Justin Olivetti is Massively Overpowered’s resident Game Archaeologist; he never lets a good old game stay buried. [Follow this column’s RSS feed]
the game archaeologist
The Game Archaeologist: Anarchy Online
"The future in your hands."
This was Funcom's promise to gamers in the early days of the 2000s. Even as the MMORPG genre slowly took...
The Game Archaeologist: Lucasfilm’s Habitat
Some of you reading this may simply never have known a world before the internet existed by virtue of your age. It's not your...
The Game Archaeologist: Star Wars Galaxies’ NGE
It became one of the most infamous moments in MMO history -- and perhaps one of the most misunderstood.
For all that the MMO community...
The Game Archaeologist: Microsoft’s Mythica
While Microsoft may be the big cheese when it comes to operating systems and worldwide domination, for whatever reason the company has the absolute...
The Game Archaeologist: Kingdom of Drakkar
Kingdom of Drakkar, also known as Drakkar or even Kingdom of Drakkar II, is a really odd duck among the annals of MMO history....
The Game Archaeologist: The Sims Online
The Sims Online was one of the odder entrants into the MMO genre, an online iteration of an immensely popular game franchise that promised...
The Game Archaeologist: The 4th Coming
Over the years that I've been writing The Game Archaeologist, I've received more than a few requests to cover a game that was completely...
The Game Archaeologist: Seven MMOs operating on borrowed time
Most everyone who knows me well will acknowledge that I'm not generally a cynical, dark person. I'm not rooting for games to fail, for...
The Game Archaeologist: Mythic’s Imperator Online
It is a truly difficult thing to create something completely new and original, especially in storytelling and setting. It's perhaps impossible in this day...
The Game Archaeologist: Multiplayer BattleTech
It was the 31st century, where feuding factions decided to settle their differences by throwing multi-ton war robots at each other. It was also...
The Game Archaeologist: AOL’s Neverwinter Nights
Here's a question for you: How much do you really, really have to love a game to pay $6 to $8 an hour to...
The Game Archaeologist: What Star Wars Galaxies life was like before the NGE
A decade after Star Wars Galaxies' "New Game Enhancements" hit the game, controversy, grumbling, and revelations still pop up about the notorious decision to...
The Game Archaeologist: Roleplaying dreams in Underlight
After years of digging into the field of classic MMOs, I know there aren't too many undiscovered titles that haven't been brought to my attention...
The Game Archaeologist: Middle-earth Online
Out of all of the MMOs that I've played over the years, I must have spent the most time in Lord of the Rings...
The Game Archaeologist: Ten more facts of EverQuest life circa 1999
A couple of weeks ago I shared with you several stories from EverQuest veterans about what life in the game was like back then....
The Game Archaeologist: Ten facts of EverQuest life circa 1999
MMOs change. We know that, but we also tend to forget it as well. The games that we play today can often be light-years...
