Perhaps I am subconsciously absorbing some of the ennui drifting around the blogosphere. Spinks first pointed it out, that MMO blogging seemed to be going into a hibernation state. Activity at Tobold's and Kill Ten Rats have been fairly sluggish, comparatively speaking, and Melmoth wrote an exceedingly poetical if not content crunchy piece on MMO Winter.
Oddly, my (MMO-related) amusements of choice have been watching an encouraging percentage of the world (MMO player-wise) swing around to "my way" of thinking.
Such as troll-lurking the CoH forums for lack of anything better to do. I read the thread on player toxicity and laughed to myself. Couldn't be arsed to actually log in and comment, which I suppose, speaks for itself on how much I value discussion (or rather rabid argument and equally rabid counter-argument) in that community now.
Amusingly, the old Incarnate trial issues have popped up again like a bad penny. Oddly, the rabid fanboi screaming seems to have subsided somewhat. Either because this is an established poster within the cartel, so there's no need to jump on him like sharks that have scented blood, or the fanbois have gotten tired of saying the same things, or they're busy grinding Incarnates within the game, or god forbid, maybe after 400 repeated iTrials, they've come around to the "value" of having a solo option so they don't have to be dependent on 11 or 14 or 23 other people, some of which may act in an annoyingly moronic fashion to their preferences.
Where the hell were they six months ago? Or more specifically, 7 months ago, as my last forum log-in marks the date and time I essentially rage quit CoH.
Till now, I still have an overwhelming sense of satisfaction and relief of -not- contributing $105 ($15 x 7) towards the development of iTrials and Freedom.
I hear they will probably announce something during the player summit about a solo Incarnate path. The summit's in late November, it'll take them at least a few more months to drift into beta testing, assuming it all goes well and Positron doesn't do something moronic to "incentivize" players into playing the way he wants us to play.
That's as it may. If a viable solo Incarnate path ever crops up, I will resubscribe then. If not, then I will just continue watching from the peanut gallery, eating popcorn and chortling. As much as I enjoy the rest of the game, I have a philosophical disagreement with grind and "incentivizing" players down a Skinner box path, and I can get a decent amount of enjoyment out of the posts of other people who have finally pierced the veil and get my point.
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Speaking of which, vindication has been a long time coming for my point about World of Warcraft.
(Apparently, Cataclysms are bad for business. Didn't work so good for Realms of Despair, and seems to have done poorly for World of Warcraft too. The more things change, the more older players get upset, it seems to appear.)
The latest expansion Mists of Pandaria have been greeted with a surprising amount of vitriol. Unscientifically counting the number of positive and negative comments across various websites, there's a hefty cohort (30-60%) of jaded WoW players who simply cannot be persuaded back to WoW for whatever reason, and appear to be grasping at anything to categorically reject the game as unplayable.
This includes bigoted comments about Asians (and Eastern settings), fat bodyshapes, furries, and young kids vis a vis rotund Pandas and Pokemons. Not to mention, a probably valid complaint about Ghostcrawler and team's obsession with balance perfection and over-simplification to the point of distilling a five-times revised skill spec system into fairly ludicrous talent tree paths with nearly no choice remaining.
Hilariously, I find that I'm rather attracted to the concept of bipedal Panda monks, similar to the furry werewolves in a top hat of Cataclysm. Of course, I have no conception of the -rest- of the expansion which affects veterans, and would probably fill me with fury similar to that of the iTrials if I was as invested into WoW as I was with CoH.
Alas, I can barely keep my attention on WoW for long. I re-patched a few days ago, intent on trying their "level to 20 free" trial, and made a Draenei paladin. I got to about level 4 before I got fully sick of "kill 8 mobs by clicking on them and thwapping them with a big hammer" and collect their random gibbets and logged right out again. It's going to take me a good year to get to level 20 at this rate. What great value for money... *wry grin*
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Only one thing's got me relatively focused at the moment. And that is catching Guild War's yearly Halloween festival before it ends on Monday. A number of PvE quests have yet to be done. I could PvP brawl to kill time. And now there's a PvE challenge mission to distract me from PvP brawling. Choices, choices.
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