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Vague Patch Notes: The community is and is not the MMO
The community is not the MMO. That should be obvious. There is a game to League of Legends that exists without any of the toxic...
Vague Patch Notes: The occupant’s dilemma in MMORPGs
This is the story of Stanley.
Stanley had a hobby, and that hobby was playing MMOs. Every day, he logged in to Final Fantasy XI, where...
Vague Patch Notes: Finding motivation within MMOs
Here's a fun question to ask yourself when you're doing basically anything in an MMO: Why am I doing this? It's usually at once...
Vague Patch Notes: The philosophy of challenge in MMOs
Today, I want to start thing off by talking about Final Fantasy. This is not entirely surprising. What may be surprising is that I'm talking about Final...
Vague Patch Notes: It’s not the MMO endgame – it’s the sudden stop at the end
When I first pitched the Vague Patch Notes that ran a couple weeks back, it prompted a big long discussion with MOP's editor Bree...
Vague Patch Notes: Online games are a marathon, but they still need to start running
One of those phrases we like to use a fair amount here is the fact that running an MMO is a marathon, not a...
Vague Patch Notes: On play conditioning and the lecture of experience in MMOs
Yes, it's another week in which we talk about abstract concepts that underpin the way we play video games, this time inspired by a...
Vague Patch Notes: Why the social penalty for open PvP in MMOs never works
One of the most important things to have when you're thinking about games and their design is reference material. It's one of the things...
Vague Patch Notes: How to recognize MMO lies from quite a long way away
One of the most consistently weird elements of covering MMOs is that there's a very simple and yet incredibly odd metric of knowing if...
Vague Patch Notes: ‘Gamer’ is not an identity
Let me tell you a little bit about myself. I'm 36 years old. I've been a professional writer for about a decade now, and...
Vague Patch Notes: Representation in games matters when you don’t see why it matters
This is a story about a boy named Michael. Follow along with me for a little bit, if you'd be so kind.
Michael was born...
Vague Patch Notes: The fads and the curious (and why Overwatch’s star is fading)
So it's beginning to look a lot like the Overwatch fad has faded. It was a crazy couple of years there, but the fact that...
Vague Patch Notes: How to make your points and exit gracefully from online debates
It's 2019, people. Let's do this. And by do this I of course mean learn to actually debate things in a way that might wind up changing...
Vague Patch Notes: The complexity of classic preservation for MMOs
Here's a fun question to kick things off. Should old black-and-white films be colorized? The key word there is "old," because there are a...
Vague Patch Notes: Understanding systems before you talk about them
Here's a fun question to consider. What were Emblems of Valor and Emblems of Heroism designed to do in World of Warcraft? Yes, they were...
Vague Patch Notes: The taxonomy of corporate apologies in video games
Somehow, Bethesda managed to persevere after the Great Canvas Shortage of 2018 to replace the Fallout 76 CE bags that were essentially plastic shopping bags...
Vague Patch Notes: MMO emulation as a paean for the dead vs. a mockery of the living
If you ever need to know why we'll happily cover Star Wars Galaxies emulators and not Ultima Online emulators here on Massively Overpowered, the reason is...
Vague Patch Notes: Having fun in an MMO doesn’t actually mean it’s any good
It appears that Fallout 76 has become the latest in a long line of games that launched too early with ill-defined goals, trying to be...
Vague Patch Notes: Accessibility vs. relevance in MMORPGs
You know that old chestnut about how the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist? The greatest trick...
Vague Patch Notes: When World of Warcraft breaks off your friendship
I spent a bunch of time post-BlizzCon thinking about why World of Warcraft personally bothered me. Not why its design pitfalls bothered me; that's...
