MMO blogger Yeebo Fernbottom tackled an issue that’s a standing pet peeve for me: When game developers take away systems, content, and fun toys that players loved. It’s like wee-ohh wee-oh the fun police is here to put a stop to you actually enjoying your game!
“For no sane seeming reason, MMO developers do this all the time,” Yeebo said. “Some developers seem to delight in ripping old content out of their games whether they need to do it or not. Forget about the old, it’s in with the new!”
Read on for more thought-provoking essays, including posts on the power of screenshots, building bases in Fallout 76, the Valheim phenomenon, LOTRO cosmetic pets, and more!
Virtual Bastion: Building a Brotherhood — and just building in Fallout 76
“Long story short, I learned two things from my shelter experience: I don’t like shelters, but I do like building! I’ll spare you the gory details, but suffice to say, I have two big issues with shelters: (1) you can’t put ‘allies’ (friends found and helped in the wasteland) in them, and (2) loading into them is a pain. To the second point, the game’s load times are horrendous enough; having to load into my shelter each time I visited only added to the annoyance.”
Gamer Reverie: Learning LOTRO’s cosmetic pets
“One of the most popular features in MMOs is, hands down, cosmetic pets. Sometimes they’re tiny versions of NPCs or mounts, sometimes they’re crazy or thematic for a festival, and other times they’re just… creatures! Whichever variety floats your boat, today we’re going to talk about the ones in Lord of the Rings Online and how you can collect them!”
MMO Gypsy: Screenshot longings
“One of the safest ways to make me miss an MMORPG and make me want to jump back in, is when I see beautiful screenshots by active players. I love taking screenshots myself and browsing through old albums makes me feel very much like looking back on events that have happened in real life. I think that’s when games are at their most powerful: when you live the in-game experience and are fully immersed in the environment.
Nerdy Bookahs: Things I’ve never done in Guild Wars 2
“One other thing I have always been against was grinding for a legendary weapon. Much too expensive and I also never had a precursor drop for me. But since I’ve been looking at things I’ve never done in Guild Wars 2 – there are many, but also a lot that I am not interested in! – I figured that maybe it’s about time!”
24 Hours In: Also Playing Valheim
“Screenshots don’t do this game justice. Gameplay footage doesn’t do this game justice. It has to be experienced. The world of Valheim is breathtaking and pulls off the same magic trick as Lord of the Rings Online in the way it creates amazing views out of simple graphics.”
Gnomecore: How to catch up with renown in Shadowlands
“Renown is a super important metric in Shadowlands , as it provides access to many, many things. Blizzard did a great work with catching up with Renown mechanics. You could easily make up to 10-15 Renown levels a week, so let’s see where it comes from.”
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.
