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]

Stick and Rudder: Elite Dangerous’ Type-8 Update engineering revamp saved the game

4
While the latest content update to Elite: Dangerous was called the Type-8 Update, what it really should have been called is the Engineering Reborn...

Choose My Adventure: Once Human brings impressive atmosphere and routine survival beats

5
Sometimes I have to wonder why people like the games they like. That's not to suggest that there's something inherently wrong with people -...

The Daily Grind: Which MMOs make you feel sad?

26
I didn't talk about this much because it's an online ARPG rather than an MMO, but last winter, I spent a crapton of time...
Trying to find a hammer.

Wisdom of Nym: Final Fantasy XIV’s unavailable NPC jobs

7
Something interesting is going to happen when Final Fantasy XIV adds Beastmaster to the game as a limited job. No matter what weapon the...

The Daily Grind: What are some quietly impressive things in your fave MMO that nobody notices?

15
When my husband and I went back to Guild Wars 2 for Janthir Wilds a few weeks ago, he booted up the game for...

One Shots: The concert that ended the world

7
Poor Ragnaros. This World of Warcraft dude's been trying to live up to his namesake by trying to destroy the world for the past...
To do.

The Daily Grind: What’s a daily MMO task you struggle to find the motivation to complete?

15
Pretty much every MMO has some form of daily task, just because that's a good way to get people logging in every day to...

LOTRO Legendarium: The easiest LOTRO virtues to get as a low-level character

2
One of the most important yet easiest to overlook parts of your character's growth in Lord of the Rings Online is investing into virtues,...

Fight or Kite: Harry Potter Magic Awakened was the most full-featured MMO you never played

4
The sudden and unexpected announcement that Harry Potter: Magic Awakened is being shuttered and taken offline everywhere save the original Chinese servers came as...

The Daily Grind: Do you call your MMO characters toons, chars, alts, or something else?

32
A few weeks back, the MMORPG sub erupted in a heated discussion about what to call, well, our characters. And it's a legit question...

Massively Overthinking: Monetization dealbreakers in MMORPGs

18
A few weeks back, I overheard my kids complaining about some custom Minecraft server that was apparently trying to monetize survival mode, which seemed...

The Daily Grind: Are you more likely to leave MMORPGs out of anger or boredom?

26
To be perfectly clear, there are lots of potential reasons to decide that you no longer wish to play a particular MMORPG. It's not...
no mad lizert

Perfect Ten: The reward categories for killing a major enemy in MMORPGs

4
If an enemy exists in an MMORPG that you are supposed to kill in some fashion, it is going to offer you some kind...
we're so dark

Casually Classic: The five World of Warcraft mods I use as a non-modder playing The War Within

6
Generally, I don't use mods for MMORPGs. Or most video games. It's not that I take some high-minded principled stand against them; I have...

Choose My Adventure: Fractured Online offers a perfectly good PvE sandbox, so why am I not in love?

6
Here we are past the month of August (yes really) and I am left kind of conflicted about my feelings toward Fractured Online. On...

The Daily Grind: Do you think chat toxicity in MMOs is getting worse?

63
I recently saw a thread on Reddit from an MMO player describing an act of an overt racism he'd suffered in World of Warcraft....

Massively Uplifting: Labors of love, generosity, and grief in Warhammer, Terraria, Conan Exiles, Albion, ARK, and more

2
Labor Day in the United States is an annual celebration of the social and economic achievement of the American workers. The official Department of...
We have fun here (I don't)

Wisdom of Nym: Let’s talk about Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail’s key artifact

7
Yes, I'm having a bit of fun in the title here. Obviously there is one main artifact that serves at a major plot element...

The Daily Grind: Is there a place in an MMO that you’re sentimentally attached to?

32
The Psychology of Games podcast recently did an episode on forming attachments to places in video games. "Have you ever become attached to a place...

One Shots: Save the teddy bear, save the world

15
In any other MMO, a child's teddy bear is usually nothing more than a sign of innocence or an environmental storytelling cue. In The...