game design
Design Mockument: What should Guild Wars 3 look like?
We know that Guild Wars 3 is happening... probably. I mean, we have no specific details about Guild Wars 3, other than the fact...
Design Mockument: In defense of visual ability customization in MMORPGs
I will never know who it was working behind the scenes at City of Heroes who first had the idea to let players customize...
Albion Online continues patching up Horizons with armor, weapon, and potion buffs
The application of patches to the Horizons update continues for Albion Online, and this time around it's everyone's favorite kind of patch: the item...
Casually Classic: WoW Classic Classic is more than just another hit of nostalgia
Out of all of the things that I didn't expect to be on my 2024 MMO bingo sheet was "Getting absolutely sucked into a...
Massively on the Go: Pokemon Go’s Max Raid and Gigantamax Battles aren’t helping the community
"What's the incentive? They look cool? It's not worth it." This is the player sentiment I've been seeing after people have spent some time...
Dual spec and no buff/debuff limits are coming to the WoW Classic anniversary realms
The fresh anniversary realms for WoW Classic are perhaps not as true to World of Warcraft's past as some might want, or perhaps they're...
NCsoft Q3 2024: NCsoft teases Aion 2 for 2025, says Throne & Liberty sales ‘surpassed internal projections’
It's been one hell of a quarter for NCsoft - and we mean that for every interpretation of the phrase.
As readers might recall, in...
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...
Stars Reach releases video footage of its movement tech from earliest testing to now
When writing up a post about last week's Stars Reach dev blog on character movement, I kept thinking one thing: This article needs a...
Perfect Ten: The reward categories for killing a major enemy in MMORPGs
If an enemy exists in an MMORPG that you are supposed to kill in some fashion, it is going to offer you some kind...
Vague Patch Notes: The problem with numbers in MMORPGs
I recently saw a post on the official World of Warcraft forums noting that if not for the game's almost infamous level squish, players...
Raph Koster on designing and defining Stars Reach: ‘The Tragedy of the Commons is a lie’
Playable Worlds' Raph Koster is back with a new dev blog on Stars Reach, and it's not about game design pillars this time; it's...
Massively Overthinking: How much research do you do before playing a new MMORPG?
On this week's MOP Podcast, Justin and I discussed our experiences in No Man's Sky (again), and both of us came to the conclusion...
WoW Factor: The mulligan problem in World of Warcraft’s narrative
In World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, Illidan Stormrage gets killed. This isn't actually a surprising end for the character. Illidan as a person...
Raph Koster aims to make Stars Reach complex but not overcomplicated – and focused on retention
You didn't think Playable Worlds' Raph Koster was going to stop at just two pillars of design for his new sandbox MMORPG Stars Reach,...
Vague Patch Notes: Yes, tutorials are a good thing in MMORPGs
For those of you who haven't been reading the site for a while or just don't keep this in your head, I'm going to...
Corepunk preps for an early July alpha test with some massive changes
The next bout of testing for mixed genre Corepunk is almost upon us, as studio Artificial Core prepares a third alpha test to run...
Raph Koster’s nine Playable Worlds teasers (so far) hint at the MMORPG sandbox you always wanted
As we covered earlier in the week, Raph Koster's studio Playable Worlds has been tweeting what appeared to be a countdown accompanied by a...
Vague Patch Notes: Chasing the metagame in MMOs isn’t the metagame at all
So a few weeks back, I did a column on what the metagame actually is in MMORPG, and then I discussed how noob traps...
First Impressions: Corepunk’s MOBA-esque closed alpha was fun – with lots of room to grow
I've got a pretty good poker face, especially when nobody can see my face. So I've been pretty subtle about my excitement for Corepunk...
