Global Chat: Big ol' FAIL
I'm taking the opportunity to indulge this week by adding a Global Chat quote from a Massively writer. Justin's Perfect Ten column this week touched on overused forum terms, striking a familiar chord with pretty much everyone who's ever spent more than 30 minutes in an MMO forum.
Of course, "fail" was in there -- how could it not be? Justin's commentary on this was both accurate and hilarious:
It's annoying just how much the MMO community's co-opted this term to sling at anything that meets its disapproval. Oh, don't tell us why you're upset; just belch out a big ol' "FAIL" and call it a job well done. Bravo.
Let's move forward to the business at hand: some of the cool things our readers had to say this week. So follow along after the jump and enjoy this week's Global Chat in between the Easter MMO festivities of your choice!
The introduction of theme weeks to Massively's daily One Shots feature made for a fun new view of games. Last week's focus on starting zones gave us the opportunity to see some games we haven't seen for a while on One Shots, including Allods Online. The discussion that followed among our readers included some input from Purkit that illustrated how much a bad decision can haunt a game's reputation:
Allods got rave reviews from commenters here. I (and many people) were extremely impressed by its quality. I remember almost no negative comments about the game until the cash shop was introduced.
I don't know the ins and outs of what patch added what, but as I understand it, you need a scroll to progress at a "normal" XP rate. As it stands, you can currently get one free scroll with a daily quest, but gPotato hasn't decided whether it will keep that in game when the game officially launches in Europe. Obviously, if I'm wrong about this, I'd love to be corrected.
I don't play the game at the moment, and I'll be honest: I don't trust gPotato enough to go back. I get the impression at any given moment it will make a change in the game that will require me to spend money in the cash shop just to be able to play. I don't mind paying for fun items or things like character slots, transfers and name changes, but I refuse to buy items just to be able to progress in a timely fashion. Having to buy consumable items just to play normally is, in my opinion, extremely negative game design and not something I'm willing to tolerate.
All of this negativity is a shame because Allods looks fantastic, is fairly enjoyable, and has some great features; it's just been tarnished by some fairly silly business decisions.
Minigames are a favorite of many MMO players, and one of the most common is called "Launch Day Speculation." TERA's newest trailer brought along a new rendition of that minigame, and Massively reader Prime Synergy stepped up to make a few good points:
If En Masse/Atari were smart, they would avoid a November release date like the plague. Nearly every single big title of the year is coming out that month. I'm excited for TERA too, but this game would get very little to no coverage (as well as sales I would imagine) that month unless it turns out to be the best thing ever. Of course, we have Massively, GBTV, and the MMO Report, and places like that that will probably cover it, but this would probably get buried everywhere else.
Like I said, I'm excited for this game. But let's be realistic: If this game wants to draw in a huge crowd of people, I'd suggest trying to do that when that crowd of people aren't already occupied. I say it should come out before or after November. "Smaller" games need to stay as far away from that window as possible.
Finally, here's a short but sweet comment from our shiny new forums. If you've not visited yet, you're missing out on some great discussion, both good and bad. It's been a place to discuss the standard forum topics -- all the latest news, what we're playing, and so on -- but it's also a place to bring problems and questions to the Massively staff. One current conversation centers around the hot topic of Massively's site layout, and several staffers took the opportunity to weigh in and chat with the readers about it. Helltrek took a moment in the discussion to express his appreciation:
A thread like this is actually why I love Massively. Writers that are to the point and heartily involved with the community.
Thank you, Helltrek!
Global Chat is the weekly feature that's all about you, our readers. Every Sunday we collect the best, funniest, and most thought-provoking comments from the Massively readers and round them up into Global Chat for discussion. Read over them for yourself, hit the comment button, and add your own thoughts!
