MMO Week in Review: Daybreak’s Marvel MMORPG, Gamigo’s RIFT promise

You might have thought a holiday week would be quiet, but this one definitely was not – in fact, it was only this past week that the Activision-Blizzard board of directors tried to throw up a fresh deflector shield and Bobby Kotick launched a trial balloon about resigning.

But fortunately, some great things happened to the MMO industry last week too: We learned RIFT really is getting some new content and Daybreak is working on a Marvel MMORPG once again. Meanwhile, Star Citizen hit $400M in crowdfunding, New World bungled its latest patch, and Elite Dangerous Odyssey underperformed. Win some, lose some.

THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES

EG7 Q3 2021: Daybreak revives Marvel MMORPG, still promising console and gfx upgrade for LOTRO - Enad Global 7, the company that bought Daybreak just about a year ago, has now dropped its Q3 2021 financial report. Just one quarter ago we suffered a bout of…

Activision-Blizzard’s board launched an extraneous ‘workplace responsibility’ committee overnight - Happy Tuesday morning! I have an exercise to get your side-eyes and eye-rolls all warmed up, in the form of a letter dispatched by the Activision-Blizzard board of directors last…

Vague Patch Notes: When ex-World of Warcraft fans become Final Fantasy XIV partisans - There is a certain stripe of Final Fantasy XIV fan that is exceedingly prevalent at this point, and that type is the rigid partisan... against World of Warcraft. You don't have to look…

Gamigo investor report promises a ‘great update’ for RIFT in Q1, Atlas Rogues is abandoned - It's a bit of good news and unsurprising bad news out of the third quarter investor report from MGI, the company that runs Gamigo. In the report's 14th page, it…

Vitae Aeternum: Analyzing New World’s storytelling - I've been wanting to write this column for a while, but it's been a struggle to find the words. I'm never sure of how to talk about New World's storytelling.…

New World rolls back European servers to correct over-generous tax refunds - It may be a New World, but this continued mess is getting awfully old. Yesterday, European players started reporting that they were granted huge sums of in-game money as tax…

Frontier Developments’ 2021 financial report admits to a ‘disappointing’ reception to Elite Dangerous Odyssey - The stumble-filled launch and subsequent slow rebuild of Elite: Dangerous' Odyssey expansion has been noted by Frontier Developments as part of the company's 2021 annual report and accounts presentation, with…

Tamriel Infinium: Eight things I really like as a Elder Scrolls Online casual - As some of you have so kindly pointed out, I am by no means an Elder Scrolls Online expert. I've been playing off and on for a few years now,…

City of Heroes Homecoming adds new Task Force, new stone powers, and new IOs with Issue 27 Page 3 - The time has come for the players of the City of Heroes Homecoming rogue server to rock out - quite literally - as the game's Issue 27 Page 3 release…

Perfect Ten: 10 mounts that New World should definitely add - For some reason, New World does not have mounts. This is obviously not the only thing that the game lacks, as it also lacks basic things like a minimap or…

Swords of Legends Online patches in the Sparkwood Gardens raid - It's time for the first raid of Swords of Legends Online's patch 1.1, and that means Sparkwood Gardens is welcoming all and sundry to its corridors. The normal mode of…

Star Citizen introduces the RAFT cargo hauler and Ares Starfighter in latest video - The Intergalactic Aerospace Expo event of Star Citizen - and by extension the newest Inside Star Citizen video - is revealing another two ships that are now available to fly…

Roblox sues toxic player for $1.6M over ‘terrorist threats’ and ‘targeted harassment’ of employees and players - Benjamin Robert Simon, otherwise known as Ruben Sim online, is being taken to court by the devs of Roblox. A suit was filed against him this past Tuesday in California,…

Guild Wars 2 teases End of Dragons elite spec changes, new character customizations - Earlier this week, ArenaNet posted a massive dev blog discussing all the changes it's making to Guild Wars 2's End of Dragons elite specs following the first three rounds of…

Massively Overthinking: Gratitude in the MMORPG genre - It's Thanksgiving here in the US, and while some folks have probably already kicked back from the table and have started in on the shopping season, I want to follow…

Early datamined cutscenes for World of Warcraft start to piece together the story of patch 9.2 - All right, when you get tired of all of the fire covering World of Warcraft and Blizzard Entertainment in general right now, maybe you'd like to see how the whole…

Perfect Ten: 10 stock MMO mobs from crummy to cool - My pet theory of MMOs is that they exist in a gaming multiverse with scores of unseen connections. This explains why so many of these titles claim to be boldly…

Albion Online’s massive fall update, Lands Awakened, is here - Albion Online's big fall update is finally here: Lands Awakened is officially live. As we've been chronicling, Lands Awakened is a sweeping overhaul of the world's five core biomes, which…

Sony Interactive Entertainment is hit with a lawsuit alleging gender discrimination - This past Monday, a female former IT analyst for Sony Interactive Entertainment filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging that she was the victim of gender discrimination and was wrongfully…

Guild Wars 2 readies fourth beta event and invites you to tea - Guild Wars 2 is preparing for its next big beta event - not this weekend during the holiday, but the weekend after, from November 30th to December 4th. Players will…

Mortal Online 2 goes into early access for a $40 buy-in price - Remember when Mortal Online 2 declared that as a result of how its beta went, the game was not going to be entering into early access? Good times. Anyhow, the…

Choose My Adventure: Cobbling together a death brick in Avorion - You know how your first construction job in a survival sandbox is a perfectly functional but spectacularly hideous in terms of aesthetics? That was my first major created ship in…

BioWare teases ‘big changes for PvP’ in SWTOR coming in 7.2 next year - [AL:TOR]When Legacy of the Sith launches on December 14th, Star Wars The Old Republic fans can look forward to a rash of new content. But PvP players should also be…

Wargaming has censored another content creator’s World of Warships videos - It hasn’t been the best year for Wargaming, the game studio behind war arcades World of Tanks and World of Warships, and it seems the bad news may be far…

WildStar’s Nexus Forever rogue server project pushes new build, warns fans to ‘not expect a full-featured experience’ - Just the other day, we were talking in the office about why WildStar hasn't seen a rogue server yet -- and wondering the only feasible project, Nexus Forever, was doing.…

Wisdom of Nym: The plot threads I hope to see addressed in Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker - It's almost time. Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker is going to be here very shortly - just a bit less than two weeks from now, in fact - and while we've had…

New World addresses grumbling over undocumented changes to elite POIs - New World's developers dropped two missives over the weekend. The first addressed changes to elite points of interest aimed at endgamers that simultaneously made them harder (intended, although not to…

Star Citizen’s crowdfunding crossed the $400M threshold this weekend - The start of the Intergalactic Aerospace Expo - and likely more specifically the launch of the Spartan APC - has once more heralded a fiscal boon for Star Citizen as…

Bobby Kotick considers leaving Activision-Blizzard if he can’t quickly fix its ongoing frat boy culture - Last week, reporting from the Wall Street Journal blew the lid off of fresh allegations leveraged at Activision-Blizzard, including attempts by CEO Bobby Kotick to hide a rape settlement from…

Black Friday sales around the MMO world, 2021 edition - Even if you're not a Thanksgiving person or even a "harvest festival" type of soul, you can take advantage of the sales and events going on this week and weekend…

THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS

Massively OP Podcast Episode 347: Land rush!

Massively OP Podcast Episode 348: To the moon with FFXIV’s Endwalker

Battle Bards Episode 205: Love is in the air

The Stream Team: Socially sanctioned Black Friday slaughter in Warframe

The Stream Team: AdventureQuest 3D’s Darkest Black Friday yet

The Stream Team: Time for Trove’s Turkeytopia!

The Stream Team: Night at the Sith museum in SWTOR

The Stream Team: A Ramsgiving feast in Dauntless

The Stream Team: Setting sail with The Swimming Oak for EverQuest II’s prelude event

The Stream Team: Undaunted adventures in Elder Scrolls Online

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.