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.
In December of 2014 Blizzard released a post talking about their plans for the upcoming 2015 calendar year. One of the interesting tidbits slid in among the other details was the mention of a way of turning excess gold into game time, essentially allowing players to play without paying a subscription. Last week Blizzard officially announced the WoW Token system offering a way of price controlled real money transactions for in game gold. As would be expected this has been the source of much discussion in the gaming blogger community.
On March 3rd the community learned the news of the closure of the original Maxis Emeryville studio, and this had a fairly significant effect on those of us who grew up playing the Sim City franchise. The last few versions of Sim City have failed to live up to customer expectations, and it feels with the closing of the Emeryville studios that it also closes and era of the game. As such many bloggers had quite a few things to say about the events. While some saw this as yet another classic studio being crushed by Electronic Arts, others questioned why we seem to view Maxis as an innocent victim. In both cases they make for some interesting reads.
Last weekend the gaming worlds eyes turned to Boston and the Pax East gaming convention. By all signs it was the biggest Pax East on record, and several large studios had major announcements to be made during the show. Today we take a break from the traditional press release experience that is a major convention, and focus on the experience of being a blogger trying to make connections. Having experienced this myself, it is interesting to read Azuriel’s recounting of the experience over a series of four posts.
Quite possibly one of the largest announcements to come out of Pax East was from the Square Enix Final Fantasy XIV presentation. Last October at Fan Fest in Las Vegas Nevada they announced the Heavensward expansion, and since then fans have been fed a constant trickle of information about the features we can expect to see. One crucial detail however had been left out, when the game would actually release. Originally slotted for a Spring 2015 release, over the weekend they announced the official launch date of June 23rd 2015 and a head start of June 19th 2015. Over the last week a number of bloggers have provided their response to the announcements, and the additional details provided in the presentation.
Nerdy Bookahs is an excellent blog devoted to the travels of Paeroka through the worlds of Guild Wars 2, Rift and Trove. This month the blog turns four and is throwing a celebration quite unlike any blog I have seen before. There are a large number of contests for both real world and in game items from the three games the blog covers. I think this is a really cool idea and wanted to devote a little time to showing this blog off to all of our readers. Last week there was a great post running down the events of the last four years, and how the blog has changed and grown. So please join me in congratulating them on their anniversary, and be sure to check out the contests running until March 22nd 2015.
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