Not sure if you might have an addiction problem.   Well if 3 or more of these have happened to you, then you might be addicted to MMORPGs.

- When looking for a cashier at a store you look up trying to find the icon above their head.

- You squished a bug then got disappointed when no loot dropped.

- You’re confused that when you approach a squirrel it runs away instead of chasing you for 50 feet exactly before returning to where it was.

- When watching any fantasy movie, you can’t help wonder how much XP the hero gains with each kill.

- You call your short chubby friend “tank”.

- You wonder why there’s no ding sound on your birthday or why you instantly don’t know a cool new fighting move.

- You get excited for Halloween, not because you get to dress up, but because there’s a special event planned in your MMORPG.

- You have a warrant for your arrest because you went to the zoo and killed 10 bears.

- When even your getting ready to do something you shout “Let do this, LEEROOOOOY JENKINS!

- When ever you see someone riding a horse, you can’t help but to think what magical quest there on.

If you have any more feel free to share.

We’ve been waiting for it, and at long last, two of the four classes removed from Warhammer: Online at release are going to be released this December. However, it seems Mythic is giving players the opportunity to complete several events which will allow them to play either class a full week before they are officially released and available to everyone. According to Mythic’s announcement, this reward will not be easy to obtain, and players who want to acquire it will more than likely have to log on every day to complete the daily events they are introducing with the content patch.

This content update dubbed “Heavy Metal” will begin on November 17th and will “set the mood” for the introduction of the long-awaited tank classes: Knight of the Blazing Sun, and the Black Guard. The Heavy Metal event will also introduce a new tab on the Tome of Knowledge, as well as a brand-new scenario available to players of all levels and tiers. It makes me wonder exactly if anyone will bother playing any of the other scenarios for the duration of the event. Then again, it might save people leveling through Tier 3 from the awful hell-spawned scenario that is Tor Anroc, if it does end up replacing the more “mainstream” scenarios.

Whether you liked the game or not, it can’t be argued that Mythic has been very prompt in answering player issues and updating their game. Although the classes were supposed to be introduced at release, there are many other companies that have promised features that a year later have no due date for going live. I noticed they have increased the renown healers get significantly, as well. I digress. Either way, for those of us enjoying the world of Warhammer: Online, we should be looking forward to this live event, and hope that Mythic continues down the road of improvement.

One of my biggest issues so far with every MMO I’ve ever played is that they don’t allow you to edit the game map.  Seriously, wtf is the big deal with allowing players to add their own notes or mark locations on game maps?  It doesn’t seem like a very complicated feature to add to a game.  Is there some secret reason I’m unaware of that this hasn’t become a standard feature in games?

While most games mark important areas on the map for you, showing you where towns, landmarks or other important areas are, they don’t give enough details.  For instance in Warhammer Online, they have icons on the map to show you camp sites, towns and War camps, but no details on what NPCs are at these locations.  I was looking for a skill trainer, walked 5-10 mins to the nearest camp only to find no skill trainer.  Some camps have them others don’t, so why the hell can’t I add a note to my map saying “No Trainer” so that I know next time.  Instead I’m forced to memorize locations on every map in every game I play.  That’s a LOT of information to have to memorize and as most people I can’t do it and end up wasting my time traveling somewhere that doesn’t have what I need.

This was even a bigger issue in LOTRO which didn’t mark quests on your map, instead just gave you vague directions on where to go.  However many times you would need to go back to that person or area and would have to find it all over again because there was no marking on the map.  (Looks up to the sky shaking hands) WWHHHHHHYYYY!?  I just can’t wrap this around my head as why we as players can’t edit maps.

So this is a call to all developers to allow us to edit the game maps, add notes and mark locations.  We know you like to frustrate players as much as possible, but if you do this we won’t bitch about something else for at least 5 mins.

So here we are. Bioware, a company that has a pretty good rep for its single player RPGs (although it was pretty brave to add its name to the unfinished and sometimes unplayable KOTOR II), is taking a step into the big time. Playing with the big boys. Building an MMORPG on top of Simutronic’s Hero Engine.

And what can we say about it? What is pretty much carved in stone at this stage?

• Characters will get class driven storylines.
• Characters will get NPC companions to help them out.
• Solo play is very, very possible.

You know, the cynic in me wonders whether this isn’t just going to be a single player RPG, but with the “added bonus” of other people being around to chat with if you feel lonely… oh, and that pesky monthly fee, of course.

See, when you start talking about in-depth storylines (which had better be PRETTY DAMN IN DEPTH, given that most MMORPGs try and make a fist at giving you a storyline for your character; and often customised to your class, too), and using NPCs to fill out your groups, and giving people all the tools they need to solo… I start to worry.

MMORPGs are, by their nature, social and co-operative beasts. Does anyone want to debate me on that? There are no other major reasons, to my mind, that you would want to step into a world populated by real people, beyond socialising and/or getting assistance from them. See, if you ignore those two things, you’re ultimately just playing a single player RPG.

Of course, at the end of the day is all about balance. Dragons Online started off by basically forcing everyone to group… and people hated it. Meanwhile, Age of Conan went out there with a VERY solo-friendly game and, besides other issues with it overall, the solo nature of the game is what made it very boring for people. It was just people shuffling around a map, doing their own thing and not really affecting, or interacting with each other… because they didn’t have to.

So what do you think? Is BioWare pushing us towards a single player RPG that we are going to pay a monthly fee for, essentially just to cover the fact we can chat with other people in the game world? Or is it all going to be pulled out of the fire and despite the individual storylines and despite the NPC companions instead of real party members and despite solo play being a major option, you think that this is still going to be a highly social game? Your thoughts, please!

W00t!  Today marks the first anniversary of MMOCrunch and its been quite a year.  We’ve had some writers come and go, won a few awards and have had a great time posting about all things MMO.  In the upcoming year we hope to continue our efforts of bringing you highly opinionated posts about the MMO gaming industry and also some actual news here and there.

Just want to thank all our readers and here’s to another great year!

I recently had the opportunity to interview Hermann Petersheck producer of Jumpgate Evolution at Netdevil.  Being that the inteview was a bit long,  this is not a complete word by word transcript, but instead just the juicy parts.

Q: Going back to the original Jumpgate, which used a classic cockpit/first person perspective, what was the reason for changing this to a 3rd person/chase perspective as seen in the recent footage at PAX?

A: We didn’t actually change it, we added that to it. The reasoning was we wanted to appeal to more diverse kinds of players.   There is first person mode in the game right now, but we haven’t done cockpits yet, which we plan on doing it.

Q: Players travel throughout the game by using Jumpgates.  Does this work like StarTrek where I can “jump” my ship from one area to another at anytime or do I have to travel to a designated area to use a physical gate to make jumps?

A: There like portals, you fly to them and you jump to whatever that next area connects to.

Q: So no warp drives?

A: We might do something like that at some point, but it’s always kinda dangerous adding teleports to a MMO because there’s value in travel time.  What I mean by that is if it takes you a while to get somewhere in order to get something of value, if you take that time of travel away you have to make sure that balances against the reward.  We might do something like a warp drive at some point, but it’s not planned right now.

Q: It seems that PvP has made a recent revival with Warhammer Online and Age of Conan.  How does your PvP system work?

A: We are planning a couple of different things.  One is where you’re just fighting someone in open space and you gain XP from it.  Then there’s battle space, sort of an arena type system that’s  scenario based where there are clear objectives for the players.  So the first one were working on is with two Capital ships approaching and you have to take out the other person’s Capital ship before they take yours out.  So it allows for huge ships in space to fight each other with huge amount of people on either side.  That’s an instanced space sort of PvP scenario.

The original game had a thing called beacons where you would convert the beacons to your side for your nation and based on that you would get certain benefits.  For example posting auctions would be cheaper or repair costs would be lower based on how much space you controlled.  So that would give people focal points to go after and there’s a sense of owning a certain part of space.  Those might be outposts that are defended, if you own them the defenses would fight for you.

Q: Will there be open PvP servers?

A: We’ve talked about that a lot internally.  Most MMOs do the standard PvE with designated PvP areas then servers that are Open PvP, but we’ve talked about mixing them some way.  Possibly a flag based system where at character creation the player would chose what sort of experience they wanted.  So when you make a character you can choose hardcore mode and you play together with other players with different rules.  I don’t know if it will work on not, we’ll have to see when we test it.

The thing I hate about the PvP server solution is that these kinds of players are over here segregated from these other players and there segregated because they want a different gaming experience. Is it possible to allow the two groups to play with different rules in the same world or is that confusing.  I don’t know the answer to that.  Those are the types of ideas we’ve had.

Q: Scenarios have been a big hit in Warhammer Online allowing gamers to join PvP battles from anywhere on the map.  Does Jumpgate Evo plan on anything similar?

A: They did that so perfect so that is something we would want to do.  Normally you go talk to a guy who represents the PvP arena and you have to get in queue and sit around a wait, that’s boring.  I really like that solution so I plan to do that type of thing.  I love that instant PvP solution.

Q: How does Jumpgate Evo handle player death?  Will there be looting?

A: Right now when you die your stuff is damaged and you go back to the last station you were in where you have to pay to have your ship repaired, but you don’t lose your equipment or ship.  As far as rewards, I like the idea that PvP gives you similar rewards to PvE.  So in other words if I defeat you in battle, I get XP points, maybe a bounty and you can do a loot roll against players and have them drop different stuff.   I think were going to stay away from the, I kill you, you’re going to drop all your stuff and I’m going to pick it up, simply because it’s so fraustrating for the victim.

However as I eluded before we contemplated  the idea of this sort of, hardcore mode sort of thing, so if you play in that mode the rules are different, so then if you do die maybe you’ll lose your stuff or ship, but in exchange you’ll advance more rapidly.  Right now for the normal type of game play, you don’t lose items.

Q: Being a space combat MMO there will obviously be comparisons between Jumpage Evolution and Eve Online.  Is your game better?

A: I don’t like the word better, I’ve played Eve quite a bit and I actually like it, a lot.  I think it’s more like we’re very different.  We’re trying to create a different type of space experience, which is more an action kind of game where you’re flying in your ship, you’re engaging in combat that is skill based, it’s more of an intimate kind of experience.  Were not necessarily trying to beat Eve, were trying to create a different type of experience.

Yesterday Lucas Arts and Bioware finally announced what we all knew was coming, a new Star Wars MMO called Star Wars: The Old Republic.  From what we know so far the game takes place 300 years after Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and 3,500 years before the Star Wars movies.  The only two announced classes so far are Jedi and Sith which should be available early on.

With this limited information it’s hard to theorize what the game will be like.  But here’s some questions I have right now.

Q: Will there be any space combat?

A: I really hope so.  The first thing I think of when I hear Star Wars are Jedi’s, then X-wings and Tie-Figthers.  Granted this is way before that, but to me a Star Wars MMO has to have some space combat, it just wouldn’t feel like Star Wars without it.

Q: How are Jedi and Sith players going to affect class balance?

A: The first SW MMO made it very difficult to become a Jedi and when you did you had the unpleasant experience of perma-death if your character ever died.  This is obviously not the same route SW:TOR will be taking.  So if players can easily become Jedi or Sith will it make the other classes worthless?  Or will Jedi/Sith be watered down so other classes have a fair chance?

Q: Too many Jedi/Sith players?

A: I really have no clue how Bioware is going to handle this. Seriously who wouldn’t want to be a Jedi or Sith?  Are we going to see servers where a majority of players are Jedi or Sith?  Will the other classes be based on different type of Jedi and Sith, like a Jedi Tank, Jedi Healer, Jedi with pet?  This would certainly make balancing classes easier.

Well that’s the big 3 questions I have at this point.  We’ll have to wait and see how it goes.

Rant: RvR – Not One Step Back!

Order 227 was issued by the Soviet High Command and Stalin during World War 2 to deal with cowards on the battlefield. Order 227 was read out to all troops in the Russian armed forces and here are the critical parts of the order…

“And so the time for retreating is over. Not one step back! That must now be our watchword.

Is there something we lack? We lack order and discipline. This is our main shortcoming. We must establish the strictest order and iron discipline in our army if we want to rescue the situation and defend our Motherland. Panickers and cowards will be eliminated on the spot. Commanders of companies, battalions, regiments and divisions, along with their commissars and political workers, will be considered traitors to the Motherland if they retreat without orders from above.”

I have been recently playing Warhammer Online and have been spending a fair amount of my time doing overworld RvR now that I am 40. The game is built around massive combat between the realms, so it has become more common to see giant bloodbaths in places like Praag. I have seen a behavior pattern that I find disturbing that I have seen in previous MMOs, and I am sure both realms are suffering from it.

Cowardice

You are in your warband marching into battle when you encounter an equal size warband of the enemy team. There is a moment where you see each other and time seems to slow to a halt as the realization hits you that a battle is imminent and unavoidable. In this moment of truth, someone from the other team finds his balls while your comrades are still feeling in there pockets trying to find their yambags, and they start charging forward towards you. For some unexplainable reason, this man inspires the fear of God into your team and they start to retreat!

What the hell is the logic behind this? You both have the same number of people. You both were looking for a fight. You both are facing each other head on. All things being equal, you had the same chance of winning as they did. Now your army will be ran down like animals and scattered into the wind.

Is it confidence that inspires fear? This is the same type of behavior we see nature between animals when one animal scares off an entire pack, or how a mouse can spook an elephant. As it turns out, elephants may not be scared of mice, but scared by sudden movements (depending on who you ask).

My Theory

I play a Shadow Warrior which is by most accounts a back row class. From my point of view, I will be traveling with my warband or group until we encounter a group. Often times I my initial reaction will be to calmly step to the back of the ranks to allow the tanks to receive the brunt of incoming attack like they are designed to do, and to give myself the range I need to be effective. Naturally other back row classes, specifically healers, are also inclined to position themselves at the rear of the warband to avoid being damaged so they can keep the front line classes alive.

I suspect what happens is that front line classes in the warband see half of their force backing up and think they are fleeing, when in actuality they are repositioning. The front liners start to freak out when they see the opposing side advancing and the rest of their team backing up. Panic sets in and they turn and run. The back row watches the front row flee, then they in turn start to flee. The next minute or two consists of you and all your friends being rounded up like cattle and put down.

We need RvR Order 227. No army ever wins an RvR fight in any MMO with their backs to the enemy. Now don’t get me wrong, there are times where you are faced with hopeless odds and running may be the best course of action. People who wander off on their own are likely to encounter superior numbers. When you have even a decent sized force, I’d wager you are more likely to get more kills by standing your ground, then try to flee and being killed anyways without any resistance. Regardless, this is something I see all the time from my experience so far in Warhammer and previous MMO’s I have played. I suspect there are many other out there like me who do a collective facepalm on a regular basis from being the victim of this phenomenon.

Paragus

Co-Leader of Inquisition

www.inqguild.com

I had a chance to play Atlantica Online earlier this week in-between being sick and playing Warhammer: Online. For a game that is in beta, it seems to want to be treated as a game that has been already released, claiming in its advertisements: “Love it, or we’ll give cash for your character!” This caught my eye specifically and made me want to try the game, not because I wanted to love it; I figured I’d hate it, since I’m a bitter shell of a man, and could get some cash out of it. However, if you take a look at the details of the ‘offer’ it sounds more like they’re trying to get cheap power-leveling out of their players than actually convince you to play. Offers aside, we’re here to discuss my first impressions, so let’s get on with it!

Graphics/UI: 5/10 – ‘Meh’

The graphics are nothing innovative. They’re similar to most eastern games on the market. This game is particularly similar to Sword of the New World, a MMORTSRPG(?) I had the chance to try last year. I don’t normally review games at the login screen, but this one wants to be. I had never in all my years seen a login screen with so many, many random colors. I think it was depicting a large-scale battle, but to me it seemed like an orgy of fairies and daemons on a rainbow chessboard. Once I survived the seizure-inducing login screen, it was time to create my character. Character customization is very limited, not only at the character screen but in-game as well. I only had about five hairstyles to choose from, two outfit types, and a…weapon? Well, anyway, once in-game the graphics didn’t get that much better. After playing to about level 10(I think), I had gotten quite a few pieces of armor. Instead of evenly distributing them between myself and my mercenaries I figured I’d put them all on my “visible” character to upgrade his appearance. Where’s my helmet? Where are the new pants I got? The character looked exactly the same as it did before I equipped anything on him.

Now, let’s make something very clear. The game needs to have low system requirements in order to function properly, as battles will eventually become very, very large. This is not why the game’s graphics are ‘meh’.  World of Warcraft and Warhammer: Online both had relatively low system requirements when released as compared to the available technology at the time. However, the way they depicted their characters, the landscapes, the spell effects, was very original, and relevant to the world they were basing the game on. Atlantica Online just seems to have copied and pasted a combination of Lineage 2 graphics, with Sword of the New World graphics, and other eastern games. That’s harsh, perhaps, but it seems to be the way the game wants to be treated. “Old MMOs not ‘WOW’ing you?” it proudly boasts in its advertisements, suggesting that they have something new and refreshing to offer. It certainly isn’t in the graphics department.

Gameplay/Chat/Community: 5/10 – ‘Who’s my special little boy?’

This section of my first impressions review will not focus on the combat aspect of the game. That’s a separate aspect altogether as they seem to want it to be. As soon as you start playing, the game will assume that you don’t know how to use your mouse or keyboard and will simply ‘lock’ you to the tutorial NPC. It will explain the world to you a little bit, and how to get started on completing your first quest. This is where the game also makes another assumption: it seems to believe that you’re too dumb to find battles on your own, so it will go find them for you. That’s right, there’s an ‘auto-move’ option that will automatically move you to your active quest’s objective. From there, all you have to do is either talk to NPC X or kill monster Y.

Perhaps an aspect that the tutorial should have expanded on was how to use the chat interface. I kept seeing only one person in my chat log, and they seemed to be talking to themselves. Not in the sense that there was no one else for them to talk to, but in the sense that they seemed to be answering questions and holding a conversation while there was no one else in the chatroom talking. Maybe I didn’t know how to use the chat, or maybe the game packs an auto-ignore feature that will ignore people it knows you won’t like automatically.

Now, one feature I sort of liked is the player’s ability to post in-game advertisements that are displayed at the top of your screen for goods and services players are interested in trading or selling(some services which I didn’t understand, such as ‘teaching pants’). This automatically made me think that goldsellers would be filling these advertising spaces with goldselling links. At the same time, though, it’s much less intrusive than those long whispers we get on other games, or the huge chunks of text in public chatrooms. If the feature were to be moderated, goldselling advertisements could be removed almost immediately.

Battle system/leveling system: 6/10

At last we come to Atlantica Online’s innovative feature. Okay, now that we’ve had a good laugh, it’s serious time. Let’s talk about how the battle system works:

• When you right click a mob to attack, a Final Fantasy-esque transition will take you to a battle sequence.
• You select the character you want to ‘move.’
• You then choose what you want your character to do. There’s attack, use item, use magic, all the standards.
• You will have a time limit, after which the enemy will make their move.
• You are now taking turns hitting each other with random things until one group is dead.

This is supposed to be the best part about Atlantica Online. Strategic turn-based combat that makes you think carefully about what you’re going to use on your opponent for maximum efficiency. The timer was so short, however, that I found myself frantically clicking enemy monsters while hitting “q” over and over so that every now and then a magical ability would go off. I had 4 characters to move on a 15 second timer. It completely removed the ’strategic’ part out of combat. Not to mention, it took me ten levels to figure out how to remove that annoying camera thing in battles where characters would take a ’solo.’ A ’solo’ is when your character decides he’s better than every other mercenary there and will take up the whole screen to show off his magical abilities in greater detail. Problem is: the timer is still running during this sequence, so if your guy decides to summon Knights of the Round or whatever, then by the time the sequence is over, so is your turn.

The combat system ended with me hitting two buttons over and over. I felt if I hooked up a Rock Band drum peripheral to my computer I could get through the battle easily by dropping some freestyle beats. My characters seemed to be a lot stronger than anything they encountered, so there was no need to think on anything. It’s a race to see how fast you can click enemy targets with a 15 second limit. Last thing, what’s up with the looting? When the mobs are dead, I have to loot them to claim my prize, but there’s usually 4-6 mobs to loot, and it uses up a character turn to loot a mob. So if all 4 of your mercenaries can move in a given turn you can loot 4 mobs, then you have to wait until the enemy corpses make a move before you can loot the remaining ones. What the hell?! Why even given corpses a turn?

The leveling system also had me a bit confused. I know each mercenary gains levels and they’re all displayed in the UI outside of combat. A lot of things required “level 20″ and it made me wonder what exactly that meant, though. An average of the levels of all your mercenaries? The level of your main character? Another thing was the random number in brackets next to my name. I saw it on every new player I ran into. I figured it wasn’t my level since it said “18″ and my character’s level at the bottom clearly said “Lv.1″. In the end, I decided it was my character’s age. A strapping young lad with a cannon on his back and a pocket full of dreams.

Overall: 5.5/10 – Nothing further, your honor.

Even though the game is still in beta, it seems to be advertising proudly things that it can’t really offer. If you hated the game, and want to take them up on their offer for cash, you have to get to level 50 first. “Old MMOs not ‘WOW’ing you” I see what you did there. Thanks, but I’d rather go back to World of Warcraft and endure the tedious scripted instances with several  people who didn’t know a giant beam or orb was coming right at them, and that it wasn’t a good thing.

In the end, if you like these types of games, you know, the free, eastern, copy-paste-insert-item-mall-instant-cash games, then you might have some fun with this one. It’s a little bit different than other released MMOs, even if it’s not innovative in  any way whatsoever.

People are probably wondering why I haven’t posted for awhile and the answer is simple: I’ve weened myself off MMORPGs.

Surprisingly, it was a pretty simple process. One day I was sitting there, playing some game or another, and I thought, “Why are you doing this? Are you getting any pleasure out of it? Is it fun?” and the answers were, “I don’t know…”, “No…” and “No…”.

Now, I’m a pretty straightforward kind of guy, so when that dawned on me, I decided it was time for serious action.

I got up from the PC and walked away. Literally.

Yep, as simple as that. I cancelled what games subs I still had open and just walked away. A geek to the end, of course, I then re-enrolled in my local garrison of the 501st and a number of other Star Wars costuming groups and have spent some great weekends lately OUT OF THE HOUSE and WITH REAL PEOPLE. Still doing geeky things, of course. I would never pretend that what I’m doing is highbrow compared to playing MMORPGs, but it’s been quite a revelation for me. I always KNEW there was a real world outside of MMORPGs, as I used to be quite social before I started devoting every weekend to grinding pointless levels in some silly game or other during the last decade, but I’d kind of forgotten how much fun it is to meet new people and tell each other our stories and have some REAL LIFE fun.

My wife has joined me in this excercise (quitting MMORPGs and doing more real-world stuff), and she’s loving it, too. She’s also doing a lot of gardening and making our backyard look like a million dollars. We are both really enjoying ourselves and feeling good.

Now, far be it for me to come at this with the zeal of a reformed smoker or born-again Christian (as both are as annoying as each other), but I’ve got to say to this next bit. To you folks out there that are enjoying your MMORPGs… great. That’s awesome. Keep playing! I could probably bang on about the number of broken people I’ve encountered in MMORPGs who I think are definitely making their depression or other medical condition worse by remaining in a game but, you know what? I can’t save the world in this regard so, just have fun! Live it up! I don’t care anymore if it’s really feeding some kind of psychosis or making up for the fact your mother never loved you or whatever the case might be… if you’re digging it, that’s good enough for me. But it you’re NOT enjoying your gaming… and I have a sneaking suspicion that there’s actually a LOT of people out there who aren’t having fun… just walk away. Yep, walk away and find something new in your life. There’s no law that says you can’t go back one day but, in the short term, just get out there and see what else is on offer in the world. You might be really surprised at the refreshing change you can have after months or, more likely, years in MMORPG land.

See, I totally reserve the right to come back to MMORPGs one day, myself. Heck, if BioWare actually announces a Star Wars game next week (or is it later this week? I’m already forgetting the details), I will probably be giving it a good sniff as I am a major Star Wars geek in general terms. The real proof of the pudding will be the implementation and gameplay, of course. It had better be revolutionary.

Because that’s the real issue at hand. I haven’t been enjoying MMORPGs anymore precisely because they are basically clones of each other… pointless and utterly stupid grindfests with no redeeming features. I mean, at the end of the day, what do you actually get out of investing oodles of time into an MMORPG? Not much, I can tell you. With character classes and skills in MMORPGs pretty much “cookie cutter” versions of each other, even hitting the level cap and raiding the harder instances isn’t much of an achievement… there are always, always, always thousands of other people JUST LIKE YOU. The promise of early MMORPGs, where you really were living in a virtual world and had the opportunity to be a real character, has been taken by more modern MMORPGs — starting with WoW — and simplified to the max. Chopped up, blended, guzzled by fat MMORPG players and then pissed up against a wall. It’s a really depressing thing, actually.

Where is the innovation in this industry? When is a company going to have the balls to do something new? I’ve been shouting about this in my writings for what feels like forever. I’ve been watching every new game for years and, every time, they promise something new… and never actually deliver it. Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. And it’s for that reason alone that I can easily, and confidentally, walk away from the industry as it stands at this point in time. It’s just not worth it. To be honest, it’s actually quite stupid. People pay real money over and over and over and over to grind through levels they can’t stand. I mean, it just makes no sense on any level. There is some really weird psychology going on that I wish someone would write a paper on because I can’t think of too many hobbies where the participants actively hate what they’re doing, yet feel this overwhelming compulsion to keep paying and playing. It’s weird.

Will I come back? Again, if a company can make a great, ground-breaking game — or I just happen to really like the IP (like Star Wars or Star Trek), I might do. But, right now, even with Warhammer out there, and a new WoW expansion, and a Hoth theme park for Star Wars Galaxies and all manner of “new” things happening (where “new” means re-heated, turgid old shit), I’m off to get some sunshine.

You’ve been a great audience. Thankyouverymuch.