Support Massively OP on PatreonWere you too busy gaming this week to pay attention to MMO news? Get caught up every Sunday evening with Massively Overpowered’s Week in Review! Undeniably, the biggest story this week – and it’s even on track to be one of the biggest of the year – is the story of how a bizarre altercation on Twitter wound up generating a massive flamewar across the MMOverse, landing on the front page of every gaming site, and cutting loose two ArenaNet employees from the Guild Wars 2 team. But there was more to the week besides the still-smoldering dumpster fire! We got sweet news about Warframe from TennoCon (it’s coming to the Switch!), Camelot Unchained briefly delayed its beta one phase, and Defiance 2050 rolled into its launch head start. Read on for the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions. THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES ArenaNet has let go two Guild Wars 2 devs following a heated Twitter confrontation - The … [Read more...] about MMO Week in Review: Paying the price (July 8, 2018)
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Value of a Hot Shower
This is going to be one of those posts that likely has no image… or at the very least a completely non-sequitur image. It always feels weird to say “own a house” when in truth the bank owns it and you are just paying it off very slowly. However that is in fact the correct term, and the biggest problem with that equation is that you are on the hook when things go horribly wrong. At this point our house has had most everything major replaced but there are still a few outliers that exist from when the house was built in 1979. Yesterday morning things went horribly wrong and the end result was me taking a very very very cold shower. For a few weeks we had noticed reduced water pressure in the shower on the hot side and the fact that it was no longer blending the hot and cold water. This lead us to take very quick showers because the water reached scalding temperatures, but was something we more or less were living with. The goal was to … [Read more...] about Value of a Hot Shower
Valve is replacing Steam Spy with a ‘more accurate and more useful’ version
One of the most-used analysis tools for Steam may soon become obsolete by a similar tool designed by Valve itself — and the original creator doesn’t seem to mind in the least. The tool in question is the popular independent site Steam Spy, which uses API to track the sales and ownership of titles on the digital platform. Its owner noted that a recent talk by Valve indicated that the company was working on its own version. “They don’t think it’s accurate enough,” he said, “so they’ll create something better than Steam Spy on their own. Really looking forward to it, to be honest. The reason I opened Steam Spy to everyone was to let smaller developers make informed decisions based on data and to remove some of the information asymmetry that is so pervasive in our industry. Naturally, I am excited by Valve’s decision to offer a better version of Steam Spy.” Valve thinks that this is an important action to take: “The only way … [Read more...] about Valve is replacing Steam Spy with a ‘more accurate and more useful’ version
Valve Reveals Dota Plus Subscription Service
Tired of playing Dota 2 for free? Well you're in luck! Valve has just announced a new premium service called Dota Plus. For $3.99/month, players gain access to new types of account progression, the ability to earn a new currency called 'shards', hundreds of new challenges, and a real-time 'Assistant' that provides item/ability build suggestions and other in-game information. Valve bills Dota Plus as a re-imagining of their Majors Battle Pass feature. Every year, Valve sells an in-game Compendium that serves as a companion to the annual world championships. That system is not being replaced. Instead, Valve will no longer sell smaller Compendiums, called Battle Passes, that have historically accompanied regional Dota 2 tournaments. The features and bonuses traditionally found in those Battle Passes will now be a permanent and ongoing part of Dota 2, at least for those players with a Dota Plus subscription. Most of the features unlocked by Dota Plus seem like the usual mix of cosmetics, … [Read more...] about Valve Reveals Dota Plus Subscription Service
Working As Intended: The MMOs we lost in 2017
It’s true that we lost a lot of MMOs in 2016 — bigger and more important ones than in 2014 and 2015. 2017, however, has been a different sort of beast. The list is long, and while it’s painful for those whose games are gone, the genre didn’t lose many major MMOs this past year. And that startles me. Marvel Heroes was surely the most dramatic of all the sunsets, given that it shut down early without notice. Earlier in the year, we saw Daybreak put an end to Landmark after less than a year of live operation, while Turbine let the Asheron’s Call franchise go, Firefall formally closed, Club Penguin’s sunset broke the internet, and NCsoft called it quits with Master X Master. A number of other MMOs simply halted development – Perpetuum, Sword Coast Legends, and SkySaga being the most prominent of those. And on a more positive note, there were a few sunsetted MMOs that were revivified, including Otherland, Uncharted Waters Online, and … [Read more...] about Working As Intended: The MMOs we lost in 2017