and making Hardcore Classic an official thing. As well it should, considering how this community-driven ruleset’s been the single most exciting and popular part…

Perfect Ten: Overwatch 2 is peak Blizzard – So in case you missed it yesterday, Overwatch 2 got unceremoniously canceled. Oh, I know, the game is still operating, but someone has already put together an edit of the…

LOTRO Legendarium: Amazon plays at making a Lord of the Rings MMO… again – Weren’t we just here? I mean, that’s what everyone’s thinking, am I right? It was just three years ago that I penned a column about the then-fresh announcement that Amazon,…

Final Fantasy XIV posts the preliminary patch notes for The Dark Throne – The Dark Throne is so close you can almost taste the throne. Which is weird; you shouldn’t be tasting thrones unless your name is Sir Trab Duncan Forthright, the Throne…

Vague Patch Notes: The power of perspective in MMOs – So now that Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is out, there is a very funny meme that is going around, but it is not funny for the reason…

Diablo IV showcases its accessibility options, runs promos involving cathedrals and meat shakes – It’s hard to think that a game like Diablo IV needs more promotion, but Blizzard has been absolutely banging that drum for a while now, running the gamut from fried…

Bossa Games is back in the MMO space with Lost Skies, an obviously Worlds Adrift-inspired co-op title – Stop me if you’ve heard this one: Bossa Games is working on a new multiplayer game with skyships and islands and gliding and rappelling! OK, you know we weren’t going…

Massively Overthinking: Solving the MMO gear obsolescence problem – Last weekend, Amazon told players in a New World Discord Q&A that the expansion still on the way will essentially nullify existing gear to a degree. Redditors debating the issue…

Colorful co-op multiplayer title Sky Children of the Light prepares for its cross-platform arrival on Steam – Back in 2020 we reported on a very emotional-looking bit of multiplayer gaming in the form of Sky: Children of the Light, a game that’s all about cooperation, peacefully exploring…

Jack Emmert’s NetEase-owned studio rebrands as Jackalyptic Games, teases Warhammer 40K title – The studio is named Jackalyptic Games, it’s owned by Netease, and it’s headed by Jack Emmert. You might think that you wouldn’t want to brand your new studio based on…

Post-apocalyptic MMO shooter Ashfall opens registrations for July’s closed beta – Announced last fall, Ashfall raised some curious eyebrows with its post-apocalyptic “adventure shooter MMORPG” format. We’ve only heard a little bit about it since then, with developer Legendary Studios speaking…

Nightingale has seen another early access delay – it’s now set for fall 2023 – People said we were mean to doubt Nightingale’s early access release in the first half of this year, but the game has already seen one major delay (last fall) -…

Whatever happened to Star Citizen’s Squadron 42? Well, you can’t buy it right now – When we wrote about Star Citizen’s alpha 3.19 release, a couple of our readers pointed out in the comments that the pledge/purchase button for Squadron 42 wasn’t working – a…

Lord of the Rings Online promises that it’s ‘not going away’ after Amazon MMO announcement – As exciting it’s been to hear that Amazon is working on a Middle-earth MMO again, some Lord of the Rings Online fans expressed concern that this would negatively impact their…

Embers Adrift tees up another free-play weekend starting June 2 – Stormhaven Studios has been teasing another freebie weekend for the buy-to-play-plus-sub MMORPG Embers Adrift, and now popular demand has made it happen, though oddly it won’t be over Memorial Day…

BlizzCon 2023 has been announced for November 3-4 in Anaheim – Well, here we go. The past couple of years have not featured a celebration of Blizzard as a company because… well, we have a long list of reasons. But this…

Interview: KingsIsle talks Pirate101’s Steam launch, Sinbad Chapter 2, and the future of the game – KingsIsle’s Pirate101 is having a bit of a renaissance right now. The high seas-themed sibling MMO to the popular kids game Wizard101 has two big releases in store this spring:…

Star Citizen alpha 3.19 launches with mining and salvage updates, new tutorial, and new PvP event – The self-described Call to Adventure is being sung by Star Citizen, which serves as the subtitle for the newly released alpha 3.19 build, which brings gameplay updates and new activities…

Overwatch 2 devs admit team strategy on PvP/PvE development shifted ‘about a year and a half ago’ – So a lot of gamers were not terribly happy that Overwatch 2 director Aaron Keller and executive producer Jared Neuss announced that most of the game’s PvE modes promised during…

Early access survival sandbox V Rising has finally launched its first big update, Secrets of Gloomrot – Early access survival sandbox V Rising has had a quiet first year of existence after winning awards for its launch in 2022. Its first major update was meant to launch…

Amazon appears to confirm Throne & Liberty will be a free-to-play title when it launches in the west – With Throne & Liberty delayed for the zillionth time and yet another round of betas still on the way, would-be players have had a bit of time on their hands…

‘Vana’diel’s not going anywhere,’ Square-Enix’s Yoji Fujito says on Final Fantasy XI’s 21st birthday – Congratulations, Final Fantasy XI; as of today you are officially old enough to legally go out drinking. (We’re all going to pretend we forgot that you were clearly on a…

Ubisoft is trying to get in on the NFT racket for a second time with Assassin’s Creed ‘smart collectibles’ – In December 2021, Ubisoft joined myriad other companies in trying to drive the NFT craze to the mainstream when it launched Ubisoft Quartz, an NFT scheme linked to the flagging…

Vampire battle royale Bloodhunt confirms it’s entering maintenance mode because of a lack of players – It looks like the battle royale genre didn’t have enough blood in it to sustain more than a couple of titles: Bloodhunt, Sharkmob’s vampiric battle royale set in the Vampire:…

Fight or Kite: Star Realms just might be the perfect blend of deckbuilder and dueler – While I was away on a trip over the last few weeks, I was able to play Star Realms, a deckbuilder that I expected to moderately enjoy but has absolutely…

Choose My Adventure: Sludging through the Saltmarsh of Dungeons and Dragons Online – This week’s Choose My Adventure episode was all about heading to a new-to-me area in Dungeons and Dragons Online: Saltmarsh. Trust me, it would have stood out, and not just…

Villagers and Heroes players can finally enter their houses with the Homestead update – It’s a day that was almost inevitable for the course of Villagers and Heroes. After years of owning a house that they could only stare at from the outside, players…

Tencent’s Tarisland offers a global release window of later this year and a new CG hype trailer – When NetEase and Blizzard had their messy breakup that ultimately lead to World of Warcraft being pulled from China, Tencent swooped in with an almost flagrant clone by the name…

Ethyrial Echoes of Yore’s reset descends into chaos with new bugs, tanking reviews, and lead dev’s partial withdrawal – The initial Steam launch of Ethyrial: Echoes of Yore went badly enough that developer Gellyberry Studios announced plans for a full server wipe and a restart over this past weekend.…

Blizzard says Diablo IV’s story is the ‘darkest ever told in a Diablo game’ – Here’s a little-known fact about ARPGs: Sometimes they have a story. It’s true! In between all of your frantic clicking and loot exploitation, there are these cutscenes that you immediately…

Guild Wars 2 End of Dragons’ second chapter, What Lies Within, launches May 23 – Guild Wars 2’s next living story chapter is officially launching a week from today on May 23rd. It’s called What Lies Within and will “challenge players to dig themselves out…

Black Desert drops a boss trailer for June’s Land of the Morning Light expansion – Pearl Abyss is pushing onward toward its June launch for Black Desert’s Land of the Morning Light: The latest is a brief trailer zipping through some of the bosses on…

The Daily Grind: When was the best time to be a fan of World of Warcraft? – Last week, an influencer tweeted out that “there’s never been a better time to be a fan of World of Warcraft.” I’m not going to link to it because I…

Wisdom of Nym: Looking ahead to Final Fantasy XIV’s The Dark Throne – It’s almost here! Yes, I know, we have a little longer until Final Fantasy XIV’s next patch properly arrives for the game since it’s dated for May 23rd, but we’re…

The EU has conditionally approved Microsoft’s buyout of Activision-Blizzard – Today’s Microsoft Activision-Blizzard buyout news won’t come as a surprise to anyone who read the leaks last week, but yes, EU regulators have officially approved the merger. “The approval is…

Gamer who leaked classified military intel was first sharing documents in – wait for it – a War Thunder Discord – Back in April we reported on another unfortunate and alarming case of a gamer spreading classified military documents on the internet, this time involving information related to Russia’s invasion of…

Overwatch 2 director attempts to take back control of the narrative over PvE cancellation – It hasn’t been a fun week to be Aaron Keller, game director of Overwatch 2 and one of the people taking the brunt of the blame for the cancellation 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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