game design
Vague Patch Notes: How to read games industry investor reports as a player
The old adage goes that diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock. By extension, marketing is the...
EVE Evolved: Fight or Flight is a season for change in EVE Online
January marks not just the beginning of a new year for EVE Online but also the start of a new seasonal development strategy for...
The MOP Up: Funcom delays Moons of Madness’ console release
For those starving in the Secret Worlds Legends content wasteland of 2019, there was at least the single-player spin-off Moons of Madness to enjoy....
Blizzard shows off the remodeled Night Elves for Warcraft III: Reforged
Warcraft III: Reforged might have missed its initial launch date of "by the end of 2019," but not by much; the game is still...
Fight or Kite: Griefing! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.
Here we are at the very first Fight or Kite of the New Year and of the decade. With it, let’s discuss something that...
EVE Evolved: First impressions of the EVE Echoes mobile beta
EVE Online has been a PC MMO staple now for over 16 years, carving out a niche for itself as a long-term hobby with...
Black Desert Mobile has officially launched now around the globe
Pearl Abyss has officially done it: It's launched Black Desert on four total platforms now, three of them this year, now that Black Desert...
You can start downloading Black Desert Mobile right now ahead of this week’s launch
Don't get too excited yet as it's not officially playable in the US just yet, but Black Desert Mobile is now available for preloading...
Pantheon’s Visionary Realms and Brad McQuaid’s family are sponsoring a design scholarship in his memory
Given that Visionary Realms has already made clear its commitment to continuing development of Pantheon in the wake of studio head Brad McQuaid's untimely...
Global Chat: Remembering the MMO fallen
A discussion chain has been rippling across the MMO blogosphere as of late, with writers reminiscing about online games that have lived and died...
EVE Online developers will soon be allowed to… play EVE Online
EVE Online's developers have historically had to keep the community at arms length to avoid inadvertently influencing the player-run sandbox. After the 2007 t20...
Roblox’s latest event taps some Star Wars Rise of Skywalker transmedia synergy
All the Star Wars things, please! That's what Roblox is dishing up right now. The kid-centered building MMO partnered with no less than Disney...
Here’s how WoW Classic influenced the design of Shadowlands for Retail WoW
While World of Warcraft's upcoming expansion has been in the works long before the launch of this past August's WoW Classic, the fallout from...
Choose My Adventure: An intriguing and frustrating start in Citadel Forged with Fire
This one’s going to be a doozy, I can already tell.
My first arrival to Citadel: Forged with Fire was a bumpy, rough, unpleasant one....
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,...
Massively Overthinking: Niche MMOs vs. everythingboxes
Earlier this month, veteran MMORPG designer Raph Koster announced that he's finally making a new MMORPG, with a suite of top devs and a...
Project C explains the studio’s philosophy behind the in-game economy and its business model
MMOs offering a currency pegged to real money that can also be converted back into real money aren't particularly common, but Project C is...
Miniature Desert Oasis: Hands-on with the upcoming Black Desert Mobile
Five years ago, if you'd asked me about any mobile game, I wouldn't have even considered it a real game. I'd have considered it...
Massively Overthinking: Are you boycotting Blizzard?
Tyler's piece this week about the Blizzard he loved being dead actually brought tears to my eyes. It hurts to lose a game and...
Massively Overthinking: MMOs, challenge, and flow
A couple of weeks ago, MMO developer Mark Kern tweeted a controversial claim about how challenge and interactivity is the point of games (and...
