When does a game go from fun to obligation? Xenophics wrote a gut-wrenching confession about how raiding in World of Warcraft became his “office,” just another job for which he wasn’t being paid.
“That’s how it goes: little by little the fun progress you had turns into farm that is uninteresting at first (who doesn’t want to kill Hellfire Assault for 52 times?!) and in the end you feel like you’d rather be doing something else than playing World of Warcraft. At this point the people who stay and raid either find the fun from playing with the awesome online friends they have, or they just suck it up and start going to the office.”
We have plenty of thought-provoking blog posts for you after the break, including the importance of community, adoration of SWTOR’s Vette, and how Guild Wars 2 eases the transition into endgame.
Superior Realities: Life is better where it’s Vette-r
“The interesting thing about the Warrior storyline to me was that the companions really ended up stealing the show. Especially one companion in particular. As you can probably tell by now, for me the warrior story was pretty much The Vette Show, and everything else came second. Vette is just so funny, so charming, so endlessly delightful in every way that she just eclipses everything else. Rare is the time Vette opens her mouth without making me laugh.”
Healing the Masses: Secret World of charming characters
“In just a short time of coming back to the game many of the characters and story I experienced have all come back to me. A wealth of memories and an intricate understanding of the many people that seemingly touched me enough to remember them after all this time, that is extraordinary. I don’t think there is any MMO out there, and even very few other games that i would be able to recall in such detail.”
Nerdy Bookahs: RIFT dimension building project: Tempest Island III
“What I always find fascinating is that you can hardly ever find bathrooms in MMOs. Where are the showers? The toilets? So I took a look at other people’s dimensions — at least those who also added homes like I did. Several had bathtubs added, but I only found two with added toilets. I have a little outhouse in one of my other dimensions, but nothing like that here yet.”
Occasional Hero: My GW2 endgame is indistiguishable from leveling (and that’s not bad)
“Guild Wars 2 has a probably my favorite leveling experience of any MMO I’ve ever played. It suffers from neither the kill grind nor the quest fatigue that most MMOs have because the game is primarily about mapping, so you’re never doing the same thing twice in each zone. Also, because of Guild Wars 2’s level scaling, you have a lot of freedom even at a low level. I recently discovered that there was a whole zone that I had never been to.”
Spandax: The importance of community — Hero’s Song
“To my opinion the community is a very important subject to deal with as a (game) developer and not to be treated without care. The time and effort you invest into your fans will be payed back to you by means of free promotion, free critics with genuine interest in creating a good product and they will also be your first customers. When you have the product to look forward to, the right people to make it and the presence and tools to get people hyped and informed, take that last hurdle and embrace YOUR community!”
MMO Bro: The most played free MMOs in 2016
“RuneScape actually provides player counts, it’s technically free to play, and by my calculations it is definitely one of the most played free MMOs out there. It’s also the oldest of the games on this list, beating out MapleStory by two years. RuneScape is continuously updated, accessible, and traditional yet progressive enough to capture old and new fans alike.”
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.
