evergreen
Perfect Ten: Why it’s better than ever to be an MMO fan in 2023
Welcome to 2023! You probably didn't need that heads-up, but you're getting it even still. I'm quite excited about the year to come in...
Vague Patch Notes: Stop taking your released MMOs back to the drawing board
This is not a column about Kingshunt, but it is. It's not a column about Crowfall or Deathverse: Let it Die or even Crucible....
Vague Patch Notes: Embracing limited-time content modes in MMOs
Today's column was inspired by a discussion in work chat about limited-time game modes - specifically, the idea of something like that in World...
Vague Patch Notes: Loving an MMO isn’t the same as having a personality
There's a story that's always stuck with me, relayed by the now-vanished blog Websnark back in the day, so forgive me if I get...
WoW Factor: World of Warcraft’s mid-expansion endgame zone problem
Hey gang, who wants to go explore new zones in Dragonflight? Does that sound exciting to you? That's great, and for the past several...
A look back at the MMO and gaming science topics of 2022
It's hard to believe, but 2022 is actually the eighth year in a row we've been tracking science stories relevant to the MMO genre....
Fight or Kite: The many ways today’s MMOs are failing PvPers
Last week, the MassivelyOP writing crew released its award for the best PvP MMO of the year - yet I couldn’t bring myself to...
Vague Patch Notes: A wake for the MMOs that were
2022 is nearly over, and for me, at least, it's been an incredibly challenging year full of some really dark points. This is the...
Vague Patch Notes: MMO design is not value-neutral
It's rare for me to find myself actively yelling at my computer screen while watching something, but it does happen every so often. The...
Perfect Ten: 10 things we’re thankful for in MMO gaming
In my experience, people who invest heavily into being grateful and thankful for blessings don't have a lot of excess room for negativity and...
Perfect Ten: 10 metrics to check to gauge MMO success or failure
There are a lot of MMOs out there. How do you know which one of them is the most popular and therefore the best...
Vitae Aeternum: Tackling New World’s endgame as a solo player
After nearly a year of stopping to smell the roses, I finally made it to level cap in New World shortly before the launch...
LOTRO Legendarium: What class should you pick in LOTRO?
Hunter.
Thanks for coming to the column! See you in the next one!
What, you want a bit more than that? Sheesh, fine. I'll stop amusing...
WoW Factor: Breaking down the ‘third era’ of World of Warcraft development
We are, at the time of this writing, less than a week out from the second part of the Dragonflight pre-patch for World of...
Vague Patch Notes: The art of picking winners and losers in MMO design
There's a meme that's gone around the Final Fantasy XIV community sphere for a while, and I'm going to try my best to explain...
Perfect Ten: 10 great reasons to revisit older MMORPGs
When one MMO dies, it forces us to look at the rest of the bunch through the sunglasses of mortality. The finite nature of...
Lawful Neutral: How extremism and terrorism slither into online gaming
Back in 2014, something happened in the gaming space, something whose impact was so damaging that even almost 10 years later, I realize that...
Vague Patch Notes: Defining classic servers and progression servers for MMOs
Something that I've been thinking about a lot over the past few days - for no particular reason - is the idea of classic...
Perfect Ten: 10 things to understand about MMO Bards
In the past four installments of this pseudo-series, I have done columns on archetypes that exist in every single game. Every game has a...
Vague Patch Notes: MMO quality and the bandwagon fallacy
Here's a fact that is objectively true but feels objectively false: There's no law stating that the best MMO of all time, to date,...
