Andy McAdams
Andy is lifelong gamer and Virtual World believer to the chagrin of almost everyone around him. When he's not slinging features as a product development professional, he's embracing his inner MMO Nomad visiting whatever virtual world strikes his fancy. He's the writer of Lawful Neutral column, covering business and legal issues in the MMO industry.
Progress Bar: Another go-round with cozy ‘MMO’ Palia, this time on the Switch
I'm not much of a console player in general. The controller has always felt limiting to me, especially when compared with the precision of...
Lawful Neutral: Reverse engineering World of Warcraft’s subscriber numbers
Do you know what time it is? It's almost quarterly financial report time! We probably won't see a full quarterly report from Activision-Blizzard as...
Lawful Neutral: Assessing the privacy policies governing World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV
It never fails to surprise me just what some people will say in general chat in an MMO. They'll say things they would never...
Lawful Neutral: Freedom of speech in MMOs
I don't think a day goes by without gamers ranting on Reddit or Twitter or forums or comment sections about how their freedom of...
Lawful Neutral: How might the so-called AI revolution affect the MMO genre?
This article has been rolling around in my head since ChatGPT rocketed into the public awareness a few months ago, and just in the...
Lawful Neutral: What if Activision-Blizzard just… sold Blizzard?
Last week, Activision-Blizzard and Bobby Kotick got a bad surprise: The UK moved to block the acquisition of ABK by Microsoft, citing concerns over...
Lawful Neutral: What MMO gamers need to know about Section 230
You might have seen something in the news last week about a thing called Section 230 and lots of panic over the "end of...
Lawful Neutral: Recapping 2022’s MMO and gaming law dramas
Fam, it's been a year. I know we've been saying that pretty much every year since 2016, but we'll stop saying it when it...
Why I Play: World of Warcraft, 2022 edition
Have you ever watched The Good Place? If you haven't, I suggest you stop reading right now and go watch. Your life will be...
Lawful Neutral: How extremism and terrorism slither into online gaming
Back in 2014, something happened in the gaming space, something whose impact was so damaging that even almost 10 years later, I realize that...
Lawful Neutral: How is an NFT MMO even supposed to work?
Recently, MassivelyOP hit a milestone: We received our quadrabajillionth email announcing that Scammy-scammers-now-with-NFTs-and-also-metaverse-because-reasons Inc. was a proven market leader with a new scamming game...
Lawful Neutral: Recapping the MMO industry’s legal dramas, 2021 edition
With meatspace commitments causing no-end of stress and herculean amounts of work for me, Lawful Neutral had a bit of a slow year that...
Lawful Neutral: Managing toxicity in the MMO industry
When I'm playing games, I make a lot of use of the reporting function. If I see a moonkin zerg farming a spot in...
Two government agencies are now squabbling over ethics allegations in Activision-Blizzard cases
The Activision-Blizzard sexual discrimination and harassment lawsuit is back in the news this week, but for an unexpected reason. Readers will recall that the...
Lawful Neutral: Defining toxicity in the MMO industry
One of my earliest memories from World of Warcraft isn't really a positive one. It was in back in the Wrath days. My guild...
Lawful Neutral: The bizarre corporate effort to buy RuneScape studio Jagex
Would it really be a new year without Runescape developer Jagex being involved in some sort of weird corporate sale only to be blocked...
Lawful Neutral: 2020 was the year that wasn’t for MMO legal news
It seems surreal, but it is that time of the year again when we wax nostalgic about the year that was. Well, maybe this...
Lawful Neutral: The Epic vs. Apple lawsuit – when titans are tweens
The MassivelyOP Golden Yacht was anchored someplace off the coast of Maine when the first news about Epic suing Apple hit. We had sailed...
Final Fantasy XIV launches new 5.3 microsite, hits 1.2M active players (with caveats)
Final Fantasy XIV has today launched a new microsite for the 5.3 patch, arriving August 11, 2020. The site confirms the new content coming...
The Soapbox: Where does WoW need to go beyond Shadowlands?
This expansion hype cycle, I've heard more about how to customize your character and less about raids than any other WoW expansion in recent memory, and I can't see that as anything other than good.
