game design
Leaderboard: Will Blizzard ever port World of Warcraft to console?
This past summer in a Daily Grind, we were discussing the issue of "dumbing down" in MMORPGs, specifically in World of Warcraft, when a...
EVE Evolved: Controversy over gambling bans and charities
It's been a crazy, drama-filled week in EVE Online, starting with a controversial change to the EULA that will ban all gambling sites using in-game currency or assets...
League of Legends introduces the Nexus for editorial content
Sometimes, the best way to find out if something has an audience is just to put out what you have and see if people...
MMO Mechanics: Enhancing MMORPGs with experiential learning mechanics
Ever since I considered the responses to a Massively Overthinking article in which a developer asked if a prestige system to encourage replaying an...
Albion Online extends its beta deep into 2017
To the chagrin of its playerbase, Albion Online has announced that it's significantly extending the duration of its current beta phase deep into next year.
"Compared...
EVE Evolved: What else is coming to EVE Online in November?
Recently I've been looking at how EVE Online will be affected by the introduction of free-to-play "alpha clone" accounts in its upcoming November expansion, but there's a...
Analyst: China should port MMOs westward (carefully!) as mobile competition stiffens
China is the biggest game market in the world. So why the heck do so many games exported from there to here seem to flop?
That's the...
Guild Wars 2 resumes development of legendary weapons
Guild Wars 2 players might recall that back in March, ArenaNet President and Game Director Mike O'Brien announced that he was instructing the team...
EVE Evolved: Free-to-play PvP cruiser fitting guide
EVE Online's new free-to-play account option will be going live as part of an upcoming expansion this November, allowing new players to delve into the game and its...
Black Desert’s Pearl Abyss on consoles, swimsuits, and global reception
Dualshockers has a new interview out with Black Desert's Pearl Abyss, the Korean-based studio that develops the original game (Kakao is the western publisher,...
EVE Evolved: The consequences of a free-to-play EVE
This week we heard the unexpected news that EVE Online will be going partially free-to-play when the next expansion lands in November. Like many games...
EVE Evolved: No Man’s Sky vs EVE Online
Like many EVE Online fans, I've spent the past week fully immersed in the procedurally generated universe of No Man's Sky and wondering what its mechanics and...
MMO Mechanics: No Man’s Sky is mechanically genius (an ode to procedural generation)
No Man's Sky has been on my hotly anticipated list for so long, and you might remember that it has had particular mention in a...
EVE Evolved: The single-shard sandbox economy
The debate about what makes a good sandbox game is as old as the term itself, and everyone seems to have a different view...
Darkfall: Rise of Agon closed beta opens up on Friday
If you're still sad about Darkfall: Unholy Wars' abrupt maintenance mode or Darkfall: New Dawn's public indev soft-launch didn't do it for you, Darkfall: Rise of...
EVE Evolved: When was EVE Online’s golden age?
In the latest Massively Overthinking article, our Patreon patron Duane got us thinking about whether the golden age of the MMO industry has passed or MMOs are actually in...
MMO Mechanics: Creating engaging crafting mechanics
I'm currently bogged down in an over-the-shoulder crafting blur, vicariously depleting gold and recommending several YouTube-approved crazy material gathering runs as I get my...
Massively Overthinking: The MMORPG wishes that go unfulfilled
This week's Massively Overthinking question is a short and sweet one posed by Das Tal developer Alexander Zacherl.
"What's the greatest unfulfilled dream of MMO players...
EVE Evolved: Can EVE be played casually?
We've heard a lot recently about huge territorial wars raging in EVE Online with thousands of pilots taking part, which some consider to be the ultimate endgame...
MMO Mechanics: Zonation and scaling mechanics in MMORPGs
The recent E3 hubub about The Elder Scrolls Online new level syncing mechanics being extended has got me thinking all about the mechanics behind zones in MMOs,...
