staff roundtable
Massively Overthinking: Which MMORPG offers the best tutorial?
MMORPG developer Raph Koster recently put this neat article by experimental game developer Nicky Case on my radar. Case notes that common wisdom is...
Massively Overthinking: Do you need to be the hero in MMOs?
MMORPG developer Raph Koster recently tweeted that he'd had a "debate with some devs who asserted that videogames require the player to be the...
Massively Overthinking: Are you susceptible to second-hand MMO hype?
So there's a thing going around the MOP virtual offices lately: Elite Dangerous hype. Between Chris and Ben especially, the excitement for Odyssey is...
Massively Overthinking: Retaking Quantic’s survey to determine our ‘gamer type’
Five years ago - yes, it's been that long! - we did an Overthinking in which our staff all took Quantic's survey to see...
Massively Overthinking: What MMO were you hoping to hear much more about this past year?
So 2020 wasn't exactly the year a lot of us probably thought it was going to be in early January. Every bit of our...
Massively Overthinking: Hopes and fears for MMOs in 2021
Welcome to 2021, folks. It's not even going to have to try all that hard to be better than 2020!
For our first official Massively...
Massively Overthinking: Our MMO resolutions for 2021
Really, there's only one valid resolution for 2021: make it suck less than 2020.
That aside, it's customary to ask the Massively OP writers to...
Massively Overthinking: Our favorite MMO stories of 2020
Earlier this week, we named our biggest MMO story of the year and gave it an award, though we imagine it's hard for a...
Massively Overthinking: Our MMO predictions for 2021
So... 2020 didn't go exactly as anyone planned. Our predictions for this past year were pretty janked up by that whole pandemic thing and...
Massively Overthinking: The best and worst MMO developer quotes of 2020
We have a fun end-of-the-year tradition on MOP to recap the best and worst MMO developer quotes of the year. In fact, I keep...
Massively Overthinking: MMO cash shop confessions
Do you ever pick up a drink absentmindedly, thinking it's going to be something, but it's actually something totally different that you hate? You...
Massively Overthinking: Gratitude for the devs of the MMO genre
Thanksgiving conveniently falls on a Thursday every year, which means it's the perfect topic for our regular Thursday Massively Overthinking roundtable. I've asked our writers what they're grateful for in and around the MMO genre the last couple of years - and now we're gonna do it again.
Massively Overthinking: No-thank-you bites in MMO gaming
One of the things I always try to have my kids do is take a no-thank-you bite of new foods. They have to at...
Massively Overthinking: What one piece of advice would you like to give to MMO devs?
Over the last couple of weeks, MOP's Eliot has pointed his Vague Patch Notes column at some friendly (and amusing) advice for MMO studios,...
Massively Overthinking: Does early access kill an MMO’s buzz?
A while back on the Massively OP Podcast, Justin and I were flipping through Steamcharts checking in on Torchlight III, and we were a...
Massively Overthinking: Doing crimes and getting punished in MMORPGs
A couple of weeks before Dual Universe's snafu banning beta players for taking advantage of a developer's poorly permissioned structure, I saw the game's...
Massively Overthinking: Where is the line between buy-to-play, free-to-play, and subscription MMOs?
You might think this Massively Overthinking topic is way too obvious, but I assure you, it's not! Consider this: When the buy-to-play-with-no-sub Guild Wars...
Massively Overthinking: What one MMO mechanic or system would you like to banish to the ends of the earth?
Back in September, one of our dear readers Aldristavan sent in a fun question for the Massively OP Podcast: What's one outdated MMO mechanic...
Massively Overthinking: How do you know you’ve fallen hard for an MMO?
For this week's Massively Overthinking, I want to bounce off something MOP's Chris tweeted a few weeks back. "I can tell a game's hooks...
Massively Overthinking: Are isometric MMOs more or less immersive than 3-D?
I was chit-chatting with MOP reader (and prolific tipster!) Panagiotis the other day about Ultima Online's big news when he hit on a topic...
