Home. It’s what many MMO gamers are looking for in a title: to plant down roots and find a place that exudes belonging. What makes one game feel more like home than another? And how do we go about finding and settling down in the MMO that’s right for us?
Blogger Tyler from Superior Realities penned an essay as to why The Secret World ended up feeling more like home to him, even though he wasn’t expecting it initially: “TSW is a game that gives me tremendous pleasure simply to inhabit […] Somewhere along the line TSW became more than a game to me. Sometime between pursuing Loki into the depths of the earth, trekking through the surreal industrial nightmare of the hell dimensions, and delving into the darkest pits of the Dreaming Prison, TSW came to embody a sense of infinite mystery and possibility.”
We’ll be visiting many MMOs that various players call “home” today, from World of Warcraft to Black Desert Online. Join us for a trip through notable blog posts from the past few weeks!
Ravalation: My return to LOTRO
“Somewhere down that road I got enchanted once more. With the beautiful landscape, with the cute quests, with Tolkien’s lore, with the kind community […] And suddenly I realised that I was involved with Lord of the Rings Online as if it were my main MMO again. Is it? I don’t know. How does one define one’s ‘main MMO’ anyway? All I know is that I found myself rather crafting in LOTRO (of all things) than playing through the newest chapter in SWTOR. I don’t think I’ve felt like that since 2012.”
“WoW will go to consoles. I know this isn’t a shocker, but those PS4 and XO controllers have more buttons than it looks like you will need to play with. The game works better as a lobby-style game anyway, so this is a very positive move. Everything is already garrisoned out (or class halls, upcoming expansion) while you wait to be teleported to your next instance.”
Waiting for Rez: Tree of Savior — first impressions
“The game is not going to appeal to everyone; the art style is cartoonish and reminiscent of older titles like Final Fantasy Tactics, the gameplay has more in common with a dungeon crawler than a traditional western MMO, and as near as I can tell it lacks the extensive feature list of its competitors. However what the game attempts to do, it does very well. The visuals are beautiful, the combat-centric gameplay is satisfying, and the class and character building systems are deep and interesting. I’ve only put a couple of hours into the game thus far, but I can already tell this is a game I’m going to stick with for a while.”
Creeping: Life is Feudal — Your own server number 3
“This game can be as easy or as difficult as you want it to be. That can be a boon or a bust depending on how you want to play the game. Honestly I like it, but I don’t think I could enjoy playing on a tougher rule set server for the time being. Mostly because I just have so much else to do. That and you know, roads don’t build themselves.”
Aywren Sojurner: Black Desert — The horse breeding game I’ve been looking for
“Now, it doesn’t seem like it’s a system that highly stresses genetics, though I have seen some pretty neat looking horses at higher tiers. But I do like how putting time into training your horses increases their ability to produce better tier horses. That means that it takes dedication and that horses have worth. I also like that there’s a breeding market and a player horse market where capturing and training horses to sell is an actual thing.”
Inventory Full: If you build it — Landmark
“Well, here we are, heading off down yet another road. Only this time it’s different. For once it’s not a road to nowhere. As of last week’s wipe all roads lead to launch. Come ‘spring’ this thing has to be ‘a game.’ Is it? No. Not yet. Not nearly. But it could be. If you make it one. Yes, you. The player. The customer. The luminary. That’s what [Daybreak] has decided to call you and I have to say that, daft though it is, it’s at least more euphonious than ‘Landmarkian.'”
MMO Gypsy: The cosmic heights of Final Fantasy XIV’s combat music
“Combat music is one of the most overlooked themes in most MMO soundtracks which is weird considering how often we do it. Many games don’t have any or only for special occasions, great raid bosses and such. Other games are so terrible at them, you get fed up after the first three times of hearing them. Only FFXIV cannot seem to respect its battle tunes enough; there are a total of 40+ tracks dedicated to different combat/grind/dungeon/raidboss occasions and even the standard field combat themes vary from greater region to region.”
Gamer Escape: It all began with a game and HDD bundle
“One year, before events were streamed like they are today, we teamed up with a popular FFXI website that focused on helping to bring news from Japan to English speaker players to cover VanaFest. I can remember spending hours talking to one of the members of that website after we had finished recording. It was so great talking to someone that, like me, had loved the game so much that she decided to get involved with the community outside of the game. This summer, the two of us will be getting married.”
Every day there are tons of terrific, insightful, and unusual articles posted across the MMO gaming blogosphere — and every day, Justin reads as many as he can. Global Chat is a sampling of noteworthy essays, rants, and guides from the past few weeks of MMO discourse.
