Bill Murphy

Like so many of you, we’ve been playing Pokémon Go a lot since it launched this week. And we’ve noticed something pretty amazing happening around the game… it’s got millions people playing together, in real life, as strangers. Pokémon Go has essentially become the world’s biggest MMO in a matter of days.

After hours and hours of prepping, tweaking, massaging content - we launched the new MMORPG.com site around midnight EST last night. The site functionality itself was ready, if needing a bit of polish. What wasn't ready? The code base and the infrastructure. For now, we're back to the old site, but not for long!

The time has finally come. Our brand new site design is almost ready to go live. This coming Tuesday, June 21st, MMORPG.com will be down for maintenance for an estimated 24 hours as we bring over the new site and migrate all the data from the old one. Read on for what it all means for you, our loyal readers.

Streaming isn’t for everyone. Some people love to watch, some love to actually be the streamer, and others couldn’t care less about the idea of people watching other people game. But for those who do actually cast, there’s a lot of logistics behind being a good participatory streamer. And there’s a set of tools I’ve been using for months now that makes being an interactive caster an easy task: Restream and Restream Chat.

Just yesterday, rather out of the blue, it was announced that My.Com (Skyforge, Armored Warfare) will be bringing NetEase’s popular eastern MMORPG Revelation Online into the EU and NA territories. We’ve done a little research, and are sharing with you some of the reasons that you might want to keep your eyes on this import MMO.

Now that they’re both in the wild, the war rages on between fans of Battleborn and Overwatch – two similar (at first glance) games competing for gamers’ attention this summer. While there’s little doubt that Blizzard’s shooter is dominating the marketing airwaves, our own Suzie Ford recently penned a column on why you can love and play both. But for Bill Murphy, there are some obvious parallels to two rival MMOs from 2004…

If you haven’t yet played Duelyst, you really should. A mix of CCG with a tactical battlefield like Final Fantasy Tactics, and a deep lore and history akin to a fine Joe Abercrombie novel, Duelyst is something special. We recently sat down with developer Counterplay Games founder and CEO Keith Lee to chat about the game’s progress since funding in 2014, and its impending launch and the future.

A while back at PAX Prime, Goblinworks’ former CEO Ryan Dancey said that he believed WildStar would very likely be the last big budget MMORPG for some time. Many, though hopeful we were, never expected EverQuest Next to come out in any state resembling its proposed ideas. Now, with the former on the ropes, and the latter completely cancelled, pundits and fans alike are bemoaning the death of the MMORPG. Which, not surprisingly, is something that’s been heralded for years.

The MMO genre is absolutely one of the most lucrative in gaming, with millions of players around the globe, across PCs and now consoles. But there’s one thing publishers and investors realize after a decade of chasing Azeroth… you can’t replicate what WoW managed to do. That said, everyone knows that long-term returns on investment can be gained with the right project. Today, we’re going to look at AAA studios I expect are making a new MMO, even if they haven’t announced it yet.

Short and sweet, I just wanted to take a moment to wish you all a Merry Christmas from the staff here at MMORPG.com. Read on if you’re in a cheerful mood, and if you’re not, read on still. Maybe a little cheer from us to you will thaw that frozen heart of yours.

During the heady days of post-Azeroth consumer boom and investor interest, the MMORPG was booming. So many new games… and so many that didn’t meet expectations of consumers or investors. Now, 11 years after the launch of World of Warcraft, it’s clearer now than ever before: we need a hero to save us from extinction.

Sword Art Online is largely an unknown to me. I know it’s an anime, manga, and videogame series about a group of kids who play a virtual reality MMO known as Sword Art Online. I also know they the main characters were stuck in this world fighting to the death (as if you died you died in real life). It’s a pretty heady storyline, but Lost Song is my first real dive into the world of Sword Art Online.

Late Wednesday I got an email invite from Blizzard’s PR about a special press conference with the cast and crew of the Warcraft movie. Since the trailer premiered at the show, the cast and director were on hand, and it was as good a time as any to chat with the actors about their characters, their ties to Warcraft itself, and the process of making an effects heavy film.

This review is going to be a bit different from our usual fare on MMORPG. For one reason, the Park isn’t so much a game as it is an interactive movie, and a short one at that. You’ll probably only need 1-2 hours to play through Lorraine’s nightmarish experience, but if you’re a fan of Funcom’s Horror MMORPG The Secret World, it’s more than worth the price of admission.

The Park, a new single player horror adventure from MMO developer Funcom is launching on October 27th. We recently toured a bit of the game with its Creative Director Joel Bylos, and came away quite impressed. Build upon the foundations of Dreamworld tech with the Unreal Engine on the front end, The Park will undoubtedly give The Secret World and horror gaming fans alike something to talk about this Halloween.