Bethesda’s E3 reveal of Fallout 76 had many gamers and franchise fans talking, no more so than out among MMO bloggers. After all, taking the series online for the first time is a pretty notable occasion, is it not?
“As I said before, I am all onboard with a Fallout survival game,” wrote In An Age. “Exploring the wasteland and looting all the things consists of about 80% of my gameplay in this series, and I am currently on an extreme survival game kick the likes of which I have not experienced since my high school JRPG days. All of that sounds fantastic to me.”
Leo’s Life isn’t as enthusiastic: “I was certainly interested last week. Now, not so much. It’s not the game that I wanted, but it’s probably the game that someone else did.” And Endgame Variable notes that, “The first thing they showed was your basic animalistic gankbox-style PvP. That’s got to be sending a message.”
Contains Moderate Peril: The failings of co-op gameplay
“And despite ongoing improvements in AI technology, playing with other people often provides a superior experience. Mutually agreed tactics are more likely to succeed and if things take a turn for the worse, real players can improvise more effectively. Hence co-op play seems to be industry darling at present and is seriously putting a dent in the MMO market.”
GamingSF: Diving for pearls in EverQuest II
“On this character at least, the event is zero-stress because he has a handy non-combat spell called ‘Swill‘ that gives him water-breathing. So I’ve spent chunks of time flitting around the shallow waters of three different zones. This character is also a woodworker by trade, so he can make very useful items that my other characters could use to emulate the same spell.”
The Ancient Gaming Noob: The trolling loophole
“For me the most outrageous aspect of the whole thing was probably Steam’s line on whether allowing a game on their service constituted an endorsement of that game and its content and, whether you can take seriously their personal rejection of a controversial or offensive game while they also take a cut of the sales price. There is, at best, a conflict of interest there and, at worst, a transparent and hypocritical attempt to protect their reputation from the consequences of their choices.”
Occasional Hero: Elder Scrolls Online’s lack of stickiness
“The first reason is one that I talked about recently: the game is super depressing. In pretty much every quest line, someone ends up dead and everyone is sad. In most MMOs when you hear ‘My husband is missing! Please find him!’ he’s probably just been taken captive by brigands or something. Sure, every once in a while they’re dead, but in ESO you hear a quest like that and you just want to say, ‘Sorry, but he’s probably been fed to demons or something. It’s probably for the best that you just forget about him,’ and keep walking.”
Coffee Cakes and Crits: Class dread in Battle for Azeroth
“It is kind of odd that no one that I’ve talked to or read about is excited about his character in Battle for Azeroth. Everyone seems to have a sort of dread that their character will be weak, vulnerable and soft. This isn’t good.”
Tales of the Aggronaut: Listless gaming
“Evenings like last night are frustrating because it feels like I squandered the opportunity to have a good time. There are times where my mind is just not in the right place to really enjoy anything so I sorta flail about until eventually giving up for the evening and going to sleep.”
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.
