We’re now on our third weekend in a row of no peace here in the MMORPG genre as it dumped yet another pile of drama and bad news on all of us, first with an Ashes of Creation investor’s bombshell accusations against Intrepid’s Steven Sharif, then with layoffs hitting Stars Reach studio Playable Worlds because, hey, all of the industry’s money has drained out the bottom of the tub into a hole marked “AI bubble.” Plus, ArcheAge Chronicles and Chrono Odyssey have been delayed again, over a thousand Ubisoft devs went on strike, and the Diablo franchise has been attacked by Warlocks. OK, that last one was a joke, kind of.
But hey, happy Valentine’s President’s Lunar New Year Day.
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
Ashes of Creation investor accuses Intrepid’s Steven Sharif of fraud and financial malfeasance – Assuming the insider reporting provided to a YouTube channel is accurate, then the controversy that’s led to the shutdown of Ashes of Creation’s development studio goes much deeper than gamers might…
Stars Reach’s Raph Koster confirms layoffs but assures fans that work on the sandbox continues – Whether this is another unfortunate sign of the games industry times or a worrying portent of things to come we’ll leave up to you fine readers, but the fact is…
Valentine’s Day and Lunar New Year in the MMORPG world, 2026 edition – Valentine’s Day and Lunar New Year did us a kindness in 2026 because they’re so close together that a lot of the MMORPG events blur. So we’re going for a…
Kakao Q4 2025: Kakao has delayed ArcheAge Chronicles and Chrono Odyssey yet again – During our coverage of Kakao’s Q3 2025 financial call, we noted that while technically both Chrono Odyssey and ArcheAge Chronicles had finally managed to hold on to a launch window…
NCsoft Q4 2025: Aion 2’s massive launch, Guild Wars 2’s solid expansion – Last week’s financial tease from NCsoft about its Aion 2 profits was just a prelude to the real deal this week, as now, the Korean megacorp’s Q4 2025 financial report…
WoW Factor: World of Warcraft’s The War Within – great expansion or greatest expansion? – We’re just a few weeks away from the launch of World of Warcraft’s next expansion, Midnight, but before darkness descends upon us, I’d like to take some time to look…
Project Gorgon has now opened a fourth server as it nears 3500 concurrent players – We have to say that when Project Gorgon started making noise about opening a second server, we were skeptical, but it happened. And then a third server happened. And now……
Casually Classic: Here’s how WoW Classic should reorganize its servers – Right now as I count it, there are six versions of WoW Classic running — and that’s not including retail and whatever else Blizzard may be planning to reveal at…
Open-world action RPG Crimson Desert surpasses 2M wishlists, shows off Pywel continent – If you’re one of the over two million players that Pearl Abyss reports have wishlisted Crimson Desert, then you’re definitely going to want to check out the game’s latest preview…
No Man’s Sky’s Remnant update has players dumpster-diving and waste-processing (in space) – No Man’s Sky’s 6.2 update has arrived today: The so-called Remnant update is all about clunkers, junkers, and space garbage. Oh, also industrial waste dumps. Delightful! First, the multitool is…
Diablo IV, Diablo Immortal, and Diablo 2 Resurrected are all getting a Warlock class – Blizzard was 1 for 2 on the dramatic reveals at the World of Warcraft and Overwatch spotlights over the last few weeks, so you’d be forgiven for wondering whether Diablo…
As many as 1200 Ubisoft devs went on strike today in Paris and Milan – If Ubisoft thought that continuing to lay off people left and right, forcing people into the office, shoving AI into studios that don’t want it, canceling games, and closing studios…
LOTRO Legendarium: Hobbits are the best race in LOTRO, period – Initially, I was going to go through a head-to-head showdown between all the races in Lord of the Rings Online until arriving at the best of them all. But when…
Acknowledging ‘rough moments’ and scope shrink, Pax Dei studio says it’s committed to ongoing development – Pro tip for MMORPG devs: Starting a dev blog “the future of the game” is going to cause hearts to pound even if the future isn’t bad, so I sure…
SpaceMolt is a new AI-driven space MMO where players aren’t actually needed – If you are already tired of hearing about MMORPGs that play your character for you, then just click X in your browser window right now because you’re not going to…
Storyboard: What diegesis actually means in MMORPGs – Today’s article is brought to you by me, as I am very, very annoyed at the fact that RuneScape’s designers apparently do not know what “non-diegetic” means. This is not…
Pearl Abyss Q4 2025: With Crimson Desert on deck, EVE Online is having a revenue renaissance – Pearl Abyss’ Q4 2025 and full-year 2025 financials dropped yesterday, with a slightly better outlook for the company than the two years prior. Readers might recall that in Q3 2025,…
Massively Overthinking: Is the MMO guild dead? – Almost 11 years ago, when we were still setting up our indie version over here on MOP, we did a Massively Overthinking about the death of the MMO guild. At…
Nexon Q4 2025: ‘Blockbuster’ Arc Raiders drives record annual revenue and global ambition – Nexon is positively clapping its hands together and giggling madly that its long bet on Embark Studios has paid off and then some. “We are pleased to report significant progress…
Vague Patch Notes: MMOs can’t – and shouldn’t – use the same magic trick twice – If you ask most veteran Final Fantasy XI players to name the best expansion in the game’s lifespan, I would bet good money that most of them would cite Treasures of Aht…
Dungeons and Dragons Online is about to give you the ultimate gift token – Whether or not you are actively playing Dungeons and Dragons Online right now, you’re going to want to check in with the game later this month when Update 78: Natural…
Highguard studio hit with significant layoffs as a ‘core group’ continues development – Just two weeks ago, the internet collectively cringed to hear Highguard’s Wildlight Entertainment CEO Dusty Welch commit to print words that seemed like a dare for the universe’s mean streak.…
It’s the end of an era in Ultima Online: The best part of IDOC camping is dead – Of course I’m gonna tell you what an IDOC is. It’s storytime with Bree! So at the end of the last century, just about 30 years ago now, there was…
PvPvE extraction ARPG Vaultbreakers kicks off its latest week-long open test – It’s time to once again crack into the PvPvE extraction RPG that is BetaDwarf’s Vaultbreakers for a week. That’s right, another open test is on for the title as part of…
Lord of the Rings Online increases instance challenges, allows LUA plugins with UI scaling – A small but significant patch hits Lord of the Rings Online today, as Update 46.2 arrives with the Tier 3 difficulty of Kingdoms of Harad’s newest instances. [AL:LOTRO]Standing Stone Games…
Q4 2025: Celebrating a record year, Krafton teases Subnautica 2 and plops OG Subnautica on Switch 2 – Krafton is waving its hands and making some press magic happen today in its continuing efforts to finesse the Subnautica franchise and make it rain money. First, Krafton studio Unknown…
Throne & Liberty admits Tower of Greed has ‘fundamental issues,’ plans server and region merges in March – Throne and Liberty does not have a big patch this week, but it does have Tico. A video with Amazon’s Tico, that is, definitely cracking goofy Valentine’s Day jokes and…
Lineage Classic makes its official release to nostalgic South Korea and Taiwan fans this week – If you happen to hold very fond memories of 1998’s isometric MMORPG Lineage and happen to live in South Korea or Taiwan, then you’re in luck because NCsoft has officially released Lineage…
Dune Awakening is heavily buffing item durability and reducing durability loss on defeat – Now that Dune Awakening’s chapter 3 is out, Funcom has been busy shoring it up with what it’s calling some “big changes” to durability and loss reduction. Honestly, we think…
Brighter Shores releases a wholesale revamp to its profession leveling in Project Milestone Phase 2 – For some time now, indie sandbox MMORPG Brighter Shores has been making steps through its profession revamp known as Project Milestone, which was described as a way to make leveling up the…
ARC Raiders’ latest update adds a PvE event where players fight machines, not each other – Are you the sort of ARC Raiders player who would rather team up with people you meet out in the Rust Belt instead of gunning them down? Then your penchant for…
Korean news outlet reaffirms that Nexon and Blizzard are working on a StarCraft shooter – Put another log on the campfire of hope, StarCraft fans, because we once again are hearing word about the possibility that a shooter based on the sci-fi RTS is being made.…
BitCraft settles on a world-only wipe – and won’t wipe the current server at launch, either – Over the weekend, early access indie MMORPG BitCraft announced plans to do another wipe later in February, putting the exact nature of the wipe (full, world, or full final) up…
Overwatch responds to Anran design complaints, Hearthstone readies the Cataclysm March 17 – Overwatch has a lot cooking for its new content cadence, including the arrival of five new heroes on February 10th. One of those heroes is Anran, a fire-wielding DPS character who…
Choose My Adventure: Project Gorgon’s launch has absolutely subsumed my time – I cannot begin to put into strong enough words how happy I am that I’m excited for a new MMORPG launch, but that the launch in question has met my…
Live-event MMORPG Eternal Tombs puts out a call for testers ahead of its proposed 2027 launch – We’ve been following the development of MMORPG Eternal Tombs for years now – in fact, since before it was even called Eternal Tombs. Back then, the so-called War of Dragnorox’s…
Riot Games lays off part of the team behind fighting game 2XKO but says its development will continue – It would appear that Riot Games, the developer most commonly known for the MOBA League of Legends, is going through a rough patch: Thanks to the underperformance of 2XKO, the multiplayer…
Foxhole’s Airborne content update lifts the war MMO’s Steam player count to new heights – It would seem that last week’s Airborne content update for Foxhole did more than lift players into the skies with the introduction of airplanes and related mechanics; it also uplifted the…
Discord users revolt over the company’s plan for intrusive age verification system – Last night, Discord announced that it is going to start rolling out age verification to users in March, which involves the company talking out of both sides of its mouth…
Wisdom of Nym: The high three bars for any Final Fantasy XIV gambling job – We will not know anything about Final Fantasy XIV’s next expansion beyond the fact that it is happening until the fan festival in April. But a lot of people have felt pretty…
Sandbox MMO Dreamworld lists a March 10 release date – but is it actually happening? – You know how there are some MMORPG projects that are so clearly bad that you know they’re going to crash yet you can’t look away as they approach? That’s the…
The Quinfall wrestles with bugs and earns over 6000 Steam players over its 1.0 release weekend – Many of us were surprised when we learned that survival sandbox MMORPG The Quinfall made it to its 1.0 launch this past Friday. So naturally the next question to answer would be,…
Former Ashes of Creation devs file lawsuits accusing Intrepid Studios of violating labor laws – Considering the way that Ashes of Creation developer Intrepid Studios was reportedly closed down, we’re guessing this headline is likely going to come as no surprise because yes, several former devs of…
Merv Lee Kwai hops from Amazon Game Studios over to NCsoft America and Aion 2 – It turns out that there’s not a lot that can keep Merv Lee Kwai down: NCsoft announced that it’s bringing Kwai on board NC America as its new Vice President of…
Massively on the Go: Preparing for Pokemon Go’s 2026 Kalos Tour(s) – Pokemon Go’s upcoming Kalos Tour is not looking great. No new legendary+ pokemon to raid, only two new Megas and one is a so-so typing that we already have, and none…
Obituary: EverQuest lead artist Kevin Lydy has passed away – I’m sorry to report this morning that the MMORPG genre has lost another real one: Daybreak announced the passing of EverQuest franchise lead artist Kevin “Panatellen” Lydy. “We are immensely…
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.