Category Archives: MMO design

The MMO genre really has been terrible for a long time

Posted on January 25, 2016 by SynCaine

TAGN has a post about the PC Gamer 50 most important PC games, which includes five MMOs (UO, EQ, EVE, WoW, Second Life). As noted in his post, all those MMOs came out prior to 2004, which basically tells you … Continue reading →

Posted in Guild Wars, MMO design, Rant, Uncategorized, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft | 9 Comments

Warhammer Online killed the MMO genre

Posted on January 19, 2016 by SynCaine

Sensationalized blog title for all of the clicks! Except not really, because WAR really did kill the MMO genre, at least in terms of being a mainstream genre similar in popularity to say RPGs, Sports titles, or FPS. Now don’t … Continue reading →

Posted in Age of Conan, Aion, Camelot Unchained, Crowfall, Dark Age of Camelot, Darkfall Online, Lord of the Rings Online, MMO design, Rift, Star Citizen, SW:TOR, Uncategorized, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft | 10 Comments

2016 MMO predictions

Posted on December 21, 2015 by SynCaine

2015 was, FFXIV aside, basically a waste in the MMO space in terms of what was delivered. A bit of ‘wake up’ progress was made regarding F2P MMOs, but for the most part nothing new of significance arrived, though some … Continue reading →

Posted in Camelot Unchained, Crowfall, Final Fantasy XIV, Inquisition Clan, MMO design, World of Warcraft | 1 Comment

Defeat leads to victory, and victory means defeat

Posted on December 8, 2015 by SynCaine

How many times have you quit playing a game because you lost? How many times have you quit a game because you won? The first is rarer than the second, right? We view defeat as motivation to improve and try … Continue reading →

Posted in Fallout 3, MMO design, Random, Rant, Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Crowfall: Game design that has also grown up

Posted on September 17, 2015 by SynCaine

Crowfall is the MMO I’ve pinned my future hopes on (and a decent chunk of change is backing that up), but since it is still fairly far away, and I know I can ‘catch up’ when I get access to … Continue reading →

Posted in Crowfall, MMO design | 3 Comments

GW2: The new F2P champion has arived

Posted on August 31, 2015 by SynCaine

I feel like I should post about GW2 going F2P, only I can’t call it a ‘downgrade to the minor leagues’ because the game wasn’t a sub MMO to begin with. Side-grade I guess? Which, thinking more about it, is … Continue reading →

Posted in Guild Wars, League of Legends, MMO design, RMT | 7 Comments

ARK – A micro-MMO

Posted on August 26, 2015 by SynCaine

My obsession with ARK continues, and it has now bled into the MMO-thinking part of my brain. To be very clear, ARK isn’t an MMO, but in a lot of ways it certainly plays like one. The big thing is … Continue reading →

Posted in ARK, EVE Online, MMO design, World of Warcraft | 1 Comment

Hitting rocks to build success

Posted on August 13, 2015 by SynCaine

For me the simplest measure of how much you liked a game is how long you played it. I think there is certainly value in a great 10 hour experience, but IMO no matter how great that 10 hours was, … Continue reading →

Posted in ARK, EVE Online, Final Fantasy XIV, MMO design, World of Warcraft | 9 Comments

WoW Legion: We get to watch it all burn down to the ground

Posted on August 7, 2015 by SynCaine

Oh New Blizzard. After attempting “We are making the game like Vanilla again, come back!” with WoD, and failing to actually deliver, New Blizzard is back with “We are making the game like TBC, our one good expansion, come back!”, … Continue reading →

Posted in Final Fantasy XIV, MMO design, World of Warcraft | 15 Comments

FFXIV: The good kind of difficult

Posted on July 6, 2015 by SynCaine

One of the aspects that soured me on WoW post TBC (although even prior to WotLK this was already somewhat of a trend in the game, just much slower) was the decrease in challenge in the ‘normal’ game, with only … Continue reading →

Posted in Final Fantasy XIV, MMO design, World of Warcraft | 4 Comments