Filed under: World of Warcraft , Culture , Game mechanics , Opinion , Anti-Aliased So, it’s late night on Wednesday night, I just got done watching Top Gear , and I need something to write about. Lucky for me that Blizzard has given me the perfect topic — MMO privacy. Thanks to a new development in their World of Warcraft Armory program, privacy advocates are up in arms and I’ve got a topic to discuss.

Filed under: World of Warcraft , Fantasy , Age of Conan , EverQuest II , Culture , Game mechanics , Lore , MMO industry , Quests , PvE , Opinion , Hands-on , Virtual worlds Believe it or not, grind is an essential part of an MMO and we might be pretty lost without it. Repetitive content is the cornerstone of the MMO genre but it’s not all just smacking monsters over the head for hours on end or completing yet another “kill ten rats” quest

guardian.co.uk Gamer Sues Activision, Calls in Depeche Mode Guitarist Undercover Music News Depeche Mode’s Martin L. Gore is an expert in alienation, according to a bizarre lawsuit from a World of Warcraft fan

Filed under: World of Warcraft , Fantasy , Sci-fi , Fallen Earth , Game mechanics , Guides , New titles At Massively, we like to focus on making more MMOs accessible to more people. That accessibility to other MMOs is initially started by the 800 lb gorilla: World of Warcraft . Without WoW , a large percentage of MMO players would not be enjoying their current game today, even if they haven’t stuck by WoW this whole time.

In Part 1 of our Aion Econ series, we covered the very basics including Kinah, Inventory, Warehouse, and Mailboxes. In this next segment, we are going to discuss gear types and their quality as well as consumables. Item Quality There are different item quality types but the different colors don’t neccessarily corospond to the ones in WoW.

Filed under: World of Warcraft , Fantasy , Aion , Lineage 2 , Game mechanics , Lore , MMO industry Aion dev Yongchan Jee spilled the beans on the game’s origins as part of a GDC Europe Q and A session.

Filed under: World of Warcraft , Fantasy , Business models , Game mechanics , News items , Browser , Free Realms GDC Austin has announced that SOE president John Smedley will be providing the keynote for the event, which takes place next month. Entitled: “From Daggers and Dragons to Kart Racing, Cooking and Concerts … It’s a Whole New World”, the keynote — which takes place on Wednesday 16 September — is an obvious allusion to SOE’s very own Free Realms , which has been one of the most hyped freemium PC MMOs of the year and will eventually see a PS3 release.

Filed under: World of Warcraft , Fantasy , Sci-fi , Aion , EVE Online , EverQuest II , Business models , Classes , Game mechanics , MMO industry , PvP , Leveling , PvE , Opinion , Browser , Virtual worlds , All Points Bulletin , Crime , Final Fantasy XIV , Cities XL , Redefining MMOs Just think about that title for a second. Of all the games genres you’ve played, isn’t it MMOs that feel most like carbon copies of one another?

Filed under: World of Warcraft , Fantasy , Sci-fi , Age of Conan , EVE Online , Lord of the Rings Online , Culture , Economy , Game mechanics , The Daily Grind These days, without descending into total geek fan girl mode, phones are all about apps. Whether you have a Pre, an iPhone, a Google Android handset or one of the new, shiny Nokia phones, apps (short for applications) are usually an important part of how phones work

Filed under: World of Warcraft , Fantasy , Business models , Economy , Game mechanics , MMO industry , News items , Second Life , Free-to-play , Casual GigaOM has posted up a fascinating feature by Wagner James Au which claims that World of Warcraft and Second Life , the two best known of the MMO major players, are not the be all and end all of virtual worlds. Far from it

Filed under: World of Warcraft , Fantasy , Sci-fi , Age of Conan , Aion , EVE Online , Game mechanics , The Daily Grind MMOs are well known for variety, in fact they’re famous for it. The world (whichever you might choose) is quite literally your oyster, You can mine, you can craft, you can kill and you can quest.

Filed under: World of Warcraft , Fantasy , Game mechanics , News items WAR is known for its weekly outpourings of info and lore in the infamous Grab Bags, those expansive Q and A’s where players can submit their questions to the devs and sometimes get very strange answers. Well, issue 20 has just been released to the masses, bringing with it the answers to twelve players’ questions. The subjects are pretty wide ranging too, covering everything from the possibility of new races and changes in class mechanics, spells and abilities to some pretty weird bugs, including this little gem: Question: My Marauder’s hair color changes when I zone or mutate

Filed under: World of Warcraft , Fantasy , Aion , Culture , Events, in-game , Game mechanics , Lore , The Daily Grind , Races I’ve played Alliance since Day One of my time in World of Warcraft . Granted I’ve dabbled now and then with Horde, I’ve always been so depressed by the starting zones that I never went further than level 4

Filed under: World of Warcraft , Fantasy , Sci-fi , EVE Online , Game mechanics , MMO industry , Browser , The Daily Grind , Legal The other day , I watched this demo of Gaikai , a new service being spearheaded by the legendary games developer David Perry .

Filed under: World of Warcraft , Fantasy , Sci-fi , EVE Online , Game mechanics , MMO industry , Browser , The Daily Grind , Legal The other day , I watched this demo of Gaikai , a new service being spearheaded by the legendary games developer David Perry . The idea is a simple one: using a browser you can access everything from MMOs to racing games and even the memory-hog that is Photoshop with all the actual software installed on a remote server and accessed via the cloud . Now it seems like an awesome undertaking but I came out of it feeling really impressed.

Filed under: World of Warcraft , Fantasy , Sci-fi , Age of Conan , EVE Online , Game mechanics , Free-to-play , The Daily Grind , Free Realms No MMO is perfect, although some cut it pretty close (I’ll leave it up to you to decide which).

Filed under: World of Warcraft , Fantasy , Events, in-game , Exploits , Game mechanics , News items As epic scandals go, WoW has had its fair share and the latest — centred around a rather boring looking shirt called Martin Fury — has had everyone talking over at our sister site WoW Insider.

Filed under: World of Warcraft , Fantasy , Sci-fi , Entropia Universe , Culture , Game mechanics , Opinion , Second Life , Behind the Curtain , Virtual worlds I was feeling lost for a little while there. My mojo wasn’t working, the Force was not strong with me, etc

Filed under: World of Warcraft , Fantasy , Culture , Game mechanics , Opinion , Behind the Curtain So, I’m back in the saddle.

Filed under: World of Warcraft , Fantasy , Classes , Game mechanics , Patches , PvP , PvE , Opinion , Anti-Aliased It’s not too often that I actually get mail dropped in my box. My column is usually so loudmouthed that people just usually complain in the comment box instead of taking the time to send me a well worded e-mail.