We’re on the brink of a packed June for the MMO world as we wait for the release of Dune Awakening, Elder Scrolls Online’s Seasons of the Worm Cult, and Guild Wars 2’s Absolution this coming week, but last week still managed to bring some expected and unexpected twists: EVE Online released its Legion expansion, Crystal of Atlan formally launched, WoW Classic announced Mists of Pandaria for July 21, City of Heroes began testing its next content drop, and New World finally announced it’s got a new game director.

Become a PatronRead 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

New World has a new game director as Katy Kaszynski takes over for Scot Lane - You might have noticed that when New World first announced Season of the Divide back in April, game director Scot Lane was conspicuously absent from the show. It turns out… Into the Super-Verse: What the heck is going on with balancing in City of Heroes Homecoming? - When we first looked at the beta patch notes for City of Heroes: Homecoming's i28p2 Legacy, the first joke I made to MOP's Bree was that we can tell the… Perfect Ten: The best improvements retail World of Warcraft’s made in the past five years - It's quite the moment to be a World of Warcraft player, with so many versions of the game from which to choose and plenty of developments happening on both fronts.… Dune Awakening’s new video demos its endgame content, combat, and conflict - Funcom delivered its look at Dune Awakening's lategame last night, effectively showing off the content that wasn't actually open to testers during the event earlier in May. The team discusses… EVE Online’s Legion update arrives today with new ships, freelance jobs, and balance updates - EVE Online is arguably a sandbox that's best experienced as part of a larger group of people, but if you're not affiliated with one of the giga-corps that like to… F2P action MMO Crystal of Atlan hits PC, PS5, and mobile today, reiterating that it’s not a gacha game - As promised, Crystal of Atlan - which kinda came out of nowhere back in March - has officially launched today on PC, PS5, and mobile. It's an anime action MMO… WoW Classic Mists of Pandaria targets July 21 as Season of Discovery portends ‘enormous appetite for new experiences’ - WoW Classic's Season of Discovery may be winding down in terms of development, but the experimental server may be a launch pad to something far greater. In a retrospective post… Guild Wars 2’s Absolution zone, Bava Nivos, is hella creepy, and it opens on June 3 - We're just a few sleeps away from Absolution, the fourth and final leg of Guild Wars 2's Janthir Wilds expansion, and now, ArenaNet is dropping some new videos, the first… Internet Road Trip invites you to pile into a virtual car with hundreds of opinionated drivers - Feel like ditching your responsibilities to cruise in an aimless road trip? While you might not have the time or gas money to do that right now, you can virtually… Amazon is experimenting with adding ‘rough edges’ to the New World PvP experience - As part of its preview of New World's upcoming hardcore seasonal world, Amazon has sent along a new Q&A-style dev blog explaining the studio's reasoning for the planned ruleset. As… Gachapwned: How gacha MMOs attract players with gameplay that’s calculated to be mid - This week in our Gachapwned column, we're examining the three-pronged approach that gacha games use to attract players in the first place. Last week, we covered the strong character writing… Kakao’s MMO Odin Valhalla Rising has seen 20M downloads since 2021 - Exactly a month ago, Kakao and Lionheart launched Odin Valhalla Rising, their Norse-mythology-themed MMO that promised typical MMORPG fare like dungeons and large-scale PvP. Apparently, that sounded pretty good to… Massively Overthinking: Who really buys MMORPG lockboxes – and why? - For this week's Massively Overthinking, we're going full Inception because we're talking about last week's Massively Overthinking and some of the spillover our team had while discussing lockboxes. See, I had… Throne and Liberty launches a new boss fight, new gear slot, and multiple combat updates - Are you prepared to face the mommy necromancer in direct combat? Then you're prepared for the newest content patch for Throne and Liberty, which has opened up the four-star Crypt… Fangbreaker, EverQuest’s newest progression server, is officially open this week - Who here is ready for another time-limited progression server in EverQuest? If you answered in the affirmative, then you've likely been keeping an eye on the Fangbreaker server's impending arrival… Ember Sword, another crypto sandbox MMO project, bites the dust - Hey, do you remember Ember Sword? No. You do not. Of course you don't because we do our best not to give them airtime, plus your brain files "crypto MMORPG"… BitCraft has opened up its beta for free for the next three weeks ahead of launch - If you're already feeling that spring/summer overwhelm with all the content drops and new MMOs coming in the next month, this article will... not help you whatsoever. That's because BitCraft… Elder Scrolls Online deep-dives the subclassing system arriving with next week’s Update 46 - We don't know where spring went, but it's almost over, and that means The Elder Scrolls Online's long-awaited Seasons of the Worm Cult is just around the corner. But if… LOTRO Legendarium: Could LOTRO use its monster player classes for something other than PvP? - To my knowledge, Lord of the Rings Online is unique in the MMORPG space in that it had to create a special faction of enemy creatures so that the "good"… DC Universe Online launches its newest content chapter Fearful Day - The Light & Rain narrative that's running through DC Universe Online has gotten its latest chapter this week with the launch of Fearful Day, bringing a new story and naturally… Elder Scrolls Online confirms testing is underway to try to bring back 900-player Cyrodiil PvP - If you like hearing podcasts about Elder Scrolls Online, then you've very likely been paying attention to the Kinda Funny limited "gamescasts" over the past few weeks. If you don't… ‘There is still a road ahead and lots of content to add,’ Equinox Homecoming boss says - It's been two weeks since Equinox Homecoming, Blue Scarab's horse mystery MMO, trotted into early access, and it's been a rough couple of weeks through which we've been holding our… Star Wars The Old Republic deploys Update 7.7: Dynamic Worlds today – but you’ll have to wait on the story - A big Star Wars: The Old Republic game update without a story is kind of like Christmas without the presents -- still quite serviceable but obviously missing something fun. That's… Embers Adrift will shift from monthly subscriptions to buyable ‘blocks of perk time’ instead - The frustrating hits just keep on coming for Storrmhaven Studios' Embers Adrift. Readers no doubt recall that the devs behind the MMORPG were effectively screwed over by their payment processor,… Skull & Bones kicks off the first season of Year 2 with item ascension, structured PvP, and world tiering - It's time to Ascent into Chaos in Skull and Bones as the first season of the multiplayer title's Year 2 content updates has officially kicked off, bringing several new features… The Division 2 launches its Battle for Brooklyn DLC and Crossroads content update - It's been quite some time since The Division 2 tied down a launch date for its new DLC. Readers will remember that it's been months since the Battle for Brooklyn… City of Heroes Homecoming’s i28p2 Legacy enters testing with a major content revamp for Kallisti Wharf - City of Heroes Homecoming fans, your long wait for fresh content is over - or will be soon, anyway. The officially licensed live version of the 21-year-old superhero MMORPG has… Choose My Adventure: Success and failure along the southern islands of Lost Skies - All right. So. I know you all wanted me to head southerly in Lost Skies this week. And I did! I wasn't going completely off-script, despite some of my urges… Funcom details Dune Awakening launch timing and server release plan ahead of next week’s debut - Funcom's Dune Awakening is just a couple of handful of sleeps away if you've preordered the larger packages - an extra handful if you haven't. That means the studio is… Fight or Kite: Here’s what changed with Guild Wars 2’s Push PvP mode in eight months - Up until a couple of weeks ago, you would be forgiven for thinking that - after several months and hardly a peep from ArenaNet regarding Guild Wars 2s newest PvP… One of PC gaming’s biggest titles is a garden growing game made by a teenager in Roblox - There's a mega-popular game catching fire across the PC gaming world right now, at least in terms of raw player numbers, and it comes from a rather unexpected place: Roblox.… Guild Wars 2 will wrap up Janthir Wilds with next week’s Absolution update – here’s the trailer - The final piece of the Janthir Wilds puzzle is about to click into place, as Guild Wars 2 plans to release the last content update of its current expansion next… Final Fantasy XIV unveils the Occult Crescent with the launch of patch 7.25 - If you've found yourself frustrated at the lack of relic weapons to advance, dinosaurs to fight, and phantom jobs to use in Final Fantasy XIV up to this point, we… Wisdom of Nym: Final Fantasy XI and the comfort of being done - When I first played Final Fantasy XI, I wanted to be a Dragoon. I wanted this because I had never really given a whole lot of thought to the Coolest… Lord of the Rings Online dev confirms that the Angmar Sorceress class is in the works for PvP - If you're familiar with Lord of the Rings Online's dev team at all, you'll know that Lead Designer Allan “Orion” Maki is a massive fan of the (niche) PvP scene… ZeniMax QA workers reach tentative contract agreement with Microsoft after nearly two years - We've been periodically reporting in on the efforts of ZeniMax Workers United-CWA - that's the union that represents QA workers who work on titles such as Elder Scrolls Online -…

THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS

Massively OP Podcast Episode 519: Kit and kabang The Stream Team: The trobble with bosses in AdventureQuest 3D The Stream Team: Pushing through some sterner missions in MechWarrior 5 Clans The Stream Team: Suspects and soarsleds in Dungeons & Dragons Online The Stream Team: Bidding a bittersweet farewell to multiplayer creature slaying RPG Dauntless The Stream Team: Backseat Streaming sets sail on the Sea of Thieves The Stream Team: Doing a casual bit of criming in Elite Dangerous The Stream Team: Some fun with Guild Wars 2 sabotage The Stream Team: Making people like me in Warframe 1999 The Stream Team: Driven to explore Planet Crafter, now with unlimited oxygen The Stream Team: Violently punching monsters as a violently pink Akuma in Monster Hunter Wilds 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.