It was a week of hands-on for us here on MOP, as our writers reported back their impressions on Odin Valhalla Rising, Lynked Banner of the Spark, and Wildgate. Spoilers: None of them sucks!

Meanwhile, Defiance brought back the Castithans, Chrono Odyssey hyped its impending beta, LOTRO finally opened Sting, Fortnite staggered back to the Apple App Store after five years of legal squabbling, and people sure do love fighting over the East/West MMO divide.

Become a PatronRead 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

MMO Hype Train: Is it time to light a fire under Light No Fire? - What earns an MMO a spot in your own Top 5 Most Anticipated Games list? There's a lot of factors to consider: personal preferences, studio cred, funding, sales pitch, market… First Impressions: Moonshot’s Wildgate is fun, but its biggest challenge is the players - I'm not much of a PvP guy. Without putting too fine a point on it, I'm bad at them. But something about Moonshot Games' extraction RPG Wildgate spoke to me,… Perfect Ten: Dead MMORPGs that were weird and I’m glad they existed - I am going to make what may be a contentious statement here: I am not particularly sad about a lot of MMORPGs that shut down. I acknowledge that it is… Wisdom of Nym: So what might the Final Fantasy XIV follow-up look like? - A couple weeks ago, I got a fun letter from a reader sharing his personal experiences with Final Fantasy XIV and Final Fantasy XI and speculating on the future of the… Gachapwned: How gacha MMOs attract players with narrative (even players who know better) - The first two installments of the Gachapwned column were all about the ways in which the gacha business model is predatory, and more specifically how it is a predatory model… Hands-on: Co-op roguelike Lynked Banner of the Spark is ready for launch and more fun than ever - I think all gamers have a dream game in their head that they wish somebody would make, a mashup of the best parts of different games that they've enjoyed in… Project Ghost’s Greg Street unwittingly ignites debate on Eastern vs. Western MMO design - Fantastic Pixel Castle's Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has swung by Twitter with an offhand remark about Project Ghost's development that ignited a debate among some MMO players still on the platform,… Christie Golden writes the first World of Warcraft: Midnight novel, this time as a freelancer - World of Warcraft's current expansion, The War Within, isn't close to being over yet, but Blizzard's already ramping up excitement for the next chapter of the Worldsoul Saga, Midnight. This… The Defiance revival has now reintroduced the Castithan race from the long-dead 2013 DLC - When Fawkes Games licensed Defiance from Gamigo and resurrected the old MMORPG from the dead, it was adamant about bring up the base game first, without all the DLC Trion… Blade & Soul NEO gets two legendary dungeons when Moonwater Plains Part 3 launches May 27 - [AL:BaS]Sure, you could delve a regular old boring vanilla dungeon, but why would you want to do that when you're wielding fantastical kung fu powers in Blade & Soul NEO?… World of Warcraft promises its focus on mods is about better conveyance, not ‘smashing a bunch of addons’ - When World of Warcraft announced that it would be taking steps to phase out several addons that Blizzard felt became mandatory for raid progression, it brought some mixed reaction, though… Stars Reach adds sliding mechanics, XP refunds, and a plant harvesting overhaul - Playable Worlds' Stars Reach is continuing its march through pre-alpha, and its latest patch has quite a bit in it for testers, starting with something they're going to love: an… WoW Factor: How could World of Warcraft reclaim the leveling journey? - If you flip back and forth between WoW Classic and World of Warcraft Retail, you will certainly agree that these are two very different MMOs in a lot of respects.… Star Citizen heralds the Idris as a victory for its server tech as players grouse over its limited sale - Star Citizen's Invictus event ushered in more than just CIG's pay-to-win clusterfudge; it also introduced the Idris, one of the sandbox's biggest internet ships that players could get their hands… Guild Wars 2’s launching a new cookbook – and preorders come with a butterknife spear skin - If you've ever wanted to make Bloodstone Bearclaw Pastries or Lake Doric Mussels in real life, first of all why, second of all why not, and third of all your… Diablo IV S9 brings custom spells and nightmare dungeon updates, Diablo III reruns killstreak theme for S35 - It's almost season time for both Diablo IV and Diablo III as both multiplayer OARPGs have readied up their next marquee events. It's a big deal if you care about doing… Chrono Odyssey hypes up its June beta with a new 20-minute dev video - How's your summer gaming docket looking so far? If it's not already completely full, Kakao would like to make a bid for your time with Chrono Odyssey, which has a… Massively Overthinking: The spectrum of lockboxes in the MMO genre - A while back, I came across a Lord of the Rings Online discussion that leaped out at me because of its unusual turn. The players were complaining about the game's… Dune Awakening’s Mentat will murder you with darts and poison spores - Dune Awakening is continuing its slow-drip of teasing for is launch next month, this time with a brief new video on the Mentat. If you haven't been paying a whole… Arc’s co-op dungeon runner Fellowship processes open beta feedback ahead of next closed test at the end of May - Over the past half a year or so, we've been covering Fellowship, a character-based co-op title that seeks to distill the MMORPG dungeon running experience as the primary game loop… Skull and Bones outlines its May 27 Death Tides PvP game mode - Death Tides. It's not just a potentially awesome name for a pirate metal band; it's the team vs. team PvP mode arriving to Skull and Bones on Tuesday, May 27th,… NetEase’s mobile FPS Destiny Rising opens pre-reg on Apple App Store, plans closed beta on Android May 29 - Last year we first started reporting on Destiny Rising, a rumored - then confirmed - mobile version of the Destiny shooter that lets players control a variety of hero characters… Cozy ‘rogue-life RPG’ Lynked Banner of the Spark officially launches out of early access today - As promised, Lynked: Banner of the Spark is officially launched and live in the wild as of today as it departs early access for good. The Dreamhaven-published, FuzzyBot-developed multiplayer roguelite… Vague Patch Notes: MMO fans create divisions that do not exist - There is a constant debate in the World of Warcraft fan space that you have no doubt seen at this point, but it is one that has been going for… Guild Wars 2 has resumed testing of its PvP Push mode, updated since last year’s run - Remember last year when Guild Wars 2 began testing its new PvP mode called Push? Our own PvP columnist Sam, who has been critical of the MMO's PvP in the… Embracer Group rebrands as Fellowship Entertainment, spins off Coffee Stain and hundreds of studios - While you might half-heartedly reorganize your game or music collection once in a while, that's nothing compared to what the Embracer Group does on a random day of the week:… Albion Online’s Abyssal Depths update adds an extraction battleground and newbie experience revamp in June - Move over, Abyssal Assault, Abyss of Dungeons, and Abyss Online: Albion Online's Abyssal Depths update is rolling up on June 30th with what Sandbox Interactive is calling a "major overhaul"… Warframe brings Yareli Prime and the latest Nora’s Mix to the game today - While the next big Warframe update is a month away, fans are not exactly going to want for things to do right now as the game's newest update brings Yareli… Fractured Online’s new owners are tinkering with everything from crafting to housing in their revamp - As Fractured Online prepares to go offline for the rest of the year and then some under its new ownership with big plans for a revamp, that new ownership is… LOTRO fixes kinship escrow issues, activates 14th legendary item reward track, and opens Sting today - Mt. Doom must have frozen over because Lord of the Rings Online is actually opening up the many-times-delayed Sting 64-bit server today. And that's just the tip of Update 44.2,… Lost Ark’s Abyssal Assault update is live with the new mystical Rimeria content region - Amazon's Lost Ark is getting another update today with the release of the Abyssal Assault patch. The key content this time 'round is the addition of a new continent -… Fortnite is finally back on the U.S. Apple App Store after nearly five years of legal battles - Our long national nightmare is over: Fortnite is finally back on the Apple App Store. We've been following this story since it punched up the doldrums of 2020, when Epic… Elder Scrolls Online’s new live-action trailer has a message for gamers: ‘You belong in ESO’ - When ZeniMax Online Studios first revealed Elder Scrolls Online's new cadence plan and Seasons of the Worm Cult to press back in April, ZOS president Matt Firor stressed - repeatedly… Choose My Adventure: The westward adventures of the Goldiyacht in Lost Skies - "Go west, middle-aged man!" That's effectively what you fine poll-answering folk told me to do this week in Lost Skies, and I don't know if I was being trolled by… Former Sony president blames the games industry implosion on ‘stupid money’ spent during COVID - They say that hindsight is 20/20, and admittedly former Sony Interactive Entertainment president Shuhei Yoshida risks little for speaking out about the actions of the wider games industry after he… Final Fantasy XI nearly went into real maintenance mode last year – but fan support kept it alive - We have a lot of fun here on Massively Overpowered making jokes about how Final Fantasy XI, despite having been in nominal maintenance mode for years, continues to get new… Fortnite’s AI Darth Vader was a toxicity disaster and an apparent provocation for striking voice actors - If you saw the news last week about Fortnite adding a chattable Darth Vader with his AI take on the late James Earl Jones Vader voice, then you might have… Pantheon explains its impending itemization overhaul for resists, stats, and progression - Pantheon Rise of the Fallen has been talking up an itemization revamp for a while now, and as of this afternoon, developer Visionary Realms is explaining in full detail just… NCsoft talks possible PC shift, launch windows, and increased PvE content for Aion 2 - Last week we covered the first quarter financials from NCsoft, which reiterated the latest official word of Aion 2's existence and specifically promised more details in a May 29th livestream.… First Impressions: How well does Odin: Valhalla Rising represent Norse myth? - I've heard some people say there are too many games these days based on Norse mythology. As MassivelyOP's resident Norse myth nerd, I disagree; what we have is a glut… Bungie’s morale is reportedly in ‘free-fall’ after the Marathon plagiarism incident - You know what game studio you probably wouldn't want to be working at this month? Bungie. The Destiny 2 developer is taking its deserved lumps after admitting to stealing art…

THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS

The Stream Team: The plot thickens in MechWarrior 5 Clans co-op The Stream Team: Thwarting warforged kidnappers in Dungeons & Dragons Online The Stream Team: Outrun the sun in Split Fiction The Stream Team: Fighting off the invaders of Super Earth in Helldivers 2 co-op The Stream Team: Lazy life of Lake Doric scouting in Guild Wars 2 The Stream Team: Pouncing on public dungeon bosses for ESO’s Golden Pursuits The Stream Team: The beauty of colors and blueprints in Planet Crafter The Stream Team: Anything goes in Final Fantasy XIV 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.