Week End – EQ Royale, New World

5 May, 2018

I’m moving this post to Saturday so I can mention stuff that happens on Friday, which previously fell through the cracks. (Of course nothing happened on Friday this week.) The MMO news and blogging world dries up completely on weekends so it’s a better time for recaps anyway.

My Week

It’s been a slow gaming week for me. I played a little bit of ESO, a little bit of DDO, and, for the first time, a little bit of a Steam sale game I bought in December 2015 called Ryse: Son of Rome. It’s a bombastic third-person action RPG that so far I would characterize as “okay.”

Mostly I’ve been catching up on important television shows like American Dad, Rick and Morty, and Archer. I don’t have HBO anymore so I’m not watching Westworld season 2. I have not seen Infinity War but I callously read spoiler reviews anyway, which, along with [my treatment of Guardians of the Galaxy Part 2 on Twitter][1], should tell you how invested I am in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

In The News

[MassivelyOP reported a rumor that Daybreak has been working on EverQuest 3][2]. I personally assumed Daybreak has been quietly working on a sequel since they announced the end of EverQuest Next (surely they wouldn’t throw code or assets away). The part about focusing on battle royale PvP is complete nonsense, though. (I think it’s false, but even if it’s true-because it’s Daybreak after all-I think it would be a mistake to try to market the EverQuest franchise to battle royale players, and/or to market battle royale to EverQuest players.)

[Redditors are mad about mounts in ESO’s cash shop][3]. It’s not just me that thinks ESO has the least bang for the buck of all the top-tier games. I myself only have two mounts: The Imperial Horse that I got from my original Imperial Edition pre-order way back in 2014, and a terribly-animated Nix Ox War Steed mount that [I must have gotten by accident][4] because I sure didn’t buy it. Four years later, I still can’t afford to buy a regular horse at a stable. That’s worse than Vanilla WoW prices.

[Amazon’s New World isn’t dead yet][5]. I guess this is good news for folks who aren’t dead inside. To my ears, most of [what we’ve heard about New World][6] so far leads me to think it’s a game designed from the ground up not as a fun game, but as a tool to increase Twitch’s revenue. News that “influencers” will be the first to see and shape the game doesn’t change my opinion. It’s going to end up being a game show disguised as an MMORPG.

[The New York Times reported that Fortnite gamers are idiots][7]. [The Guardian responded that Fortnite gamers are actually not idiots][8].

[1]: https://twitter.com/search?q=guardian galaxy %40endgameviable [2]: http://massivelyop.com/2018/05/01/rumor-daybreak-may-be-building-planetside-3-and-everquest-3-sunsetting-just-survive/ [3]: http://massivelyop.com/2018/05/02/elder-scrolls-online-players-are-salty-about-cash-shop-and-lockbox-mounts/ [4]: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/381369/free-nix-ox-mount-for-morrowind-owners [5]: http://massivelyop.com/2018/05/02/amazon-is-apparently-having-influencers-playtest-new-world/ [6]: http://endgameviable.com/amazons-new-world-part-two/ [7]: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/02/style/fortnite.html [8]: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/03/ignore-the-fortnite-scaremongering-the-problem-is-screen-time-not-games

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