Columns

Enjoy a run-down of our recent long-form pieces, both game-specific and more general. You might also be interested in our list of all of our columns and recurring articles. [Follow this category’s RSS feed]

The Soapbox: The joys of MMO collecting

7
I’ve often sat and pondered exactly what it is that I enjoy about the MMO experience. After all, being educated about your own likes...
Icy Hot, but a game.

Betawatch: Frozen Flame burns its way into a cool closed beta

0
Survival action RPG Frozen Flame announced this week that it was heading into closed beta with a single-player mode, a new event, and a special...
Nothing else has worked.

WoW Factor: No, Shadowlands is probably not going to be terrible

40
I've noted many times at this point that World of Warcraft does not seem to have done a great job with Shadowlands, at least from what we've...

Massively Overthinking: How to deal with cheater scum in MMORPGs

15
I'm sure it was a random coincidence, but last week two different Star Wars Galaxies emulators posted about steps they were taking against cheaters...

LOTRO Legendarium: Is LOTRO getting greedy with its fall content update?

27
Boars. Beets. Battlestar Galactica. OK, let's talk about one of those things, at least in a roundabout way, because there's no escaping the fact...
It's actually fine.

Wisdom of Nym: Speculating on the newly announced Final Fantasy XVI

14
So, uh... hey! Final Fantasy XVI! That's a thing we learned about yesterday, huh? I'm sure we're all shocked that Naoki Yoshida's very specific dismissal of...
Boosh.

The Daily Grind: What common MMO developer reassurance doesn’t reassure you at all?

35
At one point, I was tossing an idea around for a Perfect Ten column about a Kickstarter drinking game. It didn't go anywhere, ultimately...

Desert Oasis: Black Desert Mobile is not just a mobile copy of Black Desert

0
Last week, I taught my freshman classes basic email etiquette. In a time of distance learning, it's an important skill to teach. We looked...

Perfect Ten: 10 amazing hidden quests in World of Warcraft

5
Finding quests in World of Warcraft is not exactly what you would call "difficult," as the game famously stuck giant floating exclamation marks over...

Flameseeker Chronicles: Hands-on with Guild Wars 2’s new Sunqua Peak fractal, live today

1
While Guild Wars 2’s Cantha-centric End of Dragons expansion may not be coming until next year, players eager to visit The Empire of the...

Not So Massively: The dos and don’ts of stealing from MMOs

18
Recently I played through the new PC port of the open world RPG Horizon Zero Dawn. While playing it, I was struck by how...
Holla back.

Wisdom of Nym: Final Fantasy XIV’s second Ishgard season is a touch underwhelming

6
In the days of my youth, you usually got introduced to a new band via the radio. (The radio was like YouTube, but no...

Jukebox Heroes: The best of MapleStory 2’s soundtrack

1
The death of MapleStory 2 earlier this year is seen as somewhat tragic in the Massively OP offices. Many of us got time with...

One Shots: When nerfing goes too far

7
We've all seen classes and gear hit with the nerf bat from time to time in MMOs -- hey, it's a fact of life!...
Fly.

The Daily Grind: Do you try to be patient with new players in MMOs?

30
Patience is a virtue. It is also something not everyone is very good at - and I include myself in this particular batch because...

Global Chat: Which MMO has the least annoying inventory system?

17
Inventory is something we have to deal with in, oh, pretty much every MMO that we play. Some games are far more generous with...

LOTRO Legendarium: The quiet consistency of Lord of the Rings Online

29
I want to start this LOTRO Legendarium column today by talking about, well, by talking about World of Warcraft. Like probably many of you,...
Patch, patch, patch.

Betawatch: Craftopia is doing the difficult Early Access work

0
There's kind of a pall around early access games, mostly because a lot of them launch into early access and then faff about pointlessly. But Craftopia...

Massively on the Go: Pokemon Go’s new event includes problematic features and stat bloat

7
Yes, more not-great-news in Pokemon Go, and yes, it's once again mostly about Mega Evolution. While it's been nice that the official Pokemon Go...
Get back.

WoW Factor: Covenants have become a Shadowlands prison of Blizzard’s own making

95
If there was any remaining question about what stage of the expansion development we were at with World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, this week marked the...

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