design
Vague Patch Notes: ‘Gamer’ is not an identity
Let me tell you a little bit about myself. I'm 36 years old. I've been a professional writer for about a decade now, and...
Vague Patch Notes: Representation in games matters when you don’t see why it matters
This is a story about a boy named Michael. Follow along with me for a little bit, if you'd be so kind.
Michael was born...
Vague Patch Notes: The fads and the curious (and why Overwatch’s star is fading)
So it's beginning to look a lot like the Overwatch fad has faded. It was a crazy couple of years there, but the fact that...
Vague Patch Notes: How to make your points and exit gracefully from online debates
It's 2019, people. Let's do this. And by do this I of course mean learn to actually debate things in a way that might wind up changing...
Vague Patch Notes: The complexity of classic preservation for MMOs
Here's a fun question to kick things off. Should old black-and-white films be colorized? The key word there is "old," because there are a...
Vague Patch Notes: Understanding systems before you talk about them
Here's a fun question to consider. What were Emblems of Valor and Emblems of Heroism designed to do in World of Warcraft? Yes, they were...
Vague Patch Notes: The taxonomy of corporate apologies in video games
Somehow, Bethesda managed to persevere after the Great Canvas Shortage of 2018 to replace the Fallout 76 CE bags that were essentially plastic shopping bags...
Vague Patch Notes: MMO emulation as a paean for the dead vs. a mockery of the living
If you ever need to know why we'll happily cover Star Wars Galaxies emulators and not Ultima Online emulators here on Massively Overpowered, the reason is...
Vague Patch Notes: Having fun in an MMO doesn’t actually mean it’s any good
It appears that Fallout 76 has become the latest in a long line of games that launched too early with ill-defined goals, trying to be...
Vague Patch Notes: Accessibility vs. relevance in MMORPGs
You know that old chestnut about how the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist? The greatest trick...
Vague Patch Notes: When World of Warcraft breaks off your friendship
I spent a bunch of time post-BlizzCon thinking about why World of Warcraft personally bothered me. Not why its design pitfalls bothered me; that's...
Vague Patch Notes: The meaning of ‘meaningful’ in MMORPGs
Ironically, the term "meaningful" has a long history of not meaning much of anything with MMOs.
Back in 2015 I did a Perfect Ten about...
Vague Patch Notes: There’s more to Skinner boxes in MMOs than mere repetition
As I started watching the latest World of Warcraft video to whip people into a furor, I very nearly turned the thing off as...
Vague Patch Notes: How do you play MMOs when you know humans suffered to make them?
The original Star Wars film was a passion project for a then-young George Lucas, and it was a project that nearly killed Lucas from...
Vague Patch Notes: World of Warcraft, math, and making choices ‘interesting’ in MMOs
So if you somehow managed to miss it, let me recap:Â World of Warcraft's community manager Lore recently gave some feedback on the many complaints...
Vague Patch Notes: Trickle-down metagames in MMORPGs
A while back, there was an interesting set of data coming out of a discussion about Overwatch. The discussion was about the concept of...
Vague Patch Notes: WildStar deserves its shutdown, even though we loved it
Last week, when we heard that WildStar was being shut down, I penned a truthful, heartfelt eulogy for the game as it could've been....
A eulogy for WildStar – a marvelous MMORPG and avoidable tragedy
Friends, readers, genre fans, lend me your eyes; I come to bury WildStar, not to praise it. But just like Marc Antony, I'm going...
Vague Patch Notes: Casual no longer means anything in MMOs
Every time I see someone write something about casual players - including me because heavens know I've done it too - I feel a...
Vague Patch Notes: On scaling and meaningful advancement in WoW and other MMORPGs
It seems like pretty much nobody is happy with how scaling is working in World of Warcraft at the moment. The game's scaling means...
