Roger over at Contains Moderate Peril recently ducked into the upcoming DLC for Lord of the Rings Online to see what it contained and if it was worth the $20 price tag. He reports that it looks pretty standard for an update and considers it a little strange why SSG is charging for it.
“I suspect that the recent downtime and the ongoing performance issues that are still blighting the game have hit SSG hard financially,” Roger speculates. “They are probably obliged to hit specific financial targets set by Daybreak Game Company and have failed to do so in recent months. If that is the case then they’ve probably been ‘instructed’ to raise revenue via alternative means and this hasty repackaging of an update into a ‘mini-expansion’ is their ‘get out of jail’ card. Or at least on paper.”
Jinxed Thoughts: The WoW Classic dungeon experience
“While I do recall having fun with dungeoning back in the day, I struggle to remember why or how that was possible, because most of my memories are of it taking way too long and people both playing and behaving very badly. The playing badly part I don’t mind so much as long as there is a level of effort put in, and I know for a fact I was far from great myself.”
Tales of the Aggronaut: Swords ‘n’ Magic and Stuff
“While combat seems a bit uneven at times, one huge boon is the fact that death seems to largely be meaningless. When you die you go into a spirit world similar to that of World of Warcraft, but where it varies greatly is that a timer starts ticking down. When it completes you will be summoned back to life at the nearest shrine, which in the case of early exploration seems to be right near the docks in town.”
Endgame Variable: The Division 2 again
“The Division 2 is my favorite of the ‘looter shooters’ I’ve seen, mainly because the cover shooting mechanics looks and feels more natural than any of the others. Shooting from cover feels a lot more intuitive to me than running and gunning and bunny hopping like a stupid video game character, as you do in, say, Destiny 2.”
Kaylriene: A Wishlist for BlizzConline
“I’m not a huge fan of Second Life or anything, but one thing virtual cons sort of miss is that feeling of being part of something with other people. In my head, it would be awesome if they built a WoW event server with virtual stages that would host panels, or an Overwatch server doing the same – a place you could go in-game, with your character from WoW or favorite character/skin combo from Overwatch, and hang out with other people watching the event.”
Aywren Sojourner: The day of many wins in FFXIV
“I still have plans to work on the casting set for Amon – both for glamour and gear purposes. But I am so, so happy to finally see my luck turn around this week. I was getting pretty discouraged for a while there – even ran this thing 5 times in one week for a single drop a few weeks back. And for me, that’s pretty significant.”
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.
