The MMORPG genre saw two big launches this week: First, Brighter Shores, the new MMORPG from one of the RuneScape’s creators, made its early access debut – and we kinda liked it, though we could do with a lil less grind. And second, Lord of the Rings Online presented its 2024 expansion, Legacy of Morgoth, though we’re mostly grumping over the new elf faces.
We also saw delays for ArcheAge Chronicles and Chrono Odyssey, ogled Stars Reach’s latest trailer, welcomed cross-saving to No Man’s Sky, and got hyped for Final Fantasy XIV’s Crossroads.
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
Lord of the Rings Online releases its 10th expansion, Legacy of Morgoth, this afternoon – Fasten your cloak and pack a fresh batch of lembas bread, for Lord of the Rings Online is calling all of its high-level adventurers to sally forth once more with…
First Impressions: Brighter Shores has gobs of potential buried under mountains of grind – When I first heard of it, I wasn’t sure that Brighter Shores would be a game I wanted to play, but watching development unfold – and the character with which…
MMO Hype Train: Brighter Shores is a totally chill RuneScape clone – Former RuneScape creator Andrew Gower admits that he never planned to make another MMORPG — at least until enough fans convinced him to give it another try. Thus he and…
WoW Factor: Is World of Warcraft’s War Within the ‘come back’ expansion Blizzard wanted it to be? – It was two years ago this month that World of Warcraft players were riding out the final days of one of its most disappointing expansions to date, not knowing whether…
Stars Reach’s new trailer shows significant visual improvement – and a partial list of professions – Late last night, Playable Worlds dropped a new trailer for Raph Koster’s incoming MMORPG sandbox Stars Reach, along with an update for its NDA. As readers will recall, there was…
Brighter Shores explains its episode-specific professions design and asks players to ‘please give it a chance’ – When Brighter Shores launched into early access this week, many players were surprised at the fact that each episode (aka a major zone) had individual professions to level, including one…
Perfect Ten: 10 ways to put your MMO back on players’ radars – Running an MMORPG isn’t like Field of Dreams. You can’t just create a game and expect that everyone will show up because a magic cornfield said so. Your studio –…
Vague Patch Notes: Living like a rock in MMORPGs – So if you are anything close to my age, you probably do not think of Simon & Garfunkel’s music as being anything remotely “raw.” It’s more likely you’re distantly aware…
LOTRO’s Legacy of Morgoth expansion has everyone fretting over the new Elf looks – The initial release of Lord of the Rings Online: Legacy of Morgoth seems to be going generally fine, albeit with a few bumps and bugs. However, it’s the Elf avatar…
Chrono Odyssey narrows down its launch window to Q4 2025 – Kakao is taking baby steps to zoom in on a potential global launch window for its upcoming fantasy MMO Chrono Odyssey. Previously, the studio hoped that the game would come…
Well Fed: How I took an MMO joke sandwich name and made it real – and real delicious – Moments of inspiration really can strike from the strangest of places. Whether you’re minding your own business in the shower, about to lay down for bed, or you come across…
Interview: Drakantos discusses multiplayer open world content, monetization, testing, and more – Drakantos is one of those upcoming MMORPGs that looks so familiar while still being distinct. Its got undeniably gorgeous pixel art, a nostalgic retro style that evokes classic SNES RPGs…
Final Fantasy XIV just announced a collab with a… camping gear brand – We’ve got a late-breaking candidate for “weirdest cross-promo of the year” right here, and it’s all thanks to Final Fantasy XIV, which is apparently teaming up with a camping gear…
MMO Business Roundup: NetEase stocks dip over internal fraud and corruption investigation – Welcome back to another roundup of MMO and MMO-adjacent business news. This edition is all about money, baby. Well, quarterly financials, anyhow. And also crimes! Wait. NetEase NetEase hasn’t officially…
Final Fantasy XIV outlines PvP updates and shows off gear in the preliminary patch notes for Patch 7.1 – Next week will bring new things to do for Final Fantasy XIV players, and that means that Square Enix’s Creative Studio III has put forth the preliminary patch notes for…
Massively Overthinking: How long should it take to level to endgame in MMORPGs? – Right after New World’s Aeternum launched, we did a piece looking into how the game was faring – and one complaint I saw over and over on Reddit and in…
No Man’s Sky is adding full multi-platform cross-saves, a PS5 Pro edition, and an old Mass Effect ship – Whenever Hello Games’ Sean Murray starts dropping teasers on social media, you know something good is coming to No Man’s Sky: Today, the studio has announced three separate chunks of…
Throne & Liberty’s latest patch will let guilds fight over a castle and try to deliver tax money – It was already outlined, but now it’s here: The guilds of Throne and Liberty are now able to take part in a tax delivery event and castle siege event with…
Crimson Desert unveils a fight against Black Desert’s Hexe Marie in its new G-STAR playable demo – First off: No, we still don’t know whether the current version of Crimson Desert has retained any of its originally planned multiplayer features, nor do we have a release date…
Soulframe is opening up its ‘preludes’ test phases for up to 10,000 more people a week – If you’ve been watching Digital Extremes talk up Soulframe’s preludes testing phases over the last few months, then this might be your moment, as the studio is planning to open…
World of Warcraft’s newest map, Siren Isle, will eventually allow some flight with tons of rep and token farming – Update: Fresh datamining of the latest PTR build released just after we published this renders it all moot, so flight folks can rejoice: Apparently, there will indeed be a quest…
EverQuest II’s Scars of Destruction expansion now has a hard date of November 20 – The fact that EverQuest II is getting an expansion toward the end of the year is not any sort of revelation, given that Daybreak does this every single year and…
PlanetSide 2, fresh off an EU server merge, kicks off its 12th anniversary celebrations today – Somehow, the news that PlanetSide 2 is turning 12 years old this month strikes me as both way too high a number and way too low a number – probably…
More leaks confirm that Blizzard is working on a Warcraft II: Remastered edition – While Blizzard fans spend the next week wondering what the studio will say or reveal of its plans for the Warcraft franchise, one leak perhaps is stealing some of the…
Kakao Q3 2024: ArcheAge 2 aka ArcheAge Chronicles has been delayed yet again – Kakao Games dropped its third quarter financials this past week, and it’s a bit of a mixed bag – especially if you were anxiously awaiting the next big thing in…
Throne & Liberty boasts 4.5M unique players in its first month – If you’re in the arguably right guild in Throne and Liberty, you’ve already got quite a few things to do (and most of them can be on a very firm…
Brighter Shores officially launches into early access today, hoping to court RuneScape players – It’s early access launch day for Fen Research’s MMORPG Brighter Shores, a game so new to our radar that it wasn’t even a known entity when last year’s “most anticipated”…
Path of Exile 2 shares 30 minutes of gameplay footage from this year’s Tokyo Game Show – How will Path of Exile 2 players salve themselves knowing that the OARPG’s early access is being delayed into December thanks to demons in the database? They can watch over…
Choose My Adventure: Roaming the wild frontier of Red Dead Online with a posse of friends – What, you didn’t really think I would play this game alone, did you? I should explain just what’s happening here: I’m playing Red Dead Online for this column as both…
You can pet the animals in Enshrouded’s massive Souls of the Frozen Frontier update, live now – So if you’re looking for something engrossing to do today, something to take your mind off of, you know, things, how about some survival sandbox goodness – how about Enshrouded’s…
Vitae Aeternum: How to fix New World Aeternum’s endgame with chase items and solo play – We’re back with the second part of the Vitae Aeternum column’s series on improving New World: Aeternum’s endgame, with a special eye towards long term replay value and player retention.…
Pax Dei’s Proving Grounds update is set to launch today after a multi-hour delay to fix a building bug – It’s time to prove yourself to the grounds! …wait, that doesn’t make sense. What..? Oh, wait! Pax Dei is building grounds to prove yourself on with the release of the…
Monsters & Memories expands its team, aims for one last test this year – It’s generally positive news from the Monsters & Memories team in the latest development update. The studio reports that it’s added two new team members and should be running one…
New World releases an accolades trailer as Scot Lane says the team is ‘hard at work’ – Just ahead of the weekend, Amazon Games posted a memo to New World players – and before you get too excited, no it’s not a roadmap. But it does include…
Crafting MMORPG Haven and Hearth officially launches on Steam with its World 16 reset – Last month we reported on the next major step forward for the crafting-focused MMORPG Haven and Hearth – a 16th world reset and launch on Steam. Both of those events…
Ubisoft’s NFT battler Champions Tactics was broken to the point of unplayability over the weekend – Near the end of October, Ubisoft’s NFT figurine PvP battler Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles quietly made its full release with almost no amount of wider fanfare and a marketplace that…
Wisdom of Nym: The key takeaways from Final Fantasy XIV’s Crossroads live letter – I haven’t exactly been shy about mentioning that 2024 has been a terrible year for me, but then I look at the trailer for Final Fantasy XIV’s next patch and……
Vitae Aeternum: How to fix New World Aeternum’s endgame with rewards and content relevance – New World is currently enjoying an influx of new players following the Aeternum update, but historically New World’s struggle has not been attracting players – it’s keeping them. In my…
Riot Games promises that it’s still ‘working hard’ on the Riot MMORPG – Back in March, Riot Games decided that its in-development and unnamed MMORPG would need to reset its design direction and go radio silent for “likely several years.” This news combined…
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.
