2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great article... but the first sentence in the third article could cause sparks with the wrong people due to its placement. Just saying.

August 11, 2008 4:12 PM

Nightwish said...

Heya there.

Been reading and watching your beta blogs for quite some time now. Great work.

Well. Its just like you said. AoC got me inspired again after playing almost the same MMOs as you did. SWG was great til they messed up the whole game with that Jedicrap.

AoC itself had so many bugs and flaws, you thought you were in beta still.

So now some friends of mine were talking about WAR. Since we never read infos about it, we really dont expect that much of it. Maybe a bit of fun and if it isnt any good. Well. Happens.

I stopped having to many expectations of a new game with AoC. It really sucked. To much was promised. Nothing was really in the release version.

So maybe its just better to get the game when it comes out. Dont give a darn thing about it before it. See what happens. I guess you wont be too disappointed then.

August 27, 2008 6:53 AM

I don't know from experience how it really feels to have a mental disorder like multiple personalities, but you can probably tell from my love/hate relationship with MMO's that I sure seem to have split personas in regard to MMORPG's. It seems that one day I love them and the next I can hate them.

Take the game I'm currently all about right now for example, Warhammer Online. Ever since I started reading about this game last year, I felt myself drawn in. I love MMORPG games, and I also love "pure" PVP games like Team Fortress 2, Call of Duty, Counter Strike and the like. But a new MMORPG that is balanced around RVR and PVP? Now that had me interested. I always regretted not playing DAoC (back then I was a PVE guy and raiding was my game) and thought that I needed to pay attention to Mythic's next offering. The more I followed the game the more I continued to see design decisions that I agreed with, and a game that was shaping up to fit my play style like a glove. My anticipation and excitement for WAR seemed to grow with every article read and video watched. Then I realized that I'd felt this way before.I've loved games in this genre before, only to watch them blow up before my very eyes into a pile of complete disappointment. For example, I thought the single best MMORPG I've ever played in terms of pure potential (along with great IP) was Star Wars Galaxies. If you know anything about SWG you know that it's in the record book of failed MMORPG's along with Vanguard, Age of Conan, and many others. By "failed" I mean failed to execute at an extremely high level and keeping large numbers of subscribers - not necessarily WoW like numbers - but at least somewhere in the millions of subscribers area. I'm not going to go in depth into my percieved failings of these games, those have been beat to death. What I'm going to address is the fear that a new and anticipated MMORPG launch brings to a seasoned MMORPG veteran like myself. If you've ever felt burned by an MMO that you loved (or expected to love) at some point, you might just know what I mean.

I felt like I missed the boat when WoW came along. You see, I was an EQ guy and WoW launched right around the same time that EQ2 did. I was already familiar with EQ's IP and decided to try EQ2 instead of WoW. Besides, I didn't like WoW's cartoony graphics and played a Gnome Swashbuckler to max level (at the time max lvl was 50) before I even thought about giving WoW a try. Needless to say that once I tried WoW I became a dedicated player and gave Blizzard 15 bucks a month for 3 years. I ran the raiding treadmill with the best of them (pre-BC) and my life and play style evolved (read: married, kids, real job) to a point where WoW isn't the best fit any more. But I digress, because the point of this little EQ to WoW story is to say that I felt like I missed the boat in regard to not getting involved with WoW early on. I wasn't blogging back then either, even though I felt like I had alot I could share with other gamers. Fast forward to today, and I decided long ago that I wasn't going to miss the boat on the next game that I felt would be great. This time, its not just educated guesses from articles read or videos from other gamers getting to beta test that has helped me form my opinions. I have my own experiences to help me decide if I should be invested in this game from day 1 or not.

With that said, I've been beta testing WAR for several weeks now. After all I've seen I can say that I love the game and am more excited about it now than I ever was prior. But in this genre of gaming, there are any of a thousand things that can go wrong. A game breaking bug that lingers too long, class imbalance, gold farming and exploits, bad community management, and the list goes on. These things can happen to any MMORPG, so its no wonder that only 1 game and 1 company have succeeded at having multiple millions of paid subscribers worldwide. There are just so many pitfalls on the way to that extreme level of success that its amazing that anyone was able to reach those heights in the first place. With that said, I love this game and think it will be great. However, my paranoid side wonders what will go wrong with WAR to stop it from actually becoming the next great MMO. After all, there has to be a next great MMORPG right? WoW can't dominate the market forever, can it?

So that's where I am. Bursting at the seams to talk about my new MMORPG home and still fearful that something will go wrong and make me regret my investment in the game. It has happened before, and I don't want to feel burned again. But in a way this love/hate relationship is kind of like it is with real people. Some people are afraid of relationships because they fear rejection and getting their hearts crushed if it ends badly. So, they choose not to be emotionally invested in other people, even ones they date regularly. But as any wise person will tell you, that is not a reason to live a life of solitude. As the old proverb goes, "It is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all." The same goes for people who love games too, so I'm gonna love WAR and hope things turn out happily ever after.