Internet Friendship is Magic

Just a few days ago, I had the pleasure of serving as a groomsman in a good friend’s wedding. It was a beautiful celebration, filled with the family and close friends of the cheerful couple – an event that we managed to pull off without a hitch – much to the surprise of this particular pessimist. I’ve been to weddings before, of course, but there was something that set this one apart for me: this wasn’t the marriage of classmates or work colleagues, but former guildmates from our shared time in The Elder Scrolls Online.

Why MMO Cosmetics Matter

There’s a popular conception among the MMO cognoscenti that irrespective of circumstance, monetization involving cosmetics is never a problem. There isn’t a fundamental issue with that line of thinking – I would expect everyone could agree on a general tiering of monetization egregiousness with competitive pay-to-win as a capstone and a variety of other methodologies cascading into generally the same order with only a minor degree of variance – but the idea that this lesser evil can never be problematic isn’t one I can fully agree with.

What is Interdependence in MMOs?

It seems like anywhere you turn these days, you’ll find the creators of some up and coming MMO extolling the virtues of player interdependence in MMOs and how it’s making a comeback in their game. Titles like Crowfall, Saga of Lucimia, and Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen are touting the concept as something of a core design principle, promising that with it as a development objective, their game will usher in a return to the golden age of MMORPG communities.

What Makes an MMO Unappealing to you?

Hello and welcome to today’s edition of Isarii wrote a really long Reddit response and decided it would make a good blog post. Today’s post comes courtesy of the r/MMORPG subreddit where a user posed the titular question: what makes an MMO unappealing to you?

There are few things I enjoy more than complaining about MMOs, so I jumped right in.

Raising the Gear Cap in a Scaling World

It’s been almost a year since The Elder Scrolls Online last upped the gear level with the addition of the Imperial City last July, and we’ve seen some broad changes to the way content is delivered since then, most importantly through the continuing proliferation of level scaling technology, which culminated in the recent announcement that scaling will be coming to all of Tamriel. Will these changes introduce challenges to the next gear cap raise? This one thinks they will.

Warcraft: The Movie [Review]

I’ve just returned from viewing the film adaptation of Blizzard’s Warcraft franchise. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few weeks, you’re probably already aware that the movie has been confounding critics around the world, resulting in its current less than inspiring 27% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

A Return to Tamriel and Podcasting News

Although I normally try to stick to content that leans more towards article content than blog content, today’s post is going to be unabashedly bloggy. I’ve been up to a lot stuff recently that hasn’t shown up on The Errant Penman yet, so I bundled it all up into a single post tackling it all at once. Read on for an MMO update, fan site work, and links to podcast appearances both past and future!