non combat mmo
One Shots: Supporting characters
When you look for famous characters in your MMO, you may be looking for someone complete different than the rest of the crowd.
Lt. Commander Hikari...
How Glitch’s creator kept pulling successes from his online game failures
NPR recently did an interview with Slack and Flickr creator Stewart Butterfield as part of its series on innovators and entrepreneurs. Butterfield's drive to create...
Massively Overthinking: Random acts of MMORPG kindness
Last week, down in the comments of an innocuous post about gamers being nice in Fortnite, a couple of MOP commenters requested a column...
The Daily Grind: What exactly defines an ‘indie’ MMORPG studio?
Earlier this week, I happened to see a mainstream website refer to ArtCraft as an indie studio, and it jolted me. ArtCraft, as anybody...
The Game Archaeologist: Raph Koster on MUDs and Privateer Online
The release of Raph Koster's monster book of game essays, Postmortems, was of high interest to Bree and me for different reasons. For her,...
Fortnite: Pollsters and academics examine purchases, pay-to-win, and motivation vs. addiction
Remember the old adage that less than 10% of a free-to-play playerbase pay for the other 90%? A poll conducted by LendEDU and Pollfish...
Final Fantasy XIV’s community is rocked by a fansite sexual harassment scandal
When it comes to ranking friendly, warm, and welcoming MMO communities, Final Fantasy XIV is right up there near or at the top of...
Ever, Jane just gave you a personal butler. You’re welcome.
One of Ever, Jane's biggest advantages is providing a social gameplay experience that is unlike what you've experienced in other MMOs. And while your...
Global Chat: The MMO expansion lifecycle
With the ever-developing, ever-growing nature of MMORPGs, the expansion truly has a life of its own. By now we are well acquainted with the...
A glitch in Shadow’s Kiss freaked out its own developers
When you're building a game about bloodsucking undead sex monsters, you probably need to sport a hearty demeanor. But even the makers of Shadow's...
Perfect Ten: MMOs with different (camera) perspectives
By the time that World of Warcraft came on the scene in 2004, the MMORPG industry had already gravitated toward standard when it came...
World Adrift posts its public roadmap, improves climbing so it doesn’t kill you
The veil of secrecy has been lifted from Worlds Adrift, and now every Tom, Dick, and Jane will be able to know what the...
The Game Archaeologist: A Tale in the Desert
Once asked what he thought was the most innovative MMO from the last decade, Dr. Richard Bartle, the creator of MUD, gave a succinct answer: "A...
The Game Archaeologist: World of Warcraft’s Corrupted Blood pandemic
It began with an exploitable glitch. It exploded into an uncontained nightmare of death. It established a meme as strong as Leeroy Jenkins. It...
Glitch-inspired Children of Ur abandons Google Chrome due to incompatibility
The uphill struggle to rebuild Glitch has hit a rather significant snag in Children of Ur.
"It saddens us to bring you this news, but...
Ever, Jane eyes a new update, overhauls forums and website
We haven't checked in with pre-eminent roleplaying MMORPG Ever, Jane in a long time - since last summer, in fact - but the game,...
Global Chat: Avoiding MMO activities
Have you ever noticed that you play it way too safe in your MMOs, especially when it comes to interacting (or not) with others? Aywren...
A Tale in the Desert has launched its eighth Telling since 2003
Last summer, we included classic sandbox A Tale in the Desert in our Whatever Happened To column as one of those games that had...
The Daily Grind: What’s the most unused place or feature in your favorite MMORPG?
I really like abandoned places in games. One of my favorite articles ever was about Glitch, after it sunsetted, when I recapped my experience...
Fortnite’s 2.4.0 patch was delayed in part to fix the dang building glitch
Fortnite's 2.4.0 patch was supposed to release today, but last night, Epic announced a delay to "further improve stability and hammer out some remaining...
