It’s August, which means that it’s also Blaugust — an annual celebration of blogging! For this month, experienced bloggers and newbies alike are joining forces to cross-promote, encourage, and prompt each other to write. So let’s highlight some of the fresh voices out there, shall we?
We’ll start with Konmai Zone, who had a few words to say about Diablo IV’s endgame: “Diablo 4 is such an interesting beast. A return to form for Blizzard. A massive success. Suddenly, a massive failure? All within a few months after launch.”
Broximar is taking a month off of MMOs, noting, “I am hanging on to a vision of how I played MMOs 10-15 years ago. These games have changed, my ability to devote time has changed, and the experience I want is no longer what these games provide me. I am caught up in the sunk-cost fallacy. Cold turkey may be the way to go.”
The Lesser Key of St. Byleth became a mentor in FFXIV: “By far the largest hurdle to becoming a Mentor is acquiring all 1500 commendations, which are able to be given at the end of dungeons, trials, and other instanced content to people you thought did a good job.”
Calamity Jess got sucked into Baldur’s Gate III: “I need STORY, I need choices and consequences, adventure and romance, and finally I can have it when Baldur’s Gate III releases! I’ve sunk 99 hours into the early access version and it was only ONE chapter!”
Full-Time Casual finished up LOTRO’s latest zone, saying, “It was an easy romp with a few pieces of gear upgraded here and there. As a bonus, I always enjoy questing alongside of Gimli and Legolas and as a dwarf I feel like I fit right in. There were a few folks who were happy to see me again which required a trip or two out to lotro-wiki, since it has been ages since I’ve done the Gondor content.”
Mobile MMO Addict explains the appeal of these games: “It absolutely must have convenience features that are optional at most on desktop games. Zone size has to be considered, for example. In BDO, I can spend ten minutes or more just running from one place to another. That isn’t really acceptable gameplay on mobile. It just wastes battery life and isn’t fun.”
Off Fleek Geek talks about being an EverQuest hacker: “Eventually I wrote a program that took network data and a list of monster names, and drew a map with every place those monsters were at, marked with colored dots on the map. I’d enter a zone, sit somewhere safe for hours and collect data.”
Taking Mage poked around in Dreamlight Valley: “I am a huge fan of cozy games, and it fit the bill nicely for quite a long time. I enjoyed the Animal Crossing-like gameplay coupled with actual quests. I found that having solid tasks that I need to do keeps me engaged far longer than throwing me in a sandbox.”
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.
