As we kick off another column on recent MMO blog essays, Galactic Antics uses a recent situation in Star Wars: The Old Republic as an example of how metas can bite you in the butt.
“It’s the sort of thing which, as players of these games, we kinda have to acknowledge isn’t going to ever go away. There will always be a meta. That’s fine as long as it can, on the whole, be ignored. However, it’s the times when it really can’t be ignored that can be infuriating.”
Read on for more essays on FFXIV, World of Warcraft, ESO, and more!
Virtual Bastion gave the free trial of FFXIV a go and saw potential in it: “I like FFXIV, but the connection with it is isn’t yet strong enough for it to go into regular rotation. Once my Fallout 76 sub runs out, and I’m looking to spend some quality time with a quality MMORPG, I’ll head back into the thick of Gridania and see how things go. I do believe that once I’m out of the game’s beginning throes, have more abilities at hand, and have more experience under my belt, I just might fall for FFXIV.”
Priest with a Cause offers some casual impressions of World of Warcraft’s last expansion: “I thought the theme of Shadowlands was very interesting to begin with, and I liked the way the levelling storyline introduced you to the different afterlives. I thought that had a lot of potential, and with so many important characters in lore that are already dead, there was a nearly endless supply of story threads to pick up and utilise if desired. Unfortunately Blizzard didn’t really end up doing a lot of that.”
A Missioneer in EVE is playing Elder Scrolls Online according to personal rules: “Now Walker is well named because he is running under a few conditions that put the game back to something approaching the original difficulty and then a bit more the main condition being that he never uses wayshrines to move about. This first rule has lead to a lot more appreciation of the culture and landscapes of ESO as I don’t skip the travel time but try to walk down every road before moving onto the next territory.”
Gnomecore compared the communities in WoW and FFXIV: “AÂ little bit of positive reinforcement does wonders. The players not only succeed, but remember this experience as educating, never fail this mechanic again, and everyone is happy. I wish every game community employed that approach as a status quo.”
Mailvaltar parted ways with EVE Online and has a thoughtful essay about why: “EVE has always been a game you had to put work into in order to get to the enjoyable bits, and each and every time I took a break it was because the tedium had started to outweigh the fun. Well, by now the tedium has reached a point where I just don’t want to deal with it anymore at all, and the game’s become more expensive to boot.”
Inventory Full took a look at EverQuest II’s latest content update: “There are some new collections, which is an excellent addition to the game, but I haven’t done the old collections yet. That’s one reason my characters aren’t as powerful as they should be. Collections stopped being fluff years ago; now they’re a significant upgrade path you really can’t afford to ignore, along with mounts, mercs and familiars.”
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.
