One of the most important draws for a number of these games is that some of them are free. Unfortunately, this means many of them are absolutely terrible. Worthless beyond repair. Along the same lines as court television, only moderately interactive. But not enough to make it feel so. Perhaps instead of speaking so abstractly, I should speak on behalf of some of the worst MMOs in existence. Or instead, I could make better use of my time by taking a dump.
Well, now that I've taken a dump, I still don't much feel like talking about crappy MMOs. (Ha ha. Get it?)
By no means are the MMOs on my "like" list perfect. They have problems just as any other game. However, my second list is populated with games that, for some reason or another, have problems that keep me from signing up to give them $15 per month. Given certain circumstances, they could change my mind.
Let us begin with the ever-popular World of Warcraft.
Man, if anybody who plays WoW actually reads this, I'm in for a serious bludgeoning, I'd wager.
WoW might be the one on this list that is entirely out of the running for my money. It could redeem itself, but I have a lot of problems that stem from the players rather than the content of the game. I shall pose a question:
"dude liek why u not liek wow is gratest mmo evr"
"You, sir or madam. And all who mimic you."
Let me first say that in the two days that I attempted to play WoW on the live servers, I played as a Dwarf. This means I eventually came upon the city of Ironforge (hope I'm remembering that correctly). It is a large city on the Dwarven "end" of the map (I haven't the slightest idea the layout of the game world, to be honest). I had to add three people to my block list to be able to look at the chat log. And seriously, it's funny once or twice to jump over a dwarf character. Ha ha, it's hilarious. The fifth time it happened, I wanted to break somebody's legs. Jumping is a great things to have in MMOs, as some (Vanguard) actually require this ability in some missions.In my short time in WoW, I didn't encounter many interesting creatures. Various forms of wildlife such as wolves, bears, spiders, and boars were the main obstacles in my path. There were some bandits and such, and I really enjoyed scouting caves containing kobolds and such. Perhaps if I had found some people with which to group, I would have cared to play longer. However, as it was, I didn't much care for it. I didn't see any respectable grammar, syntax, or typing ability in the log, though.
Now, I'm sure that plenty of intelligent, respectable individuals play WoW. Sadly, they were not logged on in the two days I played.
Matthew managed to get a private WoW server running a few semesters ago. He did it for the challenge of setting it up. I used it to review some of the content, solo style. I was terribly unimpressed with the Mage up to level 12. The spells were exactly the same, just upgraded versions. Before anybody judges how little I played, I will also mention that our Resident Director at my dorm set up a private server right before break. I'm playing as a mage again, just for S&Gs. Time will tell whether he can get enough people convinced to play it. I'd much rather play in a controlled environment. Oh, and for free. Well, I mean, I already have a legal and paid-for copy of the client.
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is a guilty pleasure. I played it for several months, only got to level 19 Cleric (never played a healer class before), some level over ten Artificer (wood crafting), and some very, very low level diplomat. The most fascinating thing to me is the relative separate-ness of the three "spheres," as they call them. Adventuring is the fighting aspect. Killing things and doing adventuring quests raises adventuring experience. Crafters can choose one of three crafts, artificing, blacksmithing, and clothcrafting. Diplomacy is an odd addition to this kind of game. It's essentially a card game, but I didn't do much with it.The best thing about the three spheres is the unneccessity of leveling any particular sphere to participate in another. Adventuring must be done to a very, very low level in order to access the other two spheres, but this is minimal (and like any MMO, the "main" activity is the adventuring). Just kill a few monsters and get over it. It'd take 20 minutes. But once you get your adventuring level to 4 or 5 (which doesn't take long at all), you can survive to make it to a crafting station. Some starting areas have one that requires no travel to reach, thus you can do zero adventuring and get right to crafting. I imagine that diplomacy is a bit more dependent upon adventuring, as once you have to travel to more distant cities, there will be more nasty things blocking the path. (I imagine, though, that my time playing FFXI would make me naturally more adept at avoiding aggro.) But at some point, one just has to adventure. It's seriously impressive sometimes. Some quests will have you infiltrating camps, climbing on roofs, and I've even platformed a bit. Platforming! On an MMO! Plus, you can buy a horse at level 10, versus WoW's rather high level requirement for riding mounts. (However, there is no doubt in my mind that mounts were a necessity in Vanguard, for the game world is insanely large.)
The Vanguard community has a lot of nice, patient folks. I've really only met one or two on my server that were jerks. However, the community is so patient with people because they HAVE to be patient to play the game. It is riddled with bugs, crashes-to-desktop, occasional broken quests, and quite possibly the worst graphical performance and texture optimization of any game ever programmed. I've never seen my FPS (frames-per-second, not first person shooter, in this case) waver so wildly between 50 and 10 on any game prior to playing Vanguard. If it was steady, it would be different. However, at one moment, I run happily down a path at 50 FPS; I rotate a bit to the right and a castle whose textures have not yet rendered decide to do so at a healthy, non-infuriating 10 FPS. I decided that I would stop playing until it can run a little smoother than a crippled zebra in a lions' den. Until then, I have focused my monthly MMO fix elsewhere. (As it also turns out, they are currently having free play until January 17. However, it is only for those whose accounts have been deactivated for over 60 days. Funny, mine has been inactive for at least that long, and I can't get the free play. I was hoping to test whether their third patch ACTUALLY had some performance fixes. Oh well.) Despite how overzealous the developers were with non-instanced housing, mounts at level 10, and the unrestricted flying mounts (which, a year later, still haven't actually been implemented), the game lacks polish and stability, even a year after launch.
Star Wars Galaxies is one MMO that I'll never be able to figure out. Other than messing around on SWGEMU's test server, which is an attempt to rebuild Star Wars Galaxies as it was before all of the interface and engine changes, I've never played anything on the live servers before NGE. However, I know a rat when I smell one. First, in this "upgrade" they reduced their 24 (!) classes or "professions" to a mere 9. In the previous game (because, yes, I think they should be considered separate games), beyond simply picking a class and slugging it out to maximum level, they were able to use abilities from different classes. Certainly it would be unwise to use low level skills from several jobs rather than specializing in one or two, but this customization probably made things more unique than any other MMO. Second, the user interface was drastically changed. Characters now use a targeting reticule and must actively "shoot" using the left mouse button. Unfortunately, this is incredibly out of place. The facts that one cannot utilize cover and there is no location-based damage make this system little more than something to keep people busy and cramped-up in the wrist.
The worlds are very divided. In Tatooine, there is a field that has mynocks. There's another field that has Banthas. There's another field that has wamp rats. Were I to have an overhead map of the planets of SWG, I could draw circles around the boundaries of these "fields." While it looks and feels seamless for a short time, one quickly catches onto how little it feels like a living world. Predators don't seem to feed on other creatures, as those "fields" create an unnatural boundary. This is a problem with tons of free MMOs (including RF Online, mentioned in previous post), but a subscription-based MMO should not have this problem. Other than some indoor "infiltrate" type missions, the environment is hopelessly stale. Space combat is scarcely worth mentioning, as it consists of repetitive "shoot down X number of TIE fighters" missions and escort missions, at least for the early sections. I didn't bother getting past it, as my free trial was going to expire and my wrists hurt from holding down the "shoot" button while trying to roll TIE fighters into my view.I am going to retry D&D Online, as I imagine there's new content to be judged, and I am far less internet shy than I was when I first tried it.
I shall continue my MMO rants eventually, but expect a "normal" post or two before then.
