If you like BioWare, high tech eye candy, blowing crap up, or riding the current wave of Hot New Game Releases, chances are that you’ve come across Anthem in the past couple of weeks. The jury is still out on this sci-fi multiplayer shooter, but the opinions are coming from the MMO blogosphere nonetheless.
“Anthem is pretty good,” concedes Blessing of Kings. “The core game with Javelins is lots of fun so far. The story and writing is a bit disappointing, but really only because we have such high expectations of BioWare.”
Superior Realities gives it a similar recommendation: “Overall, Anthem is mostly living up to my expectations, for better and for worse. It’s probably not going to down as one of my favourite games of all time, and I’m not sure I’ll stick with it much once I’ve finished the story, but for now, I’m having a lot of fun.”
Tales of the Aggronaut: MMO-lite fantasy
“The challenge is still that no one has quite created a version of the Destiny model that works for fantasy games […] In a perfect world someone would take the world of Anthem, the activities of Destiny, the combat of Monster Hunter World, and package them all together in one MMO-Lite that gives me my fantasy fix.”
MMO Bro: Build MMOs for more alts, not less
“Yet always I’m left with the feeling that playing alts is a case of swimming against the current. It’s something nearly every game allows, but which very few actually encourage. It’s never been viewed as a valid playstyle worthy of its own content and systems in the way PvP or raiding might be. And I ask: Why?”
The Ancient Gaming Noob: What should EverQuest 3 even look like?
“Suggesting going back to 1999 feels like trying to get lightning to strike the same spot a second time, only the storm clouds have long moved on. Building something more WoW-like with the Norrath lore might have some draw, if done right. But is the lore enough of a draw if the game is otherwise just another free to play, cash shop, and loot box clone in the genre?”
Mailvatar: About long-term goals in MMORPGs
“I like having long term goals in the games I play. This wasn’t always the case though. At one point a couple of years ago I’d played mainly SWTOR and The Secret World for quite some time. When I started to play ArcheAge afterwards I was a bit shocked and also disappointed by the large amount of resources necessary to build fairly basic things like a clipper or a small farm cart.”
Yeebo Fernbottom: Adventures in DDO
“I have been having a fun time in DDO for the last few months. It’s still not exactly the most new player friendly game on the market. Infinite build diversity leads to infinite potential ways of gimping yourself, for example. A lot of new players also seem to have trouble making it past the low level game, which may as well be called ‘Sewer, Warehouse and Tomb Adventures.’ However, if it’s a game you have ever enjoyed in the past or have been curious about, now is a great time to jump in. DDO has made remarkable strides in recent years, and with another major expansion right around the corner the future seem bright.”
Going Commando: Rise and Fall of Knights of the Fallen Empire
“The monthly story chapters were… interesting, but not enough to get the flood of more casual players that had jumped back in for KotFE’s launch to stick around. More and more long-time players became disgruntled with the lack of new group content to keep them busy. The story direction itself was also received less and less warmly over time.”
Unidentified Signal Source: Pathfinder Online
“I didn’t find combat very interesting, but I think that’s because I don’t understand it. There are three bars there, blue is stamina, red is health, and I dunno what yellow is. There are a lot of little icons that pop up on that interface in combat that aren’t explained and mean nothing to me. I just end up spamming the main attack ability ad nauseum.”
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.
