Over the years that I’ve been playing, following and blogging about MMORPGs there has been one constant – the website Massively.com (laterly massively.joystick.com). If you look through the archives of this blog you’ll find a lot of links to news articles on that site. I often referred to their breaking news posts about new games, updates, changes in business model or the like as I considered the site to be one of the best in the MMO space.
I’ve been a daily reader for the most part for at least four years, possibly five. So it’s with a very heavy heart that I learned the site is being closed down unceremoniously by its ailing corporate masters, AOL. I’ve discovered new games directly through this site (e.g. Dungeons & Dragons Online, Allods, Eden Eternal, Everquest 2, The Secret World) and had a lot of pleasure reading the often witty commentary. I particularly enjoyed the long-term game coverage: e.g. the Mog Log for Final Fantasy and the Norrathian Notebook for Everquest. These regular features gave the site a unique character.
As with any popular Internet discussion website the comments section of many articles descended rapidly into name-calling and partisan rants – any article on SWTOR, Wildstar or The Elder Scrolls Online would serve as an example of this. But I didn’t come to Massively day after day, month after month for the comment warriors, I came for the industry-wide news coverage and that service I will definitely miss.
So for what it’s worth, I’m deeply grateful to all the Massively staff for their passion and commitment to gaming and MMORPGs, this turn of events is not welcome and not justifiable in my mind. This leaves a gaping hole in the MMORPG online community.
GamingSF 
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I’m very saddened by the fate of Massively. They were a great influence on me as a blogger and a journalist, and many of their writers were people whom I greatly respected. I’d always nursed the dream of one day writing for Massively.
Bleh. It’s just a bummer all around.
“But I didn’t come to Massively day after day, month after month for the comment warriors, I came for the industry-wide news coverage and that service I will definitely miss.”
Strange. That part is what i won’t miss that much. I know this was the “huge” part of Massively, but it very much for me felt like a centralized PR outlet to me, while more honest evaluations of games were to be found elsewhere. What i actually will miss is the Chaos Theory article series and while i was not following other series that much, there were some other gems like that around.
It was a combination for me of the broad-brush news from across the industry and the feature columns you mention (as did I above). They really have/had some very talented and enjoyable writers on the staff.
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