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WRUP: Never use the word 'first'
Welcome back to Massively's What Are You Playing, the game where we tell you what we're playing this weekend and you tell Carbine that WildStar wasn't, in fact, the first MMO ever with mount customizations. The word "first" is a dangerous word in a genre full of geeks with long memories!
WRUP: Statuesque
Welcome back to Massively's What Are You Playing, the game where we tell you what we're playing this weekend and you get sad all over again because World of Darkness. But hey, at least we got some phallic statues, right?
Ask Massively: Newsletters, EVE Online, and the value of alpha previews
Welcome back to a grab-bag edition of Ask Massively. First up is reader Roy, who asked, Do you have any kind of newsletter or weekly email on this site? Nope, no newsletter or email blasts! But there are lots of easy ways to follow our work. If you want the whole shebang, you can follow us through your RSS reader of choice as well as several social media avenues, all outlined in an Ask Massively from last year. If you want just a summary of our best stuff, you could follow just our Week in Review column, which runs every Sunday evening and might just serve your desire for a weekly summary of cool posts. We also publish weekly roundups of MMO in beta testing, crowdfunded MMOs, and pseudo-MMOs, including coverage of some games we don't traditionally cover separately. What else have we got this week? How about an internet spaceships question from Gabe.
EVE Evolved: Six years of EVE Evolved
Six years ago to this exact day, I joined the Massively crew and published the first edition of this column dedicated to the ins and outs of EVE Online. The column has been home to over 300 featured articles since its creation, offering everything from guides and expansion reveals to opinion pieces, fiction, and tales of real in-game events. It's been my pleasure in the past six years to offer the Massively readers a digestible glimpse into the ordinarily somewhat impenetrable world of EVE Online and to introduce new players to the only game (other than Master of Orion II) that's managed to keep me hooked for over a decade. It's been a fantastic year to be a fan of EVE Online, with CCP announcing its long-term vision for deep space colonisation and the game being revitalised through the Odyssey and Rubicon expansions. I've had the opportunity to explore both expansions in this column and to share some hands-on experience with DUST 514 and CCP's upcoming dogfighter EVE Valkyrie. There's been no shortage of opinion pieces this year either, with articles on everything from PvP consequences and twitch controls to whether Star Citizen and Elite are a threat to the sandbox giant. In this edition of EVE Evolved, I round up the best articles from the column's sixth year of operation in one place.
WRUP: Polarization
Welcome back to Massively's What Are You Playing, the game where we tell you what we're playing this weekend and you try to convince us that there's no place for nuance or constructive criticism in the MMO genre because this is war, so pick a side. If you criticize one aspect of a game, that means you hate the whole game forever and ever, right? Right?!
WRUP: Oversaturation
Welcome back to Massively's What Are You Playing, the game where we tell you what we're playing this weekend and you try to convince us that what the genre needs next is a zombie MMOTCG or possibly a zombie MOBA. With motorcycles. And then we make this froggy face at you.
Ask Massively: What's with all the WoW hate?
Today's Ask Massively question comes from Kirk because he wanted to open up a can of worms all over the column apparently. Why do people have to hate on World of Warcraft so much? I quit playing WoW about two years ago and never looked back, but that game encompassed the best gaming experience of my life! Now everyone wants to say its crap. But I have roamed the landscape without a real home for gaming; nothing has ever been as much fun as WoW. What person who plays MMOs didn't play Warcraft? How many of us had a great time in that game at some point? Can't we just leave it at that? I look back and admire a game that brought even my wife to the MMO table! I have no hate, just love for a game that I no longer play, and I think that's OK. Can we all move on now? What is the hold up? Let people who play WoW play WoW, and everyone else can play the game of his or her choice. Why does every chat panel in every game need to have the WoW topic constantly flowing through its veins? Honestly, I'm tired of it. Let's move on already! Because hating is fun! No, wait, that's true, but there's so much more to it than that.
WRUP: Gesundheit
Welcome back to Massively's What Are You Playing, the game where we tell you what we're playing this weekend and you try to convince us that H1Z1 doesn't sound like a four-syllable sneeze. Seriously, say it aloud. It could give Final Fantasy XI: Treasures of Aht Urhgan and EverQuest: The Legacy of Ykesha a run for their money.
WRUP: What is it about bobbleheads
Welcome back to Massively's What Are You Playing, the game where we tell you what we're playing this weekend and you tell us how bobbleheads make people with unusually fat heads really sad. Or just fly around in circles in Rata Sum giggling and photobombing screenshots. Whichever works.
Ask Massively: What happened to open-world MMOs?
A reader named Gabe emailed Massively last year with two questions (I'm getting through all the emails -- I am!). I'll address the second one eventually, but let's do the first one today because it's something I love to talk about: open-world MMOs. What happened to "open world" MMOs? I grew up with giant world MMOs where you would almost never see a load screen. I remember spending countless hours running from end to end of continents exploring and trying to see what I could find. You would run into a city instead of loading a city. I don't feel I am a part of a "world" anymore. After World of Warcraft, I played The Secret World, Star Trek Online, Neverwinter, and a few other closed-world MMOs, and it just pisses me off because I feel as if I am playing a single-player game with multiplayer options instead of a world I am a part of. I think we've got two separate issues here: One's about the literal meaning of open world, and the other's about the feel.
The best of Massively's MMO Family column
While young children aren't Massively's target demographic, we frequently encounter MMOs that appeal to kids as well as MMO gamers with kids. That's why we ran the MMO Family column for over four years. Helmed first by Lisa Poisso and then Karen Bryan, the column reviewed kid-friendly games and offered advice and insight on how to survive as the parent of budding MMO gamers. Enjoy our picks for the very best of their collected work in MMO Family.
WRUP: The artist formerly known as EQN Landmark
Welcome back to Massively's What Are You Playing, the game where we tell you what we're playing this weekend and you tell us how you're as relieved as we are that EverQuest Next Landmark finally ditched the huge and unwieldy brand name and shortened itself to just Landmark. Also is that Pikachu? And you thought you had only to worry about phallic symbols.
The best of Massively's Field Journal and MMO Mechanics columns
During their tenure at Massively, Tina Lauro and Matthew Gollschewski were responsible for two generalist columns on the site: MMO Mechanics and Field Journal, respectively. The Field Journal was dedicated to covering interesting elements of mid-tier games, the sorts of MMOs that are popular but not quite popular enough to merit their own dedicated columns, whereas MMO Mechanics represented a deep-dive into the game mechanics and systems that influence the entire industry. Though the columns had short runs on the site, they both still represent some of our most compelling and interesting work. Enjoy this roundup of their material!
WRUP: Gratuitous marketing ploys
Welcome back to Massively's What Are You Playing, the game where we tell you what we're playing this weekend and you tell us how sideboob is totally relevant to the marketing of an MMO strategy game. These are the people who made ArcheAge, folks.
Ask Massively: Too many MMOs still lack serious LFG tools
David is angry. No, David is pissed. And he's right to be. He wrote to Ask Massively with the following rant: Developers clearly see PvE instances as a key part of the MMO experience. So why do so many of them fail to ensure I can access this content with a solid group finder? I have been trying to play something other than World of Warcraft (which does have a group finder) for a number of years. But even my current pick, The Secret World, commits this sin. I usually end up annoyed at spending time in LFG channels trying to form a group, so I give up, first on grouping and then on the game. So why do they design games where they assume I am joining the game with four like-minded individuals who have the same gaming schedule as I do? Why do they assume I want to spend time in public channels showing how little I know about the game whilst trying to form a group? Don't make me go back to WoW. Unless I can access your content, there is no point in making the content! I have a theory, but you're not going to like it, and you might end up back in WoW when I'm done.
The best of Massively's League of Legends column, The Summoner's Guidebook
Former Massively writer Patrick Mackey was first brought onto the team to cover Champions Online in his Behind the Mask column, and he did so with technical expertise and brutal honesty that was even better-suited for his ultimate column here: The Summoners Guidebook, which for two years covered Riot Games' League of Legends, one of the biggest games on the planet. Today, in honor of that column's lengthy run, we share the very best of Patrick's articles. If you'd like to follow his future League of Legends blogging, you can find him at Boot Camp for Gamers.
WRUP: Geopolitical conspiracies
Welcome back to Massively's What Are You Playing, the game where we tell you what we're playing this weekend and you tell us how the ArcheAge IP-blocking fiasco is part of a grand geopolitical conspiracy related to Russian politics in Eurasia and not just, you know, the relatively petty squabbles of international video games conglomerates. Also, give us ArcheAge.
WRUP: Fat chocobo secretly hates you
Welcome back to Massively's What Are You Playing, the game where we tell you what we're playing this weekend and you tell us that you really, really need a fat chocobo to ride and nothing else will do. We're sure you're planning to ride it, not to put it in a fat microwave and see whether the Peep experiment scales up. For science.
Ask Massively: And the money will follow
A reader named Josh recently wrote to Massively to ask about the viability of a career in games journalism. He's not a kid with stars in his eyes; he's an adult who works for an elite tech company, and his dad is a published journalist himself. He once focused his MMO hobby into a livestreaming channel and blog but shut them down because of the time involved, and now he's considering whether a career shift to doing what he loves might be worthwhile. As a 30-year old with a family of three, I have a feeling that it would be very difficult to transition into the world of technology journalism. My impression is that it is an industry that does not really pay that much, and therein lies my quandary. My question for you at Massively is whether it is really possible to pursue the field of technology/gaming journalism and still support a family? And what traits are desirable in a technology journalist? Do editors look for people who have journalism degrees and existing experience, or is it a situation where you can step up to the plate and impress someone with your existing skill? How many of you that work for Massively actually support yourselves and your families based on your journalism, and what did it take to get to that point in your careers? Unfortunately, Josh's gut feeling is correct and terribly timely.
The best of Massively's Guild Counsel column
Karen Bryan is a seasoned MMORPG gamer and guildleader who cut her MMO teeth on EverQuest and went on to run guilds in Vanguard, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and beyond. That made her the perfect choice to pen Massively's Guild Counsel column, through which Karen dispensed advice to guild leaders, guild members, raiders, and even guild-less gamers for over three years. In honor of her column's long run, today we round up the very best of her Guild Counsel articles, those saturated in her trademark wry humor, wisdom, and timeless advice for MMO players old and new. Enjoy.
