I consider myself a casual gamer. By this, I mean that I don’t play a game 24/7 and learn everything there is about it, nor do I rack up hundreds upon hundreds of hours playing a multitude of games on a variety of different platforms. I’m the sort of gamer who enjoys games that have the option to explore the limits of the virtual world – scaling mountains or swimming oceans just to see what’s there. I’m the sort of person who, if the option is there, will spend an entire gaming session standing on a rock in the middle of the sea, casting a fishing rod and chatting to friends. This sort of behavior generally means that I should be a perfectly happy MMORPG player.
For those who aren’t game-savvy, MMORPG stands for Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. I have played a dozen of these in my lifetime; World of Warcraft (Beta through to the Cataclysm Expansion), City of Heroes/City of Villains, Lord of the Rings Online, Vanguard, Warhammer Online, Age of Conan, Rift, Star Wars: The Old Republic and finally Guild Wars 2. These are the type of games I enjoy playing. They are potentially limitless.
With that in mind, I think I’m going off MMORPGs.
I don’t know… I’m finding it increasingly difficult to log in to games at the moment, as it just feels as though I’m sat waiting for this awesome incredible game that hasn’t even been made yet.
All of the most recent games have been great. I adore Guild Wars 2 but none of my friends play it anymore as, like most MMOs, there’s not enough End Game content to keep us occupied. The game ends up being repetitive and boring. Plus, no-one plays it anymore. Did I mention that? So, I end up sitting there like a billy no-mates doing the equivalent of what I did back when I played WoW (before they brought in the Pandas).
I’ll describe the scene. My Character, Kib, was a Night-Elf Druid (technically he still exists, though I’ve not logged in for 2 years). I’m in Bird Form, hovering as high as I can get above the canals in Stormwind. I shift out of Bird Form and plummet towards the ground. Just before I hit the ground, I shift back into bird form. I keep repeating this action to see how close I can get to the ground without slamming into the street cobbles. Then I fly around for about 10 minutes before /sigh -ing and logging off.
The differences between what I did in WoW and what I do in GW2 are as follows:
- Instead of a male Night Elf Druid, I have a female Asuran Engineer
- Instead of Stormwind, it’s Lions Arch
- Instead of flying, I clamber to the top of one of the ship houses and throw myself off it
- Instead of trying not to hit the floor (well, I still try and not hit the floor), I aim to fall into the deepest part of a pond
I don’t know what all this plummeting to my (character’s) potential death says about me (it’s probably best not to think about that) but the result is the same; increasingly I find that MMO’s have become, well… boring.
I’ve dabbled with Rift and I love it. It’s got a good class system and the combat can be dynamic but it just feels like it’s missing something.
Maybe it’s because Rift seems to hate my PC. With Guild Wars 2 and WoW, I can run my graphics settings on high/ultra. With Rift, however, I’m lucky if I manage to run it on medium. Mobs, NPCs and other players take a long time to load in reasonably (not even high) populated areas and sometimes it just bugs out and refuses to work altogether. I know I need to update my PC, but Rift is quite an old game now and it surprises me how much trouble I have in playing it when newer games seem fine.
I also don’t actually care about the story or the people in Rift. I cared in WoW, I cared in GW2, but Rift… who cares? I didn’t ask to be brought back to life by the gods to fight a holy battle against a demon dude from another planet. Normally that would sound awesome but I can’t help but go ‘meh’.
Rift doesn’t seem to have grabbed me like other MMOs have. With WoW, I used to get very real withdrawal symptoms; I still do, now and again, even though I’ve not played for nearly 2 years. In the beginning, it was the same with GW2 but I played it to death on release and felt that I’d done everything I wanted to do after a few months. But I don’t get that longing with Rift, which is probably reflected in the fact that I’ve never managed to get a character above level 30. Maybe that’s it. Maybe I need to make the effort and push through to max out a character. Maybe only then will I get what the game is trying to do. Then again I may get bored again and end up committing gaming suicide like a frustrated Tim Bisley drowning a flailing Lara Croft over and over (incidentally, something that is far too horrific to consider doing in the new Tomb Raider….and far too easy).
As for potential future releases, Wildstar looks fun but again, I don’t think it would keep me interested. Elder Scrolls Online looks like an exciting return to Tamriel but I’ve not even finished Skyrim yet! Also, we’ve got to wait a whole year before release and by then, who knows what I’ll be doing.
Of course, I’ll still play Rift. I’ve invested some time in it now and the MMO-er in me can’t let that go to waste. I do have a PS3 but get sad when I complete a game. I think i have been spoiled by the seemingly endless worlds of MMOs.
Maybe I’ll finish writing this and read it back and tell myself “what a load of bollocks – you love that game!” and become an uber-l33t haxx0r wit al teh shinies… maybe. Until then, I’ll carry on fishing (almost max-skill in Rift now… at level 30… just sayin’) and reminiscing about how the world of MMO gaming used to be.
What do you think? Are you feeling the same as I do? Feel free to let me know in the comments below, or by voting in my poll.
Related articles
- Did WoW Kill a Genre? (nerdfarmblog.com)
- Response: Are MMOs too easy? (totemploppin.wordpress.com)
stuffbykib 