Massively Overpowered

I read with disgust a recent GI.biz piece about free-to-play and its supposed coming of age. The business model has of course run amok through the western MMO industry since Turbine's Dungeons & Dragons Online started the dominoes rolling in 2010, and it has been the weapon of choice for separating browser/mobile game players from their money since browser/mobile...

Holly Longdale's recent producer's letter for EverQuest II offered a slew of news, including the announcement that time-locked PvE and PvP servers are coming to the game this year. Unlike the progression servers of its elder sibling, which combine time and progress restrictions, EQII's could just lock content at a point of time in the game's history. But that's up...

You know that guy who's always screwing around, fishing and reading books during raid boss encounters? His name is Tony, and he's the unwitting star of The Elder Scrolls Online's new trailer, which apparently wants to remind you that console gaming with your friends is roughly like pugging everywhere else. Everyone's guild has this guy -- right? OK, maybe just...

When faced with the end of a game that you love, how do you use those final days? While some might grieve over Infinite Crisis' premature closure, one player is organizing a community-wide event to make the most of the time that is left. Player Dycer announced on the forums that he's putting together a weekly rotation of custom games...

If you're playing Final Fantasy XIV on Steam, the wait for Heavensward has been a bit difficult, as there's been no clear method for pre-ordering the expansion. Players were told that a separate expansion purchase could not be applied to a Steam client, which meant waiting until the expansion was available on the client. The good news is that...

It's become a cottage industry for EVE Online fans to try to figure out whether CCP Games is doing well or not. Gone are the days with regular crowing about subscriber numbers, and as with most companies, the focus is on publicizing the good rather than admitting what's not going so well. A fan blog, however, legally obtained a copy of...

Massively OP commenter The_Grand_Nagus recently pointed us to a conversation on the Star Trek Online forum where a Cryptic Studios employee discussed the studio's games' revenues and staffing: Game Development is directly proportional to revenue generated. So long as a game is making more money than it costs to run, it will continue to run. And luckily, the costs to run a game...

This week's Massively Overthinking topic comes from Kickstarter donor XanadoX, who wants us to talk about "playing MMOs in another language: Korean, Japanese, or even English if English is not your mother tongue." Have you done it? Do you do it? Is there anything to be learned from it? Are there any games where it's totally worth it? Let's talk about...

What exactly is Wander? Now is your chance to see! An explorer at heart, MassivelyOP's MJ can't wait to dive into the newly launched cooperative exploration game devoid of combat. That's right -- no combat. She'll begin life as a tree-being and be shaped (literally) by whatever she discovers as she goes along. Join us live at 8:00 p.m. to experience...

Revival's latest newsletter is essential reading if you've missed any of the fantasy sandbox's developer updates over the past month. Illfonic links back to missives on whaling, the mercenary life, farming, and arena combat. Illfonic also says that the month of May included progress on the game's character creation system, which is " designed to give players the freedom to create a look...