🎬 Premiering Wed at 7 PM PT: The Making of Guild Wars: Celebrating 25 Years of ArenaNet! Go behind the scenes of the franchise, the people who built it, & the community that calls Tyria home. Register to get notified when it goes live: www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpm2...

Properly heartbreaking stuff. Especially considering quite a few of these were close to prime time.

Magazine advertising for Everquest by 989 Studios & Sony Computer Entertainment in the issue #7 of PC Accelerator, in March 1999

Always find it super interesting how MMO servers can organically develop communities with their own personalities.

So, today I'm announcing a new book project... and doing a call for papers: crpgbook.wordpress.com/2025/10/31/t... It's an anthology of video game history outside the usual US perspective - an accessible & exciting panorama of different realities - and I'll pay 300 USD per article. Please share :)

From crime sims to horse girl games, here are 10 MMOs that took a gaming theme and turned it into a full-fledged MMO:

Shocked and saddened by the New World news. Cruel. Shameful. Completely unnecessary. Wishing the best for the passionate, talented people who just lost their jobs.

Huge thanks to @thevideogamelibrary.org and the good folks at CRC Press for sorting me out with a copy of this very big and very essential book. Even if you've read Bartle's original edition of Designing Virtual Worlds, you need to check out this expanded Second Edition. Eagerly awaiting Vol. 2...

Halloween festivities across the MMO world, 2025 edition - we're rounding up all the MMO Halloween events we can find (and adding as we go!)

Perfect Ten: The best MMOs for the year-round Halloween season

From WoW killers that never materialized to waiting on MMOs that still haven't launched, here are 10 things that haven't changed about the MMORPG genre since 2015

New Release - Runescape - The Official Handbook (2006) [PC]

There is a new LEGENDARY Museum in @swglegends.bsky.social #SWG #SWGLegends

Xfire – that is, Xf1re – is back to serve up some nostalgia to the old-school gaming social community

Here's a very old screenshot from Shenmue Online. Though there's a lot that remains unknown about the unreleased MMO, the locations and setting scream Shenmue to us. Maybe one day we'll learn more about this strange chapter of Shenmue's history! #ThrowbackThursday #SEGA #LetsGetShenmue4

Face of Mankind rogue server Empire Rising begins its open beta tomorrow

The third Digimon MMO just got an update adding an official English translation. This YouTuber speculates that a global version of the game might be imminent. Doesn't sound unreasonable given the current hype surrounding the IP (Time Stranger, Beatbreak, Alysion). www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA48...

My blog has been quiet for quite a few months now, but I've been secretly busy. I'll be announcing my new book at the end of August. mmofolklorist.com/2025/08/01/a...

#LOTRO Weatherstock, baby! It's been a long time. Hey, who invited the Nazgul?

Getting close to wrapping up our filming week for the 20th Anniversary Guild Wars Documentary we’ve been commissioned for via @lostandfound.media. I’m always fascinated by just the breadth of history that successful MMO’s bring to the table.

Love this new piece from @sypster.bsky.social.

In light of the Hellraiser reception, can someone please give Gun Interactive permission to repurpose their tone-perfect Texas Chain Saw Massacre assets into a singleplayer title now?

Can't believe my favourite horror franchise is getting a game adaptation that looks *that* good. I am so ready for @hellraisergame.bsky.social to give me terrible, terrible nightmares.

Snapshots of a different time. A website called 'Jedi Business', which specialised in the sale of Jedi characters in Star Wars Galaxies. Looks like they had pivoted hard into selling credits by the end of 2005 😬

Digging into a Russian CD-ROM full of bootleg and cracked games from the late 90s and early 2000s, and found a juicy bit of SEGA action with... PHANTASY STAR ONLINE. This appears to be an eng-translated, offline and online version of the PC port of PSO that was released in Japan only in 2001. 🧵

Big refresh to my list of rogue servers for dead MMOs. Only a couple of new games added, but lots of updated links and new servers for the 68(!) games on there. mmofolklorist.com/2022/07/25/t...

This is a well-measured take. The industry is clearly shifting, and, even as someone who loves live service games, it's hard to argue that it will probably be for the better.

In addition, I'm very excited to share today that we've been commissioned by ArenaNet to film a documentary in celebration of Guild Wars' 20th Anniversary. My team and I leave this weekend to get that filmed via our work for hire arm, @lostandfound.media!

I'm thrilled to share that Better Together, my @shacknews.com #longread about the making of @everquest.bsky.social 🧝‍♀️ is now a book 📖! You can read it: 💻 For free at Shacknews: www.shacknews.com/article/1104... 📚 In hardcover, paperback, or on Kindle: www.amazon.com/Better-Toget... Enjoy!

This is a straight truth bomb. Bartle's 'Designing Virtual Worlds' and 'Postmortems' by @raphkoster.bsky.social are the perfect place to start but there are heaps of great books out there. ... and there's one more set to be announced next month 🤫

Corellia is a certain vibe in #SWG

"Light... Darkness... Internet... A New World..." A promotional video for the beta of Phantasy Star Online for Dreamcast: coming to the NET in 2000! Such amazing hype. I played some PSO at the time on a friend's DC, but EverQuest was my jam then. #VideoBytes

Thirteen years ago today, The Secret World launched. Twelve years ago today, it began its first anniversary event, and MOP's Tyler experienced one of the most unique and memorable moments of his MMO career: the Joelzilla incident... @duneawakening.com @funcom.com

New to the archive: "Where Man walks, strife follows..." #FFXIV 1.0 assets released for E3 2010! Includes fact sheet, screenshots, logo, and trailer!

2 new MMO books incoming! Really hoping these get English translations someday.

FFXIV is trying out Bluesky! 🦋 Follow us and 🔁 while you're here so you and fellow Warriors of Light never miss #FFXIV news on Bluesky! For our fans around the world, be sure to check out our regional accounts as well! ❤️ @fr.finalfantasyxiv.com @de.finalfantasyxiv.com @jp.finalfantasyxiv.com

Awesome to see DDO thriving. Not a game I've ever played, but this expansion is definitely my vibe. Time to give it a try?

Here's a look at how it was to use the Internet* almost 40 years ago: youtu.be/-rs7SgswXl8?... *Not actually the Internet as we know it, you were connecting only to Quantum Link's servers - but still.

Final Fantasy XI is celebrating an impressive 23 years with new updates this month, which is the perfect excuse to publish our piece about the enduring legacy of Square Enix's experimental online RPG. gameinformer.com/2025/05/19/t...

I kept seeing people say that Final Fantasy XI still needed PS2 devkits to make new content, despite no longer being playable on PS2 for many years. The FF wiki claims it too, with no source. Well, here it is. It sounds like they scrounged dozens of devkits from around the world.

E3 2004 - May 12-14 Sony Online Entertainment celebrating five years of EverQuest and the impending release of EverQuest II. EverQuest II shirt from Nvidia booth's scavenger hunt. #E3stuff

Another OBJECTS OF OBSESSION post on the #blog, this time looking at the ephemera surrounding #StarWarsGalaxies that accumulated around me during my years of play. If you ever logged into this particular MMO you might find it interesting. typedbytom.substack.com/p/objects-of... #swg #videogame

Lots of talk about independent games journalism at the moment so I wanted to give a shout out to @massivelyop.bsky.social as I rarely see them mentioned among all the other terrific reader supported sites out there. They just celebrated 10 years as an indie outlet which is pretty dang good going.

It's true.

Yesterday would've been Brad McQuaid's birthday. A true icon of the genre. This post over on the @pantheonmmo.bsky.social site is super emotional. www.pantheonmmo.com/news/pantheo...

Reading through some GDC lectures from 1998 (thanks @gamehistoryorg.bsky.social). Here's a good passage about multiplayer games from Jonathan Baron (Designer on the Air Warrior series and Ultima Online: Renaissance). Interesting to reflect on this in a post-EQ, WoW, Fortnite world.

After several years of research and not quite knowing how to approach the thing, I've finally broken ground on my second book of MMO history. Still a long way to go, but I can't wait to reveal it later in the year.

April 24, 2000 The best expansion pack of all time.

We chatted with the Star Wars Galaxies Legends staff to find out everything we could about the upcoming Jedi Themepark part 2. We even got a tease for the launch date! And pics of some returning TCG houses. :D @swglegends.bsky.social

I can't really overstate how much my interest and knowledge of games and film grew from the hours I spent flicking through mags in supermarkets while my mum did the weekly shop. A shame that kids today will miss out on that exposure.