Tag: MMO

Occasionally, my realities collide, and I find gaming inspiration in strange places. My daughter, Coraline, was born earlier this summer (which should partly explain why I’ve been quiet here lately), and consequently I’ve been consumed by the joy of consulting parenting blogs when I’m awake at 4 in the morning. This is how I bumped into Alfie Kohn’s new book,…

Karen Bryan, Massively’s wonderfully level-headed guild and family columnist, recently wrote about the problem of absent guild leaders in modern MMOs. I certainly have no plans to quibble with her conclusion; she is absolutely correct when she says that modern MMOs have created complicated systems of ranks and privileges and achievements for guilds without also creating effective tools for dealing…

Launching today is my first entry in Massively’s newest opinion column, called Why I Play, in which we tell you… well, why we play certain games, as it says on the tin. I chose City of Heroes first, since it’s one of those mid-2000s games that’s had some staying power but is far from being the new shiny, and hey,…

The media embargo for Star Wars: The Old Republic’s beta dropped yesterday, and Massively produced two different impressions pieces summing up the beta, both of them from guys who willingly and happily play themepark MMOs but who have more than once declared their preference for sandboxes. I saw the game about a year ago but was only in the regular…

That’s how my husband said I should feel at last night’s Marvel Universe Online event in San Francisco. He meant it as a compliment! Of course, I’d rather be Inara, but I suppose I’m going to have to settle for Kaylee in my big floofy maternity dress, surrounded by geeky dudes all talking shop, several of whom (shout out to…

Last autumn, I had my Ultima Online account turned on for old times’ sake. I bought myself a ride to the most populated server and decided to plop down a house. After a few days of looking, I’d found myself a location, but I still had a book of leftover runes to what are known as IDOC houses. In UO,…

My boss invited me to guest-host on this week’s Massively Speaking podcast, on which you can hear the decidedly midwestern accents of Shawn Schuster, Rubi Bayer and me as we discuss EVE Online’s upcoming expansions, the Minecraft craze, sparkly vampires or lack thereof in World of Darkness, hack-and-slash freemium game Vindictus, MMO crafting pitfalls, the state of the MMO industry,…

Since I started working for Massively, the one upcoming game I’ve gotten to check out in person more than any other is a cute little game from Gazillion and the Amazing Society called Super Hero Squad Online under this quaint, obscure IP called “Marvel comics.” Gazillion’s devs have actually secured the rights to Marvel games for something like the next…