Massively Overpowered

On this week's MOP Podcast, Justin and I discussed our experiences in No Man's Sky (again), and both of us came to the conclusion that while it's a gorgeous and content-packed MMO, it's just not a super intuitive sandbox - meaning that if you're starting new (or returning after a long time away, as I was), you're probably best...

This year has been a bloodbath for game developers, with job cuts happening across companies big and small, so that naturally brings up questions - namely, why is game development in the United States so expensive and what can be done about it? These are the questions that a Game Developer piece pondered, as it looked at the situation...

An indie MMORPG developer is asking for help to test out a brand-new title that's still in its early days. This would be Homestead Online, a sandbox title that's batting around some controversial design elements such as permadeath, consequence-free PvP, and player characters persisting in the game world even when the user logs out of the game. The sole dev,...

It's hard to miss the fact that the Arcadion raid series in Final Fantasy XIV features bespoke tracks for each of the raid's four bosses, with an easy standout being the fourth fight's electrifying "Give it All." (Yes, the pun there is intentional.) And that wasn't a coincidence, as it turns out that the song was a collaboration with...

Like it or not, AI tools are proliferating throughout gamedev, and the human cost is already being showcased. According to reporting from Wired, which sources emails and employee interviews from across the industry - particularly at Activision-Blizzard - the application of AI generative tools in video games is spreading significantly. The report references internal emails from Activision-Blizzard from as far...

Jagex is continuing to work on improving the client for Old School RuneScape, though it has been some time since the studio checked in with a progress report. That changed this week as an update post offered some previews of new updates and features that will be applied to the game client sometime in the future. Updates that are being...

Look. You knew that when Star Trek Online started toying around with pseudo-ARG puzzles regarding its latest promotion that the end result would be telling you to drink your Ovaltine. The real question was whether or not the new ship bundle being promoted would be worth the tease. And if you thought unique starships from prior Star Trek video...

Today is the day when Sea of Thieves players can become the world event - and possibly have everyone's guns trained on them in the process. Season 13 is underway in the piratical sandbox, and its primary feature will let players take over a powerful new ship, thus becoming the boss themselves. The world event in question is centered around...

Fifteen years is a huge chunk of time to devote to both a video game and an ongoing blog covering it, but that's exactly what Priest with a Cause has done with World of Warcraft. In a retrospective post, the author looks back over this decade-and-a-half to see if it was all worth it. "Since then it's mostly been retail...

This morning, MOP's Sam busted into MOP's work chat with a link to the Fridge Poetry game. "It's more like an art project than a game, but an interesting multiplayer thing," he said in his pitch. "Basically a bunch of words spawn and people can move them around to say things." He'd seen it on RPS, which described it as...