Fishing in MMOs: You either really get it or you really don’t. Ancient Gaming Noob Wilhelm is among those who enjoys taking every opportunity possible to cast his rod and reel in search of slimy, scaly adventure under the waves — and he’s shared how he assigns an alt the joy and responsibility of fishing in each one of his games.
“If there is fishing in a game, I’ll be there. But fishing really only needs one character,” he writes. “I generally pick somebody to be my fisherman and send them out to fish around the world, following whatever plans the game happens to have for the vocation.”
Oh my cod, you say, this column has already started to flounder. Well, fear not, we have a porpoise for everything we post, and we’re sure that you’ll get hooked on one of these MMO essays and end up trouting its virtues.
A Mind Rarely at Rest: Why LOTRO hits the spot
“Lord of the Rings Online has the advantage over any other Middle-earth game or movie in that they have the ability to cram in every little nook and cranny of lore […] LOTRO, being an MMO, gets to be that expansive world where the devs could comb the canon within their license and build out all the familiar places and sprinkle all those little nods and things throughout the landscape. Even a description of what something looks like can be used by the art team to create something magnificent.”
In An Age: Survival equilibrium
“Hitting that equilibrium moment in survival games though is bittersweet. It’s like the middle of every Civilization game I have ever played — the game part is over, and now you must go through the motions towards inevitable victory. Ideally, you would want the challenge of the game to match up with the game’s end, and not midway.”
Endgame Variable: Guild Wars 1??
“At first, I didn’t care much for the game. It’s clearly from a bygone era, when men were men and MMORPG players used arrow keys to turn and move. You can use the right mouse button to look around (not the left button) but anytime you walk up or down a plane, the camera shifts by itself to compensate, which is very disorienting. I can’t find any way to disable it.”
Superior Realities: SWTOR — the traitor trickle
“Man, what’s going on with SWTOR? They seemed to be on such a roll there with Fallen Empire and Eternal Throne. Two great expansions in rapid succession that seemed highly successful by just about every possible measure. But now I return to the game after nearly a year away, and it seems to be floundering, with barely a trickle of new story added since I left.”
Creeping: Exploring One Tamriel and Morrowind
“Having all that content to play through also also removes some of the worry over having enough skill points to unlock passives and skills. This can give you a lot more build flexibility as you roam about the content and lets you experiment with different aspects of gameplay without feeling like you have to run back to the respec shrine every five minutes.”
Blessing of Kings: WoW Classic announcement
“I would like WoW Classic to be a success. If it is successful, maybe Blizzard will start nudging normal WoW back towards Classic, adding back some of the small decisions, inconveniences, and restrictions that have been smoothed away. Perhaps they will also dial back the focus on transient gameplay, bringing back an unapologetic focus on ‘extended’ content.”
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.
