Filed under: MMORPGs
My MMORPG malaise continues. As of late, even MMO news has failed to throw a bone my way with any promise of excitement on the horizon. My real-life WoW group has been petering along ambivalently. We’re crawling toward level 50 hoping that some Alterac Valleys will help breath some life back into things–but most of our group has “been there, done that” so often, I’m not sure we’ll have it in us to run on that hamster wheel again. I’m confident its just a matter of time before one of us musters up the balls to have the “it’s not you, it’s me” conversation so we can all head off solemnly to greener pastures.
Age of Conan didn’t last long on my hard drive. I have the same complaints that pretty much everyone else who didn’t stick with the game had. Nothing new here. Though easy on the eyes–like Vanguard, AoC never felt like a world to me. Whereas V:SoH’s Telon never felt fleshed out or stylistically coherent enough, my problem with AoC stems from the heavy instancing and absentee community. The beginning area in Tortage is just awful once you’ve played through it–eradicating any desire I might have had to create alts.
I enjoy the amusement park element of a guided experience in an MMORPG–as an OPTION. In WoW, EQ2, Vanguard, LoTRO, etc. you can run around clicking quest icons above NPC’s heads–but you can also explore and grind mobs if that’s how you opt to progress. Not the case with AoC. To get the hell out of Tortage, you have to be steered through the same intro storyline again and again regardless of your character’s class or place of origin. Not very “RP” of Funcom, is it now?
So, where has all my bitching and dissatisfaction left me this month? I started playing LoTRO again. I enjoyed my free trial last year, but despite all the things I really liked about the game, I wanted to try something less PvE-centric at the time. I still have to say this is the most visually impressive MMORPG out there IMHO, even a year plus after release. I created a dwarf guardian and a hobbit minstrel. I’m not quite sure which I’ll stick with, but I’ve made a pledge to my brother-in-law to catch up to his hunter at max level sometime before Turbine releases an expansion.
I’ve neglected posting for quite some time now. Not one to blog for blogging’s sake, there just hasn’t been much in the gaming world that’s captured my interest. The last few weeks have been beautiful in NYC, so I’ve taken advantage of the great weather before spring gives way to oppressive humidity and I get really cranky and hole up in air conditioning until September.
I’ve been tinkering with Age of Conan now and again. I’ve hesitated sharing my views on it because several weeks in, I still haven’t brought myself to bring a character to level 20 yet. For those of you who haven’t tried AoC, level 20 is the point where you bid farewell to the single player element of the game and enter the proper world once-and-for-all.
The constant instancing bugs me a little. Walk into an inn, there’s a loading screen. Hop on a boat, there’s a loading screen. Leave a zone, well, you get the point. Guild Wars had the same feel, but for some reason I never found it to be quite so jarring.
AoC’s combat is just fine–but personally, if I drafted up a laundry list of gripes I have about the current state of the fantasy MMORPG, lack of real-time combat would be really low on my list. I think there are a lot more things that need fixing across the genre and that’s where Funcom’s vision and my own diverge a little.
The early quests seem terribly directed, which IS one of my big complaints about most current MMORPGs. To satiate me, an MMORPG needs to allow players to stray off the beaten path (both literally and figuratively). I’m not seeing that quite yet in AoC. Much like my brief stint in Dungeons and Dragons Online I feel way too confined, like I’m on a journey but I’m not behind the wheel.
The graphics are nice, the music is great, I’m excited to try PvP (I’m holding off til 20 for that one), but again–it’s just not calling me to be played. Keep in mind I seldom play single player games anymore so that’s another personal bias I’m bringing to the table. I lost my zeal for them after experiencing the “living, breathing worlds” of massive multiplayer gameplay four years ago. So, I’m reserving final judgment of AoC until I plow through the solo segment of the game and move onto the more MMO-focused end of things.
I don’t want to be dismissive of AoC because it clearly was lovingly crafted by the Funcom team. They released a clean, playable product that is a treat to look at–and there’s a lot of hack-and-slash fun to be had right off the bat. It’s not a bad game. I just haven’t determined if it’s the game for me yet.
Filed under: MMORPGs
I was deeply saddened when I came across the news that Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons and Dragons–and the man who, along with Dave Arneson, invented the RPG as we know it today–passed away. There’s no real way to measure the impact this man had on my adolescence. For over thirty years, Gygax fueled the imaginations of countless numbers of gamers and fantasy enthusiasts while unknowingly laying the groundwork for most of the systems still present in modern-day MMORPGs. The gaming world has lost it’s most iconic figure. My sympathies go out to his family. Shitty day.
