Elder Scrolls Online became the first major MMORPG of the year to put all its chips on the table with the announcement of its new seasonal model and controversial battlepass business plan – though it landed in the context of the game’s former boss finally making clear just what kind of villain ZeniMax’s corporate owner Microsoft is.
Meanwhile, we concluded our awards rollout with our picks for MMORPG of the year, best expansion, most anticipated, best studio, and best indie MMO, plus we doled out our lifetime achievement award. Congrats to all our winners! We’ll have our full debrief on awards season later this week.
In the meantime, 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
Everything we know about Elder Scrolls Online’s new seasonal content plan and business model – If you didn’t like Elder Scrolls Online’s 2025 intermediate seasonal model and content pass, then you’re going to be pretty happy after ZeniMax Online Studios’ big reveal today because the…
Former ZOS president Matt Firor finally confirms he left over Project Blackbird’s cancellation – When Microsoft swung an axe across thousands of game developer’s jobs last year, one of the studios affected was ZeniMax Online Studios, particularly the devs working on the MMORPG codenamed…
Here’s how Elder Scrolls Online is boosting its sub perks when seasons begin this year – As fans of Elder Scrolls Online already know by now, this year is bringing a shift to a seasonal content release model for the MMORPG, including new events, an eventual…
End-of-Year Eleven: Upcoming MMOs to watch in 2026 and beyond – After a surprising and twisty-turny year of 2025, we turn the corner into virgin territory where specters of the past, portents of the future, and familiar friends wave encouragingly to…
MassivelyOP’s 2025 Awards: MMORPG of the Year – Welcome back to MassivelyOP’s annual MMORPG awards for 2025! Today’s award is for the MMORPG of the Year, which was awarded to Throne & Liberty last year. Longtime readers will recall… MassivelyOP’s 2025 Awards: MMO Expansion of the Year – Welcome back to MassivelyOP’s annual MMORPG awards for 2025! Today’s award is for the MMO Expansion of the Year, which was awarded to Guild Wars 2’s Janthir Wilds last year. Every…
WoW Factor: Nervous and excited for World of Warcraft’s Midnight prepatch – By now, World of Warcraft fans are used to the multi-stage format that Blizzard employs to roll out its expansions. It’s never a one-and-done affair, is it? There’s the prepatch,… MassivelyOP’s 2025 Awards: Most Anticipated MMO – Welcome back to MassivelyOP’s annual MMORPG awards for 2025! Today’s award is for the Most Anticipated MMO, which was awarded to Star’s Reach last year. This award can be frustrating since…
Lawful Neutral: The biggest MMO and multiplayer legal dramas of 2025 – The last few years have been quiet on the legal issues in games, but in true 2025 fashion, this year was a legal drama-llama. Granted, maybe a little bit more…
Casually Classic: Would WoW Classic’s hardcore mode benefit from roguelite progression systems? – As I type this, we’re at the top of January and waiting for two events that should be happening in the WoW Classic space this month. The first is the… MassivelyOP’s 2025 MMO Lifetime Achievement Award – Welcome back to MassivelyOP’s annual awards for one more special honoree. Readers will remember that a few years ago, we decided to institute a lifetime achievement award specifically to honor…
MassivelyOP’s Weirdest MMO Stories of 2025: Weirdest thing MMO gamers did to win an internet argument (yes, again) – Today we’re finishing up our traditional countdown of MassivelyOP’s weirdest MMORPG stories of the year, that year being 2025! Coming in at #1 on our list is… Oh come on,…
Casual MMO Eterspire says it climbed to nearly a half-million registered users in 2025 – Eterspire, the delightfully charming little MMO that recently took our Indie MMORPG of the Year award, revealed that it had its best year ever in 2025. In fact, the cross-platform…
Warframe of Mind: Taking a look at the Tauron Strikes and what they bring to the game – A week ago, I was talking about Warframe’s Tauron Strikes and noted that they were, at the end of the day, a collection of Win More buttons. And this is something…
BitCraft adds more localization and chat hyperlinking as it preps today’s New Year’s party – BitCraft, our winner for Best MMO Crafting of 2025, is focusing on communication among players in its first patch of this year, as the crafting-centric sandbox MMORPG has added support…
WoW Classic game designer says he’s focused on ‘long-term vision for content and narrative’ – One of WoW Classic’s big movers-and-shakers hinted that he’s deeply involved with some big stuff behind closed doors — projects that might portend to the Classic Plus experience that fans…
Massively Overthinking: What will be your three most-played MMOs in 2026? – So here we are, at the top of a new year, 12 whole months of screwing around in video games laid out before us. In tonight’s Massively Overthinking, we have…
Solarpunk MMO Loftia aims to go into early access by the midpoint of 2026 – While the indie devs at Loftia studio Qloud Games initially thought that it only would take three months to build the game from scratch, the truth is that it’s taken…
Black Desert Console releases the Seraph class, goes free-to-play on PS5 for a limited time January 9 – What would it take for you to check out Black Desert on the PlayStation 5 system? Maybe a lady knight who swishes a big ol’ sword around? Or perhaps you’d…
Vague Patch Notes: The desire for novelty that MMOs can’t deliver – Every time people discuss new things they would love to see in long-running MMORPGs, I see at least a few people speculating about things that aren’t just not happening but…
Japanese servers for Blade & Soul and Blade & Soul NEO will officially shut down in March – We have some unfortunate news to share for any Japanese fans of NCsoft’s MMORPG Blade & Soul: The studio has officially confirmed that both Blade & Soul and its Blade…
Sea of Remnants opens sign-ups for an ‘extremely limited’ closed alpha starting in February – In the middle of last year we first started reporting on Sea of Remnants, an upcoming Age of Sail-styled RPG promising “vibrant graffiti energy” from developer Joker Studio and publisher…
Microsoft denies rumors that it’s about to lay off thousands more workers – Yesterday, an article from investor website TipRanks circulated throughout the games industry: The rumor was that Microsoft is planning to cut somewhere between 11,000 and 22,000 jobs in January, roughly…
Past Fate’s early access launch begins with bugs that cause players to swim in the air and lose their stuff on logout – Yesterday was the starting gun’s firing for Past Fate’s early access, and it looks as if the sandbox MMORPG’s first steps were pretty stumbling indeed, as the game has been…
DC Universe Online celebrates 15 years with free gifts and the White Lantern ring – We are nearing the 15-year mark since DC Universe Online emerged on January 11th, 2011, and that sort of thing calls for a celebration. Fortunately, DC’s greatest heroes and villains…
Once Human teases its 2026 plans as the ‘Year of the Monsters’ kicks off – How do you feel about a new scenario in Once Human featuring a gigantic battle with a semi-submerged monstrous entity? The newest preview video from the game’s developer is promising that…
MassivelyOP’s Weirdest MMO Stories of 2025: Weirdest new MMO of the year – Today we’re continuing our traditional countdown of MassivelyOP’s weirdest MMORPG stories of the year, that year being 2025! Coming in at #3 on our list is… The Internet Road Trip…
WoW Classic’s Burning Crusade Anniversary finally gets an Outland date – After nearly a month-and-a-half of radio silence from the WoW Classic team, the legacy MMO’s community finally has a launch date for Burning Crusade Anniversary’s servers: February 5th. The newest…
Family MMORPG Wizard101 finally releases on the Nintendo Switch next week – It felt like an obvious win when Wizard101 arrived on consoles last fall, but while the Xbox and PlayStation are fine consoles, the obvious missing link was the Nintendo Switch, a…
RuneScape commemorates its 25th anniversary with celebratory tasks and a new cape to wear – RuneScape is 25 years old this year, which is definitely a milestone achievement for any MMORPG, and one worthy of an in-game celebration that promises a festive atmosphere, new tasks,…
Cozy solarpunk MMO Loftia reaffirms its plan to enter early access in 2026 as it opens its Steam page – Those who read Loftia’s message to close out 2025 already knew this was coming, but Qloud Games would really, really like to make sure people know that it’s planning to…
Fight or Kite: The first PvP MMOs you should play to kick off 2026 – Congratulations and welcome back everyone! Despite all of the past year’s efforts, we’re still here. You made it! It’s an achievement that should be recognized. You did amazing, are amazing,…
Choose My Adventure: Returning to Dungeons & Dragons Online in 2026 – The problem with playing as many MMO games as I do is the fact that I have a lot of accounts to manage. So with that context in mind, perhaps…
Online isometric MMO Dreadmyst heads toward a launch this very week – Hey, how about a surprise launch this week of an MMORPG you’ve never heard of before but might actually be worth experiencing? Then we’ve got a possibility for you to… MassivelyOP’s 2025 Awards: Indie MMO of the Year – Welcome back to MassivelyOP’s annual MMORPG awards for 2025! Today’s award is for the Indie MMO of the Year, which was awarded to Project Gorgon last year. All indie MMOs, crowdfunded…
Project Gorgon announces its official launch date: January 28, 2026 – Well here we are reporting on something we’ve been anticipating literally for years now: Project Gorgon has an official 1.0 launch date — and the best part is that it…
Wisdom of Nym: What we’re expecting out of Final Fantasy XIV in 2026 – I picked out this week’s topic for the column fully expecting that by the time the actual column needed to be written, we’d have a message from Naoki Yoshida to…
World of Warcraft: Midnight’s transmog changes will cost over two million gold to fully unlock – A sweeping fashion revolution is coming to World of Warcraft when Midnight’s prepatch drops later this month. Blizzard is overhauling significant portions of the transmog system, most notably allowing warband-wide… MassivelyOP’s 2025 Awards: MMO Studio of the Year – Welcome back to MassivelyOP’s annual MMORPG awards for 2025! Today’s award is for the MMO Studio of the Year, which was awarded to NCsoft last year. We asked our writers…
Chronicles of Elyria lead dev claims progress on engine tech by way of working on a third-party game – It’s time for another peek into Chronicles of Elyria, and no, the news is still not great, though in this recent Discord-only missive, lead developer and studio boss Jeromy “Caspian”…
Ashes of Creation closes duping exploit and reaffirms ‘zero tolerance’ stance on RMT – Over the weekend we reported on the widespread plague of RMT botting and duping exploits that have afflicted the early access of Ashes of Creation, which sprang up right as…
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.