Three years ago Liore, Arolaide, and special co-host Corranhorn were pretty serious business MMO players. Today, all three of us have scaled our MMO participation down considerably, if indeed we’re playing one at all. So what happened, and are we just part of a general trend away from MMOs? Does the genre even mean anything today? Are MMOs for old people? Can there ever be another WoW-like behemoth?
Because staying on topic is hard, we also briefly discuss SWTOR’s move to free-to-play and why EA are big jerks, as well as how much we hate daily quests. (Hint: it’s a lot.) Additionally we lament our gaming budgets and the Steam Autumn sale: we already have more games than we could ever truly play, and yet we can’t resist good deals!
Note that Aro had a fantastic rant about how it’s disrespectful to call Optimus Prime just “Optimus”, but her microphone went robot and I had to cut it out. It is a loss for us all.
Some links you might be interested in after listening:
* ESA Industry Facts
* The Steam Calculator will make you feel bad about your game purchases
* Free Music Archive page for our theme, in THE crowd by The Years
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Herding Cats is the blog of Liore, known in the real world as Jessica Cook. She writes mostly about MMOs and RPGs, and believes in 
Good discussion. Have you all tried Vanguard SoH since the F2P? It’s a bit too grindy/hardcore for my tastes but it does have a very different take on online gaming than WoW.
Telwyn´s last post: Rift: ding! and leveling speed
Glad you enjoyed it, Telwyn! I haven’t played Vanguard at all, actually, although it was on my list to check out for a while. Next time I get the urge to see a different MMO, I will definitely check it out…
The funny thing with WoW’s size is, it makes pretty much everyone who’s playing an MMO other than WoW a hipster. Hipster MMO gamers unite! :P (After playing WoW for over five years, it’s certainly been “weird” to switch to an MMO that isn’t the focus of attention on every site and that people might not actually know much about.)
Shintar´s last post: Random Bits