Hey folks and welcome to Bel’s Blog Bonanza, a bi-weekly feature here on MMOGames where I attempt to highlight some of the more interesting topics currently cycling through the gaming blogosphere. One of my favorite aspects of writing about games, is the interactions I have with other bloggers. In this column, it is my goal to highlight some of the individuals in this community and present their interesting take on current issues. Let us dispense with the introduction and get to the awesome.
This was an exceptionally busy two weeks and as such I have a ton of great links to share with you to awesome content from the blogosphere. In this period of time we had the World of Warcraft 6.2 patch, the launch of the Final Fantasy Heavensward expansion, all of the festivities of the E3 show, the announcement of a brand new Star Wars the Old Republic expansion, and a bit of a pre-order debacle for Guild Wars 2 Heart of Thorns. There is a ton of great reading to be had and as such I am going to end up sharing a bunch of posts from each of these topic areas.
This week saw he release of the World of Warcraft 6.2 patch and with it comes a brand new tier of raiding in the form of the alternate universe Hellfire Citadel. In addition to this a whole new kind of Garrison system was introduced that allows players to build naval ships and send them out on missions. Some of our bloggers felt this was just what the game needed, and others had slightly mixed opinions. Will this patch be enough to tide players over until the next expansion?
It feels like this year the common gamer sitting at home in their living room, had more access to the show than ever before. Every major event could be watched in real time, and this turned both the blogoshere and social media into a strange shared space as we all reacted to the things that we happened to be seeing. Everyone took their own things away from the show, and Void even chose to serialize his posts reacting to what he saw after each show. Here is a rundown of what all was said in relation to all the exciting news.
The biggest news of the week for me, since I of course write the Final Fantasy Column here… was the very impressive launch of the Heavensward expansion for Final Fantasy XIV. This has pretty much been taking my every waking moment, and from the sounds of these posts the same is true for the rest of the blogosphere. While there were some significant issues with the head start, namely in the form of login issues to the Aether Data Center, the final launch ended up being among the smoothest I have experienced. We have a huge stack of exciting posts to go through.
One of the big surprises for me at least was the announcement of Star Wars the Old Republic: Knights of the Fallen Empire. This one came from out of left field because I had no clue it was even in the works. The resulting trailer presented a very different universe for the players to experience, and with it rumors have begun to fly about just what this will mean. We have a massive stack of blog posts,each of them trying to work out the details of this expansion and exactly how they feel about it.
This was a week of public relations blunders, and the one that most of the blogosphere seems to be focusing on is the Heart of Thorns pre-order announcement for Guild Wars 2. It has been odd just how universal opinion seems to be that it is not exactly fair to force players to essentially pay for the core game in addition to the expansion. Since this announcement they have thrown in a minor bonus for veteran players, but it has a few folks saying that they are done with the franchise. I’ve collected a smattering of opinions on the matter and present them here today.
Tanki Online: Press Event Highlights .
Winter Veil in World of Warcraft .
Warlords of Draenor: Can it revitalize World of Warcraft? .
Best Memories in Gaming: A Chaos Axe in Guild Wars .
Runescape 3: 14 Years of History .