evergreen
Vague Patch Notes: Checking your bias when it comes to MMOs
What are your biases when it comes to MMOs? It's all right, you can be honest about them here. Maybe you're biased against games...
LOTRO Legendarium: Six essential LOTRO store purchases for new characters
In my Lord of the Rings Online career, I have started way, way too many brand-new characters. It's just something I do every so...
Vague Patch Notes: The win state of MMOs
So how do you win an MMO? The general consensus is that you don't. The whole point of an MMO that this is an...
Casually Classic: The brilliance of World of Warcraft’s sound design
Can you hear pictures? Well, I bet you heard the banner graphic for today's column because that level-up sound from World of Warcraft is...
Perfect Ten: Why I’m a sucker for MMO collector’s editions
If you've ever wondered what kind of naive sucker would plunk down a semi-thick wad of perfectly good cash on an overstuffed MMO collector's...
Vague Patch Notes: What we mean when we talk about MMO maintenance mode
I've mentioned before that this column's title was inspired by the vague patch notes of Final Fantasy XI, and here we are diving into that...
Perfect Ten: Here is the stuff you can have when I quit this MMO
Paul Simon once said that there had to be at least 50 ways to leave your lover. Back in the day, however, there was...
Vague Patch Notes: Playing MMOs as an introvert
I've heard people say that the idea of "extroverts" and "introverts" isn't really all that accurate to the way that human beings actually behave,...
Perfect Ten: How to deal with MMO burnout
I remember the first time I got hit hard by the powerhouse slugger known as "burnout." It was during my second stint in World...
Casually Classic: Ranking WoW Classic’s capital cities (through Burning Crusade)
Even more so than they are in retail World of Warcraft, WoW Classic's capital cities are the central bustling hub of commerce and staging...
The Soapbox: Lies I was told about World of Warcraft
A few months back, I was feeling restless in my MMO routine. Guild Wars 2 is my MMO "home," so I'm always in that...
Vague Patch Notes: The myth of the days before MMO datamining
For those of you who don't know, this column was named after Final Fantasy XI. Specifically, it was named after the practice that particular game...
Why I Play: Multiplayer sandbox Eco is so much more than just an ecology simulator
I’ve been struggling to come up with a succinct way to describe Eco. The game was recently the subject of a Whatever Happened To...
Perfect Ten: How The Burning Crusade changed World of Warcraft forever
We're kind of thinking about the first World of Warcraft expansion around these parts this week. No particular reason, especially in my case; I'm not...
Perfect Ten: Top 10 annoying things you hear in MMORPG global chat
General chat, sometimes called "Barrens chat" or "zone chat" or "the party line," is both the bane and the secret fixation of my existence....
Massively Overthinking: What are your MMO character customization dealbreakers?
Back in February, when BlizzConline was at its height, part of the World of Warcraft community lost its mind over the revelation that Blizzard...
Vague Patch Notes: The fine art of shutting yourself up (so you can enjoy MMOs again)
This week, an unusual thing happened to me: I didn't really want to write this column.
This may not sound all that unusual to you,...
Perfect Ten: The wide umbrella of MMOs and online gaming subgenres
Let's be realistic here, "MMO" as a term covers a whole lot of different game styles. I know this is a particular topic that...
Casually Classic: How World of Warcraft made bad graphics look good
When I returned to World of Warcraft Classic in 2019, I steeled myself to be vastly underwhelmed by the visuals. I'm not a graphics...
The Game Archaeologist: The online world of Diablo II
Most of us probably weren't expecting to see Diablo II once again propelled into the spotlight in the year 2021, but the BlizzCon announcement...
