MMO
16 entries. 24,165 words.
2017-12
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Snap Judgment – Warframe.
2017-12-13.
I’m not entirely sure how to categorize a post about Warframe. It’s usually covered by the MMORPG press but after only a few minutes with it I can say it’s obviously not an MMORPG. Perhaps I finally need to add that “MMO” category to my blog, for discussing what are effectively little more than regular old multiplayer games.
I’ve never heard anyone say they didn’t like Warframe. In fact I’ve heard a lot of “positive buzz” about Warframe.
- MMO
- Reviews
2018-05
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The First Time I Played Fortnite Battle Royale.
2018-05-07.
Fortnite was in the news last week. The real news, that is, not just the MMO news. Both The New York Times and The Guardian mentioned it.
But I’m not here to talk about those articles. They just reminded me of those heady days when I played Fortnite Battle Royale myself. Heady day, I mean. Because I only played for one day. One match, in fact, on that one day.* It didn’t click with me.
- MMO
- Reviews
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Fortnite, The Followup.
2018-05-09.
After writing my last post on Fortnite, I played over a dozen more games and now I have a somewhat more nuanced opinion about it. To respond a little bit to Jeromai’s comment, I think I get it now. Kind of. At least I have some understanding of the appeal of the battle royale genre in general and Fortnite in particular. Two major things clicked into place, which I’ll detail below.
- MMO
- Reviews
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What the Heck is Dauntless.
2018-05-29.
Over the Memorial Day weekend here in the U.S. everyone was talking about Dauntless, or more accurately, talking about the queues that made it impossible to play Dauntless.
It made me wonder: What the heck is Dauntless?
Well, it’s a co-op action RPG coming to PC in 2018. And I guess that’s all we need to know to create hordes of stampeding fans hyped with excitement about it. Or at least, that’s what their web site would lead us to believe, because the only other clue we get before the big red “Download Game” button is: “Battle ferocious Behemoths, craft powerful weapons, and forge your legend in the Shattered Isles.
- MMO
2018-06
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Week End – Fallout 76, Because SEO.
2018-06-02.
A summary of news and observations from the week.
I loaded Dauntless (and FRAPS) a second time just to take a screenshot for this post. In The News It’s been an incredibly bleak week for news, to my eye. Maybe everyone took the whole week off, because Monday was a holiday here in the US.
Bethesda teased us with an announcement of a new game called Fallout 76. It’s debatable whether this deserves to be mentioned on an MMO-themed blog, but see above about bleak news.
- MMO
- MMORPG
- Roundup
2018-09
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New Lord of the Rings MMO.
2018-09-10.
A random Lord of the Rings Online screenshot Even packed full of news as it was, I still neglected to mention in my Saturday post that Athlon is planning to make a new Lord of the Rings Prequel MMO.
That is the extent of what we know so far. We can speculate that it will probably be released on console and PC, that it will probably be free-to-play, and that it will probably not even remotely resemble the kind of traditional MMORPG that we actually want to play.
- MMO
- MMORPG
- Pre-Release
2018-11
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November in Review.
2018-11-28.
I don’t normally do month-in-review posts, but since I was largely absent this month, I figured I should do one for a change.
I’ve spent most of November trying to recover from back pain. The first day of the month it got really bad, then it got better, then it got really bad again, and now it’s getting better again. I’ve been taking a muscle relaxant called baclofen every day this month, and last week I started going to physical therapy to try to loosen things up.
- MMO
- Musings
2019-02
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Anthem Open Demo Notes.
2019-02-04.
First! Wait, what? Other people have written about Anthem too? Oh. Oh well. I guess here’s another.
Roger basically wrote the exact same post that I did. In fact, I dare say most every reaction to Anthem I’ve seen from newcomers to the free demo weekend is basically the same: “It’s okay if you like that sort of thing, but it’s not for me.” That’s what this post is, so buckle up.
- MMO
2019-03
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The Division 2 Open Beta.
2019-03-04.
I tried the open beta this past weekend, because it was free.
First, in marketing terms, it was a far better game demo than The Division 1 Open Beta, because you got into the action much faster, and didn’t spend your first 30 minutes just wandering around trying to find where to start. So in that sense, it’s much better.
Other than that, there’s nothing much to report. It’s basically identical to the first game, except it takes more CPU and GPU power to run.
- MMO
- Reviews
2019-07
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Snap Judgment – Life is Feudal: MMO.
2019-07-27.
Life Is Feudal, the MMO, as opposed to the other two games with the same name that are different, recently became free to download and play on Steam. This is a game I’ve wanted to check out almost since the day I heard about it, which seems like five or ten or a hundred years ago now. It’s been an Early Access game all this time (and still is), but it’s always been more than the amount I’m willing to pay for an Early Access game, which is $10.
- MMO
2019-10
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Destiny 2: A Picture Book In Two Parts.
2019-10-06.
Sorry folks, this page will probably take a year to load.
Up front I should say that I’m well aware that I could have turned to Google to clear up any confusion described below. I’m simply relaying how I interpreted the game screens presented to me in the absence of any other context, from the perspective of a person who has never seen or played Destiny 1 or Destiny 2 or even any Halo games before.
- MMO
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The Division 2 Free Weekend Worked.
2019-10-22.
Over the weekend I learned about the The Division 2 free weekend. I remembered generally liking the The Division 2 open beta, so I decided to download it and take advantage of the gift. (I wish I’d known that the free “weekend” had actually begun last Thursday.)
I proceeded to play for about seven hours on Saturday and Sunday, making my way to level 8. I enjoyed it so much I considered buying it, since it also happens to be on sale right now.
- MMO
2019-12
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Revisiting Ongoing Games.
2019-12-18.
I briefly mentioned the category “Ongoing Games” in my last post (or “post”) as a potential replacement for the terms “MMORPG” and/or “MMO.” Even before I saw Jeromai’s post, which I agree with, I started to doubt my own judgment about it.
The more I thought about it, the more “Ongoing Game” meant nothing whatsoever. It might as well be “Game.” Almost any game could fit into this category in 2019.
- MMO
- MMORPG
- Musings
2020-09
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The Division 2, Again.
2020-09-20.
So I’m playing an MMO again, kind of.
I just happened to notice the other day that the base version of The Division 2 was on sale in the Ubisoft store for $10. Adding in a handful of “Uplay Points”-or whatever they’re called-that I’d gathered from years of playing Assassin’s Creed games, I knocked it down to $8.
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.
- MMO
- Shooter
2020-10
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Genshin Impact (PS4).
2020-10-04.
This will probably be my only post on Genshin Impact, the hot new MMO everyone is talking about.
It was kind of fun. But not because of the game. I derived the most enjoyment from making up my own dialog to go against the NPC dialog. Since, for some incomprehensible reason-I guess JRPG tradition-you have to press X after every NPC line, there is plenty of opportunity to inject yourself into every scene.
- MMO
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Genshin Impact (PS4), In My Own Words.
2020-10-05.
Ha! Here’s one more post about Genshin Impact. I copied the (100% unedited) transcript from my video down below. I had hoped I could do that in the last post, but it apparently takes a day for YouTube to think about the video and make the automatic transcript.
The transcript also includes the NPC dialog, which is kind of a bummer. I still wish I had a tool that I could run my microphone track through to automatically create a transcript like this.
- MMO