blogging
Massively Overthinking: The best and worst MMOs of 2017’s PAX West
PAX West 2017 has come and gone, and though MJ is still feverishly working on her last few articles, we wanted to pause a...
Global Chat: Overwatch’s stalled story
With all of the attention, fandom, e-sports, and development given to Blizzard's Overwatch, have you ever suspected that the team shooter has a critical...
Wurm Online works on becoming better-looking and better-performing
This past Saturday, Wurm Online pumped out a small 4.0.6 client release. With improved performance and better lighting, the patch serves as a prelude...
The Black Death looks back at history while Osiris: New Dawn releases the Architect update
At this point, we are really starting to wonder if The Black Death is a history thesis that ran away from the student and...
Global Chat: Has No Man’s Sky finally arrived as a full-featured game?
It's been a year since the disastrous and controversial launch of No Man's Sky, a game with failings that included, among many others, a...
Massively Overthinking: Female characters and gender-locked classes in MMOs
One of the reasons I gravitated to and stick by the MMORPG genre in spite of its many ups and downs (oh, so many...
Battle Bards Episode 104: Something wicked this way comes
And lo, as the Battle Bards walk through the zone of the shadow of death, they will fear no evil, but they will listen to evil’s...
The Daily Grind: What do you actually expect to get out of MMORPG lockboxes?
MMO blogger Bhagpuss has an intriguing multi-angle post out this week criticizing, rightly in my mind, Guild Wars 2's lockboxes, but not the way...
Raph Koster on roleplaying consent and emotes in Star Wars Galaxies and WoW
MMORPG designer Raph Koster has a fun piece out today, ostensibly about what he's dubbing "consent systems" in multiplayer games that include roleplaying --...
Massively Overthinking: The survivalbox vs. the MMORPG
A few weeks ago in Massively Overthinking, the team discussed the resurgence in popularity of small-scale co-op games and whether that has impacted the...
Global Chat: World of Warcraft’s wild frontier
How is World of Warcraft like the wild west of American history and legend? Something about Barrens chat might come to mind, but blog...
The Daily Grind: Do MMORPG studios worry too much about player retention?
Back in March, we used a Richard Bartle blog post to discuss retention in MMOs and how developers could up their stickiness factor. But in...
Massively Overthinking: Alone together vs. forced grouping in MMORPGs
I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that everyone has at some point seen the xkcd called Isolation, but if not, there...
Global Chat: The MMO blogosphere’s reaction to Guild Wars 2’s Path of Fire
It seems like the entire MMO blogosphere wanted to chip in thoughts on the Guild Wars 2: Path of Fire announcement, whether or not...
Battle Bards Episode 103: Wurm Online
You think you’ve heard strange MMORPG soundtracks before, but Wurm Online is about to take you to the odd frontier. With two distinctive soundtracks...
The MOP Up: Portal Knights splits up the party (August 13, 2017)
The MMO industry moves along at the speed of information, and sometimes we’re deluged with so much news here at Massively Overpowered that some...
Massively Overthinking: Is the popularity of small-scale co-op games hurting MMORPGs?
Gamasutra has an unusual piece from an Ubisoft developer this week arguing that co-op gameplay is the industry's rising midcore trend, one that he...
Perfect Ten: Fresh approaches for familiar MMORPGs
Short of taking a blow to the head, there's very little I can suggest in the way of experiencing a familiar MMORPG for the...
Global Chat: What Asian MMOs can learn from the west
Usually when it comes to discussing world hemispheres of MMO game design, comments and observations are made about what western studios can learn from their...
The Daily Grind: Which MMO has the best fashion design?
Don't pretend you're all about the stats and are above venal preening over your looks in games. You secretly spend hours grinding dungeons, scouting...
