With all of the attention, fandom, e-sports, and development given to Blizzard’s Overwatch, have you ever suspected that the team shooter has a critical weakness in its narrative?
Tyler at Superior Realities unloads with both barrels at what he calls the “failure” of Overwatch’s story: “The thing is, a 10-minute video clip once a year and a 10-page digital comic every six months aren’t a story. They’re marketing […] Nor has there been any forward momentum to the story. We’re still just hovering, frozen in time, at the moment Winston reactivated Overwatch. If this were a movie, we’d still be in the first five minutes.”
Our whirlwind tour through the latest that the MMO blogosphere has to offer continues, with a look at Destiny 2’s PC beta, FFXIV’s nostalgia trip, the perceived value of MMOs, and more!
Aywren Sojourner: FFXIV’s The Rising 2017, a nostalgic trip
“All which goes to remind us… there are people behind the game with thoughts, feelings and hopes. These snippets were meant to be funny, but working in R&D myself, they hit close to home. I really do feel that the FFXIV team is hard-working, passionate about the world it makes, and cares about the players.”
Ravalation: LOTRO’s first character update, humans and Elves
“Although I have been critical in this article about some details, I generally feel the character update is a huge upgrade and a great addition to the game for LOTRO players. If you are like me and have trouble adapting to a new look of your characters, give it some time and fiddle around with things at the barber — the automatic look almost never does it right.”
Ancient Gaming Noob: In search of the thousand-dollar video game
“So whining about people buying lattes instead of your video games is just a self-serving attempt to blame other people, including your customers, for your own problems in a cheap attempt to milk some guilt out of them.”
Tales of the Aggronaut: Destiny 2 PC beta thoughts
“The other big takeaway is that everything just feels more polished. This one isn’t easy to quantify, but everything about this build felt production ready. The other big takeaway is that once I got used to the hotkeys… the PC experience is just flawless and before long I reached a point where it was just as instinctive for me to hit F to activate my super as it is to mash my two shoulder buttons.”
Galactic Antics: Thoughts on SWTOR’s 5.4 (no spoilers)
“As for Umbara, it’s certainly atmospheric once you get beyond the train section. Unfortunately — a side-effect of presumably not wanting a shedton of clutter on-screen — the scenery which is visible from the train is incredibly barebones, which doesn’t make for a very interesting environment at all. Seeing as this train is also going to be the Stronghold, this is especially disappointing, but if it’s the only way this section can run smoothly (even then it’s still fairly laggy) I’m okay with it, I guess.”
Endgame Variable: Getting lost in MMOs
“When I think about my experience playing through the remainder of the Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns story, I was lost a lot in the Maguuma Jungle, and it was aggravating. The flat 2D map helped little because the world was extremely 3-D and while the map might show you standing on top of your destination, in reality it might be way above you or below you with no discernable path to reach it.”
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.
