Why do we like to pew pew from range?

Last week, a really interesting article caught my eye. It was called When starting a fight in video games, cautious long range is most popular, but men like to rush in and was based on scientific research by Quantic Foundry on 1266 gamers. The news was picked up by Massively OP, but remained unnoticed in the blogosphere. Which is odd, because it addressed a question that is on my mind a lot: what makes us play MMOs the way we do? Perhaps I'm alone in this; either way, it prompted me to investigate why (almost) everyone loves to play ranged in MMOs.

Six times green

I'm deeply ashamed to admit that I've missed yet another edition of the 6 on 6 challenge last month. My lame excuse: it's not so much a shortage of screenies (I'm drowning in them), rather me plain forgetting about them. It's just that there's a whole month in between the 6 on 6 posts. Yes - goldfish - I know.

Also, it was very tempting to post six screenshots of grass here, but all the other pretty green screenies started staring at me with those cute imaginary eyes of them, so, fiiiine.

Fandoms that I never thought I'd like (but did)

Today's 5 Fandom Friday post was enthusiastically called "Fandoms You LOVE But Didn't Think You Would!" I usually try to keep an open mind and not dismiss things without knowing them. I obviously fail at this, though, because I managed to come up with this list of five anyway!

Food in MMOs

Today's 5 Fandom Friday is about favourite fictional food. Looking for my traditional gaming twist, I decided to investigate why we have food in games. After all, if you think about it, there's no need to use food in a digital environment. However, I will argue that food does play a role in MMOs - the game type I spend most time playing - as a method of implementing realism and familiarity to digital environments. Here are some examples from the games I play. As always, your own examples from other games are very welcome in the comments!

Six times pink

It's time for 6 on 6 again (and yes, it's already 7, sorry about that) and this time I've dug through my screenshot collection for pink pictures. Although pink is not a colour I roll with a lot on my characters, it was easier than expected. This edition is surprisingly Lord of the Rings Online heavy, which may have something to do with me having picked up that game once more.

Six times red

It's that time of the month again: the sixth! I'm currently typing while waiting for my flight from the Netherlands to Sweden, but that doesn't stop me from selecting six screenshots for you that feature the colour red. I've also once again succeeded to include an appropriately skin-coloured alien from my favourite MMO.

Six times gold

Today I'm doing two photo challenges in one: 6 on 6 and IntPiPoMo. Win-win, right? Only this month's colour, gold, was hard. Really hard. On the positive side: by having to dig deep through my screenshot library, I found some pictures from games I don't usually write about. Enjoy!

Six times orange

Put mildly, orange is not exactly my favourite colour. Once upon a time, when the internet was young, I even initiated the "Orange club", a website dedicated to loathing oranges and everything that shared the same colour. Every once in a while an orange lover would accidentally join and be hugely disappointed.

So you can see that I truly love you guys, because I decided to endure the pain and stomach finding six suitable pictures for this month's issue of 6 on 6 gamer style!

Six times purple

It's already that day of the month... the sixth! Surely you know what I'm talking about (if not, you can quickly read up here and pretend nothing happened); this month's issue is all about purple.

Guildless in Guild Wars

It's the strangest thing. When you're playing a game called Guild Wars, one would expect to spend a lot of time in that game playing with a guild. Yet somehow Guild Wars 2 has quickly developed into my favourite duo game. I barely have contact with anyone in the game save the people that I occasionally bump into while exploring - and that contact is usually superficial.

Six times blue

No, I'm not sad. And yes, I know, I'm one day late with posting. But I have the perfect excuse, hear me out. Oh, and I sincerely hope you guys like blue.

Creatively double-Liebsterized

I've been creatively double-Liebsterized! What, you have no idea what I'm talking about? You say I've already been Liebsterized before? Alright, you've asked for it now, here we go. It involves dinosaurs, though, I've warned you!

Should you pre-order Heart of Thorns?

I've been talking so much about SWTOR's announced Coffee expansion that you would almost forget about "that other MMO"'s upcoming expanion: Guild Wars 2's Heart of Thorns (yes, I still play that game).

Safari through the games I play

One of the things I liked most of the NBI 2015 was Murf's Screenshot Safari. I had a lot of fun checking out everyone's entries during the course of the event. And I wasn't the only one: Murf counted an overwhelming total of 105 entries from 35 different blogs! Check out his post with all the facts and numbers here if you haven't done so yet. I enjoyed reading it a lot.

Capturing High Fantasy

One of Murf's screenshot categories of his Screenshot Safari challenge had me scratching my head: High Fantasy. What is High Fantasy? The first thing I thought of was that it might be a synonym for "real fantasy", as in, "Lord of the Rings is real fantasy because Tolkien invented the genre - everything after that is lesser fantasy". Murf doesn't strike me as someone being into fantasy elitism (if such a thing even exists), though, so I googled it:

Mums in games

Pokémon mums, by ViViVooVoo

When I saw that last week's 5 Fandom Friday* theme was "favourite fictional mums", I knew I was going to have a hard time adapting this to "favourite mums in games". What I did not know was that I would have to scratch the "favourite" part altogether, because there simply wasn't enough data. With games traditionally focusing on the combat adventures of healthy, young characters; mothers, associated with homeliness, parenting and familial relationships, don't exactly score high on the agendas of game developers.

I'm sure there are some games featuring great mothers out there, but for now I'll focus on two questions: how many mums are there actually in the games I play? And: in what way is motherhood portrayed?

Just when I thought it couldn't get worse... [NSFW]

...it did. Remember how I was on a great hunt for a decent outfit earlier? I was surprised at the difficulty to find decent-looking clothing for female characters wearing light armour in Guild Wars. The skirt in the screenshot above came to my knees and didn't look skimpy at first sight. That is, until I started swimming.

The games I love to play

F.l.t.r.: Valiant Hearts: the Great War, SWTOR, Guild Wars 2, Pokémon Emerald, LOTRO

This week's Fandom Friday* challenge was themed "the five games you love to play". Now for me this was a bit of a problematic challenge, as the only things I talk about are games, so most of you guys will already know what games I play (also, the text underneath "About this blog" to the right sort of gives it away). However, I play my games in different manners: for me there's a game for each time and mind state. So in addition to providing you with an overview, I'll look into what I get out of these games as well. When do I choose to play them, and why is that so?

Griffons!

Today in griffon-related news. The good news: Guild Wars 2 has griffons! The bad news: they want me for breakfast...

Surviving April Fool's Day

I have a love-hate relationship with April the first. I don't mind being surprised, but I do get this feeling I have to double-check everything to make sure it's not a joke. And then some jokes are so bad they make me sigh and wish the day was over already. This Wednesday, I initially didn't think about what day it was. I had just enough time to hit the "publish" button for my (serious) Guild Wars exploration article during breakfast and went off to university.