https://massivelyop.com MMORPG news and opinions Fri, 09 Feb 2024 15:50:30 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.1.1 https://massivelyop.com/2024/02/09/vague-patch-notes-mmorpgs-and-the-pc-gaming-market/ https://massivelyop.com/2024/02/09/vague-patch-notes-mmorpgs-and-the-pc-gaming-market/#comments Fri, 09 Feb 2024 17:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=479180 I find myself thinking a lot about the MMORPG industry lately and the ways in which the gaming industry as a whole has changed over the course of the past couple decades, because it seems clear to me that things have been changing. Did you know that up until 2004, PC gaming accounted for less […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2024/02/09/vague-patch-notes-mmorpgs-and-the-pc-gaming-market/feed/ 11 https://massivelyop.com/2024/02/01/vague-patch-notes-why-we-drift-away-from-mmorpgs-we-still-love/ https://massivelyop.com/2024/02/01/vague-patch-notes-why-we-drift-away-from-mmorpgs-we-still-love/#comments Thu, 01 Feb 2024 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=478104 Why did I stop playing Star Trek Online? Was it because there was some change made to the game that made it no longer fun to play? Did it come as a result of some drama at the endgame, some major flaw? I bought the game nearly at launch, but I left. Why did I […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2024/02/01/vague-patch-notes-why-we-drift-away-from-mmorpgs-we-still-love/feed/ 42 https://massivelyop.com/2024/01/25/vague-patch-notes-early-access-is-just-game-development-as-performance-art/ https://massivelyop.com/2024/01/25/vague-patch-notes-early-access-is-just-game-development-as-performance-art/#comments Thu, 25 Jan 2024 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=476951 I was reminded recently about Valheim. I do not own the game and thus have not played it; I cannot tell you if it is a good game in its current state, whether it is severely lacking content, or how one can reach Bodylande. But I can tell you that the game has now been […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2024/01/25/vague-patch-notes-early-access-is-just-game-development-as-performance-art/feed/ 20 https://massivelyop.com/2024/01/19/vague-patch-notes-what-city-of-heroes-homecoming-means-for-the-wider-mmorpg-industry/ https://massivelyop.com/2024/01/19/vague-patch-notes-what-city-of-heroes-homecoming-means-for-the-wider-mmorpg-industry/#comments Fri, 19 Jan 2024 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=476130 As you have probably noticed from the fact that I have been writing about City of Heroes nonstop since the Homecoming server got its official license to operate, I have been thinking a lot about this game and what it means. Obviously, much of that thought has focused on the game itself because let me […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2024/01/19/vague-patch-notes-what-city-of-heroes-homecoming-means-for-the-wider-mmorpg-industry/feed/ 9 https://massivelyop.com/2024/01/12/vague-patch-notes-the-real-question-every-mmo-has-to-answer/ https://massivelyop.com/2024/01/12/vague-patch-notes-the-real-question-every-mmo-has-to-answer/#comments Fri, 12 Jan 2024 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=475101 Why am I here? A lot of times I will slow-roll my column and lead to something unexpected, something that I am sure you are all used to at this point since I have had a weekly editorial column on the site now for five years now. (I don’t actually remember the negotiation between Bree […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2024/01/12/vague-patch-notes-the-real-question-every-mmo-has-to-answer/feed/ 3 https://massivelyop.com/2024/01/04/vague-patch-notes-mmos-are-still-just-games-you-rent/ https://massivelyop.com/2024/01/04/vague-patch-notes-mmos-are-still-just-games-you-rent/#comments Thu, 04 Jan 2024 17:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=474046 When I was a teenager, I accidentally stole a few games from a video rental place. You might wonder how you accidentally steal something, but it turns out that it’s actually remarkably simple: Amidst an intensely chaotic move off of an island and to the mainland as your father is placed in rehab after you’ve […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2024/01/04/vague-patch-notes-mmos-are-still-just-games-you-rent/feed/ 8 https://massivelyop.com/2023/12/28/vague-patch-notes-the-ever-changing-costs-of-playing-an-mmorpg/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/12/28/vague-patch-notes-the-ever-changing-costs-of-playing-an-mmorpg/#comments Thu, 28 Dec 2023 17:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=473395 It was a pretty big deal back when I had first started working at original Massively when the trend started, and I can still remember the main catalyst. Dungeons & Dragons Online suddenly announced that the game was switching from its subscription business model to a free-to-play model, with some restrictions on play for free […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/12/28/vague-patch-notes-the-ever-changing-costs-of-playing-an-mmorpg/feed/ 7 https://massivelyop.com/2023/12/21/vague-patch-notes-its-never-cheating-in-mmos-when-you-do-it/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/12/21/vague-patch-notes-its-never-cheating-in-mmos-when-you-do-it/#comments Thu, 21 Dec 2023 17:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=472824 My friend from Final Fantasy XI was, understandably, upset. He had just been suspended for a week, and he had been warned that continued violations would result in longer suspensions and perhaps even culminate in a ban. And it was because he had been using FleeTool. FleeTool, back in the day, was a popular hack […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/12/21/vague-patch-notes-its-never-cheating-in-mmos-when-you-do-it/feed/ 12 https://massivelyop.com/2023/12/14/vague-patch-notes-what-you-cant-forget-in-mmos/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/12/14/vague-patch-notes-what-you-cant-forget-in-mmos/#comments Thu, 14 Dec 2023 17:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=471742 Years ago, I had a relationship with someone I met in Final Fantasy XI. It wasn’t a good or solid relationship by any stretch of the imagination, and quite frankly I regret it because I wasn’t a good partner to her. I was actually a pretty terrible one, and she deserved better. Whether or not […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/12/14/vague-patch-notes-what-you-cant-forget-in-mmos/feed/ 7 https://massivelyop.com/2023/12/07/vague-patch-notes-waiting-for-the-mmorpg-endings-that-are-never-coming/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/12/07/vague-patch-notes-waiting-for-the-mmorpg-endings-that-are-never-coming/#comments Thu, 07 Dec 2023 17:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=470714 It took some real courage for Naoki Yoshida to get up and announce that Final Fantasy XIV was ending. After an enormously successful run, the MMORPG had reached a natural endpoint for its storyline, and so Endwalker was announced as the final expansion. Not only did this allow for the game to go out on […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/12/07/vague-patch-notes-waiting-for-the-mmorpg-endings-that-are-never-coming/feed/ 23 https://massivelyop.com/2023/12/01/vague-patch-notes-mmo-gameplay-by-enhancement/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/12/01/vague-patch-notes-mmo-gameplay-by-enhancement/#comments Fri, 01 Dec 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=469823 A while back, I was talking in the comments of an article about how bad The Secret World’s combat was. It was the game’s real weakness and why most people stopped playing the game, but there is – very technically – more to it than that. One of our commenters, who agreed with the premise […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/12/01/vague-patch-notes-mmo-gameplay-by-enhancement/feed/ 6 https://massivelyop.com/2023/11/27/vague-patch-notes-the-myth-of-the-first-mmorpg/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/11/27/vague-patch-notes-the-myth-of-the-first-mmorpg/#comments Mon, 27 Nov 2023 17:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=468778 One of the things I like to joke about every so often is various myths about the history of MMOs, and a lot of those myths tend to swirl around World of Warcraft for various reasons. Basically no one worth listening to actually believes that it was the first MMORPG (it very definitely wasn’t), but […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/11/27/vague-patch-notes-the-myth-of-the-first-mmorpg/feed/ 14 https://massivelyop.com/2023/11/17/vague-patch-notes-how-does-an-mmorpg-studio-rebuild-trust-it-shattered/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/11/17/vague-patch-notes-how-does-an-mmorpg-studio-rebuild-trust-it-shattered/#comments Fri, 17 Nov 2023 17:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=467861 Earlier this week, Pantheon cancelled its intensely stupid extraction shooter mode. Now, I don’t say that it’s intensely stupid because I dislike this sort of gameplay. I do dislike this sort of gameplay, but the fact of the matter is that there was basically zero chance of my playing Pantheon beforehand, so the existence of […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/11/17/vague-patch-notes-how-does-an-mmorpg-studio-rebuild-trust-it-shattered/feed/ 37 https://massivelyop.com/2023/11/10/vague-patch-notes-blizzcon-2023-wasnt-a-disaster-but-it-needed-to-be-better/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/11/10/vague-patch-notes-blizzcon-2023-wasnt-a-disaster-but-it-needed-to-be-better/#comments Fri, 10 Nov 2023 17:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=466745 The last live BlizzCon in 2019 was not a great show, but it was fundamentally a hype festival for Blizzard just like they’ve all been. At the time, the reputation and general thinking around Blizzard was that the company was a once-storied developer that had spent several years being pretty dang obnoxious and had fallen […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/11/10/vague-patch-notes-blizzcon-2023-wasnt-a-disaster-but-it-needed-to-be-better/feed/ 26 https://massivelyop.com/2023/11/01/vague-patch-notes-so-what-are-mmorpgs-meant-to-be/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/11/01/vague-patch-notes-so-what-are-mmorpgs-meant-to-be/#comments Wed, 01 Nov 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=464781 I don’t know exactly why I’ve spent so much time this year fixating on the question about what MMORPGs are meant to be and where their development should lead, but I have. Perhaps it’s not actually surprising. I’ve talked about how the growth of the internet has changed them, I’ve talked about how genre conventions […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/11/01/vague-patch-notes-so-what-are-mmorpgs-meant-to-be/feed/ 30 https://massivelyop.com/2023/10/27/vague-patch-notes-default-mmorpg-genre-features-change-over-time-and-thats-ok/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/10/27/vague-patch-notes-default-mmorpg-genre-features-change-over-time-and-thats-ok/#comments Fri, 27 Oct 2023 15:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=463794 I want you to picture a nonexistent MMO in your head right now. Not one that hasn’t released yet; one that hasn’t even been announced. A totally fictional game unrelated to anything that’s currently out, one original and unbound to anything else. If you desperately want it to be part of a franchise, fine, but […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/10/27/vague-patch-notes-default-mmorpg-genre-features-change-over-time-and-thats-ok/feed/ 8 https://massivelyop.com/2023/10/19/vague-patch-notes-pivots-dont-work-with-mmos/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/10/19/vague-patch-notes-pivots-dont-work-with-mmos/#comments Thu, 19 Oct 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=462877 So we can pretty much confirmed now that Pantheon’s goose is thoroughly cooked. Yes, I know, the folks at Visionary Realms are claiming that when they have a livestream, it’ll clarify everything and you won’t be mad any more, but we all know this doesn’t work. Our article even cited a number of other crowdfunded […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/10/19/vague-patch-notes-pivots-dont-work-with-mmos/feed/ 20 https://massivelyop.com/2023/10/12/vague-patch-notes-why-procedural-generation-doesnt-solve-the-content-problems-of-mmos/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/10/12/vague-patch-notes-why-procedural-generation-doesnt-solve-the-content-problems-of-mmos/#comments Thu, 12 Oct 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=461827 Just yesterday, MOP’s Justin ran down the various features that the long-canceled EverQuest Next promised before its demise – including the promise of all sorts of procedurally generated content. Procgen has long been a buzzword in video games, although these days it’s often glossed over by people on Twitter with .eth in their username who […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/10/12/vague-patch-notes-why-procedural-generation-doesnt-solve-the-content-problems-of-mmos/feed/ 23 https://massivelyop.com/2023/10/05/vague-patch-notes-why-people-cant-just-ignore-things-they-dont-want-in-mmorpgs/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/10/05/vague-patch-notes-why-people-cant-just-ignore-things-they-dont-want-in-mmorpgs/#comments Thu, 05 Oct 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=460773 As I often do, I’m going to start this column with a bit of history. But in this particular case, it’s a bit of history that I did not personally experience because it’s from Ultima Online. So you’ll have to forgive me if I get pieces wrong, but I promise you that any details I […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/10/05/vague-patch-notes-why-people-cant-just-ignore-things-they-dont-want-in-mmorpgs/feed/ 28 https://massivelyop.com/2023/09/28/vague-patch-notes-the-games-industry-arrogance-cycle-in-mmos-and-elsewhere/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/09/28/vague-patch-notes-the-games-industry-arrogance-cycle-in-mmos-and-elsewhere/#comments Thu, 28 Sep 2023 15:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=459676 Unity has fallen. Oh, sure, the company has rolled back the worst parts of its incredibly boneheaded “give us money for your successful game” nonsense, but not all of it… but frankly, it doesn’t matter. Once the company started floating the idea of doing it, the gloves came off. All of the goodwill that Unity […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/09/28/vague-patch-notes-the-games-industry-arrogance-cycle-in-mmos-and-elsewhere/feed/ 11 https://massivelyop.com/2023/09/22/vague-patch-notes-so-what-actually-kills-mmo-communities/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/09/22/vague-patch-notes-so-what-actually-kills-mmo-communities/#comments Fri, 22 Sep 2023 15:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=458852 Since we’re busy getting a front-row seat to World of Warcraft adding the dungeon finder again, only this time it’s WoW Classic, we are also getting a front-row seat to That Guy coming out of the woodwork. That Guy (who is not to be confused with That Man) is the one who is always quick […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/09/22/vague-patch-notes-so-what-actually-kills-mmo-communities/feed/ 65 https://massivelyop.com/2023/09/14/vague-patch-notes-i-dont-know-what-the-deal-is-with-throne-liberty/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/09/14/vague-patch-notes-i-dont-know-what-the-deal-is-with-throne-liberty/#comments Thu, 14 Sep 2023 17:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=457639 Let me just state this outright: What in the absolute heck is supposed to be going on with Throne & Liberty at this point? What is this game’s deal? Like, on paper, sure, I get it. Throne & Liberty grew out of what was originally going to be Lineage Eternal, which was announced in the […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/09/14/vague-patch-notes-i-dont-know-what-the-deal-is-with-throne-liberty/feed/ 14 https://massivelyop.com/2023/09/07/vague-patch-notes-the-specter-of-racially-locked-classes-in-mmos-and-before/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/09/07/vague-patch-notes-the-specter-of-racially-locked-classes-in-mmos-and-before/#comments Thu, 07 Sep 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=456738 One of the things I’ve taken on multiple times in this column is the concept of gender-locked classes, which are bad, and if you think “hey, it makes sense in some culture,” you’re wrong and making bad excuses. But there is another common case of class restriction, and those are racially locked classes. This comes […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/09/07/vague-patch-notes-the-specter-of-racially-locked-classes-in-mmos-and-before/feed/ 38 https://massivelyop.com/2023/08/31/vague-patch-notes-what-you-leave-behind-in-mmos/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/08/31/vague-patch-notes-what-you-leave-behind-in-mmos/#comments Thu, 31 Aug 2023 15:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=455934 You meant a lot to me when we knew one another. I wonder if you ever really understood that, or if I even communicated it right. I have been playing MMOs more or less continuously now for 20 years. That’s a whole lot of my life. And that means that I have met a lot […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/08/31/vague-patch-notes-what-you-leave-behind-in-mmos/feed/ 16 https://massivelyop.com/2023/08/24/vague-patch-notes-internet-killed-the-mmorpg-star/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/08/24/vague-patch-notes-internet-killed-the-mmorpg-star/#comments Thu, 24 Aug 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=454700 If you ever need to understand why MMORPGs today look so different from how they looked back in 1997, there are a lot of answers. But a big portion of that answer can be found on your smartphone. Oh, sure, there are other reasons too, like going from designers who were trying all of this […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/08/24/vague-patch-notes-internet-killed-the-mmorpg-star/feed/ 7 https://massivelyop.com/2023/08/17/vague-patch-notes-the-shell-game-of-mmo-subscriber-numbers-and-player-counts/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/08/17/vague-patch-notes-the-shell-game-of-mmo-subscriber-numbers-and-player-counts/#comments Thu, 17 Aug 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=453606 Here is a very reasonable question: How many subscribers does Star Wars: The Old Republic have? Not how many players, but how many subscribers. How many people are paying a monthly fee for playing this game? Considering the game’s move to Broadsword and the fact that its development team will be larger than any other […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/08/17/vague-patch-notes-the-shell-game-of-mmo-subscriber-numbers-and-player-counts/feed/ 2 https://massivelyop.com/2023/08/10/vague-patch-notes-almost-nobody-can-save-mid-to-small-mmos/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/08/10/vague-patch-notes-almost-nobody-can-save-mid-to-small-mmos/#comments Thu, 10 Aug 2023 15:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=452612 A week ago, we all sounded off on the best way to save a small-to-mid-size MMO that was struggling, as prompted by a discussion of Temtem. I often demur on these topics mostly because I have this column to fill out every week, but this time I chimed in with a rather pessimistic answer. I’ve […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/08/10/vague-patch-notes-almost-nobody-can-save-mid-to-small-mmos/feed/ 10 https://massivelyop.com/2023/08/03/vague-patch-notes-contemplating-the-origin-of-the-big-five-in-the-mmo-space/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/08/03/vague-patch-notes-contemplating-the-origin-of-the-big-five-in-the-mmo-space/#comments Thu, 03 Aug 2023 15:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=451644 A few weeks back, I talked about the various tiers of MMORPGs, and that included a discussion of what we call the Big Five ’round these parts. This prompted some debate that was both energetic and phenomenally unnecessary, ranging from arguments that it should be the Big Four to declarations that it should include other […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/08/03/vague-patch-notes-contemplating-the-origin-of-the-big-five-in-the-mmo-space/feed/ 17 https://massivelyop.com/2023/07/27/vague-patch-notes-culture-doesnt-excuse-poor-design-choices-in-mmos/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/07/27/vague-patch-notes-culture-doesnt-excuse-poor-design-choices-in-mmos/#comments Thu, 27 Jul 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=450547 So Tarisland has heard that people don’t like gender-locked classes. This is the correct feedback because gender-locked classes blow, and every game that has them would be better without them. And the response to that is what amounts to word salad in which the developers promise to figure out if they can make the time […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/07/27/vague-patch-notes-culture-doesnt-excuse-poor-design-choices-in-mmos/feed/ 31 https://massivelyop.com/2023/07/20/vague-patch-notes-whaling-is-a-death-spiral-especially-in-mmos/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/07/20/vague-patch-notes-whaling-is-a-death-spiral-especially-in-mmos/#comments Thu, 20 Jul 2023 15:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=449523 Here we are again with another one of my “let’s put down some important industry notes” columns, and this time we’re talking about whaling. Specifically, we’re talking about whaling as a business term and what it means in terms of video games because there’s a bad tendency to equivocate when a company goes in on […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/07/20/vague-patch-notes-whaling-is-a-death-spiral-especially-in-mmos/feed/ 11 https://massivelyop.com/2023/07/13/vague-patch-notes-which-players-count-in-an-mmo/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/07/13/vague-patch-notes-which-players-count-in-an-mmo/#comments Thu, 13 Jul 2023 15:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=448634 When I first started playing Final Fantasy XI some two decades ago, I went in with no illusions about one thing that seemed clear to me: I would probably not count as a player. And for most of my experience, that seemed to be pretty much on the money. This may seem like an odd […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/07/13/vague-patch-notes-which-players-count-in-an-mmo/feed/ 43 https://massivelyop.com/2023/07/06/vague-patch-notes-the-power-of-the-middle-bit-in-mmos/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/07/06/vague-patch-notes-the-power-of-the-middle-bit-in-mmos/#comments Thu, 06 Jul 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=447631 I knew that Tales of Arise wasn’t really working for me like its immediate predecessor when I started kind of avoiding combat. Now, to a certain extent this is a smart thing to do in the game. You do actually have resource management to worry about between fights, so unlike Tales of Berseria, Arise is […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/07/06/vague-patch-notes-the-power-of-the-middle-bit-in-mmos/feed/ 24 https://massivelyop.com/2023/06/15/vague-patch-notes-so-why-didnt-crowdfunded-mmos-save-the-genre/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/06/15/vague-patch-notes-so-why-didnt-crowdfunded-mmos-save-the-genre/#comments Thu, 15 Jun 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=444827 The past few weeks we’ve been following this freakin’ thing because… well, obvious reasons. But that has me thinking about crowdfunding in general, because we’ve gone in an interesting trajectory. Around the time when I was first starting this job, crowdfunded MMOs (or “Kickstarted MMOs” because most of them did use Kickstarter, but I’m being […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/06/15/vague-patch-notes-so-why-didnt-crowdfunded-mmos-save-the-genre/feed/ 39 https://massivelyop.com/2023/06/08/vague-patch-notes-paying-customers-in-mmos-arent-voting-shares/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/06/08/vague-patch-notes-paying-customers-in-mmos-arent-voting-shares/#comments Thu, 08 Jun 2023 15:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=443670 So let’s take a tour back to the dewy slopes of 2010, when I bought the collector’s edition of Final Fantasy XIV. That would be the original version, yes. That gave us all several months of free subscription time, and when that ended at long last, I… still subscribed. I have the physical collector’s edition […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/06/08/vague-patch-notes-paying-customers-in-mmos-arent-voting-shares/feed/ 19 https://massivelyop.com/2023/06/01/vague-patch-notes-why-we-should-evaluate-mmo-systems-based-on-how-they-break/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/06/01/vague-patch-notes-why-we-should-evaluate-mmo-systems-based-on-how-they-break/#comments Thu, 01 Jun 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=442665 Back before Final Fantasy XIV’s reboot launched, Naoki Yoshida talked about how the developers had plans to make certain primals be world bosses. Players would team up to take them down, and the free companies that managed to land the killing blow would have access to the primal as a powerful summon for a limited […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/06/01/vague-patch-notes-why-we-should-evaluate-mmo-systems-based-on-how-they-break/feed/ 74 https://massivelyop.com/2023/05/25/vague-patch-notes-why-do-people-remember-an-mmo-past-that-didnt-exist/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/05/25/vague-patch-notes-why-do-people-remember-an-mmo-past-that-didnt-exist/#comments Thu, 25 May 2023 15:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=441707 Let’s just start with the premise out of the gate. World of Warcraft launched to sales of 240,000 units on its first day. The best sources I can find gave it 84 servers on launch day. If you assume that every server had the same number of people on it, that everyone who bought the […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/05/25/vague-patch-notes-why-do-people-remember-an-mmo-past-that-didnt-exist/feed/ 85 https://massivelyop.com/2023/05/19/vague-patch-notes-the-power-of-perspective-in-mmos/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/05/19/vague-patch-notes-the-power-of-perspective-in-mmos/#comments Fri, 19 May 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=440705 So now that Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is out, there is a very funny meme that is going around, but it is not funny for the reason that the people who are spreading it think that it’s funny. There is a group of people – and you can figure out what their […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/05/19/vague-patch-notes-the-power-of-perspective-in-mmos/feed/ 19 https://massivelyop.com/2023/05/11/vague-patch-notes-you-cannot-win-on-pay-to-win/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/05/11/vague-patch-notes-you-cannot-win-on-pay-to-win/#comments Thu, 11 May 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=439418 I want you to put a game in your head that you think is pay-to-win. No, you do not have to say it out loud or write it down. For one thing, I won’t be collecting your papers at the end of class, and I won’t hear you if you say it out loud. For […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/05/11/vague-patch-notes-you-cannot-win-on-pay-to-win/feed/ 39 https://massivelyop.com/2023/05/05/vague-patch-notes-gamers-dont-talk-about-aging/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/05/05/vague-patch-notes-gamers-dont-talk-about-aging/#comments Fri, 05 May 2023 15:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=438657 I turned 40 this year. It’s not something that I announced with any particular fanfare, due in no small part to the fact that I was sick on my birthday. (It’s happened before, but it’s never fun.) But it’s true, I’m 40 now, which is kind of amazing to me when I consider that I […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/05/05/vague-patch-notes-gamers-dont-talk-about-aging/feed/ 78 https://massivelyop.com/2023/04/27/vague-patch-notes-can-the-gaming-industry-move-on-from-high-school-please/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/04/27/vague-patch-notes-can-the-gaming-industry-move-on-from-high-school-please/#comments Thu, 27 Apr 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=437418 So this weekend had at least one incident that was, I’m not remotely sorry to say, exceedingly funny. If you’ve been paying any attention to Twitter, you know that Elon Musk’s latest progression through his “actually very stupid and World’s Most Divorced Man” arc involved getting rid of Twitter’s verification system and replacing it with […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/04/27/vague-patch-notes-can-the-gaming-industry-move-on-from-high-school-please/feed/ 46 https://massivelyop.com/2023/04/20/vague-patch-notes-if-theres-any-sort-of-metaverse-its-already-here-and-its-not-what-you-think/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/04/20/vague-patch-notes-if-theres-any-sort-of-metaverse-its-already-here-and-its-not-what-you-think/#comments Thu, 20 Apr 2023 15:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=436387 We’ve had a lot of fun here having a good little giggle about the whole saga (if you want to call it that) of the metaverse, the bugbear of so many half-baked projects that don’t seem to be really going anywhere. It’s also become the favorite talking point of a lot of people who insist […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/04/20/vague-patch-notes-if-theres-any-sort-of-metaverse-its-already-here-and-its-not-what-you-think/feed/ 5 https://massivelyop.com/2023/04/06/vague-patch-notes-e3-is-gone-but-its-only-half-a-victory/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/04/06/vague-patch-notes-e3-is-gone-but-its-only-half-a-victory/#comments Thu, 06 Apr 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=434375 So E3 is dead, and we’ve already shared some of our thoughts on the matter earlier this week. But as someone who literally wrote a whole article about how much I loathe trade shows, I have even more I want to say on the matter. And that starts with an extension of the premise floated […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/04/06/vague-patch-notes-e3-is-gone-but-its-only-half-a-victory/feed/ 6 https://massivelyop.com/2023/03/30/vague-patch-notes-can-anyone-really-cover-games-objectively-when-theres-suffering-built-in-to-them/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/03/30/vague-patch-notes-can-anyone-really-cover-games-objectively-when-theres-suffering-built-in-to-them/#comments Thu, 30 Mar 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=433202 In July of 2021, we started a roundup tag in our tag cloud that most of us probably didn’t expect to still be using nearly two years later. It’s just “blizzard-scandal,” but that kind of says everything we need to. I wrote about it at the time, but since then it has only gotten worse. […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/03/30/vague-patch-notes-can-anyone-really-cover-games-objectively-when-theres-suffering-built-in-to-them/feed/ 46 https://massivelyop.com/2023/03/24/vague-patch-notes-the-objective-truth-of-objectivity-in-games-journalism/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/03/24/vague-patch-notes-the-objective-truth-of-objectivity-in-games-journalism/#comments Fri, 24 Mar 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=432306 All right, folks, real talk: Originally there was going to be a much more sober and depressing column this week, but then this week happened, and while I don’t really want to talk in detail about my personal life, it took a lot of the wind out of my sails. Not in the sense that […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/03/24/vague-patch-notes-the-objective-truth-of-objectivity-in-games-journalism/feed/ 20 https://massivelyop.com/2023/03/16/vague-patch-notes-how-wildstars-first-dungeon-killed-me/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/03/16/vague-patch-notes-how-wildstars-first-dungeon-killed-me/#comments Thu, 16 Mar 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=431080 This is the story of a girl who ran a dungeon in WildStar’s world, and while it looks all right in photographs, I absolutely hated running that. As much as I would like to be able to recruit Josh Hampton to write a new version of the song just for this column introduction, I am […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/03/16/vague-patch-notes-how-wildstars-first-dungeon-killed-me/feed/ 41 https://massivelyop.com/2023/03/09/vague-patch-notes-being-there-or-getting-there-in-mmorpgs/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/03/09/vague-patch-notes-being-there-or-getting-there-in-mmorpgs/#comments Thu, 09 Mar 2023 17:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=430073 Here’s an interesting fact to consider: It took me ages to hit the level cap in Final Fantasy XI. Absolute ages. And no, it’s not because the game was more challenging than modern MMORPGs (because it wasn’t, and there’s a whole column to be written about that some day), nor was it because I played […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/03/09/vague-patch-notes-being-there-or-getting-there-in-mmorpgs/feed/ 15 https://massivelyop.com/2023/03/03/vague-patch-notes-why-im-anticipating-blue-protocol/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/03/03/vague-patch-notes-why-im-anticipating-blue-protocol/#comments Fri, 03 Mar 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=429234 My anticipation for Blue Protocol is something that I cannot adequately explain because at the end of the day it’s more based around a feeling than it is actual evidence. But sometimes those feelings can actually contain some evidence, and so I’m going to be talking about that too while I talk about this game. […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/03/03/vague-patch-notes-why-im-anticipating-blue-protocol/feed/ 10 https://massivelyop.com/2023/02/23/vague-patch-notes-mmo-events-are-not-for-the-high-level-playerbase/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/02/23/vague-patch-notes-mmo-events-are-not-for-the-high-level-playerbase/#comments Thu, 23 Feb 2023 17:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=427973 Let me start with a statement of fact: I actually really like limited-time events in MMORPGs. I don’t like them as a means of conveying major story beats (looking at you, Guild Wars 2; it took you way too long to correct that error). But as a chance to give you something to different to […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/02/23/vague-patch-notes-mmo-events-are-not-for-the-high-level-playerbase/feed/ 5 https://massivelyop.com/2023/02/16/vague-patch-notes-the-three-kinds-of-sunset-in-the-mmo-space/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/02/16/vague-patch-notes-the-three-kinds-of-sunset-in-the-mmo-space/#comments Thu, 16 Feb 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=426967 Not all sunsets are the same, no matter how much you may like a given game. This is one of the things that tends to be hard to understand. Maintenance modes, too. There is a world of difference between the state of affairs with Guild Wars – a title that entered maintenance mode after years […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/02/16/vague-patch-notes-the-three-kinds-of-sunset-in-the-mmo-space/feed/ 9 https://massivelyop.com/2023/02/09/vague-patch-notes-diversions-are-what-makes-the-mmo/ https://massivelyop.com/2023/02/09/vague-patch-notes-diversions-are-what-makes-the-mmo/#comments Thu, 09 Feb 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://massivelyop.com/?p=426045 I am going to put forth a theory today in the Vague Patch Notes column. It is potentially an odd theory, and as sometimes happens, it is not a theory I have thoroughly workshopped or even a theory I am wholly convinced is accurate. But it’s an interesting theory to consider, and I think it […]]]> https://massivelyop.com/2023/02/09/vague-patch-notes-diversions-are-what-makes-the-mmo/feed/ 10