A big Guild Wars 3 embargo finally dropped this week, allowing press and previewers to reveal what’s been shown and said – but still not played – behind closed doors, raising as many questions than it answered. MOP’s own Colin got some juicy quotes out of ArenaNet’s Colin Johanson, who is apparently taking on the game’s direction himself.
Meanwhile, Xbox announced plans to continue shooting itself in the foot, Aion 2 isn’t getting an Oceania server, Elder Scrolls Online is forging on with its new roadmap, and we’re all anxiously awaiting BlizzCon… and the new StarCraft game that we’re assuming will finally be unveiled after years of rumors.
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
Flameseeker Chronicles: A first look at combat and the joy of movement in Guild Wars 3 – Has anyone else been itching for more information on Guild Wars 3? I know it’s not just me. So of course when we were invited to see the game in…
Rumor: Nexon is nearing a deal with Blizzard to create a StarCraft successor – At this point, the fact that Nexon is working with Blizzard to develop aStarCraft title is one of the worst kept secrets in our corner of the gaming world; our…
LOTRO Legendarium: Looking back at Siege of Mirkwood – After the huge effort that was Mines of Moria, Lord of the Rings Online’s second expansion felt like a serious downgrade in scope, features, and content. Actually, that wasn’t some…
Warframe of Mind: Reacting to everything unveiled in the Iceblade of Narin preview – Man alive, I feel rotten about this. Seriously, just awful. MOP’s Chris, whom I consider a friend and also just an excellent dude in his own right, gets to step…
Project Gorgon ‘Voltrons’ a few servers together into one while giving extra temporary character slots – If you recall your ancient ’80s cartoon lore, you might recall the tale of Voltron: Defender of the Universe — a giant robot made of cat robots. Project Gorgon took…
Massively Overthinking: Is it wise for MMORPGs to court older gamers? – One of the things that stood out to us when wereported on Kakao’s recent quarterly financials was the fact that the studio is specifically looking to target the older gaming…
Casually Classic: Does cosmetic transmog belong in WoW Classic? – Originally I was going to tackle this rumor swirling about Classic Plus being a complete rework of the game — a «World of Warcraft 2.0» as it’s being called. But…
Lineage II announces plans to launch another server ‘with its own identity and ecosystem’ September 15 – Someone over at NCsoft walked over toLineage II, tapped it solidly on its hood, and exclaimed that this baby can hold so many server types. That’s right, in addition to…
RuneScape plans an engine upgrade, Havenhythe Part 2, and a ‘deep clean update’ this month – RuneScape is back once again withanother monthly roadmap post, and this Septemberappears to be a pretty important one for the MMORPG and for the team at Jagex as well. We’ll…
Xbox will impose a cap on cloud gaming hours for Game Pass subscribers starting in November – With console hardware prices getting raised higher and higher, accessing titles via cloud gaming might have seemed like a reasonable and comparatively more affordable alternative. Unfortunately, Game Pass subscribers who…
Final Fantasy XIV offers a few more story and Beastmaster teases ahead of next week’s patch 7.56 – Fans ofFinal Fantasy XIV are all eagerly looking forward toEvercold, in which we’ll be traveling to the Fourth… but are we even going to be waiting that long? Ahead of…
After six years of early access, Craftopia is making its 1.0 launch sometime in 2027 – It would be easy to have forgotten entirely aboutCraftopia, particularly after Pocketpair’s other survival sandbox absolutely exploded in popularity across its own early access development and into its own full…
EverQuest Legends celebrates Labor Day with extra XP and free Murderbee – When I log intoEverQuest Legends, there’s an insect next to me. It can leave me dying – Murderbee. And though I don’t want aggro, it is still nearby and chasing…
Farhaven is a cozy co-op ‘FriendMO’ sandbox that promises a private world of shared adventure – We’ve come across some unique portmanteaus and acronyms used by game studios to describe their titles, but we have to admit that calling a game «not an MMO, a FriendMO»…
MMO Business Roundup: PS Store lawsuit, tariff refunds, and Tim Sweeney on gaming’s ‘crash 2.0’ – Welcome back to yet another roundup of MMO and MMO-adjacent industry news! In this bundle, we’ve got an update on a lawsuit, game corps effectively saying «no soup for you,»…
Neverwinter lays out its roadmap for the remainder of 2026 and into early 2027 – Just because we’re cruising into fall soon doesn’t mean that it’s too late in the year for an informative MMO roadmap! So it’s good to see that Cryptic’s sharing some…
Vague Patch Notes: In which I do not memorialize Elyon – You can thank Justin for this column in which I memorializeElyon, a game that was once known asAscent: Infinite Realm and actually looked pretty cool at that time with its…
Grand Theft Auto Online’s official roleplaying server nopixel V enters closed beta September 8 – In the not-too-distant future (but not next Sunday, AD), people are going to be mostly talking aboutGrand Theft Auto VI. Perhaps that’s why as it stands now, Rockstar Games is…
Stars Reach brushes off sunset fears as it releases its Ground Control update – With the early access line crossed, Stars Reach is now in a race to build out an appealing MMORPG before interest and funds fall away. And to the team’s credit,…
Bossa Studios unveils new ‘chaotic’ co-op game while admitting Lost Skies has not made any money – This was a pretty foregone conclusion if you’ve been following our coverage of the airship building survival title Lost Skies, but it does look as if developer Bossa Studios is…
SteamDB’s owner sells the site to popular mod repository Nexus Mods while admitting to burnout – If you’re a PC gamer of nearly any stripe, you’re likely very familiar with Nexus Mods, one of the biggest places to find mods for a wide assortment of titles…
Perfect Ten: Revisiting the winners of our last 10 underrated MMORPG awards – I’m always a sucker for «underrated» lists and suggestions for various media because the popular good stuff is well-known — what I want to discover is the great stuff that…
BlizzCon posts its complete program schedule and other event details ahead of this year’s show – We’re just a little over a week away from BlizzCon 2026, and that means it’s time for everyone who’s attending the event in-person toget some information beforehand in order to…
Elder Scrolls Online shares a peek at its Warden refresh, which is still on track for 2027 – Listen up, Warden players ofElder Scrolls Online — or read up considering this is in text form. ZeniMax Online Studios has offered anupdate on its plans to refresh the class,…
EVE Online has a cow playing the game today. Yes, seriously. Stop laughing. – Is EVE Online so easy that your average bovine gamer can play it? We’re going to find out, because those wacky Icelander devs decided to hook a cow up to…
Aion 2 confirms that its global launch will not be arriving with an Oceania server – During our latest podcast, MOP’s Bree wondered aloud whatAion 2 would be doing to support any Australian players who would want to hop in during its global launch, particularly sinceits…
Pocketpair exec argues Steam concurrency numbers don’t tell the whole tale of a game’s health – While we have referenced Steam concurrency numbers in some of our news reports, we often point out that it’s a facet of a greater look at how things are going…
Choose My Adventure: Dungeon delves to wrap up my opening stint in EverQuest Legends – Sure, I could do what last week’s polls told me to do and visit one dungeon inEverQuest Legends, but what about visitingtwo of them instead? That’s right, dear readers, I…
World of Warcraft promises to find players who boosted their way to the top of Mythic Plus rankings – What would you do for a new bird mount? If you’re a certain type ofWorld of Warcraft player, you may have bought your way to the tippy-top of Mythic Plus…
Fight or Kite: PvP siege MMORPG Gloria Victis is back from the dead – It always amazes me just how many MMOs existed, continue to exist, and come back from a sunset. I’m always shocked when I look at the backlog of games I’ve…
Quinfall parts ways with a community manager who allegedly engaged in cheating and RMT – There appears to be a bit of drama occurring within the official Discord ofQuinfall, as the devs of the sandbox announced thatthey have parted ways with one of their community…
Lost Ark delays its next server merge to September 9 and is re-opening Paradise – Those of you who keep a close eye onLost Ark’s schedule probably remember that the game was originally planning to do its next server merge on September 2nd. However, after…
Guild Wars 3 collects concept artwork and lore details of its three revealed species in one video – Sure,Guild Wars 3 has already made sure to show off three of its four playable species, but there was one unanswered question rattling in our minds: What are the Asura’s…
Legends of Aria Eternal arrives to Steam September 10 with a box price and dedicated server capability – As of this past July, if you wanted to playLegends of Aria Eternal, the second rebooted version of the original Kickstarted sandbox MMORPG, you had to join a playtest that…
Wisdom of Nym: Melee weaponry Final Fantasy XIV could use for future jobs – So let’s recap. Last week, I posited something that I feel is pretty straightforward: We’re hitting a point where clearly we can no longer rely on past jobs as a…
Dune Awakening promises it’s not abandoning the PvP playerbase despite its small size – If you’re one of the few and proud PvP fans inDune Awakening, you probably feel like you’re second chair at best most of the time. But fear not because creative…
World of Warcraft emulator pivots to new MMO called Ascension – It happened withThe Heroes Journey. It happened withTurtle WoW. And now, it looks like it’s going to be attempted by Project Ascension, the World of Warcraft rogue server that’sshutting its…
Albion Online knows exactly where your dragons are — they’re in today’s Dragonfire release – You know what they say: When one MMO ends all the dragons, another begins them. What? People totally say that. Hrmph. In any case, Albion Online’s going all fire sky…
Guild Wars 1 makes balance tweaks, adds a new bonus merchant, and makes some small fixes – It’s still pretty wild to know that original tasteGuild Wars is getting new things added to it to this day, but we’re also not complaining, even if the thingsapplied over…
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.
