There’s been a lively discussion around the blogosphere over the last day or so, around the topic of Free To Play games and their value for money. Sounds like an oxymoron? Not really. After all, Free To Play games still have to make money somewhere – and that’s where the trouble starts: Klepsacovic muses on [...]

Lots of good posts this week, and I was slightly tardy on looking through them all – so here’s a Saturday update of all the good stuff I didn’t get to in the week. Enjoy! Doone presents a great roundup of the discussion of “adult content” in MMOs and gaming recently, plus a look at [...]

A really fascinating discussion came up earlier this week, as longtime MMO blogger Syp “finished” The Secret World. He wrote a great piece looking at his time with the game, and thinking about things he would change if he was Game Director For A Day – which is interesting reading on its own. But then [...]

Want some deep insight into how MMO design works? Like, really, really deep? We’ve got a good one for you today, then. Eric at Elder Game has written a stormer of a post looking at pet classes, and the problems of balancing them in MMOs – which then goes into how balance works in an [...]

It’s “honking big announcements” time in the WoW world once again, as Blizzard unveils what’s coming up in the new patch. Some of it – like the new “Virtual Realm” idea – is still a bit too fresh to have many reactions out yet, but one announcement from last week has set off massive waves. [...]

That’s the rousing conclusion that The Godmother comes to this week. As we hit the end of the first week in June, and after May’s subscription drop and even discussion of WoW’s end, she’s extremely bullish on World of Warcraft’s future. Indeed, she thinks that it might be about to get a massive positive push? [...]

Cynwise’s stats on the WoW playerbase are rapidly becoming one of the highlights of the patch cycle. For those of you who don’t know: every couple of months, Cynwise has had an ongoing project to investigate what classes in WoW are being played, getting to endgame, and participating in various types of content – and [...]

I’d never really thought about this, but one of the big cultural differences between MMOs is how they handle their updates. For WoW, of course, each patch release is a mini-event – there’s buildup, there’s ferocious argument, there’s a tsunami of information accompanying each release. But Guild Wars 2 has a very different policy – [...]

DUST 514 is still one of the most interesting experiments going on in the MMORPG sphere at the moment – a free-to-play MMO shooter that exists in the same world as, and theoretically interacts directly with, the long-running player-led space game EVE Online. But Jester thinks that its future is much, much brighter. In a [...]

I think we’ve all had these, in almost any MMO – the quest that’s just so fun, has such a nice side-perk, or is so key to the story that you’ll never want to complete it. Today Rades looks at his “I will never” quests from WoW, from the story to the just plain fun. [...]

What’s the best thing that many MMOs could do to improve immersion? Shut their lead character up. At least, that’s what Ravious contended this week, in a post that’s sure to make any MMO developer who has spent tens of thousands on voice acting unhappy… “In The Old Republic and Guild Wars 2 my character [...]

If there’s one area in which MMOs differ more than any other, it’s economy. From Guild Wars 2′s uber-accessible model to Everquest 1′s “go stand somewhere and shout”, via the massive player-run commercial empires of Star Wars Galaxies (and the equally huge and even more cutthroat world of EVE), no two worlds work the same. [...]

Everyone has a wishlist. But what rises to the top? Machination had an interesting idea – to trawl through some of the biggest “mmo wishlist” threads on forums out there, and compile a list of most-requested features. So, what does the modern MMO player want in 2013? ” Character customization: “to make my character unique [...]

5.3! Advancing plot! New Dailies! Yep, WoW has moved on again. But what does the community think of the new patch? Big Bear Butt shares his initial impressions of the patch as a whole, including the new “pets drop from raids” mechanic – “Blizzard has sure succeeded in getting my butt out there to do [...]

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 [...]