Muckbeast

Permadeath was never a tremendously popular feature in MUDs, but it was common enough that it did have a certain following. Some players consider permadeath a vital component of roleplaying, and they feel it adds a significant amount of excitement and tension to a game.
I certainly understand why no commercial MMORPGs have experimented with the [...]

League of Legends is an MMO RPG/RTS inspired by the Warcraft 3 mod Defense of the Ancients (DotA). It also includes RPG elements in the form of a summoner character that gains levels, trains “abilities” called masteries, and gears up with runes.
Check out this review of League of Legends MMORPG/MMORTS.
Let me know what you think [...]

I read a couple of really good blog posts recently that I highly recommend:
From Spinksville:  You cant heal stupidity!
and
From Bio Break: The Long, Hard Road to Console MMOs
and
From Elder Game: 2009: A year of Shitty MMOs.
For reference, you might find this post from Bio Break really useful: MMO Timeline. It includes dates of every major [...]

I am going to try not to get too esoteric or philosophical. Lets eschew things like success as defined by making people happy, bettering the world, adding good ideas/concepts to the game design space, or all sorts of totally unmeasurable things like that. For the purposes of this discussion, lets focus a little more on [...]

I read this signature file on an MMO forum today: “Remember, in MMO’s whoever achieved more than you is a nolifer, whoever achieved less than you is a noob.”
I chuckled at first, but it is sad how true that mentality is.
What do you think causes this?

… while counting their money?
I don’t expect every, or any, MMO to be a WoW killer. But it strikes me as a pretty dang sad indictment of the genre that time after time, big budget, major publisher MMOs come out and fail miserably.
Read on for examples that include Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, and Champions [...]

I’ve been meaning to blog about this for a while. This article at MMORPG is the final push over the edge.
Most MMOs have gone with the shard/server approach. Each copy of the game has a distinct community. You make characters on a specific server, and the character can only be played on that server. Each [...]

The ugly way Roper drove Hellgate: London and Flagship into bankruptcy is legendary. The greedy subscription model for an action RPG Diablo clone was an exceptionally bad idea. His constant arguing and fighting against respecs was rancid icing on the rotten cake.
In light of that, it was a real head scratcher when Cryptic hired him [...]

By now, many of you have read my article What Went Wrong with Warhammer Online? Is it a failure? Since I wrote the article, new leadership really has not done much to address those issues. In a recent interview, the head dev. of Warhammer put the blame for WAR’s problems on the game being too [...]

I always loved the idea of Guild Wars. I love their business model. I love so many of their game design concepts (full respec in town at will, great end game, many features designed to enhance community and social aspects, etc.). Unfortunately, when I played the game I just couldn’t get into it. The inability [...]