Working As Intended is Massively Overpowered Editor-in-Chief Bree Royce’s favorite place to muse about game design, the MMO industry, and worlds gone by. Previous entries published on Engadget. [Follow this column’s RSS feed]
working as intended
‘I saw a City in the Clouds!’: Previewing Star Wars Galaxies Legends’ Bespin expansion
There are very few MMORPGs that can plausibly compel me to sit down and log in the weekend of a big real-life move, seeing...
Working As Intended: Decorating MMORPG houses in SWG Legends and beyond
I've been mulling over how to do a piece about MMO housing for a while now, spurred on by colleagues and readers who've said...
Star Wars Galaxies fans debate Legends, PvP, the economy, and more on community podcast
When fellow Star Wars Galaxies Legends player, YouTuber, and friend of MOP Napyet asked me to join him for a podcast last week, I...
Working as Intended: The big list of City of Heroes rogue servers, 2020 edition
It's been a weird and wonderful year for City of Heroes fans. In April of 2019, the expose of a secret City of Heroes...
Working as Intended: Sparking joy in MMOs
On this week's podcast, I mentioned that I'd just finished off Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, something that superficially seems unrelated...
Working As Intended: Deep-diving Star Wars Galaxies’ endgame crafting
When I leaped back into Star Wars Galaxies via the SWG Legends rogue server mid-2018, I didn't really truly think I'd stay all that...
MassivelyOP’s complete 2019 awards debrief and annual recap
As we did in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018, today I'm going to recap our annual awards and other meta articles from the end of...
Working As Intended: The MMOs we lost in 2019
The good news is that our sunsetted MMO list from 2019 is shorter than in most years. The bad news, of course, is that...
Guild Wars 2 studio ArenaNet chased the 2016 Gaile Gray account hacker all the way to Germany – and lost
Back in 2016, MassivelyOP covered an odd story about the Guild Wars franchise and a hack that seemingly involved the account of then-ArenaNet employee...
Working As Intended: What it means to be an MMORPG
I am amused and somewhat bewildered to admit that I have my very own pet troll. He follows me around on Reddit to hassle...
Working As Intended: We’re all full up on moral panics right now, but thanks
It's no great secret that MMORPG fans fall toward the middle of the age spectrum, given the history and peak of our genre. This...
Working As Intended: The MMOs we lost in 2018
While we lost several painful MMOs in 2016 and 2015, 2017 was noticeable chiefly because we lost a large number of small MMOs, perhaps signalling a...
Massively OP’s complete 2018 awards debrief and annual recap
As we did in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017 - it's becoming a real tradition here! - today I'm going to recap our annual awards and...
Working As Intended: The gamification of the workification of games
Last weekend, my husband made the bold choice to let our young son play The Stanley Parable. I am not entirely sure the kid...
Working As Intended: Returning to Star Wars Galaxies – in 2018
If you've followed the Massively OP Podcast this summer or read any of my ramblings in Daily Grinds and WRUPs, you probably know that...
‘Magic through serendipity’: Raph Koster on the glorious mess that was Ultima Online
I was a wide-eyed, naive kid when I first stepped into Ultima Online in 1997, and as it turns out, the developers were too.
That's...
Working As Intended: The MMOs we lost in 2017
It's true that we lost a lot of MMOs in 2016 -- bigger and more important ones than in 2014 and 2015. 2017, however, has...
Working As Intended: Guild Wars 2’s new mount licenses are still lockboxes, but they’re not the worst lockboxes
Pretty much everyone assumed that back when Guild Wars 2 planned out mounts, it did so with its cash shop in mind. The game...
Working As Intended: The best and worst of Guild Wars 2 Path of Fire (so far)
I've spent a chunk of the last week moving through the first part of Guild Wars 2's Path of Fire, finishing up the Crystal...
Working As Intended: Why classic Guild Wars matters, 12 years in
The spring season always sees a deluge of MMORPG birthday celebrations: Lord of the Rings Online, City of Heroes, Allods Online, Free Realms last...
