Tag: mmorpg

A few months ago I promised to upload the second of a pair of antique and frankly low-res MMORPG videos I had rattling around on my hard-drive, both of sunsetted, much-beloved MMORPGs. This second video was actually a public stream. In 2010, one of my guildies, Zaphir, won a major architect mission contest developed by City of Heroes’ Paragon Studios,…

MMORPGs have a rags-to-riches problem. It’s one found in the roots of the pen-and-paper games that inspired the MUDs before them. Life for characters in these games is a progression ladder. They start as young, skilless, penniless adventurers, over and over. They’re told to climb that ladder to improve their skills and fortunes and fame. Get experience. Level up. Practice….

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…

Last Sunday, I partied with colleagues Eliot and Matt in Allods Online, which refused to cooperate with our simple desire to group. We were complaining over Skype about petty annoyances like not being able to team up on the newbie island and having to roll off for dropped quest items when in Allods’ defense I argued how much better it…

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…