An NCsoft studio known primarily for WildStar.
carbine studios
MMO Hype Train: What’s the ideal path to promoting and hyping an MMO?
As much as there's a great deal to master when creating an MMORPG, there's also quite the learning experience when it comes to promoting...
MMO Hype Train: Palia’s been given a chance to flourish — and it has
Sometimes it takes more than one run at an MMORPG or online game for it to click with you. There are titles that have...
First Impressions: Moonshot’s Wildgate is fun, but its biggest challenge is the players
I'm not much of a PvP guy. Without putting too fine a point on it, I'm bad at them. But something about Moonshot Games'...
Hands-on: Co-op roguelike Lynked Banner of the Spark is ready for launch and more fun than ever
I think all gamers have a dream game in their head that they wish somebody would make, a mashup of the best parts of...
Perfect Ten: Dead MMORPGs that were weird and I’m glad they existed
I am going to make what may be a contentious statement here: I am not particularly sad about a lot of MMORPGs that shut...
The Soapbox: Could an official WildStar revival succeed in 2025?
WildStar: Carbine's ambitious, flashy, and flawed MMO that launched in June 2014. A little over a year later, it shifted to a hybrid free-to-play...
Perfect Ten: The accursed MMORPG dungeons of no return
So it came to be that I did face my Judgment, and I sat between that greatest of all Game-Masters o'er all the online...
Massively Overthinking: The things that broke us from old beloved MMORPGs
Last week, MOP's Chris and I were discussing his husband's obsession with Sea of Thieves; he runs with a set crew that generally leaves...
Battle Bards: The Final Refrain
It’s been a very long while, but the Battle Bards haven’t fully abandoned you — at least not without a goodbye! In the grand...
Perfect Ten: The strangest weapons you wind up using in MMORPGs
Human beings have been using things as weapons for about as long as human beings have had hands and needed to hit stuff. That's...
Perfect Ten: MMOs with the very best soundtracks
I've long had an affection for video game music and feel content to live in an age where I can actually obtain it and...
Perfect Ten: 10 MMORPGs with creative idea hooks
There's so much blatant -- and lazy! -- copying in the world of entertainment and arts that anything novel is to be cherished. I've...
Co-op open-world roguelite Hyper Light Breaker just launched into early access
Multiplayer fans looking for a dash of that old WildStar environmental vibe should take a look at Hyper Light Breaker, the sequel to 2016's...
Interview: NCsoft America’s new CEO, Jeonghee Jin, on awakening the ‘sleeping giant in the West’
A few years ago, I attended Black Desert Online's Heidel Ball, one of the yearly events that Pearl Abyss holds to make major announcements for...
Former WildStar dev Tim Cain claims the MMO’s lengthy development hurt its launch
Most gamers likely associate the name of Tim Cain with the creation of Fallout, but he also worked as the programming director and then...
Vague Patch Notes: MMORPG accelerationism is a stupid sucker’s game
The most recent Warframe update starts with a solid chunk of story, and the story that it tells is that of a time loop....
MMO Hype Train: My growing obsession with Stars Reach
As much as I respect Raph Koster for all of his passion and pioneering of MMORPGs, I've rarely crossed paths with his games, notably...
Perfect Ten: Lessons from unsuccessful MMORPGs that I wish designers would learn
I have been writing about this genre for far too long now and seen far too many games with genuinely good elements completely fail...
MMO Hype Train: Wayfinder is a genuinely good little RPG – but a missed opportunity to be an MMO
Look at that: I don't always talk a big talk -- sometimes I actually end up playing the game I said I will. Like...
Massively Overthinking: Has the term MMORPG become toxic?
Back in 2016, when the MMORPG genre had just suffered a brutal one-two punch of losing EverQuest Next and the gutting of WildStar's team,...
