Ask Massively: I do not yet have my copy of Persona 4 Arena edition
The idea of a traditional 2-D fighting game in the Persona franchise seemed like it was too good to be true, but Persona 4 Arena is an actual thing that exists. Unfortunately, I don't currently have my copy, as I didn't feel like shelling out the extra money for super high-speed shipping on release day. So I'll probably have it soon, but not today. Until then, I can still be happy that Kanji's ultimate attack involves his fist-bumping his Persona. Oh, and Mitsuru's playable.
Ask Massively, as a whole, does not cover fighting games. Instead, it covers your questions about MMOs or about meta-MMO issues. For example, this week's question is about Massively guilds in games. If you've got a question you would like to see answered in a future installment of the column, mail it to ask@massively.com or leave it in the comments below. Questions may be edited slightly for clarity and/or brevity.
soundersfc.tid asked: So does Massively still have guilds in any active MMOs (like The Secret World or Glitch)? Or perhaps upcoming MMOs (like Guild Wars 2)?
Not really. The last extant Massively guild was in Guild Wars, and that has currently become something entirely on its own.
Of course, the implied question is why don't we have guilds. And the reason is that guilds as they currently exist in most MMOs don't really work well with the idea of having a Massively guild.
Part of that is the problem of membership. In most MMOs (Guild Wars 2, Final Fantasy XI, and Final Fantasy XIV being exceptions that leap to mind), you're limited to membership in a single guild. City of Heroes and many other games do something similar with group alliances, but even then it's not quite the same. Thus, one guild needs to pretty much do everything. If you want to PvP, you need the guild to provide you with fellow PvPers. Want to roleplay? It needs to be a roleplaying guild. There isn't a whole lot of room for having a character in a guild composed of people who read a site focused on many different aspects of the game plus many other games.
Then there's the simple fact that running a guild is a lot of hard work. And you might think that we could just create a guild and let other people govern it, but since it has the Massively name on it, we'd have to keep in mind that it represents the site. That means moderating offensive individuals, keeping everything above-board, and also performing the usual cat-herding requirements of guild maintenance.
And then there's the simple fact that not all of our writers are playing every game, and some of us are playing on different servers, and so on. It turns into a nightmare of logistics, and it's not worth the mild "oh, cool" evoked from the guild's existence.
That being said, we still do run into people who read the site, and a lot of us give away public information about who we are or will do so when asked. I've grouped up with several of our readers before, and it's always pretty awesome.
Cendres said: If there's a Massively pub crawl, I'll bleed my account dry to fly there and go.
I really hadn't intended for this to become a thing. That appears to be the direction we're heading in.
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