finalark
SNORLAX
Sometimes, people say things about genres and franchises. Sometimes they say things that are just flat out incorrect and misinformed. This is the place to correct those misconceptions.
For example:
The "spiky haired emo teenager with a giant sword" being the go-to sterotypical JRPG protagonist. Now, I am a man who has played a ton of JRPGs on many consoles over the course of many years. And while I have seen my share of spiky-haired protagonists, I have never seen a character who actually matches that description. I imagine this comes from onlookers mashing the protagonists of the two most internationally successful JRPGs, Final Fantasy VII and VIII, together.
On that note, Cloud being "emo." While I won't argue that his more recent depictions aren't this, to assume that he's always been like that is incorrect. In FFVII, Cloud was cocky, abrasive and willing to speak his mind but was still kind of a dork under all that. In Kingdom Hearts and Advent Children, he was given that 2000s anti-hero makeover. Emotional, brooding, "tortured." My theory for why he was changed so radically was that this type of character was very popular in the 2000s and Sqeenix likes money.
And finally, the idea that you can kill people and take their stuff in MMORPGs. I was an MMO addict for years and while my primary love and joy was World of Warcraft, I bounced around from game to game pretty frequently. And in all my years of playing MMOs, the only games I've come across where this is a thing were Ultima Online (one of the oldest in the genre) and Runescape, which (as some of you may be surprised to learn) is a freeware clone of the former. The fact is, this feature was phased out of MMOs quickly once devs realized that allowing players to kill whoever they want to take all their hard-earned gold and equipment tended to promote unpleasant playstyles.
So, how about you guys, do you have any misconceptions you've heard time and time again you want to debunk?
For example:
The "spiky haired emo teenager with a giant sword" being the go-to sterotypical JRPG protagonist. Now, I am a man who has played a ton of JRPGs on many consoles over the course of many years. And while I have seen my share of spiky-haired protagonists, I have never seen a character who actually matches that description. I imagine this comes from onlookers mashing the protagonists of the two most internationally successful JRPGs, Final Fantasy VII and VIII, together.
On that note, Cloud being "emo." While I won't argue that his more recent depictions aren't this, to assume that he's always been like that is incorrect. In FFVII, Cloud was cocky, abrasive and willing to speak his mind but was still kind of a dork under all that. In Kingdom Hearts and Advent Children, he was given that 2000s anti-hero makeover. Emotional, brooding, "tortured." My theory for why he was changed so radically was that this type of character was very popular in the 2000s and Sqeenix likes money.
And finally, the idea that you can kill people and take their stuff in MMORPGs. I was an MMO addict for years and while my primary love and joy was World of Warcraft, I bounced around from game to game pretty frequently. And in all my years of playing MMOs, the only games I've come across where this is a thing were Ultima Online (one of the oldest in the genre) and Runescape, which (as some of you may be surprised to learn) is a freeware clone of the former. The fact is, this feature was phased out of MMOs quickly once devs realized that allowing players to kill whoever they want to take all their hard-earned gold and equipment tended to promote unpleasant playstyles.
So, how about you guys, do you have any misconceptions you've heard time and time again you want to debunk?
