evergreen
Perfect Ten: Utterly silly MMO transmedia synergy over the years
Remember back when Trion Worlds tried to coin -- or cement -- the term "transmedia synergy" for the relationship between Defiance the game and Defiance the...
LOTRO Legendarium: Riding out into Lord of the Rings Online’s Legacy of Morgoth
Anyone who knows my gaming habits understands that I am not a fan of desert zones, expansions, or even Tatooine. Sorry Luke, but it's...
The Soapbox: The War Within is the best World of Warcraft’s endgame has ever been
When I delivered my first impressions of The War Within, I was full of praise for World of Warcraft's latest expansion, but I did...
MMO Hype Train: Into the Echo and the wish for a time travel MMO
Are there any MMO projects that you suspect only you remember and care about -- but everyone else has forgotten? I feel that way...
WoW Factor: Home is where the heart is, even in World of Warcraft
It has been a curious sensation these last few months, looking at World of Warcraft: The War Within and not wanting to play. That...
Vague Patch Notes: Going solo isn’t a problem in MMORPGs
So I'm wrapping up a month of talking about how MMORPGs are by necessity social games. These are games in which you need other...
Perfect Ten: Why I still love Final Fantasy XI today
You know what's really funny to me when I think about it for more than five minutes? Final Fantasy XI is, at this point,...
Vague Patch Notes: Living like a rock in MMORPGs
So if you are anything close to my age, you probably do not think of Simon & Garfunkel's music as being anything remotely "raw."...
Perfect Ten: 10 ways to put your MMO back on players’ radars
Running an MMORPG isn't like Field of Dreams. You can't just create a game and expect that everyone will show up because a magic...
LOTRO Legendarium: How should LOTRO handle ‘the levels issue?’
Legacy of Morgoth comes out next week for Lord of the Rings Online, and I'm generally excited for it. I wasn't initially, since desert zones aren't...
Design Mockument: Exploring alternatives to the typical MMO trinity
Here's a fun thing for you: I swear that way, way back before the game launched, there were documents from the Guild Wars 2...
Casually Classic: Looking back at my 20+ year journey in World of Warcraft
When was the first time you ever heard of World of Warcraft? As a fan of the three Warcraft RTS titles, I became aware of...
Vague Patch Notes: Solipsism and what it means for playing MMORPGs
We've been talking for the past couple of Vague Patch Notes columns about the fact that MMOs are, as a genre, defined by having...
Perfect Ten: The 10 types of tanks in MMORPGs
I've been thinking a fair bit about player archetypes lately, and that also means that I've been thinking about the variants within roles. While...
Design Mockument: Alternate trinities in MMORPGs and the challenge of other roles
The trinity has been a truism of MMO design now for about as long as it wasn't. I came up during the small times...
Vague Patch Notes: The MMO world you don’t control
Last week in Vague Patch Notes, I attempted to lay out my thesis for what it means when we say MMOs require other people....
LOTRO Legendarium: The rise and fall and rise of Mines of Moria
With Lord of the Rings Online's Angmar and Mordor progression servers looking forward to entering the first expansion sometime in December, thoughts have once...
Design Mockument: How might we build a Stormlight Archive MMORPG?
So when I was talking with MOP editor Bree a while back, I mentioned how one of my early ideas for the most recent...
Vague Patch Notes: MMOs rely on other people – but what does that really mean?
Now that we're done with Leveling Month in Vague Patch Notes, is there another topic I can turn into a month-and-change of column topics?...
Perfect Ten: Ranking the top 10 cities in Final Fantasy XIV
I can't speak for my fellow writer Justin (he apparently doesn't want to install the mind-probe that would make this really easy to find...
