Month: August 2019

Taking the tiniest taste of permadeath in DDO

Bio Break

While last week I was extoling the virtues of permadeath in Rimworld, I have to admit that this mechanic isn’t really suitable for a lot of games, especially ones in which you sink a whole lot of time, effort, and even money. You know, like MMORPGs. Permadeath has always remained a very fringe ruleset for this genre, popping up most often in online ARPGs more than proper MMOs.

However, from time to time a game experiments with it, and this month we saw Dungeons and Dragons Online actually launch a “hardcore league” server that revolved around permadeath as a core feature. This didn’t come out of nowhere; DDO’s community has long had a reputation for embracing permadeath voluntarily as a sort of roleplay feature, and so I can understand why the devs would want to try this out for realskies.

The question for me was, is it really up my…

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Staying motivated #Blaugust2019

GamingSF

It’s the final week of Blaugust 2019 and the topic is “staying motivated” according to the schedule. I’ve not had much of an issue with blogging these last few weeks; anyone would think some major MMORPG event has happened or something. Indeed, this post would have gone live earlier in the week if not for me having so much else to write about…

Outside of the rare industry-shaking mega-event, or even the relatively more modest but still game changing launch of a new expansion or beta or whatever, it can be harder to keep coming up with topics and fresh insights though.

In a sense this topic loops back around to the start of Blaugust, the types of content and idea generation suggestions still apply if motivation is flagging or ideas are running low. In a sense this is a particularly interesting time to be a blogger, especially if…

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The diminishing returns of progression servers

Bio Break

Generally these days I have a pretty set pattern in approaching Lord of the Rings Online. On night one, I’ll play my Lore-master on a regular server in the newest area (Vale of Anduin), and on night two, I’ll jump onto my Minstrel on the progression server in Mirkwood.

A few months back, and most of my enthusiasm was reserved for the Minstrel, but as of late I’ve noticed that my interest has swung in the other direction. I very much enjoy going through the newer content and catching up with the latest while I find that my Minstrel feels more like a chore that must be done and endured.

This gave me serious pause the other night as to my intentions for the progression server. Is it worth the time and effort? It’s no small thing to level a character from one to 120 in LOTRO and through to…

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Five things to do when your MMO feels stale

Occasional Hero


It happens to us even in our favorite MMOs. Content we enjoyed gets stale. We wind up in a rut. We still feel like playing, but nothing sounds fun. This is different from simply feeling turned off by a game, where we have no will to play at all. So what’s a gamer to do? Here are a few ideas.

Roll a new character

As an altaholic, this is my go-to. A new character in a new class, or even a new style of a class you’ve played but want to make different choices with, can breathe a lot more life into a game. Sadly, this often means either deleting a character or paying money for a new character slot. But I feel that I get a lot of value out of new characters, so I generally don’t mind paying for one.

Just wander

MMOs have rich, beautiful worlds. If…

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What game could you play for a year?

Many Welps

I’ve seen this question floating around a few blogs as of late or variations of it. I believe the original question was what game could you play for the rest of this year. That’s for about 4 months. But I think the harder question would be what game could I commit to and play for a year.

I haven’t played a game for more than a couple months in a very long time. The last time I was heavily invested in a game was Guild Wars in 2007 and before that, it was Runescape in 2005. Since then I’ve flitted between games trying to find the next one that I could latch on too.

I think I’ve been playing Trove for around 4 months straight now. Which if you told me that I would be doing that last year I would not have believed it. But even now, my interest…

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