While I let you chew on that slightly clickbaity title there, I urge you to check out an essay on Bits & Pieces about the history of fast travel in video games (which, of course, includes MMOs).
“Certainly the languid pace of travel in a game like World of Warcraft before its expansions, as well as other classic MMOs, was one of the main elements that battered you over the head with the size of its gameworld,” Gavin wrote. “Now, with its myriad, cheap flight-paths, ability to use easily-available flying mounts anywhere and common teleports, player convenience has been prioritised over a completely integral sense of world-space.”
MMO Gypsy: Musings on gaming history and MMOnogomy
“It’s nice to have a steady MMORPG to return to and see the world and your character grow with it. Even if I’m always up for trying new promising titles, and they are now far and few between, I am an MMO monogamist at heart. I like to know where to turn to in the evening after a long day at work. I like walking familiar streets, watching familiar sites. There’s a sense of belonging to an MMO world once you become a more seasoned player that is just very nice and comforting to me, like a warm blanket to the soul.”
Kaylriene: The downsides of Patch 9.1
“Blizzard kind of tried to wiggle out of a problem here. If you say ‘new zone’ people think of large landmasses with sprawling new gameplay areas to check out. Korthia is…small. Maybe slightly smaller than Mechagon, in that there is still travel time from edge to edge, but it’s not huge by any measure.”
MMO Casual: Initial thoughts on FFXVI Patch 5.5
“As the main story quests roll out, particularly in endgame patches, there is content that is gated behind an ilvl requirement. In this case, you would have either needed enough tomestones saved up from older content to exchange for upgraded gear. Or you would have need to be relatively current on going through the most recent raid instances.”
Gamer Reverie: Learning LOTRO — Merrevail
“You are most likely going to see what many players call ‘bat babes’ — bat-like women found in some of the vilest parts of Middle-earth. Where there’s one, there’s often many more. A female is called a morroval (Sindarin for ‘black-wing’), and a male is called a morvul (‘black-slave’). The males are more monstrous in appearance, and are hunched over, and not as prevalent as the females.”
Inventory Full: Stick with what you know
“Shawn definitely isn’t acting like a rock star. Really the opposite. The whole vibe around Project_N (hate that underscore…) seems to be to damp down expectations. After years and years of overblown pitches for god-games that end up imploding before they even reach market it’s nice to see someone setting their sights low for once.”
The Nerdd: Will we have conventions this year?
“Businesses have lost money, and conventions cost a lot. How will they get revenue back up? Online events over the past year made a fraction of a fraction of their standard revenue. It still cost money to put on those online events however, and so in their attempt to make money, they lost even more. Because of this, taking a gamble on having an event without a 100% guarantee that it’ll be okay, is losing any appeal.”
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.
