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!
