MMORPG Games & MMO News – MMOCrunch

I still seem to be hooked on the topic of risk and reward in MMOs. This article continues along that vein, but instead of the harsh, cold realities of item loss, we are going to think in terms of the spirit of the Olympic Games and talk about the sport of Competitive Dungeoneering.
Betting – In this [...]

Last month, I posted a bit about the concept of risk in MMOs and the conclusion I came up with is that most modern themepark MMOs have sanitized their gameplay such that risk is no longer a factor. I feel that risk is an intriguing design element and that without it, our MMOs are less [...]

League of Legends (LoL), is a Defense of the Ancients (DotA) game made by Riot Games. I have logged in countless numbers of hours into LoL during the past few weeks but not once did I think of it as an MMORPG until I saw this news feature on the League of Legends website. LoL [...]

Plenty of games on the market are geared towards females, but it’s no secret that not every female wants to play Cake Mania and Imagine: Fashion Designer. Women who aren’t just into fashion, makeup, and cooking are left with few games that speak to them personally. Until recently, women and gaming have hardly been mentioned [...]

I am currently working on a post that talks about ways to create risk in MMOs and how designers might make that risk palatable to an otherwise risk-averse themepark gaming population. In the meantime, Callan S. made a comment I felt was interesting enough to discuss. In response to the idea that Eve Online is [...]

I’ve had these Selentine Keys in my bank for quite a while now and have never seen a Selentine Chest (the lowest level “cool” chest) in which to use them. Recently, I found a nice spot, with an easily accessible chest and nothing more than Dire Zombies guarding it. Dire Zombies can still give me headaches, [...]

My last post about Risk versus Reward started a couple interesting conversations both here and offline. Those conversations brought a couple of interesting points to light.
The main thing I have discovered is that most players and game devs tend to jam the concepts of challenge and risk together and call that “risk”. If an encounter is hard, [...]

Aion’s Issues
This will probably be my last write up regarding Aion.  If you have been following my previous articles, I have detailed my play experience with the game by focusing on the 1-10 experience, 10-25 early Abyss, and the 25 and beyond.  This will be my last word on Aion for the time being because [...]

Aion: Post Launch Impressions
It has been about a few weeks since the NA launch of Aion, so I wanted to take some time to give my Aion review. In these first few weeks I have been exposed to a variety of gameplay experiences in the game, so I am going to talk about a few [...]

Recently a new ratings system for games was proposed on another website, I took a little of that framework and adjusted it for my own reviews. It is simple and still in it’s “new idea” phase, as I didn’t want to complicate things (too much). It’s also open for discussion and if anyone has an [...]