game design
Wisdom of Nym: Musings on Final Fantasy XIV’s current crafting game
Crafting is really important in Final Fantasy XIV. That much can't be denied; the game places so much emphasis on the options available to...
EVE Evolved: The Agency could revolutionise casual PvE in EVE Online
Though EVE Online has a reputation as a cut-throat PvP sandbox where anything goes, the fuel that fires its conflict engine has always been...
Digital Extremes halts development on The Amazing Eternals
Digital Extremes announced this morning that it's halting development on The Amazing Eternals.
"After many discussions internally on the state of The Amazing Eternals, we...
EVE Evolved: EVE Online’s free-to-play upgrades are pretty damn generous
You've probably heard by now that EVE Online is giving its free-to-play alpha clone characters a massive boost in power in December about a...
Crowfall’s Raph Koster explains why MMO systems stagnate and die
The man who pretty much wrote the book on many MMORPG systems shared another piece of keen insight about a pitfall in many competitive...
Perfect Ten: How MMORPGs become so darn complicated
MMOs are complicated. This seems like a fairly non-controversial statement; there are more or less complicated games, but they all tend to be complex...
Armored Warfare deep-dives the role of Armored Fighting Vehicles
The latest development diary on the Armored Warfare site is trying to answer a remarkably unclear question: What are Armored Fighting Vehicles? It sounds...
The Repopulation’s next patch is on the way, and so is more visual lore
Fans of The Repopulation have been waiting for the game's next patch for a little while, but it shouldn't be much longer now. A...
Wisdom of Nym: Deep-diving Final Fantasy XIV’s leveling structure
I do a lot of leveling in Final Fantasy XIV. This is, in part, because I am stupid; for several dumb reasons I have...
MMO Mechanics: Material storage and the Guild Wars 2 economy
Guild Wars 2 launched its second expansion, Path of Fire, a few days ago, and as you might expect, a new expansion means some immediate...
This week in survivalboxes: Valnir Rok, Hellion, Next Day Survival, and ARK
It’s time for another survivalbox roundup! What's new in the world of eternal building, unbuilding, ganking, ganking buildings, and consuming adequate food and water...
World of Warcraft Senior Producer Stephan Frost leaves Blizzard
One of the MMORPG industry's more prominent designers is leaving one of the MMORPG industry's more prominent games. On Friday, World of Warcraft Senior...
EVE Evolved: How much toxic, antisocial behaviour should MMOs tolerate?
The EVE Online community is aflame this week after alliance leader gigX was permanently banned for making threats of real-life violence against another player...
Seed explains its AI-driven design and its 2018 test plans
The bad news for fans eagerly looking on with Seed's development is that the game isn't going to be opening up for external testing...
Choose My Adventure: Many kinds of lost in Shroud of the Avatar
One of the first things I did in Shroud of the Avatar was get kind of lost. The last week's activities were largely similar....
Magic: The Gathering announces new online game, still no word on Cryptic’s MMO edition
Remember how former Turbine President Jeffrey Steefel was snapped up by Wizards of the Coast this past January to head up a digital games...
Final Fantasy XIV’s Naoki Yoshida on Stormblood’s release, AI issues, and MMO history
After all this time, I'm sure some of you forgot that my original E3 2017 interview with Final Fantasy XIV's Naoki Yoshida was supposed to...
Massively Overthinking: Alone together vs. forced grouping in MMORPGs
I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that everyone has at some point seen the xkcd called Isolation, but if not, there...
Global Chat: What Asian MMOs can learn from the west
Usually when it comes to discussing world hemispheres of MMO game design, comments and observations are made about what western studios can learn from their...
The Soapbox: Getting to the heart of toxicity in MMOs
So we've gotten another post from a developer saying that they're going to really 100% be better about rooting out toxic players from their...
