Factions in MMORPGs are a “love ’em, hate ’em, or largely ignore ’em until the studio remembers it has ’em and decides to shove ’em in your face all of the sudden” affair. Tyler over at MMO Bro certainly is not the first to deem them irrelevent, especially in PvE games, and call for their dissolution.
“Factions really don’t add much to the experience of playing MMOs,” he writes. “They’re unnecessary, at best. The chief argument that seems to be put forth in favor of dividing players into factions is that it instills a sense of pride and faction identity, but I’ve never heard anyone clearly articulate why that’s actually a good thing. Mostly it just seems to feed toxicity between players.”
As you chew on that, head on for more MMO essays, including a review of Final Fantasy XIV’s latest patch, aging out of World of Warcraft, praise for disliked games, and more!
Unidentified Signal Source: What is Elite: Dangerous?
“In reality Elite is only as multiplayer as you want it to be. I personally choose to play in Open, but honestly human pilots are pretty rare unless you’re engaging in current even content. My experience with other humans has been very mixed so far. I had a ‘lol noob your not worth my time’ sort of experience once before and much more recently a ‘sorry it’s just business’ sort of encounter when a player from an opposing faction dropped in on the home system and fried me with a hold full of goods. Honestly the vast majority of people don’t interact and if you’re in transit you may not be in the system long enough to notice.”
GamingSF: Should healers have to deal damage in dungeons?
“Back when I played Final Fantasy XIV it was a norm among many players that healers should dps as much as possible. If you weren’t using cleric stance (I read this has changed) to enhance your damage spells in-between bouts of healing then you were a lazy White Mage/Scholar! It’s not something I ever adjusted to and I swapped mid way to cap to mostly play Bard partially because of this. I’m not that great at multi-tasking to be honest so any gameplay that involves switching playstyles repeatedly is likely to tire/confuse me quickly.”
Aywren Sojourner: FFXIV Patch 4.4 story impressions
“It was fun to experience another bout of ‘role play’ battle with Y’shtola — it was neat to see her again throughout this entire episode, in fact. But after I wiped again, and saw that I’d have to go back through Sadu’s fight, I put it down for for Sunday night. Yesterday, I was able to clear it the first try, so it could have just been the effects of having been on a plane all day Sunday. That being said, I was glad to be done with that part of the story.”
Alunaria’s Avenue: Is there such a thing as getting too old for World of Warcraft?
“How on earth do you tell a story — and design a game, that appeals to these two player segments at once? And which player segment is going to bring you the most income to your game? Which one should you focus on the most?”
The Ancient Gaming Noob: The lesson of Club Penguin Island
“I thought Disney had enough muscled to force Club Penguin Island to be a success. I was wrong […] Basically Disney betrayed their installed base, switched platforms, and offered an inferior experience, but thought it would all work out just fine. It did not and yesterday the company officially announced that Club Penguin Island would be shutting down.”
Through Wolfy’s Eyes: Nice things about disliked MMOs
“To get the bad out of the way first: the classes in ESO are probably some of the most yawn-inducing choices I’ve ever experienced in any MMO ever. In spite of that, however, I’ve got to say that The Elder Scrolls Online’s sidequest gameplay is top tier. In fact it’s so good, I can ignore the hum-drum classes.”
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.
