Raph Koster is a legend in the gaming industry. As the lead designer of Ultima Online and the creative director on Star Wars Galaxies, they know a thing or two about online worlds. Ultima Online, in particular, was one of the formative MMOs of our time, allowing an unprecedented degree of freedom compared to most RPGs on the market. That philosophy of player freedom led Koster to work on Stars Reach all these [...]

It's one thing to read a list of features and plans on a press release or a site like ours. It's another thing entirely to experience it firsthand. Yes, I know Stars Reach has technically been playable for backers for a while now, but I've deliberately stayed away, wanting my first experience of a Raph Koster-led MMO to be one that isn't going to be mired [...]

It's rare that I'll open up a preview about a game by saying "hear me out", but in the case of Stars Reach, it's appropriate. I will readily admit, upon a cursory glance of Stars Reach's Steam page, that my inner cynic (who I try not to pay too much attention to) had written it off as a bog-standard, boilerplate survival game with MMO elements. [...]