MMO Week in Review: Catching an early Dragonflight

World of Warcraft’s Dragonflight expansion officially launched this week, setting players up for a holiday season of flying dragons and new zones to explore. We’ve already dived in ourselves with impressions of the new expansion’s storytelling, dragonriding, crafting, combat, content, and the future.

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

First impressions of World of Warcraft Dragonflight, part one: Direction and narrative – While it’s not really what will serve as a foundational component of my evaluation of World of Warcraft: Dragonflight as a whole, I think the clearest impression of the expansion’s…

First impressions of World of Warcraft Dragonflight, part two: Dragonriding and dragging crafting – As is always the case with these World of Warcraft impressions, there was no way to stop with just part one. There’s other stuff to talk about, after all. And…

First impressions of World of Warcraft Dragonflight, part three: Combat, content, concerns – Eventually, you are going to have to fight something in World of Warcraft: Dragonflight. Of course, by “eventually” I actually mean “more or less immediately” because this is WoW and…

QA workers at Diablo IV studio unanimously vote to form a union – Activision-Blizzard has once more been thwarted in its efforts to stop workers at one of its studios from forming a union. After fighting through months of Blizzard’s attempts to challenge…

Steampunk survival Nightingale wraps up second closed alpha test, confirms fishing is coming – As Nightingale studio Inflexion Games prepares to break for the holiday, it released an end-of-year video summing up the recent Closed Alpha 2 test and hinting at future developments. Inflexion…

New World posts 2023 roadmap, plans changes for Winter Convergence and territory control – Your winter holiday present this year from New World is… a roadmap! No, really, an actual roadmap! Yes, the roadmap is covered in a little more detail in the latest…

EverQuest II: Renewal of Ro launches today – Squeaking in under the wire to make a November launch, EverQuest II’s latest expansion, Renewal of Ro, launches later today. Players find themselves returning to the Isle of Ro: “Here,…

EverQuest Online Adventures rogue server project is ‘very active’ as it develops three shards – It’s now been a full decade since EverQuest Online Adventures closed up shop after a nine-year run in 2012. The PlayStation 2 MMORPG released in 2003, requiring console users to…

Roblox’s sketchy monetization attracts kids, parents, and hungry corporations alike – Would you pay your kids’ allowance in virtual currency? That’s the frame for a piece today on The Wall Street Journal, which offers an eyebrow-raisingly credulous skim of Roblox’s monetization…

Warhammer 40K Darktide makes its official launch on PC, plans an Xbox X|S release soon – If you enjoyed smashing rat face in Fatshark Games’ prior multiplayer co-op horde killers Vermintide and Vermintide II, then you probably were already bought in (literally or figuratively) to Warhammer…

Lord of the Rings Online explains why it doesn’t have full voiceovers – While Lord of the Rings Online isn’t devoid of spoken dialogue — players note that a lot of the epic quests in particular feature at least a full voiced line…

Lost Ark’s interdimensional Witcher crossover launches in the west in January 2023 – Nearly a month ago, Lost Ark teased a collab with The Witcher IP coming next year, followed by crickets. A lot of crickets. But now that it’s live in Korea,…

Massively Overthinking: The best MMO music of 2022 – Years ago, MOP’s Justin listened to hundreds – no, probably more like thousands – of MMO music tracks to narrow this topic down to a handful of winners. This was…

Russian security forces apparently killed STALKER larpers they thought were real terrorists – This story’s pretty distressing, so we gotta warn you up front: Some S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl superfans were apparently killed by Russian security forces who allegedly believed they were actual…

Blizzard responds to World of Warcraft: Dragonflight criticism with questionable videos – If you’re already tired of exploring the Dragon Isles in World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, you can instead explore the new isles of cringe discovered in a series of video advertisements…

Diablo Immortal promises catch-up mechanics, a new zone, and boss raid targeting in future updates – The devs of Diablo Immortal took a moment to answer some player questions, which in turn ended up being a sort of preview post for what’s arriving in the next…

Elyon prepares to sunset in Korea following its western shutdown – It’s an ignominious end to a once-promising MMORPG. Elyon (previously Ascent: Infinite Realm) has less than a week left before Kakao closes it in the west. But if anybody was…

Forsaken World officially sunsets, but there’s already a private server available – Gearbox Publishing announced at the tail end of April that it would be shutting down Perfect World Entertainment’s MMORPG Forsaken World on November 30th. Sure enough, that sunset has come…

Australian lawmaker proposes bill that would classify games with lockboxes for adults only – There is at least one lawmaker in Australia who feels very strongly about the matter of gaming lockboxes, apparently. Andrew Wilkie, an independent member of the country’s parliament, has put…

From the Depths: ‘Free-to-play’ World of Warships is an expensive journey – When I first started playing MMO’s back in 2012, the hot debate of the time was subscription vs. free-to-play business models. Over the last 10 years, however, that conversation has…

A group of Spiral Knights ‘fans’ form an LLC to try to purchase the game and turn it into a blockchain clowncar – Spiral Knights is not a game that pings our radar very often, but it is still trucking along regardless – we last peered in on the MMO as part of…

End-of-Year Eleven: The Biggest MMO Surprises of 2022 – All right, 2022, you are officially no longer allowed to surprise us any more because we’re doing the end-of-year thing now and that means it’s time to return to the…

Lord of the Rings Online dug a grave for players and killed our pet rock – In my experience, when someone else digs a grave for you, it’s not going to spell a good day, especially when they end it by saying, “Hop in!” So my…

Fight or Kite: Conqueror’s Blade brings Dynasty Warriors vibes to the MMO genre – This last week was a bit light in the gaming department. It was turkey time for me and many in the US, so I hope you all also had some…

Microsoft to concede Call of Duty to Sony for 10 years to stave off UK government’s halt of ActiBlizz buyout – Over the past couple of months, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has been putting Microsoft’s buyout of Activision-Blizzard under a microscope, with one of the sticky wickets being…

New World is merging 13 legacy servers down to 6 on December 2 – Just yesterday, we covered some of the problems that have befallen the “legacy” New World servers following the massive launch of the fresh start servers. It’s not that the population…

WoW Dragonflight’s launch was a tale of belated boats and lagging logins – Hey, what’s more old-fashioned than a messy and chaotic World of Warcraft expansion rollout? Good times it was last night, then, as Dragonflight’s launch immediately hit all sorts of snags…

World of Warcraft: Dragonflight launches tonight [Update: It’s live!] – If you’ve been waiting eagerly for World of Warcraft: Dragonflight to arrive and wipe away Shadowlands as much as possible, your wait is rewarded today. Dragonflight is officially live as…

Wisdom of Nym: Thematic discussion of Final Fantasy XIV’s first major story arc – Let’s start with something straightforward: Everyone who wants to hop down to the comments to state that you don’t care about story in an MMO? You’re excused. Congratulations on not…

How WoW Classic became a ‘hellscape of instrumental practices’ – Are other people jerks when they decry your poor World of Warcraft performance, or is it your fault? That’s the general topic being taken on in a recent video essay…

PvPvE survival shooter Scavengers goes from maintenance mode to sunsetted on December 16 – It’s been a fairly long stretch of time since we’ve heard much out of Scavengers, the PvPvE survival shooter from developer Midwinter Entertainment, but that’s to be expected as the…

Monumental’s CEO once again says ‘nothing is off the table’ as the devs work on retooling Crowfall – Crowfall shut down last week, though it did so with a vague promise of some kind of return – a prospect that hasn’t instilled a great deal of confidence in…

Bless Global is a blockchain-linked version of Bless that’s headed for Steam and mobile devices – The life of the Korean MMORPG Bless has been like a neverending story without any of the ’80s-era whimsy. Readers will remember it first arrived to our half of the…

Ashes of Creation previews alpha two’s cleric and day/night cycle in new video – Whether you draw your power from the heavens or like to look up at them as they loom overhead in the sky, the latest video preview out of Ashes of…

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.

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