I finished Bioshock Infinite a few days ago – for the most part I had fun with it but it was ultimately disappointing, and there are some very specific things I really did not like. Possibly I’ll write a longer blog specifically about that at some point, but for now my summary is: meh.

I’ve spent most of the day today playing Neverwinter and I’m enjoying it. I doubt I’ll stick with it for very long, but there are some interesting things that they’re doing. I also feel like some of the key decisions Arenanet made with Guild Wars 2 have seeped in, or maybe we’re just finally at that stage in MMO thinking, but either way, I’m glad to see it. Artificially inconveniencing players as a means to gate content just never sat well with me, even when I understood the thinking behind it. It is interesting that this shift is coming from the F2P space. With Neverwinter, I think it makes even more sense, with the Foundry in place. Speaking of which, I have played through one Foundry quest (they actually incentivize players to play them, through daily quests). I haven’t yet crafted my own, though I definitely will be playing around with it. Very very curious to see what that toolset looks like. I’d probably be doing that right now if the servers weren’t down for maintenance.

I also picked up Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, and I’ll probably boot that up in a bit to check it out. It looks super fun though.

Originally published here.