There’s no shortage of new MMOs rushing out to meet us these days, it would seem. Neverwinter, Defiance, Firefall, and the list goes on. But will any of them ever achieve permanence? Will the community of roaming MMO players ever settle on a single game as they did on WoW, so many years ago? Syl’s [...]

Yep, it’s that time again! There have been spectacularly few changes to most classes in WoW’s Patch 5.3, but here are all our Quick-Start Guides – including summaries of what’s changed – updated to Patch 5.3: Tanks Brewmaster Monk in Patch 5.3 Protection Paladin in Patch 5.3 Protection Warrior in Patch 5.3 Guardian Druid in [...]

I’m a bit crunched at the moment working very hard on my latest film (starring People You’ve Probably Heard Of – more details soon), so here’s a catch-up of some of the very cool posts I haven’t managed to feature in full over the last week or so: The Grumpy Elf offers an amusing look [...]

Longer-term readers will remember last year’s New Blogger Initiative, an effort from Justin Olivetti, aka Syp, to encourage new bloggers to join the MMO community. Well, it’s been a year – so how has the NBI turned out? Are many bloggers from it still going? It turns out, as a number of bloggers marking the [...]

You know that guy? Or that girl? In your guild? Well, the chances are that if you spend enough time in the world of MMORPGs and pass through enough guilds, you’ll see their like again. And again, and again. It’s ground that bloggers have covered before, but this week Shintar’s put together an entertaining summary [...]

Lots of new titles bubbling up or about to explode onto the MMO scene right now! Here’s a quick round up of the reports bloggers have posted in the last week from new MMOs: West Karana has posted continuing first impressions of Neverwinter after a few weeks – “I’ve played Neverwinter for a couple of [...]

It’s the big – nay, huge – news of the month in the MMO blogosphere: according to publishers Activision, World of Warcraft has dropped 14% of its subscribers, 1,300,000 people, since the fourth quarter of 2012. That’s massive. Does it mean WoW is dying? Is there likely to be another WoW expansion in light of [...]

Yep, it’s time for a Friday Evening Roundup! Everything from prettiness in LoTRO to an intriguing on-the-ground review of Age Of Wushu in our “stuff we couldn’t fit in the rest of the week” linkpost: Julian at Kill Ten Rats has been playing Age Of Wushu, and finds it somewhat quirky, but very appealing – [...]

Last week was the annual EVE Fanfest, and as usual, there’s been no shortage of interesting news – including some rumours about the World of Darkness MMO that sadly I’ve not been able to verify. But perhaps the most interesting news comes from Jester, who has been reporting on the apparent imbalance at the Fanfest [...]

I imagine most of us would say “No”. But are we right? As the Kickstarter campaign for Camelot Unchained – which at time of writing isn’t looking like it’ll succeed – enters its last few hours, Darren Henderson of OnRPG writes an impassioned editorial claiming nothing less than CU’s place as the MMO industry’s last, [...]

“I’ve got lag!” We all hate it, we all hate to say it – but do we understand it? Maverick indie MMO designer Eric at Elder Game has been hearing that phrase from his players a lot lately – so this week, he’s put together a fascinating Field Guide To The Lag Monster. It’s aimed [...]

The latest contender on the ever-more-crowded fantasy MMORPG block is out – Neverwinter, based on 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons and from “Star Trek Online” developers Cryptic. It’s another Free To Play MMO – but that doesn’t mean the time you’d spend on it is worthless. So, is it worth spending that time? Apparently, yes. [...]

Kickstarter has launched a bunch of exciting new MMO experiments, from Pathfinder to Richard Garriott’s new project. But one of the most talked-about Kickstarter projects so far, Camelot Unchained, is still short of its targets – and may never meet them. Spinks takes an insightful look at the way that the Camelot Unchained campaign has [...]

Between the birth of the modern MMO and now, the trend has been toward increasing accessibility, increased convenience and less time commitment. But, as many people have said, that comes at the cost of a social fabric in modern MMOs. At the same time, most people believe that it’s now impossible to go back – [...]

Interested in trying out a new MMO? As usual, there are more options out there than anyone could have time to explore. Here are the latest batch of reports from brave pioneers venturing into the latest, greatest, or just strangest options available in the MMOSphere… Healing The Masses has been checking out Darkfall, and so [...]

We finish off the week with a short, fun, interesting piece from Bravetank, as she delves once again into the cold, unforgiving space of EVE Online. Ever wondered what might possess someone to jump into something that’s famously one of the least friendly and least forgiving game environments available? Well, Bravetank’s not only done it [...]

How do you design for a massive game like WoW? The most obvious approach would be to tailor your content toward the average player. But who exactly is that? Today we’ve got two posts looking at just that question. Firstly, Tobold takes on the perennial “hardcore vs casual” debate with some Real World Statistics: “The [...]

Love it or hate it (and I think regular readers know my opinion by now), WoW’s LFR continues to be one of the most debate-worthy and interesting experiments in the MMO world at the moment. Today we’ve got two really interesting, rather opposed views on the entire thing. First, we have Dinear at Forever A [...]

Eric Heimburg’s Project Gorgon is absolutely fascinating, and I make no apology for featuring it as often as I do. He’s trying to do the impossible – create an independent, full-featured, 3D MMORPG that’s (in some senses at least) competitive with the best of the genre. And as he does so, he’s blogging the entire [...]

Ah, the story of our favourite MMO. That’s why we play, right? To learn what happens to our favourite heroes, villains, and… Wait, what? No? MMOs appear to have disappeared down a “story” rabbit-hole as of 2013. From the increasing linearity of much of WoW to Guild Wars 2′s “All Trahearne, all the time” plotline, [...]

Seems like things aren’t going too well in World of Warcraft’s Raid Finder at the moment. Whilst that’s not exactly a surprise – the Raid Finder is one of the major reasons I’m not playing WoW much right now – it’s interesting to see just why things are going so wrong. We’ve seen two great [...]

Three quick links for excellent articles I found last week – or in one case the announcement of a really cool new project that I hope does really well! Keen argues that MMOs desperately need a counter-revolution – a move backward in game design – “MMOs were once achieving certain things, progressing (EQ/AC to DAoC [...]

Tobold wrote a fascinating article last week on a topic I’d never really thought about – why is it that MMOs at least appear to have a far bigger community online than pen-and-paper games? Obviously, MMOs are a larger phenomenon in society. And equally, Tobold’s better known as an MMO blogger than a tabletop blogger. [...]

We’ve had a great crop of “impressions” posts in the last couple of days for a variety of new or new-ish additions to the MMO world. I’d not had time to check most of these out, so I found everything here really interesting – and if you’re considering what to play next, or whether to [...]

EVE Online is more “real” than many MMOs in a lot of ways – but one of the most innovative is its “player council”, which actually acts as a form of government, directly reporting to and advising the game developers. It’s a very big deal in the EVE world – and a fascinating experiment for [...]