Global Chat: Do you binge-play MMOs?

    
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With TV streaming services that dump entire seasons of shows on us at once, we have become a society that is used to binging on entertainment instead of enjoying it at a slower and more time-gated pace. When it comes to trying to catch up in MMOs, this binge mentality may come in useful. Or not.

Roger from Contains Moderate Peril said that he’s currently binging on Lord of the Rings Online in order to catch up to the latest patch: “There are certain advantages to ‘binge playing’ an MMO. First you get a far clearer picture of how your progress through the game impacts upon your character’s abilities […] The second bonus that I find comes from ‘binge playing’ is that I get to focus far more on the quest narratives.”

Read on for more hot takes from the MMO blogosphere, including a look at Neverwinter in 2020, a rant on MMO levels, the silver lining of World of Warcraft’s Patch 8.3, and more!

GamingSF: Neverwinter in 2020

“The changes to companions are radical if you’ve not been following the game’s development more recently, but so far they seem positive enough. Divorcing benefits from the active companion is a great design decision as it means I can have whichever companion I wish actively helping me, while still benefiting from the ‘must have’ benefits of certain very popular companions.”

Everwake’s Internet Adventures: Levels

“We pay to bypass levels. DC Universe Online is giving away a max-level character to everyone for its own birthday. Mobile games include a button to let the AI level for you. It’s turned levels into a frivolous, meaningless thing. Which, granted, levels were always mostly a frivolous, meaningless thing. But it was a thing you could attach a meaning to. A level 60 in WoW was an impressive feat for a long time. Now max level is just the standard. Get to max level so you can increase your item level instead.”

Kaylriene: The repeatable content of Patch 8.3 — is it good?

“My point in writing this post is to highlight something I actually really like about the Patch 8.3 content so far – the pacing is targeted in such a way that you have a burst of content every few days, with a few bits you can do in-between.”

The Friendly Necromancer: Project Gorgon — The pen makes the sword mightier?

“I picked up the Calligraphy skill several months ago but never really did much with it at the time. I do remember being a little disappointed when I tried to write a book in game and not being able to since my Calligraphy skill was low. As of last week, I decided to raise that skill up to some more respectable levels… and especially so that I could contribute a dad joke to the weekly Poetry Jam that happens on Saturday afternoons.”

The Ancient Gaming Noob: Forty

“Technically one of the skills I got at 40 was the ability to wear mail armor, but I am putting it in its own category because this feature is on my list of ‘Why?’ questions that go back to vanilla WoW. Playing WoW Classic has reminded me of that list and I should probably do a post on it. But still, why did Blizz think that changing armor type at level 40 was a good idea? They got rid of that, but only much later.”

MMO Fallout: Is it safe to admit that Ashes of Creation Apocalypse failed?

“But similar to Planetside Arena, the public did not take to Ashes of Creation Apocalypse kindly or with much interest at all. Steam charts show that the title peaked at 288 concurrent players in October 2019 and over the last three months has quickly dwindled to a peak of 21 with an average of seven. Recent reviews put the title at a 14% ‘very negative’ rating and as I am writing this piece there is one person online probably wondering why the queue timer is reaching well over several hours.”

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.
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