Week in Review: Spaceships and superheroes

by Brianna Royce on Jun 26th 2011 8:00PM

Massively Meta, Week in Review, Miscellaneous

At the end of every week, we round up the best and most popular news stories, exclusive features, and insightful columns published on Massively and then present them all in one convenient place. Miss a big MMO or WoW Insider story last week? You've come to the right post.

Nary a week goes by nowadays when we're not peppered with free-to-play announcements, but this week, F2P couldn't have happened to a better game. Paragon Studios announced that longtime superhero MMO City of Heroes will be taking the free-to-play path (one it's calling Freedom) come its next major issue release.

In far sadder news, sandbox fans reeled at the announcement that Sony Online Entertainment's Star Wars Galaxies will be shutting down come the end of the year, an announcement that put something of a damper on the game's eighth birthday festivities.

Meanwhile, in spite of the long-awaited Incarna expansion's deployment to EVE Online, residents of New Eden raised a ruckus over new "monoclegate" microtransactions and leaked corporate documents about CCP's vision for the game.

Past the break, we'll take a peek at this week's other top MMO stories.

Guild Wars 2 takes us down into the dungeons, dives head first into underwater combat
We got glimpses of GW2's press and fan event in Seattle.
RIFT launches patch 1.3, but don't bank on it
RIFT's Waves of Madness patch hit the live servers sans the promised guild banks.
Pottermore officially announced, but what exactly is it?
The Pottermore game reveal generated more questions than answers.
LEGO Universe going freemium this August
We learned the LEGO MMO will adopt a hybrid F2P model by fall.
MMObility: Fifty games for the mobile lifestyle
Beau highlighted 50 MMOs for your smartphones and laptops.
Enter at Your Own Rift: Talking 1.3 with Hal Hanlin
We interviewed Trion's design producer on RIFT's recent update.
Captain's Log: The lower decks
Brandon previewed Star Trek Online's upcoming Duty Officer system.
SWTOR has fun storming the castle
Fan Friday revealed the latest Star Wars: The Old Republic trailer.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Of revolutionary design, babies, and bathwater
Rubi pondered revolutionizing for revolution's sake.
Artist to lock self in crate with no contact with outside world
No contact, that is, except through MMO Lord of the Rings Online.
Gods & Heroes launches today
Heatwave Interactive's P2P mythology MMO entered the market.

And from our sister site, WoW Insider...

The OverAchiever: Guide to Midsummer Festival 2011 achievements
WoW's fiery Midsummer Festival kicked off on the live servers.
Blizzard unveils patch 4.2 Dungeon Journal Preview
The new feature offers players info on dungeon drops and encounters.
Ask the Devs 10: DPS answers revealed
Blizzard's development team tackled players' DPS-class questions.

Tags: joystiq, massively-meta, meta, roundup, top-stories, week-in-review, weekly-recap, weekly-roundup, wow-insider

Reader Comments (3)

Pay to win is fail period, it equals fail players and fail games.

Don't have skill, don't want to do the work, ok then buy your way, so weak....

Not been a good week for the sandbox fans.

@(Unverified)

Not just you but that is not the case. Dec. 15th is not a Tuesday (which many big games launch in the US on that day of the week).

The SOE/LA contract runs out on Dec. 15th, now, it may be interesting (to me) if the game launches after Dec. 15th, but we need more facts and there aren't any (although I sense some crypticness to Larry Everett's comment on a previous subject, but again, that's just potential speculation and I need a few more clues.

The "when-it-will-launch raffle" is still going strong. It could be December...or November...or anytime even July (but I doubt July, unless EA wants to impose a very short-window for pre-ordering the game. You have to figure the preorder time into it).