With traditional expansions back on the table for EVE Online, the question of whether it’ll ultimately help the MMO looms in the galactic foreground.
The Ancient Gaming Noob has a few thoughts on this, saying, “It is more of a question as to whether or not CCP can recapture player enthusiasm with expansions again. If nothing else, an expansion implies the company is bringing something big to the game. You can get away with tuning and adjustments with quadrants, but for an expansion to land it needs to bring something new.”
Read on for more MMO essays, including those on Guild Wars 2, SWTOR, damage meters, and more!
Tales of the Aggronaut wrapped up the storyline of Guild Wars 2’s recent expansion: “As far as the final encounter of the expansion goes… it felt phenomenally epic but was also at times VERY busy. It was about as frenetic as I could possibly handle without just feeling overloaded by it. When it was over… I was thankful because honestly there was a little too much going on for me and I felt deeply overstimulated.”
Going Commando claims that the true endgame of SWTOR is not what you’d think: “SWTOR is and has always been a game about alts. It launched with eight unique class stories, and you better believe that the devs didn’t intend for you to only play one of them! Playing alts in SWTOR isn’t some kind of side activity that you engage in when you’ve hit a bit of a lull with the ‘main’ game — it is the game!”
Nerdy Bookahs wonders what’s the best way to return to LOTRO: “This MMO – as well as the classic World of Warcraft – give me something that newer MMOs do not give me: Slower combat. No need to jump, dodge, hop, sprint away from any burning circles, rectangles or whatever as fast as I can. Just your good old tab-targeting.”
MMO Quests is having a good time with Guild Wars 2’s first season: “What none of my characters have done is the living world stories because these are usually in between major expansions, the times when I end up taking a break. I wanted to work on those starting at the beginning because they’ve been releasing living world season one for the first time and it would be neat to do those in order. I finished the first chapter, and am waiting for the release of the next one.”
Parallel Context offers some commentary on WoW’s new social contract: “The real question that everyone likely has, what sort of enforcement this social contract will receive, is the one that nobody except Blizzard knows. Even Blizz probably doesn’t know how that will shake out either, like whether it means Blizz will go harder against offensive player names or will more frequently intervene in trade/LFG chat, but one could hope that some of the more egregious crap out there would be thrown the ban hammer.”
Not All Hunters gives damage meters a second chance: “Actual people use that data to improve things in some way. Not actual people (from here classified as trolls) use that data as a method to harass actual people.”
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.
