Everyone has mobs that they particularly enjoy offing in MMORPGs — sometimes so much so that we go out of our way to get in that extra kill. Maybe the mob offends us in some way, we love the death animation (sadists!), or we imagine our character has a personal vendetta against those creatures.
Blogger Murf lists the top five MMO mobs that he never tires of killing, and you might not expect his top choice: skeletons. “EverQuest took Ultima Online’s skeletons and raised the stakes,” he wrote. “In particular, their skeletons were remembered for their distinct laugh and ‘bone breaking’ death noise. Often the laugh would be a precursor to a huge newbie aggro chain where your choices were die there or run and die somewhere else.”
Read on for this week’s tour of thought-provoking blog posts, including articles on the Warcraft movie, the satisfaction of being a healer, Guild Wars 2’s content drought, and more!
MMO Quests: Beautiful but slightly annoying
“One of my least favourite type of quests are the ones that require you to harvest something but as you’re harvesting you get a message like the one below. That’s right, you managed to pick up the item but OH NO it crumbled to dust! Now you have to harvest another one. Honestly, these quests are nothing but annoying, especially when (as I have mentioned numerous times) RNG and I are not friends.”
Overly Positive: Healer satisfaction
“All of this leads to an idea that healers feel that their active participation in prevention of damage or saving folks is one of the most significant roles in a game, and that bringing someone or something back from the brink of defeat is just as satisfying as delivering killing blows or herding monsters or enemies together in the front line.”
Nerdy Bookahs: Guild Wars 2 — The upside of having a content drought
“Having no new content means that whenever I feel like playing Guild Wars 2, I start it up and play. I enjoy myself in the game, because I never feel as if I am in the game only because I have to. There is nothing to catch up with and no feeling to play in order to not fall behind — and that’s refreshing!”
Inventory Full: How many WoW players does it take to save a movie?
“It may well be that the audience Warcraft needs is precisely that vast horde of people who never played WoW at all but it has almost no chance now of reaching them. That would lie in the realm of serendipity, of the zeitgeist, that magic fairy dust that can’t be manufactured. You can’t bake in word-of-mouth in the pressing plant or code cultural phenomena into the download and you can’t create a ‘must see’ by slapping a poster on the side of a bus, either.”
Superior Realities: SWTOR Inquisitor story complete
“I’ve heard it said that the inquisitor is the dark side class of all dark side classes, but honestly, going light side felt more natural to me as an inquisitor than any other Imperial class. To me, the idea of someone who has seen the worst the Empire has to offer and is determined to make it better is very compelling, and it felt perfectly natural to me.”
I’m Not Squishy: A love affair with MMOs
“I like to think of RuneScape as the gateway MMO. It wasn’t flashy, it ran in a browser, and it was pretty easy to learn  to play. It was one of the first open world games I played and even as a free account, where 50% of the content was locked off, the map felt huge. I never could convince my parents to pay for a membership. It was in RuneScape that I fell in love with watching numbers go up and there were so many skills to level!”
Nomadic Gamers: FFXIV 3.3 very initial impressions
“It was amusing, but not inspired like the earlier level 50 Hildy stuff was. Not sorry I did it, but it felt a bit on the ‘fluff’ side of things. Then again, that’s all Hildy ever was, so I’m not sure why I’m not finding it to be so hilarious now. There were some good lines, and I chuckled more than once, so I still find it funny, it’s just… lacking that ‘spark’ I used to feel that it had?”
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.
