Do you ever live in fear that the development team behind your favorite MMORPG might screw things up in the name of progress and improvement? Then you’re in good company, because MMO blogger Yeebo Fernbottom expressed the same in a recent post concerning Dungeons and Dragons Online’s reincarnation system.
“Years ago the developers in DDO proposed to all but remove any way of earning hearts for true reincarnation in game. This idea was not well received by players (to put it mildly), but at first the developers ignored them. To call attention to the issue, players staged a protest in game. Eventually some news sites even started covering the protests, and the developers finally relented. This is when the system that DDO has now was finalized.”
Read on for more MMO essays, including those that cover FFXIV beast tribes, Diablo II’s anniversary, and City of Heroes: Going Rogue.
The Nosy Gamer: Thoughts on FFXIV’s beast tribe quests
“Completing each tribes quest line results in making mounts, minions, and dyes available from each tribes’ store. The beast tribe vendors are also a source for crafting materials. Since I am into both the crafting and glamour systems, doing the beast tribe daily quests made sense.”
The Ancient Gaming Noob: Reflecting on Diablo II at twenty
“Back in 2000 we played a lot of it. People dropped out of EverQuest and TorilMUD to devote time to the game. I ended up owning two copies because we would play it at the office after hours together and you only have to forget your disk and miss a game night once to feel the need to have a second copy. It was, for its time, so engaging. I still marvel at the use of lighting, something that the games successors have really never matched.”
Tales of the Aggronaut: Of nickels and dimes
“There is a large part of me that longs for the era of MMORPGs when you purchased the box, purchased the occasional expansion every few years… and then had a simple subscription amount that you could budget for. The problem there is that this limits the amount of money that a game can drain from your pocket book, and even the bastion of the subscription model has found a way to add additional purchases to try and entice you to spend more.”
Kaylriene: Beautiful MMO zones and the players that love them
“My absolute favorite MMO zone at the moment is FFXIV’s The Tempest. The zone name is kept hidden on the Norvrandt world map for all of Shadowbringers, and it is not until the MSQ begins winding rapidly to its conclusion that the game even hints at the zone, so if you haven’t looked at the full Norvrandt map (which the game doesn’t give you reason to anyways), you can be genuinely surprised by it. ”
24 Hours In: City of Heroes Going Rogue
“When Going Rogue was announced I was already an active player of CoH. Well, active-ish, in that I already had one hero and one villain at level 50, and though I did spend some time on alts (no surprise there) I was only revisiting the game from time to time. The updates/issues that had been released since I’d started playing the game had all been fairly thin as far as new content was concerned, so I was excited to see what an actual expansion would bring. It didn’t disappoint.”
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.
