Final Fantasy

Keen made a post decrying the “dumbing down” of MMOs – people head for easy mode at every opportunity, and seeing that, more, even easier, games are made. A vicious spiral that ends in “Hello Kitty Adventure Island”. I thought I rather reasonably suggested that there were hard(er) MMOs out there – FFXI Online, EverQuest, and Lineage 2 among them – and that they weren’t exactly burning up the charts. Keen replied that the whole point of his post was that games are getting easier, not that old games were harder (and in fact, that tended to support his point). ...

I got a little sidetracked with two things I’m working on for this blog (“Music” and “A Day in the Life”), but I came across this article about FFXI fandom that I found very interesting. Not so much for FFXI, a game I enjoyed to the point of frustration, but what it says about all of us who play MMOs. A very good read. Ways I Am Evil #56127 I was at Fry’s buying a hard drive for work. And OMG they had Guitar Hero set up! It’s a weird demo, without all the songs, so I’m just getting used to it and making a few mistakes when this young guy comes up… Pressure is on… I get through the Judas Priest song I’m on, do a Franz Ferdinand and offer him the controller. Pretty easy, eh? He takes it, completely loses it on White Zombie. I finish it up perfectly. ...