There are casual gamers, hardcore gamers and then there are those that are addicted. Today we have an interview with Croc, a World of Warcraft addict that has been clean for 6 months. I asked him a few questions about his addiction and how its been since he quit playing.

So, my first question is how long did you play WOW?

I was playing it full time for 2 and a half years. I added up all the play time once, the actual time i spent in game and it went near 200 days

And how long did it take for you to get addicted?

That happened almost instantly, a couple of days after i was introduced to the game I just couldn’t stop playing it. I just had a feeling it was this best game i’ve ever got to play

Did you realize you were addicted right away, or did it take some time for you to admit it?

I’d say it was pretty obvious from the start but for a long time I didn’t even care enough if i was addicted or not. I was just enjoying the game

How did you eventually quit playing?

Well, six months before I actually did quit, I decided to stop playing WoW because I had already realized what it had done to my life. I didn’t play for about a month that time but I just couldn’t manage and went back playing, anxiety got the better of me

What got me to quit for good was reflecting on the past two years and all the things I could have done but was rather in World of Warcraft got me feeling really bad and I just decided to say goodbye to all the friends I had there and just stop it

How many times did you try to quit, just two?

Yes, when I was serious enough about it, it was just those two times. I guess I was aware of the addiction for a longer time before that but couldn’t get myself to even think about quitting.

When you were at your peak addiction, what was your daily life like?

Well, I guess you could say I was living just so I could be in WoW. I used to get up in the morning and it was straight to the PC and play WoW, there is always something to do there and I couldn’t help myself but to rather do stuff in WoW then most of the things I had to do in real life. I even skipped college classes so much I failed two consecutive years.. just cause I couldn’t cope with the anxiety of not being in WoW.

You mentioned that you felt bad when you reflected on your time playing WOW. Do you regret playing as long as you did?

I definetly do, that was a huge loss and I wish I knew better.

The first few days after quiting, what was that like? Did you know what to do with all the extra time?

The first days or first couple of weeks even were the worst. I had already deleted WoW and frozen my account and was determined not to start playing again but that didn’t stop me from thinking about it, or missing the game, the friends I made especially.

Yeah, I did end up with alot of new free time and I started doing all the stuff I would usually do but I’ve spent alot of time on the PC aswell, just chatting with the people I’ve played with or reading WoW news, looking at screenshots I took and such, that lasted a while but I managed not to start playing again and I’m happy about it.

Does talk about new expansions make you want to start playing again?

No, actually not at all. I think over this time I haven’t been playing WoW I’ve got to not just dislike the game but in a way hate it for all the time I was consumed by it.

My next question was going to be, would you ever go back, but from that answer I’ll take that as a no.

That’s right

Have you been playing any other MMORPG? Would you?

No, WoW was my first MMORPG and the last. I still enjoy playing games and read on the new games, some of them MMORPGs and even tho they look awesome and all that simply for the fact it’s almost impossible, for me anyway, to play such a game casually I don’t get interested.

Do you have any advise for our readers that might be addicted to a MMORPG?

Yeah. I’m sure you’re all aware how being a part of that virtual world can and will out throw your real life and get you to neglect your friends and your obligations. And even so it’s hard to quit, but as hard as it, it’s also very simple – just quit it. Say good bye and move on.

Well that does it for the interview. Thanks Croc.

I’d like to add something if I may please.

You asked me if I would ever go back to playing again.
It’s a bit hard to answer because of all the bad things that went with it I’ve made some good friends playing there and with a few I’m still in touch and that’s one thing that came out good about it.

Well its been quite some time since we’ve posted about our favorite Diablo 2 clone turn MMORPG, Mythos. Today I received a newsletter update covering the latest patch and there are some BIG changes, BIG! For one PvP is back! Players will be able to attack players anywhere, including towns, and have a Anarchy rating which determines how many items you drop if someone kills you. If you have a low rating and are killed, you drop 1 random item. However if you decide to be a dick and slaughter a bunch of low level players your rating goes up, meaning the next time your killed, you’ll drop more than 1 item. So be nice to the noobs. If you don’t have the stomach for PvP, dueling has been added so you can fight without the fear of losing any of your precious items.

Along with PvP a new race has been added along with a third zone with new quests, monsters and towns. Crafting has also been revamped with hundreds of recipes, harvestable ingredients, ingredient refinement, a full Crafting skill tree.

If you want to full details of the patch, check it out at the all new Mythos site.

I haven’t played Mythos in a few months as I had a hard drive failure and never reinstalled the game once I got a new drive, but I’m currently downloading it so tomorrow you can bet I’ll be hacking and slashing it up on the PvP server. For those of you who haven’t been able to get into the Beta you might be in luck soon.

“If Zone 3 goes well, we could be looking at an Open Beta release in the near future.”

We all know that there is talks about a BioShock MMO. However, what hasn’t been overly reported on, as of yet, is that it appears that Civilization is also up for the same consideration. According to this Take2 report (via MTV) it would appear that there is a chance that we may get to see a Civilization MMO at some point in the future. Exciting stuff, right? But how would that even work?

For those that have played a Civilization game, most notably Civ 4, you’d probably understand two things about it:

1. The game is absolutely awesome.
2. Online multiplayer is decidedly less so.

Civilization just wasn’t meant to be a multiplayer game, and despite Firaxis making bold attempts to create that it just hasn’t materialized. I just can’t sit there and wait 10 minutes until my turn comes around again. Likewise, playing by email is much like playing chess by mail, that is to say, aggravating. So, surely, making an MMO out of Civilization is impossible, right? Not entirely.

Allow me to direct you to two different IPs. Neither of which are directly related to Civilization, but they both share some of the same ordeals and conflicts that a Civilization MMO would encounter: Nation States, and the announced Heroes of Might and Magic Kingdoms. Nation States centers around the idea of having to build up a nation and live with a bunch of other “states”. While the game has no military or building options it does allow extensive government and civic construction through choices made throughout your “states” life. Likewise, with Heroes of Might and Magic Kingdoms is going to be an MMO based on a different turn based game, but the principles stay the same. My point being is that if both of these games actually exist can it really be all that different from making a Civ MMO? Probably not.

It’s an arguable statement to say that the entire industry of games is beginning to lean heavily on the online portion of their games. Hell, it’s almost ludicrous to even think of an FPS game without a multiplayer aspect. In this same thought it would only make sense that traditional turn based strategies would have to make the same jump, one way or another, or die off in the years to come. However, I’ll tell you right now that Take2, and Firaxis aren’t going to let that happen to Civilization anytime soon…

The BBC has just published an article today stating that Blizzard is suing Michael Donnelly, the creator of the MMO Glider program, which performs key tasks in the game automatically, such as gold farming, crafting and fighting.

Blizzard has stated that such programs damage the game and infringe on the company’s copyrights.

Blizzard’s designs expectations are frustrated, and resources are allocated unevenly, when bots are introduced into the WoW universe, because bots spend far more time in-game than an ordinary player would and consume resources the entire time.

Blizzard further argues that the program also infringes the End User License Agreement that all parties have to agree e to when playing the game.

Mr Donnelly says his tool does not infringe Blizzard’s copyright because no “copy” of the Warcraft game client software is ever made. Blizzard however does not feel the same and said the tool infringes copyright because it copies the game into RAM in order to avoid detection by anti-cheat software.

Both have submitted legal summaries to a court in Arizona and are awaiting a summary judgement in the case.

As if anybody was really surprised by these turn of events; Mythic came out today and officially announced that Warhammer Online will be delayed until the Fall. Those of you who are signed up to the newsletter will have actually recieved the official notice from the developers. It’s a sad, sad day in MMO-town. Or is it?

To be honest, I kind of expect every MMORPG to get delayed at least 3 times nowadays. Hell, if I saw an MMO not get a single delay I probably wouldn’t buy it at all. MMOs require lots of time and it’s become kind of customary to delay the game in order to polish it up a bit. After all, everybody knows what happens when a game releases without having the appropriate polish required; you need only look so far as Vanguard. Bottomline, all a delay signifies is that the development team wants to take a bit more time to make the game actually worth the $50 we are going to be paying for it.  So, good for WAR I say. I look forward to being able to jump into the game this Fall! Let’s just hope Blizzard doesn’t decide to screw up Mythic’s plans by releasing their next expansion near or on the same release date…

[Source: WAR newsletter]

Ubisoft acquired full rights to the Tom Clancy name a few days ago for a reported 90 million dollars and has now announced a Tom Clancy MMO. Development on this new project has not yet started, but speculation is already putting the budget for this game at around 50 million.

It truly seems that the MMO rush is on and everyone wants a piece of the action. No doubt a Tom Clancy MMO would be a FPS, although I don’t know how you can take a spy/swat type gameplay and turn it into a MMO. How does that work? 50 spies all trying to steal the same suitcase? No, most likely it would follow in the footsteps of The Agency, which Sony is working on. You would create your team and signup for missions that are instanced.

Without a truly successful MMOFPS to date, its going to be interesting if any of these upcoming games can pull it off. Personally I’d be more interested in a MMOFPS like Planetside except good.

What would it take to take a game like Civilization, Starcraft or Sim City and turn it into a MMO, but keep the God like power one has it these games? Instead of controlling one character you control an entire civilization in a MMO style game. All the same features you find in RTS games and MMOs would be there. Leveling up your civilization, controlling your army and civilians, researching, epic large scale battles and complete customization.

There are text based games around the internet that are similar to this, but usually these games are played in rounds of 1 to 3 months long, then the game resets and everyone starts all over. Could this work for a graphical MMO? Playing rounds that only last a month?

To take a RTS game and turn it into a MMO is no small feat as there are many things to consider.

• What happens if your civilization is destroyed? Do you start over or do you have to wait for the next round?
• Can you be Switzerland and be neutral? Perhaps an economic power and not a military power.
• How many players per player universe? Can you have 1000 civilizations in one world or does a limit need to be imposed? Can servers handle that kind of processing load?
• What happens when you log off? Can your civilization be attacked?

Some hurdles definetely need to be resolved before a game like this could be made. What do you guys think? Would this be something that you would consider playing or does this sound like a very very long RTS game?

I don’t normally write about other news. I like to write my own stuff about my own thoughts and ideas. Any regulars here at MMOCrunch generally know that. That said, however, I just could not get over this recent article done by 1UP. Done in traditional list style, 1UP decided to create their own top 5 worst PC game launches. Nothing too special, a fun read but that’s really all, until you realize that 3 out of the 5 game launches are MMOs, or MMO-like.

MMORPGs aren’t known for their polish. In fact, it’s become common knowledge that the game you buy on day one probably won’t be the same game you are playing six months down the road. Theres a whole lot more programming, and a whole lot more testing that needs to go into an MMO as opposed to a single player game. So is it really fair to judge an MMORPG on the same standards as a normal game?

Let’s just get this out of the way before I continue writing anymore. The three games that made 1UP’s list are:

• Hellgate: London
• Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
• World War II Online

Before I begin, allow me to go back to the question I proposed earlier: is it fair to judge an MMO off the same standards as a normal PC game? No it’s not. MMORPGs are vastly different from any other type of game. They aren’t really a separate genre so much as a completely different avenue of gameplay. Everything changes when you decide to make an MMO, everything. Each of these games had serious problems when they launched, especially Vanguard, but do they really belong on the same list with single player PC games? Absolutely.  Despite given certain laxes on standards there is no reason why each one of those games should have launched with the enormous amount of problems that they did. It’s hard making an MMO, but it’s not impossible.

Of course, those games were the occasional black marks on the MMO’s history. It’s sad to see a list like 1UP’s where the majority of the games are MMORPGs, but it’s even sadder to see an industry that continually does this kind of crap. I don’t really have much more to say on the matter. Feel free to take a gander at the original article. Like I said before, it’s a fun read.

Worst PC Game Launches

Codemasters Online, who is set to release NetDevil’s new space based MMORPG Jumpgate Evolution (PC Only), has recently announced to gamesindustry.biz that they are set to publish two more MMOs for consoles. With this announcement it seems that the gaming industry is finally warming up to the idea of MMO’s on consoles, as of up until now there have only been a hand full of MMOs on all consoles combined.

SoE’s The Agency, Funcom’s Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventure are set to be released within a year. Then you have the untitled NCsoft PlayStation 3 project which might be released as early as Q4 2008. Along with these, there are also a hand full of other MMO’s that have been announced such as a new Final Fantasy MMO.

Indeed it seems as though the MMO has fully arrived on consoles. So what what was the hold up? David Solari, vice president and general manager of Codemasters Online Gaming, stated that one of the bid hurdles with console MMO’s was the business model.

“It’s got to be the right business model. It’s more difficult because the first-parties take a share of the revenue – and it’s quite significant share.”

Can you imagine WOW having to give a percentage of its revenue to Microsoft and Apple? Ouch!

With this next set of MMOs set to hit the consoles late this year, it will be interesting to see how things go when gamers have more than 1 or 2 MMOs to choose from. If we see some flops it just might scare away future MMOs from consoles and send them back to PCs where PC gamers will continue to have there pick of the litter.

There are a lot of different MMORPGs out there. Despite the industry being overwhelmed by fantasy MMOs, you can still get your fill of other types of games as well. There are plenty of Sci-fi MMORPGs, a Super Hero MMO (with 2 others in development), a couple Pirate themed MMOs. Hell, you even have some historical MMORPGs to choose from if you so desire (WWII Online, Roma Victor). Yep, this industry is finally starting to get some games that actually show some originality. So where are the occult games?

Back in 2006 when CCP (the creators of EVE Online) acquired White Wolf it was a forgone conclusion that we would finally see an MMORPG based in the world of Vampires and Werewolves. I mean, come on, how could somebody not assume that? CCP owns and operates one of the more successful MMORPGs today, it would only makes sense that they’d want to expand those profits into a new game based in a new setting. Unfortunately, we still have heard nothing on the matter. Nothing has been announced, and nothing has really been rumoured.

So where does that leave lovers of the occult? Well, certainly not in the MMO space. There used to be a 2d isometric MMO called Dark Eden that you could play, but I can’t even find that anymore. It was very simplistic, but for those that really wanted to play as a vampire it was the only choice. Nope, the MMORPG industry has yet to embrace this sector of off-fantasy, and it may be some time more before we really see a game based on it. Such a shame as I am a huge fan of these worlds…

Anybody want to watch Underworld?