Last week, when Microsoft and Bethsoft had the nerve to re-release The Elder Scrolls Oblivion for 50 smackaroos along with paid horse armor DLC (again), I read a particularly provocative article from Aftermath that reminded people they can just… not buy it. Spicy sentiment indeed, I know, but sometimes people really do need to ingest permission to just not leap to whatever thing the industry us hyping this week. All the people who just rebought a game they likely already own are proof.
“Everybody is posting about the Oblivion remaster today, and over 100,000 people are playing it on Steam,” Aftermath’s Nathan Grayson wrote. “But in a couple days […] they’ll stop. That’s one of the few upsides of living through this era of Peak Media: Whatever your reasons, be they budget or boycott, you can always just skip the thing everybody is talking about. Give it a day or two, and there will inevitably be something else.”
I wanted to consider this in the context of MMOs and MMORPGs today. So many times a new game will come along and I’ll be tempted to leap in from FOMO, even if I am perfectly happy in whatever MMO I’m already playing. It happened to me just a few months ago with Path of Exile 2. I didn’t enjoy it, and I should’ve known better because I didn’t enjoy the philosophy of POE1 either, and no amount of my liking Grinding Gear is going to change that, but I got sucked along by the hype. Worse, the diversion hurt my momentum in Guild Wars 2 at the time, and I’d been having a blast. And yet if I don’t leap in, I feel guilty, as if I’m not supporting the genre or something.
Do you feel bad about skipping new MMOs as they come out when you’re perfectly happy with your current game? How do you you navigate the hype cycles?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
