MMORPGs are well-known for featuring an entire Sonic series’ worth of contrasting biomes. And while that’s great for lovers of variety, the art teams do tend to struggle when piecing the world together in a way that doesn’t look artificial and abrupt.
We’ll let you be the judge of Hikari’s viewpoint in Conan Exiles: “The location of Star Keep is based largely on the way the area transitions. The area is forested but cold as the trees thin out. It overlooks a partially frozen river that separates it from the frozen cliffs north and the spires of the volcano.”
“Does vacuum count as a biome?” asked Natalyia. “Regardless, MicroTech in Star Citizen has a few, and they look great.”
I particularly liked this picture of a large ship enjoying a sunrise (sunset?) cruise over the mountains. Not a lot of places to stop and shop for gifts for your off-worlder friends, but that view is magnificent.
“This is not remotely related to last week’s challenge, but this tickled me,” said Bryan. “Is this REALLY a part I want to be using to build a metamorph monster?”
Path of Exile does raise a lot of conundrums like that, but according to my necromancer friends, “you work with what you got.”
First up on the list of “Why Blizzard regrets putting flying in World of Warcraft” would be how the deficiencies of its world design tend to pop out when the studio can’t hide the tricks it used.
Minimalistway gave us this prize-winning biome mish-mash: “I don’t think there is any game like WoW where zones don’t make since when it comes to transition from biome to another. Here we have four different zone colliding.”
“One thing that LOTRO does very well is the transition from one biome to another,” shared Amorey. “There are many examples, like the approach to Forochel which is truly beautiful. One of my favorite ‘transition’ zones is on exiting Moria, between Nanduhirion and Nimrodel on the approach to Lothlorien. There is nothing abrupt about the two areas, it just feel natural and beautiful. As I said I can think of countless examples in LOTRO but this is just one of my favorites.”
I think we need an emotional break this weekend, so this week’s screenshot challenge is fairly simple and straightforward: share a picture of something in an MMO that makes you happy. Whatever that may be!
Every week, One Shots shines a spotlight on the best community screenshots from your MMO adventures. If you have a great pic to share, email it to justin@massivelyop.com with the subject “One Shots.” Make sure that the picture is over 880px wide and comes with a description or story!
Something that makes me happy? This is easy – seeing other characters being in positive happy mood. Something like:
Something strange happened at my work and it’s created a lot of boggling moments, as well as humor over it. It’s so weird to me that the three things that you can’t find anything of in my town is fresh meat, canned tuna and toilet paper. I get the canned tuna. That makes sense! Fresh meat to a degree, but toilet paper? It wasn’t until I saw the empty shelves that I even thought of why people would go for the toilet paper first thing in a semi-panic pandemic.
It gets more bizarre! We were full-on out of toilet paper at work. My boss came in so mad! She had managed to get a couple of cases before they ran out at Sam’s and it was ALL GONE. Stolen by customers and employees. She has to order it special now and said it’s going under lock-and-key. I don’t get the behaviors people fall into under things like this.
Anyway!
Decorating and playing with my Entertainer in SWGL makes me ridiculously happy! Just finished the front room of a salon last week and I put in many meditative, late night hours in working on deco. It’s very Zen!
Am not one for screenshots, but ended up finishing the Vermintide main campaign today and … what views in the last level!
I suddenly have a lot more time to play games. So here’s some shots of FFXIV from this week.
Nekomata + tanuki. <3
I managed to get right next to 2P on the way down to the second boss in the Copied Factory raid.
Second pic is in the Firmament just before the reconstruction FATE started. Lots of camaraderie.
I won’t lie to you, it has been a hell of a ride so far and it is getting worse where I am. Please everyone be safe, wash your hands, and be kind. Especially now I am very grateful to my game for giving me some time-out, it is not easy and the mind often does wonder to real life, but here are some of the things that make me happy on LOTRO :
-Friends
-Music
-Stories
<3 everyone
Great advice, I was playing ESO last night and what few people were on were just being Douchenozzles…I loaded up FFXIV, the game was jammed packed and elder Guilds were running folks through the main story lines of ARR, and Heavensward.
I may drop back into LOTRO the community is always great there.
The first pet i bought in FFXIV is this walking coal bunny thing, this one is with me all the time, i love it when i /poke it and it drop the crystal and panic.
It’s hard to take a good screenshot for this pet.
The Spriggans are very adorable, especially when they drop their precious rock, I wish other minions would have similar amusing animations instead of random idling or moving around.
So, one of these is MMO adjacent, being from Dreamfall Chapters (the lore of Ragnar Tørnquist’s TLJ series and Secret World tend to intersect like alternate realities). I won’t spoil what happens, but it was something I was actually afraid we wouldn’t get to see. Still makes me cry very happy tears just thinking about it.
I submit the rest without commentary (and with no promises that they will post in any particular order) except to say it’s usually the people in the MMOs. And bunnies.
Hmm… that shot of Talyia and Hikari in BDO might not actually be mine, it might be Natalyia’s. Hard to tell because of the resolution and they all run together. :) Have some more!
And Tanek and MJ.
Some light reading as the world around you goes bat shit crazy…and shooting a big gun (while gathering for minerals, of course). #happy
I saw people using the big gun in streams, it makes me want to level up quickly so i can go do gathering and crafting in Diadem and Ishgard.
There is something about that picture of a person reading a book while riding a sheep in a forest that delights me. Thanks. :)
Fountains of paradise…
So I finally got Zandalari flying unlocked and went to soar around a little. I was decending from the highest mountain top in the area when I noticed the hills near Xibala are shaped like Pterrordax (or something of the sort) skeleton when viewed from above. I thought it was pretty nice detail.