Global Chat: The column where you get to be heard

We don't blame you if you get tired of hearing our opinions. After all, when you visit our site, you're bound to come across one of our opinion columns sooner or later. There are certainly enough of those types of columns here!

But, what about a column in which print what you guys have to say? We don't have many of those at all!

Enter Global Chat -- our newest column where we'll highlight some of the best comments and discussions of the week from here on our site. When you guys respond to us, you always have some really great things to say and it's about time that we moved over a bit and gave some space to you. So, each week, we'll dive into our comment section and point out some of the very best of what the Massively.com community has to offer.

This week we have three great discussions to point you towards, and they include such various things as Lord of the Rings Online, Star Wars Galaxies, and boobs. Seriously.

The Lord of the Rings becomes Lord of the Free

Sure, this discussion is only a few hours old, but it's already hit over 113 comments! When the announcement hit this morning that Lord of the Rings Online was going free to play, people did everything. They celebrated, the panicked, they started downloading LotRO immediately and some even started carrying "The End is Near!" signs. It was madness I tell you, madness!

But out of all of that insanity, many a good point was raised by many commenters. In fact, after going through the whole thread, I found so many comments that I really couldn't just narrow it down to a few. That would be wrong.

So, instead, I invite you to go on over to our Lord of the Rings Online F2P story and get your say in. Is Turbine right for converting the game over to a F2P model, or was it a bad decision that's going to kill one of the genre's leading MMOs? The choice is yours, dear readers, the choice is yours.

The long road of Star Wars Galaxies

The history of Star Wars Galaxies is long, and absolutely no-one can say that the game didn't hit many, many potholes. However, so many years and so many controversies later, the game is still standing and sporting a decent-sized player base. And to think how many people declared it dead during the NGE!

However, NGEs and CUs aside, the column on SWG attracted a great group of comments that looked at the negatives and positives of the Pre-CU era. From mpdivo:

"For me, it was the removal of permadeath for the Jedi that was the beginning of the end of the game. Lots of players put a lot of hate toward Smedley and SOE when it was players themselves that nerdraged the forums wanting a lot of the changes. It was like George Lucas got a hold of the game. The influx of Jedi into the game was like the introduction of Jar Jar Binks. An unnecessary add, only appealing to young kids."

And from Zan:

"I don't know what the future holds for SWG with the upcoming Star Wars games coming out. This article brings back some of the pain that was the NGE. I had since returned to SWG long after the NGE debacle and to my pleasant surprise found that much of the NGE damage had been mitigated (except of course the class system).

I have since enjoyed the game, however, I do not believe I will ever bring myself to fully trust SOE's MMO management. If I play their games again, it will be on a mild surface level, without investing too much time and money. There are just way too many good MMOs out there now to get burned like that again."

So, even with all of the usual hatred that the NGE brings to mind from SWG players, we can still be neutral and remember both the positives and negatives of the pre-CU and post-NGE eras.

Boooooooooooooooooobs!

And, finally, what's a TERA post without commentary on the game's female armor sets? Whenever a screenshot of TERA rises, it's inevitable that the topic of conversation will always go to the game's ladies.

And, of course, that's a pretty fair point. For the longest time, mixing breasts with armor creates a volatile reaction that disintegrates most of the metal away, leaving bare skin while still covering all of the necessary parts. Gamers are, naturally, just getting tired of that style of artwork. If our comments are any indication, the Massively.com community would really like our fantasy ladies to put real clothing on for once -- sheesh.

First off, an amusing post from Neurotic:

"'Aim for her stomach!'
'No, aim for her shoulders!'
*thwip* *clonk*
'Doh!'"

A great post from Cray:

"It's unfortunate that companies prioritize sexualized marketing over conservative aesthetics. The latter would help sustain the life of a game.

Sexualized women are like exotic sports cars, there's always a newer and hottier version just around the corner and the everyone soon forgets the older version.

Seriously take a look at 5 year old games with half naked women and tell they are not cheesy looking."

And an amazing look at the whole situation from NeverDeath:

"If people want to play a fantasy vixen, they should be able to. No matter what load of feminist bull the PC crowd will try to force-feed you, this is a classic character of the fantasy setting, and it has been immortalized because people like it.

Still, I think there should be a manner of choosing if you want to be a more chaste type of character like a holy warrior or perhaps a dreadnaught of battle, who wears the heaviest armor the female frame can support and is just a rugged beast. There definitely should be a more copious perspective and a better balance involved in the art design of most female armor sets, in most MMOs. However, please realize that the Castanics wouldn't even look like Castanics if they were fully clothed - men included; The art design in this particular case seems to at least be consistent with what we have seen of the race as a whole..."

That's all for this edition of Global Chat. Next week? I'm assuming there's going to be a lot more thoughts on LotRO, and maybe even a few thoughts about some other MMOs. =^_^= Keep it commenting, readers!