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WHY I LOVE (Image credit: Blizzard) In Why I Love, PC Gamer writers pick an aspect of PC gaming that they love and write about why it’s brilliant. This week, Harvey goes home (in MMORPGs). As World of Warcraft: Midnight gears up, Blizzard’s released its player housing early for those who’ve pre-ordered the expansion—I won’t […]

It’s been quite a while since the fantasy MMORPG Ashes of Creation smashed through its Kickstarter milestones back in 2017, but the old-school playground brings its player-driven civilization to Steam soon with an early access launch of its alpha build. Emphasis on the early phrasing there. Intrepid’s Steam description (and official site) reiterates in quite […]

There’s still nothing quite like the original Guild Wars. It came out before World of Warcraft had crystallized the face of the modern MMORPG, and was as inspired by Magic: The Gathering as it was by Everquest or Ultima. It turned out as more of a co-op ARPG with shared town hubs, dual-class deckbuilding, and […]

What do critically acclaimed MMO Final Fantasy 14 and the renegades of funk, Rage Against the Machine, have in common? Probably not much before this week, but now they both contain a shared ingredient: legendary guitarist Tom Morello. Morello was featured on the game’s official X account, where he announced a collaboration between him, the […]

Terminally Online (Image credit: Future) This is Terminally Online: PC Gamer’s very own MMO column. Every other week, I’ll be sharing my thoughts on the genre, interviewing fellow MMO-heads like me, taking a deep-dive into mechanics we’ve all taken for granted, and, occasionally, bringing in guest writers to talk about their MMO of choice. It’s […]

Final Fantasy 14‘s making a huge, revolutionary update this month with the release of patch 7.4—it’s removing all glamour restrictions. If that doesn’t sound revolutionary to you, you must not understand that the true endgame of every MMO is fashion. In all seriousness, it’s actually a pretty huge move. Previously, FF14’s glamour system, which allows […]

Next time a commenter points out a typo in one of my articles, I’ll just say it’s to make potential plagiarists look stupid. After No Man’s Sky players on Reddit (via GamesRadar) questioned the provenance of an asset in survival MMO Once Human—suggesting it bore a marked resemblance to a similar object in No Man’s […]

Terminally Online (Image credit: Future) This is Terminally Online: PC Gamer’s very own MMO column. Every other week, I’ll be sharing my thoughts on the genre, interviewing fellow MMO-heads like me, taking a deep-dive into mechanics we’ve all taken for granted, and, occasionally, bringing in guest writers to talk about their MMO of choice. Every […]

There are times when World of Tanks feels less like a videogame and more like a giant ad budget looking for something to be spent on. This year, all those huge sacks with dollar signs on them have been thrown Benedict Cumberbatch’s way, making him the game’s newest “Holiday Ambassador” and the star of an […]

The PC is still the center of innovation in gaming, according to Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, CEO of CCP Games, which is known for long-running, esoteric space MMO EVE Online. “I think most of the innovation in gaming has happened on PC, to some extent on mobile, just because of sheer volume,” Pétursson told me at […]

In 2023, ArenaNet switched to an annual expansion plan for Guild Wars 2—smaller, but more frequent expansions that rolled out in stages across an entire year. The benefit has been a more consistent release schedule. But there are downsides too. The first of these expansions, Secrets of the Obscure, felt like it was trying to […]

MMOs have lost their way. Time was, everyone and their grandma had a WoW sub, and they all spent their evenings getting up to great larks in Azeroth. Now? A wasteland. WoW still has plenty of adherents, no doubt, but it’s not that strength which in old days moved Earth and Heaven. And nothing really […]

I’ve seen some monetisation-related disasters in my time, but I think this one might be up there with the worst—NCSoft’s Aion 2, which launched in Korea and Taiwan November 18, has caused no end of problems for the company immediately after launch. Including, potentially, causing its stock price to tank a whopping 15%. As for […]

There are a lot of tough bosses in the recently released wuxia MMO Where Winds Meet, but none of them can match the sheer power of the goose. Check the subreddit or the Steam forums and you’ll see threads of befuddled players with titles like “Goose??” and “please be careful around geese” and “throw every […]

Old School RuneScape has been around for, oh, about 12 years now, and in all that time it’s never gotten a new skill. Players have been working with—and making great sport of—the set of skills it inherited from the original RuneScape, which itself last got a new skill (that’d be Hunter) all the way back […]

Guild Wars released in 2005 and, even in the wake of the all-conquering World of Warcraft, offered an MMO experience that was distinct and freeform enough that, 20 years later, you’ll still find people saying it’s the best MMO around. OK, these days they’re probably more likely to be on-board with the superb sequel, but […]

Final Fantasy 14 has been in a bit of a weird state. Endwalker’s post-launch patches failed to hit the ground running, despite the main expansion absolutely nailing the climax of its 10-year story. Dawntrail carried these problems forward, and with a lukewarm main quest, it couldn’t rest on that good ol’ patch story hype to […]

Terminally Online (Image credit: Future) This is Terminally Online: PC Gamer’s very own MMORPG column. Every other week, I’ll be sharing my thoughts on the genre, interviewing fellow MMO-heads like me, taking a deep-dive into mechanics we’ve all taken for granted, and, occasionally, bringing in guest writers to talk about their MMO of choice. I […]