I’m always a sucker for a good timeline, which is why I perked up at seeing Wilhelm at Ancient Gaming Noob trace out the history of Sony Online Entertainment (neé Daybreak) and its library of titles.
“At some point around 1996 John Smedley, working at Sony, managed to get Brad McQuaid, Jeff Buttler, Steve Clover, Bill Trost, and a host of others together to create a 3D online multiplayer fantasy game loosely (or not so loosely in places) based off of Sojourn MUD / TorilMUD,” he wrote.
Read on for even more MMO essays, including looks at Warhammer Online, Genshin Impact, and Star Wars Galaxies!
Nerdy Bookahs: Warhammer Online in 2021
“I think it’s quite curious that both Star Wars Galaxies and Warhammer Online are private servers that got started after the official games were canned. I just can’t believe that they hadn’t been profitable anymore… well, come to think of it, WAR probably wasn’t because it didn’t run well at all on the PCs we had back then and was overall a buggy mess.”
MMO Folklorist: Star Wars Galaxies is getting the Bespin expansion you’ve always dreamed of
‘The first thing that struck me when I landed on Bespin was the skybox. I didn’t realise it until I landed, but if it had looked wrong it would have totally ruined the feeling of actually being on Bespin. Instead you feel instantly as though you’re right there and immersed in the location that you saw in the movie. The colours are a moody mix of oranges unlike anything else in the game, and the sky is alive with all manner of ships zooming around between the floating city’s platforms.”
Mailvatar: Events done right in Genshin Impact
“Even so, the thing about Genshin Impact is that its developers, miHoYo, definitely do not rest on their laurels – nor their piles of dollar bills, probably high enough to make Uncle Scrooge blush. Quite the contrary. Frankly, I haven’t seen such a high cadence of new and interesting stuff to do in an online game, like, ever.”
Many Welps: My favorite games of 2020
“If you told me in the beginning of the year that RuneScape would be my most played game this year, I wouldn’t have believed it. Mostly because I tried playing RuneScape in January and bounced off of it hard.”
The Friendly Necromancer: Delving those MMO pool labyrinths
“When I was spending a lot of time in this zone, oh… what 17 or 18 years ago? It was because I needed a quest item from a rare mob for my Beastlord epic weapon quest. I remember I spent quite a long time at the entrance of the zone killing the same mob over and over again. I think boredom eventually caused me to branch out and start hunting in other areas of the zone, but this place was a bit of a nightmare and it was easy to aggro multiple mobs and not even know it because, just like Dory, you just keep swimming.”
Tales of the Aggronaut: Dailyquestification of games
“I had a bit of a revelation over the weekend, and now I understand a little better some of my motivations. I hate daily quests, and I understand WHY I hate them, but first I guess we should probably talk a bit about the daily quest construct as a whole.”
MMOquests.com: Wurm Online owns my gaming soul
“I’ve never really been the sort of person to min/max in Wurm. I’ve never cared about max skill gains – but now all of the sudden I find myself caring a little bit so I’ve been researching how to optimize what I do in game. I know, that’s not exactly FUN for a lot of people, but I’ve been playing for over 10 years, and I’m constantly changing my play style.
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.
