evergreen
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...
Vague Patch Notes: What is good meaningful leveling in MMORPGs?
All right. So we are here at long last, at the end of Leveling Month, although it's actually more like Month And A Bit....
Perfect Ten: The complete list of CCP’s weird EVE Online projects and offshoots
CCP Games, like some other studios we could mention, seems to be a place where the team got one very successful MMO off the...
LOTRO Legendarium: The 10 most metal titles in all of Lord of the Rings Online
You know, I'm simply not a guy who likes to slap titles onto my character's name in MMOs. Never have been, probably never will...
Vague Patch Notes: The dark side of meaningful MMO leveling
We've been in Leveling Month over here in Vague Patch Notes, and I had intended for this particular column to close off that discussion...
Perfect Ten: 10 MMOs that let you bring a whole squad of pets and minions
Pet classes are not really my jam. I don't want my companion to be doing the tanking or damage or healing or whatever, and...
Vague Patch Notes: When leveling too quickly becomes a problem in MMORPGs
Last week, I talked about how slow leveling design could become a problem. In that piece (and the one before it - it's become...
Perfect Ten: The MMO races that nobody ever seems to choose
Just because an MMORPG offers a wide array of character options doesn't mean that player interest will be equally divided among them. We've long...
