No, it’s not a slow news day; it’s just The Daily Grind, a long-running morning feature in which the Massively Overpowered writers pose gaming-related questions to the MMORPG community. [Follow this feature’s RSS feed]
the daily grind
The Daily Grind: Does gender play a role in your MMORPG class selection?
We've been covering Nick Yee-founded Quantic Foundry's game analytics research as it's fleshing out the Gamer Motivation Model, which seeks to create a modernized...
The Daily Grind: What’s the most disheartening loss you’ve had in an MMO?
Losses aren't fun in any game. No one ever wants to lose. But in a single-player game you usually can reload from a save...
The Daily Grind: What’s your favorite MMO easter egg?
The other day someone pointed me to the direction of a big ol' page of EverQuest II Easter eggs. As someone who only lightly...
The Daily Grind: Are OARPGs the future of the MMORPG genre?
Toward the end of 2014, genre academics popularized the idea that the MMORPG genre was becoming "unbundled" -- that MMORPGs were splintering, "with sociality,...
The Daily Grind: Does powergaming ruin the MMORPG experience?
A recent article on Kotaku tells the author's tale of being powerleveled by a friend through Diablo III. "You might think that there's no 'wrong'...
The Daily Grind: How frequently do you want events in an MMO?
I have a mixed set of feelings about the various Star Wars: The Old Republic reputation events. On the one hand, it annoys me...
The Daily Grind: Are you a fan of screenshake in MMORPGs?
Some people hate lockboxes, some people hate PvP, some people hate grind, some people hate jiggleboobs. But I hate... screenshake.
Seriously, if I could banish...
The Daily Grind: Could a time travel MMO work?
A week or so ago, we reported on the release of an eastern title called Dark Era that was largely unremarkable save for the...
The Daily Grind: What’s your favorite MMO fantasy creature?
The other day in Final Fantasy XIV I was taken aback when I saw a Lalafell prancing around on a unicorn. You might think...
The Daily Grind: Should MMORPGs use Kickstarter as a promotional option?
One of Tuesday's big bits of news was that Hero's Song - John Smedley's big post-Daybreak project - was cancelling its Kickstarter. The announcement...
The Daily Grind: How much will you pay for a VR headset, and which one will it be?
New analysis published on GamesIndustry.biz last week suggests that the virtual reality headset war is only going to heat up from here on out....
The Daily Grind: What’s the best MMO customer experience you’ve ever had?
Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, before I worked for Massively, I called up SOE. I wanted to move my Star Wars...
The Daily Grind: Have you ever had an in-game MMO romance?
I got my wife into MMOs by volunteering to buy her a copy of World of Warcraft. At the time, we had been best...
The Daily Grind: What were MMOs like back at their launch?
I was reminded this week that Dungeons and Dragons Online is hitting its 10-year anniversary in 2016, which amazes me because I don't think...
The Daily Grind: Do MMO graphics influence your immersion?
This past week, in the hubub surrounding Smed's new OARPG, Hero's Song, we interviewed bestselling author Patrick Rothfuss, who's building the lore of the game's...
The Daily Grind: What MMORPG character creator would you like to play offline?
I haven't the slightest interest in Black Desert for various reasons that deserve more than a pithy comment here, but boy, that standalone character...
The Daily Grind: Do you like starting over in MMOs?
I used to think I had a sickness, or at least a weakness, as I was constantly rerolling characters in MMOs. While friends were...
The Daily Grind: What’s the best MMORPG for shy gamers?
A few weeks ago, Massively OP's Eliot Lefebvre wrote about the intersection of social anxiety and MMOs. It was a surprisingly popular article, with gamers...
The Daily Grind: What’s the best pet class in an MMORPG?
I hated pets when I first got started in MMORPGs. Pets in early MMOs had such terrible AI and were such a nuisance to...
The Daily Grind: What do you do in MMOs to calm down?
At the risk of giving you more information than you all want to hear, lately my anxiety issues have been reaching a fever pitch....