MMOs and MMORPGs have generally been a PC based genre. The always on, constantly updated nature of the genre made them an ill fit on consoles with nascent internet capabilities. Sure, there were exceptions. Phantasy Star Online was released on the Dreamcast way back in 2000, and here in the West we got EverQuest Online Adventures in 2003. But these [...]

With 2017 coming to a close, we're left still waiting for the majority of MMORPGs that have been crowd funded over the past few years. Just last month, Crowfall announced they would miss their 2017 soft launch window. Shroud of the Avatar is still awaiting release, despite having an estimated release date of 2017. Camelot Unchained, Chronicles of Elyria, Dual [...]

One of the unique properties of MMORPGs as compared to other genres is the social and economy hierarchies present in their persistent worlds. We all start at the bottom, but how high and how fast we rise is only tangently related to the hours we put into a game. We all know the perpetual peasant, the friend whose played since [...]

The recent drama surrounding Star Wars Battlefront 2 has been one of the biggest gaming stories of the year, often leaking into the mainstream press and even into the financial news. As soon as that happened, Electronic Arts was quick to back peddle, removing micro-transactions from the game entirely. Many across the gaming media shared in on the outrage, but [...]

Flanked by the ever increasing market share of mobile games and the lack of interest among the major publishers in bringing a new MMORPG to market, things look grim for the PC MMORPG genre. That's not to say its all bad news. We're still getting a steady release of smaller titles. Just this week we saw the reveal of Ascent: [...]

Blizzcon 2017 was held on November 3rd and 4th and this year saw several major announcements. Major Updates for Hearthstone, StarCraft 2, Heroes of the Storm, and World of Warcraft were revealed. There were plenty of surprises, and several disappointments. Among the biggest surprises for us was the revelation that Blizzard has indeed been working on a Classic World of [...]

The recent drama surrounding NeoGAF over the weekend, and the firing of all-but-one paid staff members at The Escapist has spurred me to reflect on the changing nature of Internet communities. While internet forums are not yet dead, its clear that social networks and aggregators like reddit have put the whole standalone forum format into terminal decline. The ascent of [...]

For years now there has been a trend among games in general and MMORPGs in particular to make them more accessible by lowering the difficulty of their content. A recent game launch and a patch highlight this trend. With the release of Patch 4.1, Final Fantasy XIV unveiled a new dungeon. This new 24 man raid was not meant to [...]

Its a feature, not a bug. No game is immune from bugs, but the effects a bug can have are magnified by the multiplayer, persistent nature of MMOs. Often bugs go unfixed for months, if not years. Whether its not developer's inability or ignorance of such bugs, they often end up being fixed features of a MMO. Something for players [...]