ArenaNet and the Price Paid

Tags

anet, arenanet, community, games, gaming, guild wars 2, gw2, MMO, mmo gaming, mmorpg, mmorpg gaming, reddit, social media, twitter

By now, everyone has had more than enough time to process the matter of ArenaNet’s actions against two of the writers of Guild Wars 2, including the resultant blowback that still seems to be washing onward at the point of my writing this blog. As someone who likes to follow and write about MMOs and multiplayer games, there’s something of a compulsion to provide my own opinion on the whole sorry affair, but there’s also quite a lot of thoughts I would like to get off of my chest.

Before I begin, though, I do want to mention that links that I provide in this post are very likely going to direct to some unpleasant content, so if that’s a sensitive spot for you, then I implore you to not click any links in this post if that will cause you to be upset.

I’ll also be including pictures of owls to further smooth the edges.

Being a Shared Experience

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blog, social media, streamer, streaming, twitch, vlog

I’ve been watching a lot of Twitch lately.

It’s not really something that’s worth blogging about on its own, of course. I could perhaps fashion a listicle about what sorts of channels I really enjoy, but this being a personal blog I’m going to talk about something that’s come up to my mind literally just moments ago. About streaming. About being a personality. About the want to be entertaining and engaging versus that little voice that hums a mantra of self-destructive doubt.

This is, essentially, going to sound like a damn inspirational Pinterest board.

The Delight of Outreach

Tags

community, forum, message board, MMO, playstyle, roleplay, social media, twitter

MMO’s are things that can be done solo, which is fine and well and wonderful…but at the same time, there are things that are just better together.  I have tried to just get by on writing headcanon for my character in Final Fantasy XIV, but that’s more an exercise in writing than it is engaging with others.  MMO’s are best when you find like-minded folks to be with.

But in a gaming age where groups are assembled through a finder algorithm, is there really a point to it anymore?  Are MMO’s losing their social side?  Not really.  You just have to do a bit of legwork.  Which isn’t really work at all.

Calling it “legplay” just gives it a whole different context.