evergreen
Remembering the life and work of legendary MMO designer Brad ‘Aradune’ McQuaid
When the news hit last night, it brought everything to a screeching halt in the Massively OP office: At the age of 51, veteran...
Perfect Ten: When MMO lore is at odds with the game
Lore is made up. We all know that. People who write the lore for games are not doing research into the real story and...
Fight or Kite: MMORPG PvP is about competition, not combat
Over the last month, Eliot has written a Daily Grind and Perfect Ten that really got me thinking about what PvP truly is. He...
WoW Factor: A brief history of flight (in World of Warcraft)
Flight has been a part of World of Warcraft as long as the game has existed. No, not just flying mounts, even though you could...
Massively Overthinking: Do MMO betas rob you of launch joy?
I use to think of betas as being unpaid labor for video game companies, but maybe I've been going about it all wrong. On...
Vague Patch Notes: MMO grind is good (except when it isn’t)
Some of my fondest memories of World of Warcraft involve Adam Sandler and the Badlands.
My wife and I had a pretty steady tradition made out...
Perfect Ten: Counting Fallout 76’s many post-nuclear flubs
I'll admit that I was the first one out of my seat, applauding wildly, when Fallout 76 was first announced at Bethesda's E3 showcase...
Tamriel Infinium: Our biggest Elder Scrolls Online pet peeves
This week, fellow Massively OP writer Justin published a post on his personal blog detailing a pet peeve with his favorite MMO. I find...
Fight or Kite: PvP games to play if you’re still boycotting Blizzard
The past couple of weeks in the land of Blizzard have made for a wild ride. Some of us have extremely strong feelings and...
Massively Overthinking: The problem with MMO ‘dailies’
Longtime MOP Patron and friend of the site Avaera recently posed us an intriguing questions about daily login rewards in MMORPGs.
"Recently my game of choice,...
The Game Archaeologist: A brief history of Multi-User Dungeons
You know that sinking feeling when you get into something that's way, waaaay over your head and you have no choice but to swim...
Lawful Neutral: What’s China really worth to the Western gaming industry?
You know what we never talk about these days? China and video games! We should do that more. For example, did you know that...
Vague Patch Notes: Scammers, grifters, and amateurs in the MMORPG market
There are two apparent truisms about scams in the MMO marketplace. The first is that players are quick to call anything that vaguely stinks...
Perfect Ten: The many flavors of MMO PvP
Not so long ago (so, at the rate news has come out since then, what feels like decades ago) I wrote a column about...
MMO Cartographer: World of Warcraft, then and now
A month before the whole Hong Kong Hearthstone debacle consumed the gaming industry - and blissfully unaware that this article would ultimately be held back because of it - I put my innocent money down on Blizzard for my MMO Cartographer column here on MassivelyOP. I jumped on the World of Warcraft Classic bandwagon. It was a combination of FOMO and curiosity that did me in.
Perfect Ten: WoW Classic dungeon reviews courtesy of Azeroth’s Yelp
So, you all know that there's a Yelp equivalent in World of Warcraft, right? An awful lot of people forget about that, but Yelpcraft is seriously right there. It's been in the game since beta, which is why you can still look at it and see reviews about how zones would be much better if Paladins had talents and some ancient references to some terrible action star of the 1980s. Can't remember which one. Dolph Lundgren, probably.
Perfect Ten: Kickstarter MMOs that raised the most money
The rise of crowdfunding in the mid-2010s swept a large wave of MMORPGs our way that might never have happened otherwise. For a while...
Lawful Neutral: Endorsements, disclosures, and the games industry
Infomercials are the worst. There's nothing quite as infuriating as turning on the TV only to find a 30-minute commercial about how people can't...
Vague Patch Notes: Copies, blatant copies, and plagiarism in MMOs
So... this was honestly not the story that I had expected to have wound up coming out of Eternal Magic. I'd been expecting that "beauty...
Perfect Ten: Solo prequel games to MMORPGs
When studios go about making MMORPGs, risk comes along with the effect as a matter of course. The only question is how to reduce...
