Interviewer’s note: Minor grammatical changes have been made to improve readability. I recently had the chance to sit down with Robert Basler, the sole developer of the upcoming MMORTS, The Imperial Realm: Miranda. We talked the game, its inspirations, and the challenges of being a solo developer as he gave me a tour of the game in its current form. [...]

The MMORTS genre is largely a niche. MMORTSes are impossible to balance, unfriendly to newcomers, and have to be exceedingly complex in order to keep people around for an extended period of time. The modern concept of an MMORTS is far from what it originally was. Whereas most modern MMORTSes are casual affairs that lead to money pits, such as [...]

The MMO Investor is a weekly column on the state of the MMO industry when it comes to business. Get a quick weekly glimpse at the real life auction house that is high finance in the MMO Industry! As the size of the MMO industry continues to grow, there's a relatively new, but massive shift taking place. Big traditional game developers are starting [...]

Grind. The word itself just sounds unpleasant. Gamers use the term to refer to any repetitive task. Common examples includes clearing the same field of monsters, completing the same quest/dungeon over and over, crafting otherwise worthless items simply for skill gain, and so on. Grinding is not exclusive to the MMORPG genre, many games all but force players to grind [...]

The word "MMO" has been redefined countless times since the early days of MUDs and social games. It’s a contentious term with personalized definitions, and as the market has grown so has the scope with which the label is applied. Narrowing down a definition of "massively multiplayer online game" that is still broad enough to encompass the growing range of [...]

Despite the term "WoW Clone" being tossed around regularly, not every MMORPG is a clone of Blizzard's World of Warcraft. There are however, numerous titles out there that are unusually similar to World of Warcraft; so much so that it's definitely not a coincidence. Given WoW's enormous success, it shouldn't be too surprising to see developers try and capture some [...]

It goes without saying, I think, to anyone who has been gaming actively for more than a decade, that we’ve come a very long way in a number of respects. From graphical quality, audio and voice overs, music, and general design, video games are becoming rapidly more and more sophisticated. The medium is becoming respectable and acceptable to the mainstream [...]

A lot of these Do's and Don'ts should go without saying, but having recently played the extremely popular open beta of Skyforge, I think some of these bear repeating. These rules generally apply to EVERY MMORPG. Do: Join groups and conquer tough dungeons. Don't: Ditch a group mid-dungeon. Before you enter a dungeon with a group, make sure you can STAY with [...]

A large part of the appeal of role-playing, whether it's in an MMORPG or on a kitchen tabletop, is being able to take on the personality and appearance of someone new. Personally, I enjoy adventuring in strange mythical worlds, but I keep my characters relatively boring in comparison. My class of choice in Dungeons & Dragons is the fighter, and [...]