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]

Guild Chat: How to reacclimate when coming back to EVE Online

29
Welcome along to another edition of Guild Chat, the space in which I get together with the MOP commenters to help a reader in need...

The Game Archaeologist: Myst Online Uru Live

11
The impact of Myst's launch in 1993 was akin to an atomic bomb going off in the PC gaming world. The leap forward in graphical...
It's a real laugh.

Betawatch: Chronicles of Elyria racks up the funding (May 6, 2016)

25
On May 3rd, Chronicles of Elyria started its Kickstarter campaign. On May 4th, the developers were already hitting significant funding milestones. On May 6th,...
Whoops.

WoW Factor: Content gaps, polish, and the Legion release date

68
The past few weeks have been pretty well packed, both in a personal and in a professional sense, so it's easy to sort of...

EverQuesting: The gaffe of gating EverQuest II’s content behind a sub

65
With last week's release of GU100 in EverQuest II, an interesting conversation reared its head again -- a not necessarily flattering one for Daybreak. While...

Perfect Ten: The final minutes of beloved MMORPGs

61
"This is how the world ends," T S Eliot wrote in his famous poem, "not with a bang, but with a whimper." That might well...

Flameseeker Chronicles: Weighing in on the Guild Wars 2 WvW poll

32
The first WvW poll is about to close and the votes have been flying in during the last few days, driving home that Guild Wars...

Hyperspace Beacon: SWTOR’s heist-themed ‘Profit and Plunder’ chapter stole the show, literally

31
I believe there is only one word to describe Chapter 13 for Knights of the Fallen Empire: cute. For the six chapters prior to...

Jukebox Heroes: City of Heroes’ soundtrack

23
In the history of MMORPGs, City of Heroes might well go down as having one of the most passionate communities in the genre. People didn't...
Originals of the species.

Wisdom of Nym: Final Fantasy XIV’s first patch 3.3 live letter

24
I don't know why, but I was kind of surprised by the sheer volume of discussion about Final Fantasy XIV patch 3.3 in the...

EVE Evolved: Fixing EVE’s New Player Experience (again)

159
It's become almost a running joke in the comments of articles that EVE Online is a great game to read about but not nearly...

Global Chat: What can MMORPG devs do to foster community?

60
One of the neat aspects of the MMO blogosphere is how writers will often interact and collaborate with each other. Recently, four bloggers ganged...
Wow, positive.

Perfect Ten: Ten City of Heroes systems every MMO should have stolen by now

152
Today, City of Heroes turns 12 years old. Except it doesn't; the game shut down three years ago, it never lived until it reached twelve,...

Chaos Theory: The Secret World survival game

23
I've been thinking. (A dangerous pastime, I know!) And I think I have come up with a solution to a number of the things...

Tamriel Infinium: The Dark Brotherhood of Elder Scrolls Online

24
If any of you played the Dark Brotherhood quest in Skyrim, you likely thought very little of the Black Sacrament being performed by the...
It's not just me, right?

Wisdom of Nym: Final Fantasy XIV’s deepest dungeon, Palace of the Dead

22
The funny thing about Final Fantasy XIV, in some ways, is that the game could actually get away for a reasonably long time without...

The Game Archaeologist: Saga of Ryzom

47
Every so often I get requests to cover such-and-such game in this column. These are often incredibly obscure titles, even to me, and when...

MMO Mechanics: Innovating mechanics to refresh Guild Wars 2

76
I usually keep MMO Mechanics quite general by looking at several games as examples to highlight my point regarding the mechanics of choice in each article,...

Perfect Ten: What I loved about Dungeons and Dragons Online

46
Dungeons and Dragons Online was a very strange game at first glance. Ten years ago, I ventured into Stormreach with no more motivation than a longstanding...

EverQuesting: Daybreak is on the right side of the MMORPG legacy server debate

105
WoW is stupid. Yes, I said it. World of Warcraft is dumb. More accurately, I should say Blizzard is stupid. The reason? Its stance...