Whoever said “always look on the bright side of life” obviously never talked to gamers, because we are a notorious bunch for looking at the dark side. Even when you’re a generally upbeat player, such as Tales of the Aggronaut’s Belghast, sometimes you need to vent some steam about what makes you grumpy in MMOs.
“Now lets switch over to a problem that is most represented by Final Fantasy XIV but goes for any game with a similar system,” he wrote. “I hate having to keep track of physical items that I am only holding onto for cosmetic purposes. All this does is serve to bloat our banks as well as the amount of items that you are having to store for a specific character.”
Faction walls, gender locks, and no damn beards are also things that make him a mite bit salty. But read on for more grumpy essays, including sexism in SWTOR, inconsistencies in MMOs, and the worst types of players in WoW Classic!
Going Commando: Should there be sexist NPCs in SWTOR?
“I’ve been spending more time replaying story content lately, especially the original class stories and other older quest lines that I hadn’t done in a while, and one thing that I’ve been finding striking is how often NPCs treat you differently based on your gender. I wouldn’t actually say that it happens a lot, but it happening at all is still a stark contrast to more recent content releases where your sex makes no difference whatsoever.”
Gnomecore: Battle for Azeroth — the ultimate story review
“You can’t deny they were building up the Old Gods theme ever since leveling experience in BfA (Stormsong, Vol’dun, Nazmir) – and yet it was clearly a side dish, very poorly and illogically connected to the main story of faction war.”
Mailvatar: Turning the trinity up to 11
“Since my return to the game I’ve made a couple of friends (or let’s rather say acquaintances) with whom I’ve been running some dungeons every now and then. Not only are TSW’s dungeons really great fun, doing them again also reminded me of the fact that this game allows for even more creativity when designing your class and build than I’d initially remembered.”
GamingSF: Inconsistencies that bug me in MMORPGs
“The inconsistency that I keep forgetting and that annoys me every time is that, in Classic, entangling roots only work outdoors. It’s possibly just a nod to the entangle spell in Dungeons & Dragons, the most likely inspiration for this spell though not the restriction. There is plenty of foliage in Wailing Caverns, either of the Razorfen instances or later ‘indoor’ dungeons, why should this spell not be useable? Even worse some dungeons have very clear ‘outdoor’ components, even if they are still instanced.”
Misdirections: Is Blizz phasing out raiding?
“I think we are in the midst of a game-altering change to WoW raiding, but it is being played out so slowly that we are not really aware of how significant it is. I am not even sure Blizz realizes how big the change is, nor — distressingly — am I certain it is even planned on their part.”
World of Warcraft Classic: Five worst types of players in Classic
“This is a huge peeve of mine — DPS players who only care about doing big numbers to look good on Warcraft Logs. You know these guys: they ignore mechanics, pull aggro constantly, and are the first to post in your discord channel about their 95% parse on a fight that you nearly (or repeatedly) wiped on.”
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.
