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]

Chaos Theory: Six tips for new Secret World players

114
Now that Blingzilla is no longer roaming the lands tempting everyone with goodies galore (or turning movement into a stroll through a mire of...
What you are chasing and will not get.

Perfect Ten: 10 MMOs that let you turn real money into MMO money

56
Two days ago, World of Warcraft launched the WoW Token service, which will kill the game forever. It thus joins the list of every...

Flameseeker Chronicles: Four fabulous Guild Wars 2 vistas worth visting

21
Guild Wars 2 makes me tick because the creatives at ArenaNet have laid such a unique and amazingly vast world at my character's feet, filled with...

Global Chat: Are MMO players too mean to game developers?

218
Is it too easy to forget that MMOs, like all video games, are made by people just like you and I? Belghast over at...

Tamriel Infinium: Elder Scrolls Online sucked me in with werewolves

90
A couple of weeks ago in Massively Overthinking, we talked about making a game sticky without vertical progression. Although the question was a bit...
The future is dragons, as is the present.

Wisdom of Nym: Final Fantasy XIV’s Steps of Faith

38
It happened, just as expected. A day after I posted a lengthy column discussing Final Fantasy XIV's last big pre-expansion patch, that patch dropped, and...

EVE Evolved: Four lessons sandbox MMOs can learn from EVE

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The past few years have seen a resurgence of support for sandbox MMOs, both of the trying-to-be-minecraft creative kind and the hardcore nuke-it-from orbit...

LOTRO Legendarium: Why you need to read the books if you play the game

48
While my Kindle is loaded with so many new books I've yet to read that I really should take a few months off to...

The Soapbox: The misguided quest for MMO stickiness

58
This guest Soapbox was originally commissioned in 2015 through Massively Overpowered's Kickstarter campaign and is authored by Tyler F.M. Edwards, who blogs at www.superior-realities.com....

10 ways MMOs have changed the real world for the better

31
Are MMOs pointless time-wasters, the bread and circuses of the modern era, or do they make positive, meaningful contributions to the real world? Well,...
AHHHH

WoW Factor: Flying ruined everything and shouldn’t be removed

170
Allowing flying mounts in World of Warcraft was a terrible mistake that should never have been corrected. For those not up on their history, here's...

EverQuest II cuts expansions, debuts DLCs with Rum Cellar

98
With everything that has happened over the last couple of months, players are understandably curious and concerned about of the future of Daybreak Games'...

Choose My Adventure: Torchlight, too

15
March is but a memory. April is here. And while a new month certainly brings new things to Choose My Adventure, we've got just...

Ask Mo: Jobs in the MMO industry, jobs in MMOs

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Today, we're reintroducing our general MMO advice column, here named Ask Mo: the column where you ask Mo questions, and he... lets me answer them for...

Jukebox Heroes: Seven MMOs with player music systems

30
A few weeks ago I asked the Massively Overpowered community if all MMOs should come with player music systems. In my opinion, at least,...

Three Elder Scrolls Online mods you shouldn’t play without

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If you have not jumped into Elder Scrolls Online yet, you should really give it a shot. With its latest update and B2P transition, it's...
Myth: Lalafell have to be irritating cutesy-boop piles of crap.

Wisdom of Nym: The fall in Final Fantasy XIV

36
There is a crack in the foundation of Eorzea's defenders, and it's been there for a while. For all of Final Fantasy XIV's operation, we've...

Guild Chat: The top five ingredients in every great guild

85
Welcome to Guild Chat, my comfortable little corner of Massively Overpowered in which I dissect the inner workings and tricky politics associated with MMO...

The Game Archaeologist: Middle-earth Online

33
Out of all of the MMOs that I've played over the years, I must have spent the most time in Lord of the Rings...
We're actual size, but it seems much bigger to see.

WoW Factor: In praise of Warlords of Draenor

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I've made no secret of the fact that I consider Warlords of Draenor to be a sub-par expansion. My opinion on that has not...