It takes a bit longer for me to mull MMO news over now. As exciting as some breaking developments can be, I guess there is so much now that the barrier-to-entry (to-blogging?) is higher. EverQuest Next is of course a very worthy subject, but I needed some time to step away from those that chugged that Kool-Aid without pause or dumped it out on the floor for no particular homey.
There’s plenty of things to get excited for. Putting Minecraft in an MMO was a hindsight-obvious move especially since that crumbling tower Mr. Hikikomori took 40 hours to perfect is about a magnitude higher than the time budgeted for an in-house artist. Destructible environments are an interesting, albeit concerning, prospect. And, action-oriented combat in this day and age is pretty much required.
What I really care about in MMOs is how content affects players and their communities. It’s why I was chugging Guild Wars 2 Kool-Aid from the start because I believed how they were designing content would make player interactions more organic. Continue reading [EQN] With a Procedural Eye