history
The Daily Grind: Which doomed MMO would you love to play again from launch?
Good news! Your friend, Professor Hypothetical-Question, has developed a time machine! Unfortunately, it's pretty limited. It will allow you to do one thing and...
The Daily Grind: How solid do you think your memory of your favorite MMO’s history is?
Ages ago, I wrote a column in which I jokingly pointed out that in order to really get the WoW Classic experience, you should need...
A new interview reveals how Naoki Yoshida leveraged charisma and spreadsheets to make Final Fantasy XIV happen
We all know that Final Fantasy XIV is a big success story. So what's the secret behind Naoki Yoshida taking the game from zero...
David Brevik discusses how Diablo 2’s development was marked with a year of crunch
It's easy to think of "crunch" in game development being something of a more recent phenomenon as we've heard more about it. It's also...
World of Warcraft has been post-Pandaria longer than it has been pre-Pandaria (in the EU)
When dealing with a long-running MMO, it's easy to sort its history into eras based on expansions. But it's also good to remember that...
The Game Archaeologist: The virtual worlds of the 1990s
With the increased speeds of modems and the move into 3-D space in the 1990s, some game designers thought it was a logical conclusion...
The Daily Grind: Were you present for any historic MMO events?
For all the talk of world firsts, server firsts, and so forth, the real notable MMO events are usually ones that just seem to...
WoW Factor: A history of itemization in World of Warcraft
Huh. You know, I really thought I'd written about the whole Corruption system in World of Warcraft's upcoming 8.3 before now in a format more...
The Daily Grind: What MMO did you not give enough credit until after the fact?
Sometimes I ask myself whether I really liked WildStar as much as it deserved. Obviously, it's a kind of inherently silly line of thinking;...
Tracing the lineage of the modern MMORPG
Do you ever wonder where the MMORPG was born? If you said, "The internet, duh," you're technically correct but also a huge smartass. But...
The Daily Grind: When did you start playing MMOs?
This is a fun and simple question that is also remarkably complex to answer, because there are so many different ways to answer it....
PlanetSide 2 celebrates 20 years of EverQuest with a new objective line
Just because the big milestone anniversary this year is for EverQuest and not PlanetSide 2 doesn't mean that the latter title needs to be left out...
The Daily Grind: Are there MMOs that turn you off just based on history?
We were having an interesting discussion in work chat the other day about EVE Online involving Brendan and me. Brendan, obviously, is the expert on...
The Daily Grind: When did you realize you were no longer a beginner in an MMO?
I tend to think of myself as a beginner in any given MMO for a really long time. Like, to the point where I'll have...
Long before Diablo Immortal, the franchise nearly had… Diablo Junior
We hear that if you look into a mirror with the lights off and say "Diablo Immortal" three times, the Prime Evil himself will...
The Daily Grind: Are there any MMO anniversaries you’re looking forward to in 2019?
It's weird to think that World of Warcraft hits 15 years this year, but that's the way linear time works. Five-year intervals are big ones,...
Path of Exile’s team is back at work with the first Betrayal League patch of the year
It's good to know that the team behind Path of Exile took some time off for the holiday, since all outward indications are that this...
EverQuest II kicks off its 14-year anniversary celebration
Can you believe that EverQuest II has been running for 14 years now? We'll give you a moment to scamper off to Wikipedia to...
The Daily Grind: Do you skip periods of MMOs you play?
I've seen the argument put forth several times over the past month or so about World of Warcraft players just... skipping the current expansion....
Wizard101 shares a whole list of facts you might not know about its development
If you weren't already aware, we like lists of 10 around here. So we're pleased by the format Wizard101 chose to use in revealing...