Major gaming studio, responsible for World of Warcraft and the Warcraft franchise, Diablo III and the Diablo franchise, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, and Overwatch.
blizzard
The Daily Grind: Is there an MMO you wish had never been made?
Before I dig into today's Daily Grind, I want to make clear that I don't seriously wish any MMOs had never been made, not...
Vague Patch Notes: The player-provided guidance problem in MMORPGs
Final Fantasy XIV has a player-based mentor program and an automatic guidance network for new players. The idea is that certain players can volunteer...
Crowdfunded multiplayer RTS Stormgate enters headstart today ahead of its August free-to-play launch
If you're an MMORTS junkie as MOP's Tyler is, you've probably been watching Stormgate's development with great interest over the last few years. In...
Perfect Ten: MMOs with outstanding tutorial sections
Tutorials! They're important. I even wrote an entire column about them recently, talking about how important they are in getting people into a new...
Massively OP Podcast Episode 478: Ultima Online finds its stones
Justin and Bree discuss the WoW War Within prepatch and Ultima Online's New Legacy, followed by a mailbag catch-up segment on AI, holidays, release timing, and MMO complexity.
Diablo IV’s Season of the Infernal Hordes features new tweakable wave-based battle scenarios
Get ready, Diablo IV fans, because we're just a week away from Season of the Infernal Hordes.
"Season of the Infernal Hordes begins on August...
World of Warcraft starts up The War Within’s pre-expansion event and finally turns on Warband banks
A week after the patch that was meant to turn on most of the features for World of Warcraft's next expansion, one of the...
A week after The War Within’s pre-patch, World of Warcraft still has the same bugs
The World of Warcraft pre-expansion patch for The War Within launched on July 23rd, and it launched with some pretty substantial bugs. The updated...
Rumor: Blizzard’s new WoW Classic survey once more raises hopes for a Classic Plus launch
If you're anywhere even adjacent to the WoW Classic playerbase, then you've probably seen rumblings about a "Classic Plus survey" making the rounds in...
PSA: Hackers hit World of Warcraft emulator TurtleWoW’s account database
As regular readers know, it's not our policy to report on emulators for MMORPGs that are actively running, and there are few that are...
The Game Archaeologist: A look back at proto-MMOs through the 1980s
Today I want to try something a little different as we look at MMORPG history. Rather than focus in on a single title or...
Hearthstone apologizes for the past 18 months, shares ‘Fun, Focus, and Fearless’ vision
While Hearthstone's brand-new Perils in Paradise expansion should be the talk of the game these days, Blizzard is instead doing damage control over an...
One Shots: Retrofuturism for rent
Here's your two-step process to make anything old look all futurey like something out of the Jetstons. Step one: Take a normal thing. Step...
World of Warcraft debuts the official cinematic trailer for The War Within
Are you ready to get hyped? Possibly confused? Perhaps you're going to wonder just who these people are? There's a little something for every...
Warcraft Rumble touches grass with the Cenarion Family, which you can earn in this week’s event
This summer's all about the Druids in Warcraft Rumble. Blizzard's mobile RTS released Season 7 this week, and with it, the first members of...
Overwatch 2 is pondering a potential return of the 6v6 format, but only after running some tests
When Overwatch 2 announced it would feature a change in team size from 6v6 to 5v5 in 2021, it was presented as a fundamental...
Massively Overthinking: How much research do you do before playing a new MMORPG?
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...
Activision-Blizzard artists express anxiety and disgust as the studio foists AI tools on existing workers
Like it or not, AI tools are proliferating throughout gamedev, and the human cost is already being showcased. According to reporting from Wired, which...
Global Chat: Looking back at 15 years of World of Warcraft blogging
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...
Vague Patch Notes: Everything in an MMORPG is time-limited
Today, I want to talk to you about an event that you can no longer participate in within Final Fantasy XIV. It's an event...
