raph koster
The MOP Up: Skyforge hisses and burns
It's (sigh) mass hiss-teria in Skyforge these days thanks to Gorgonide forces invading the place. Gorgonide? Really? Devs ain't even trying these days. Anyway,...
Here’s what Ultima Online looks like in a real 3-D client
We all well know that Ultima Online is a partly 2-D game; the game world is made up of a largely flat graphics, even...
Massively Overthinking: Designed downtime in MMORPGs
In a Daily Grind not long ago, MOP reader Armsbend said something I thought just cried out for discussion. After noting that he had...
SWTOR gives a skimpy roadmap while Star Wars Galaxies is remembered… in song form
It's a two-for-one Star Wars special in this post today! A short post on the Star Wars: The Old Republic forums shed a very...
Crowfall’s Raph Koster has some advice for community managers
Community management may be one potential path to making inroads at a development studio, but before you take that job, you'd best heed the...
Perfect Ten: Hit franchises that were almost made into MMORPGs
For my money, there are few more tantalizing and agonizing thoughts than the great "What Ifs?" of the MMO genre. What if one title...
MMO designer Raph Koster runs down the key mechanics that drive retention in online games
If last week's "games as a service" conversation piqued your interest, hop on over to Raph Koster's blog. The veteran MMORPG designer has a...
Fortnite is apparently fertile ground for doing crimes, like money laundering
Hey, you know what is fun? Money laundering! Wait, did we say "fun"? We meant "highly illegal and full of dire consequences." It's probably...
Project Horseshoe’s design papers confirm decades of MMORPG lessons
Not everyone involved in game design is trying to squeeze every last penny out of you. Yes, a lot of them are, but many...
What Destiny 2 could’ve learned about community puzzle gating… from Star Wars Galaxies
Say you're the developer of an online shooter, but you really want to add something that challenges the players in a world where they...
Richard Bartle reveals the secrets and history of MUDs
If you know even a little bit about the history of the MMORPG genre, you'll be aware that these games didn't start with World...
A look back at the MMO and gaming science topics of 2018
Over the last couple of years since becoming Massively OP, we've made a concerted effort to improve the quality of our gaming science-related articles, as...
The Game Archaeologist’s ultimate MMO archives v2.0
While The Game Archaeologist columns take up the most time of any project I do here at Massively OP, I absolutely love doing them...
The day twinkle trees killed Ultima Online’s Christmas
In a pretty amusing Twitter thread in which game designers admit to goofy and horrible mistakes, Ultima Online creator Raph Koster owned up to...
Ultima Online’s Raph Koster says Fortnite is more like an MMO than we might think
It's like people are discovering MMOs all over again.
Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies creator Raph Koster recently expressed amusement at the culture and...
Massively Overthinking: The best and worst MMO developer quotes of 2018
It's become a tradition on Massively OP to include among our end-of-the-year roundups and editorials and retrospectives a run-down of our favorite - and least favorite - MMO dev quotes of the year, be they obscure, poignant, or just plain dumb. So once again, for this week's Massively Overthinking, I've asked our staff to offer up those quotes and then reflect on what we from the year and reflect on just what we've learned from them.
Leaderboard: How much does an MMO’s IP influence your interest in it?
Here's a fun thought exercise: What if standard assumptions about IPs and games is wrong? To hear some people tell it, games like Star...
Smed vows he’ll someday make a game akin to EverQuest Next
Earlier this week on the podcast, Justin and I were joking around about how one of our favorite fun things to write about is...
MMO designer Raph Koster lays out the component parts of making MMORPGs
Veteran MMORPG designer Raph Koster has up a new blog post that sheds some light on the many angles of developing an MMORPG. In...
Ultima Online’s Raph Koster muses on the appeal of MMO experiences
A little weary of killing and nothing else in MMORPGs? You're not alone because Star Wars Galaxies and Ultima Online creator Raph Koster pines...
