Massively Overpowered

How does a seven-week course in gaming centered around Lord of the Rings Online grab you? Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative is being taught by Vanderbilt's Jay Clayton, according to the syllabus published on Coursera. The class begins on April 27th and lasts seven weeks. Students are required to read The Fellowship of the Ring as well as...

For the past five years of operation, Star Trek Online has built up to the conflict with the Iconians. Now it's time for the Federation, the KDF, and the Romulan Republic to face off against this ancient foe, starting today. The game's most recent patch has gone live, pitting players against the race that was ancient before humanity even...

How would you like to own the most lavish llama in the lands of Tyria? All you need to do is participate in one of Guild Wars 2's community-run PvP events. You don't have to win one of the events, according to ArenaNet's latest blog post. Placing in the top half of a bracket will "generally" earn you a...

The next big update to Lord of the Rings Online brings players ever closer to Mordor, which anyone with passing familiarity with the story knows means that it's not going to be a pleasant stroll. A new video preview is available, showing off the new areas being added to the game and some of the scenery to be explored. Said...

The next big update to Landmark will bring a major update to progression, and that means a major update to how the game's achievements work. You earn achievements to get big stat boosts, which allow you to progress to more difficult content and earn bigger and better achievements. The achievements are based on a combination of major "layers," which...

One of my favorite things about the storytelling in Elder Scrolls Online is that the quest-givers don't fill their dialogue with exposition regarding Tamriel lore. For instance, NPCs will throw around terms like Ayleid and Dwemer as if you are just supposed to know what that means. That's not to say they don't share a lot of expository dialogue; it...

Wondering why the Land of Britain developers have gone quiet? Probably not, as we hadn't covered the title before today. Regardless, we have an answer to that question, as the game has apparently been swapping to Unreal Engine 4 and has a few new screenshots for fans to look at. They're all in the gallery, naturally. The conversion to a...

The team behind Star Wars: The Old Republic posted a single image with a simple hashtag: #FallenEmpire. No further explanation or extrapolation was offered. You can check out the image yourself on the official site at a higher resolution than what's here (and with no cropping), but that doesn't answer the question - what are we looking at here? Speculation...

Let's try to walk through this particular sequence of events; it isn't pretty. EverQuest puts a new patch update on the test servers with some minor but important shifts to how the game plays. That's a good thing, naturally. Then someone takes a peek at the in-game cash shop and notices that the items there are... cheap. Too cheap....

Last week, Firefly Online announced that it had scooped up almost all of the old Firefly cast members to voice the multiplatform online-but-not-really-an-MMO. Cue internet nerdgasm! I am impressed that the game is managing to dodge so many of the usual problems of IP-driven games; you're playing not Mal or Zoe but a pale imitation of them as the captain...