Do you have inventory management with the passion of a thousand burning suns? Have you lost most of the vision in your left eye from squinting at rows and columns of tiny icons and their descriptive text? Do you feel like you’ve wasted a month of your life doing nothing more than shuffling around fictional items in your fictional backpack?
MMO Gypsy wants you to know that you’re not alone: “After 15 years of MMOing, I do not know a single MMO player who enjoys spending time sorting and moving around inventory; limited storage, tedious micro-management of too many (useless) items and having to move around inventory that’s bound to location, are decidedly unfun activities after a short time. This is not the kind of mini-game I want to spend my precious time on while playing games!”
That rant kicks off a great string of MMO blogger posts today, including a check-in with World of Warcraft clones, a look at pet classes, and the birthdays of two long-running games.
Project Tyria: Happy birthday, Guild Wars!
“The game has lost none of the charm for me, though, in all my years of playing. When I venture out, especially to take pictures, I find myself getting caught up in the world. Sometimes it’s collecting trophy items in pre-searing and other times it’s just finding a beautiful spot in the snow of the Shiverpeaks or admiring the shadows made from the leaves on autumn trees in the Northlands.”
“Basically, crafting is broken because all other options available to get in-game currency take keyboard effort (gathering, grinding mobs) whereas crafting does not. And, having reflected on that, it is 100% true. Just as in real life, the people making bank aren’t those doing the work, but the ones working the bank.”
Superior Realities: On pet classes
“Another divide is that MMO pets tend to require a lot of micro-management, at least in group content, whereas single-player pets and companions are almost always fire and forget. I definitely do not want to have to spend a lot of time baby-sitting my pets — that defeats the purpose as far as I’m concerned.”
MMO Bro: Checking up on the WoW clones of yesteryear
“The years passed, and eventually the procession of new WoW clones slowed down. Nowadays MMOs aren’t as afraid to forge their own paths. But most of the bigger WoW clones are still chugging along. Now that the fad is passed, it may be interesting to look at how these games have fared over the years, and whether they’ve stuck to their WoW clone guns or started to establish identities of their own.”
The Ancient Gaming Noob: Return to the land of the ten-dollar horse
“Runes of Magic was kind of a big deal when it launched eight years back. The game was an Asian MMORPG title built in the style of the then current and popular Western model. Up until then there had been a pretty solid divide between East and West when it came to MMORPG design. Asian games were were pretty but very grindy while the West favored… well… the theme park aesthetic where quests quite you through the game.”
Gaming Conversations: Looking back on LOTRO
“The things I miss about the game aren’t really about the game at all. They’re about the people who play the game. The people are what make an MMO great. Not the graphics, nor the size of the landscape, nor the dungeon design. The people. Thank you, LOTRO, for being the medium through which I could meet and get to know all of these amazing people.”
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.
