World of Warcraft’s Captain Placeholder. Final Fantasy XIV‘s square grapes. City of Heroes asking you to kill skuls. Lord of the Rings Online putting a rock in the middle of the road. Weird, memorable things happen in these games, often technical errors, and players are quick to immortalize these weird bugs or strange moments as memes. And every so often, the developers realize that they are sitting on a gold mine and lean into it, leading to moments like FFXIV making square grape stress toys for the fan festival.
Oh, sure, it might be weird to have a misplaced rock in Middle-earth, but isn’t it better when everyone enjoys the sudden arrival of an unexpected geological feature on the path? What’s your favorite moment of MMO developers embracing a community meme? Anything from a weird player story that gets immortalized in a loading screen tip to something that gets explicit textual acknowledgement in a quest is fair game.
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!
