My whole life I’ve been avoiding MMOs. Not because they’re bad, but being the addiction-prone gamer I am, I figured getting involved in one would be the end of my real world life as I know it. Goodbye sunlight, goodbye relationships, goodbye job and social life. I’ve spent so long listening to people talk about how good they are, it’s only natural that I might start to build an unrealistic expectation of them.
So when I did finally cave and decide to try one, I was somewhat surprised to find out that the world of MMOs isn’t all I thought they’d be. It seems “The Perfect Games” that I’ve been avoiding might not be as perfect as I once imagined.
This is the documentation of my first ever MMO, and by extension, what any other gamer who hasn’t played one before might experience.
Picking the Game – A Rational(?) Choice
Working at EB Games/Gamestop does have its occasional perks. You might find it a surprising claim, but a large portion of its employees don’t actually have an interest in games. It is, after all, a business, and having customer, sales, and work skills is more important then having an interest in the product. Required knowledge can be learned on the job. And occasionally, this also goes for managers.
What this means is that when the monthly “free managerial copies” of games come through, more often then not it’s the casuals that will receive them as handy rewards or incentives. Booyah! So when a promotional copy of FFXIV arrived, I thought “What the hey?” and decided to give it a try.
Why FFXIV, you ask, and not WoW? Considering the entire Warcraft collection can be picked up for mere pitons and is (so they say) an infinitely better game?
Well, at the time I still didn’t trust that I wouldn’t become addicted to an MMO if I played a good one. I also have an aversion to paying subscription fees. With FFXIV’s recent worldwide condemnation, and subsequent Free-to-play status, it seemed the perfect way to be introduced to the MMO realm without the risk of becoming dangerously hooked. Having also received the base game for free, it meant I had no monetary stake in it at all. Money could in no way influence my experience.
I took it home, installed it, and one hour later I was ready to play. Was this the beginning of the end? A one way path to ultimate nerd-dom? You never know until you take the first step…
Final Fantasy XIV – The First Day
This is Celaneo. Isn’t she gorgeous? I don’t think I’ve ever made a female character as cute as she is. Just look at that nose, that adorable fringe-flick. Aaawwww.
It was a pleasant way to start the game. FFXIV’s character creation list has a limited number of features to choose from, but thankfully they all seem to fall under cute, cuter, gorgeous or stunning. It’s almost like the developers didn’t want their world populated by uglies. “Only beautiful people shall exist in our MMO!” they seem to cry. (Hey, I can live with that, but feel free to start a hate site and bring those insensitive bastards down.)
I choose a number of other seemingly pointless stats and traits, pick a starting location – forests are always nice – and finally, the game begins.
Wow. Straight off the bat I can see this is a pretty game. So pretty I overestimated my slightly-obsolete video card’s power and had to turn the graphics down. Just the opening cinematic of my girl walking through the forest, getting harassed by people falling from the sky and then assaulted by wolves, is boggling to look at. Beautifully rendered character models, generous splashes of colour, and fitting music? This was looking good! And then the gameplay started.
Moogles: Plushy Incarnate
Er. Hm. Huh? So yeah, apparently one or two lines is enough of a tutorial when it comes to XIV. I awkwardly fiddle and push buttons and eventually find a way to make Celaneo attack things. Slowly. Very, very slowly. Damn, not exactly action packed, this combat.
Five minutes later, the wolves lie dead, and I’m treated to another cool cutscene of my character being harassed by Treants and Moogles. It’s still fun to watch, but the earlier gameplay taste has me worried, so I’m less eager to get to the meat of the game now. Eventually, however, all the cutscenes and story things end, and I’m released into the big wide world to do what I want!
…which would be cool, except I don’t know what I want to do. I don’t know what I can do. Once again, the game distinctly lacks anything in the way of a decent tutorial, attempting to explain to me the jobs system in roughly two sentences. Here I am, in a world so massive it probably covers six screens, and the only thing I have for a guide is a small window in the bottom left that might as well be a retard’s twitter feed. How helpful.
Feeling somewhat overwhelmed and fast becoming bored, and decided to play with the emotes, and made my sweet Celaneo sit down to observe the scenery. Pretty! At least the game was still nice to look at.
And then salvation arrived:
“Do you need some help?” the friendly Telly-Tubby asked.
“Yes,” I answered. “I’m lost. This is my first MMO. No idea what I’m supposed to be doing.”
“Where are you up too?”
“I just started.”
“Do you want to do the main story?”
“I guess. If I have too.”
“Ok, let’s go. I’ll show you around”
And so with renewed interest, I followed my stout friend and skipped into the unknown. Along the way he taught me many things; crafting, maps, journals, gear, teleporting, quests, you name it. The amount of stuff the game contained was staggering, and ultimately begged the question: if I hadn’t found someone to teach me, how the f**k was I supposed to figure this all out by myself?
For two hours we wandered about, exploring and talking. I soon discovered that a very large portion of your MMO time will be spent walking. And walking. If you want to fast-track, you’ll have to pay a penalty of sorts, which really sucks ass. Why the hell should I be punished for wanting to skip lots of pointless running about? Artificially extending playtime? Why the heck would a game this size need that? Pphhh.
My first fight was disappointing to say the least. Facing off against a Deadly Mushroom of Death (see above), this time I decided to really get into it: strafing, dodging, using the few skills I had. Until my new friend proclaimed “You know, moving doesn’t make any difference. You can just stand still, they’ll hit you regardless”. Well. That’s deflating. So I just stood and pushed a single button for another five minutes until it died. Yawn. So this is what MMO combat is like? Well it’s nice to know that my skills are on par with this guy:
Homer Simpson had the right idea
At last it was time to call it a night. The following days would be abundant with new activities, I felt sure. I said goodbye to my friend, added him to my friends list, and closed the game down.
Final Fantasy XIV – The Next Week
The following week I got quite busy at work, and so didn’t have much time to play FFXIV. I managed maybe one hour a night. During this time, something was becoming quickly apparent: this game was filled with enormous, unashamedly obvious time sinks.
The most noticeable one was the quests. At any time you can pick up a few quests, revolving around combat, environment or crafting. Each one will develop one of your skills, and give you rewards. Sounds easy, yeah?
Well, it is. Very easy. It’s just really, really, really, really freakin boring and time consuming. Every quest requires you to journey somewhere, and every activity can take between ten and twenty minutes to complete once you get there. This would be fine, except that every single damn action in the game requires a skill, and each skill has to be developed individually. You can’t help but feel overwhelmed when you have a hundred different skills and it takes thirty minutes to level up just one of them.
The worst part? They’re necessary. Or at least, they are if you ever want to wear something different to the stuff you start the game with. See shops don’t sell many (if any) gear, and when they do it’s so insanely expensive you better be prepared to donate some organs to make up the difference. If you want items without paying through the nose or killing enemies that are out of your league for another fifty levels, you have to make them yourself.
To do that, you need raw materials. Which means harvesting them. Better materials require higher skills, so you have to develop those. Then, even when you get the materials, you need the skills to craft them. But don’t expect it to be just one skill. Want to make so new leather clothes? You’re going to have to learn weaving and leatherwork equally, and anything else needed along the way. It would probably take you hours upon hours, maybe even days of constant work, just to make one item.
You'll be doing a lot of this. A LOT.
Once again, maybe this would be ok, if crafting wasn’t so mind numbingly dull. Sitting there, pressing enter. Over. And over. And over. It was probably around the third day that I thought “You know, this isn’t entertaining. Hell, this isn’t even interesting. This isn’t even a game! It’s just a waste of time!”
Resolving to leave quests and crafting behind, I decided to follow the story missions. But even they were just an endless stream of “Get from Point A to Point B” sequences. It was now very apparent that if I was ever going to get to the “fun” part of this game, I’d be looking at a month or more of constant work to even get established. I’d also need to join some sort of guild or group, since soloing was almost impossible even in the starter areas.
Disgruntled and over it, I closed the game and went on my merry way. Perhaps the promised updates in the future would make things more interesting, but somehow I don’t think that was the problem. The issue seems to be deeper then that. I soon came to terms with the fact that I did not like the core of MMOs after all. The problem was me.
The Aftermath – “Well Duh!”
I talked to a lot of people about my experience. When they asked “Oh? How did you find it?” I responded:
“Well, I’ve probably played ten hours in total, and all I’ve done is waste a hell of a lot of time crafting, doing pointless quests, developing pointless skills and killing the few miniscule animals I can. I’ve been stuck in the same 2% of the map where I started the whole time. It’s pretty boring.”
To my surprise they all looked at me blankly and said “Yeah… but that’s what all MMOs are like. You didn’t know that?”
I guess I did not. I’d avoided MMOs for so long, I’d never even read up on what the start game was like. It also didn’t help that all the cool things like raids and instances that my friends talked about took place after hundreds of hours of play. Here I was, expecting to get hooked on a genre within the first few hours, and it’s simply not the case. Who would have thought that I’d need to work so hard to get addicted to something?!
The one thing this experience did do was help me put things in perspective. Sure, FFXIV is a terrible MMO, and WoW or Rift would be a much better choice. But the same core features still apply to them: crafting, questing, skill developing, walking and combat where a single fight can last longer then some FPS storylines. So with that in mind: who the heck has time to play this genre?
The MMO Crowd – How Do You Do It?
Seriously. I just can’t comprehend it. I mean, I don’t have much of a life compared to non-gamers, I’ll admit that. I’m a pretty serious hobby gamer. It’s basically my life, my passion, and one of my few interests. But even I have a partner, a job, parents to visit, social functions to attend, general household duties, and a regular sleeping pattern. Not even kids at the moment!
Yet I know people who have all that and a few Level 85 WoW characters! Wtf?! How? How is that possible? If I played ten hours and barely got anywhere, exactly how much time would it take for someone to get not one, but multiple character to Level 85? And that’s just the start. What about the people who get into the top raiding guilds? Or earn the “insanity” achievement? The rare mounts? The highest ranked gear? Apparently these things take thousands of hours to get! Who on earth has the time for that?
Or at least, who’d be willing to make the sacrifices necessary to become that involved in the game. Work would surely suffer. Relationships definitely would. Your whole world would start to revolve around this fake one, and everything else in your life would become secondary. Now I know how long these things take, I can see why the terrible gamer stereotype of “lives with parents, no job, no partner” has developed: for dedicated players, MMOs have forced that kind of lifestyle!
My god, who spawned this evil gaming entity into existence? How has it been allowed to continue? It must be quashed for the very sake of mankind! It might as well be demanding a neutering on top of their subscription fee.
The Verdict – Freedom is Sweet
Ok, so maybe I’m over exaggerating by… er… a little. But it’s the honest feeling I got while I played.
My brief foray has been an enlightening experience. It helped me abolish my fear of genre, though not in the way I expected. I once considered the MMO to be my perfect game. And now I know it is not. Once again, not because the games are bad (I’m sure WoW and Rift are as good as they say), but I simply don’t have the time or devotion needed to reach the enjoyable part of the game. I’m not the “target audience”.
From my point of view as a hobby gamer, an MMO is a game you play when you can’t be bothered to (or have no interest in) buying or playing other games. It’s what you choose when you just want to sit down and work on something and watch it progressively improve, not for a few days or weeks, but perhaps years. It might be slow, it might even be boring, but at least you know you’re getting your moneys worth. After all, a full priced regular game can end in only four hours nowadays.
The other perk is the social opportunity. It’s a great way to meet new people online, make friends, and stay in contact with them. It took me mere minutes to meet someone nice, and had he had Steam I’m sure we would have played something together. For shy people, or those that live in rural, sparsely inhabited areas of the world, the MMO is a glorious portal to sociality. It’s still not worth abandoning your real world friends and family for someone you know mainly as text on a screen, but at least you wouldn’t feel alone if you lacked those things.
My desire to go solo and not join a Guild is not the games fault; it’s a personal preference that simply doesn’t mesh with the genre. I’d love it if MMO’s let you solo a little easier, but hey. Can’t be helped. It’s obviously not for me, so there’s no point whining that they should change something that works for everyone else.
And so it seems Celaneo and I must part ways. Not that she looks all that broken up about it:
I think she may have gotten sick of running in circles, endlessly grinding that crafting board. I don’t blame her. I’ll return every now and again (it’s free-to-play after all) to check on her and see if they ever manage to patch the game to playable levels. Maybe my opinion will even change in the future?
For now, I’m going to enjoy my freedom, and return to the safety of my regular games that only taken a couple dozen hours to finish. One thing’s for sure: I’ll never take the ability to buy my stuff from merchants for granted ever again. God bless those overstocked bastards!
(Please queue your comments on my misinterpretation of the games you love below.)
I have read the game has improve quite a bit since launch and if you compare my experience with yours, you are being very generous. The only way I could survive the UI was to plug in a controller. After that it was a lot more enjoyable. Talking about combat, you should PLEASE (I beg you!) download the unlimited trial for Age of Conan. Tortage is one of best starting zones (until you get tired of it) in any MMORPG. Also, the combat is one of my favorites. Positioning is important, you get bonuses for tactical combat and decapitations are just sweet. Check out this old video:
bilingue(Quote) (Reply)
[youtube 7hXy8WJX6ZM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hXy8WJX6ZM youtube]
bilingue(Quote) (Reply)
Age of Conan went F2P too? Damn, how long ago did that happen? Actually I wasn't even aware that the game was still going. It doesn't appear to have aged well in that vid. Meh, maybe I'll look into it one day, but without people to play with, and a distinct lack of time, I doubt I'd be able to get much more out of it then I did FFXIV.
Project_Xii(Quote) (Reply)
Its not F2P, just the starting zone. They will be adding 2 new servers with some hardcore rules like 1 character per server and loot drop on death. I am a fan of that game.
bilingue(Quote) (Reply)
Considering the only well-developed area in that game is Tortage, that doesn't surprise me. Show off your best-developed area in the hopes that people will become customers expecting the rest of the game is that polished (when it isn't). I jokingly called that game Age of Tortage once–it seems like it might be an aptly-named title now.
Agamemnon(Quote) (Reply)
I'd hate to be Captain Obvious here Proj, but you only played how long? I think your first problem was going into this expecting it to be like a fighting game, where the mechanics are specifically built around only one aspect as there's only one aspect in that game to deal with. Or perhaps with the average game you might play elsewhere, which probably only offers thirty to forty hours of entertainment before you beat the game and have accomplished 90% of what you can do. I've never played FFXIV, but I can tell you from experience that picking a new MMO as your first is a bad idea. The other problem here is that you also picked an MMO not on your likes, but simply because it came across your path.
My first MMO was WoW. I trialed it twice just to say I took a character to twenty in both Horde and Alliance (as it took me roughly two weeks to do so for each character). I abhorred it. Like you I was sitting at a low level pressing the same couple of skills over and over. The colors certainly weren't stimulating–they reminded me of Saturday morning cartoons. And, more importantly, I had zero interest in the theme of the game (I've always disliked Warcraft). I didn't know it, but I had set myself up to actually HATE MMOs by picking the worst one for me to play. WoW is not for me.
I trialed a crap-ton of MMOs after that. I somehow managed to get into numerous alphas and betas afterward. It was not until I started playing LotRO that my aspect on MMOs changed. Here was an MMO whose theme I absolutely love. Note how that's about my only like I put forth. I have been playing LotRO since open beta and the game has drastically changed since then. Your complaints about a weak tutorial, heavy level grinding, and a steep learning curve? They would have applied for LotRO back then. Now the game has a tutorial that holds your hand until LV7, all the quests are geared to railroading you to new concepts (and thoroughly explaining them), mobs were made weaker, and they continue to reduce the low-level XP required to level. You can go from LV1 to LV15 in one day if you have three or four hours to kill. LV25 in a week. And slowly they are converting nearly every group quest to be solo (or at least to have a soloable version).
This is only after four years of development, however. And what I've seen from MMOs is that the longer they are around, the more changes they make to what they consider player feedback. Sometimes that feedback works out–sometimes it doesn't. As such, the game has hit F2P. From a customer's stand point, they continue to throw customer rights to free players and it's being made abundantly clear that there will be no "free lunches" any more and they will try to sell new updates through the store. I love the game but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
You just have to find your niche. I know I really got into Eve for a bit until I found out that it is the very definition of Persistent World MMO and all you do is earn money to join a corporation to do PvP. In reality MMOs are a completely different genre of their own (as you eloquently put it: duh). You really either love them or hate them.
Agamemnon(Quote) (Reply)
In terms of regular gaming times, 14 hours is a long freakin time. Especially to be stuck in a single area of the map, grinding skills endlessly. I wasn't really expecting a fighting game, but I was expecting something a little more fast paced then that. I could have finished 2 decent console games in that time and actually had a memorable experience out of it.
FFXIV was always going to be my MMO of choice. I have no interest in other worlds, but I like Final Fantasy, so it seemed the one I'd associate with best. That said, how the heck am I supposed to know what my MMO "likes" are when I've never played an MMO before? :/ How am I supposed to know that, short of buying and trying every MMO? And who'd have the time or money for that?
Yeah, it seems FFXIV is slowly improving. The new team has already patched and fixed the crafting system a touch, making it a lot more stream lined. Still, doesn't change the fact that the core elements are boring. Even if I did play a "good" MMO, I highly doubt anything would be different. It still comes down to the same things; walking, questing, and grinding. And I just don't have the time or interest to do that.
I'll continue on in Herey's reply anyway.
Project_Xii(Quote) (Reply)
You keep saying that "It still comes down to the same things; walking, questing, and grinding" and I think that is where you're missing something – because you only played for 14 hours.
I think for a lot of people, MMOs are much more than that. Thinking about WoW, all of your points are kind of minimal. They've made travel so damn easy that you hardly have to do any walking. There's flight paths galore, and with the new random dungeon finder, you can enter a queue, teleport straight into the dungeon, and teleport straight out when you're done. No walking. This also applies to the pvp battlegrounds and arenas, which is what a LOT of people spend their time on in WoW. No walking (unless you're chasing someone), no questing, no grinding. Just purely fighting other people and pitting your skill/gear/whatever against theirs. Grinding isn't too necessary in WoW either. Sure, in the lower levels you'll need to*quest* to level up, but they've even made leveling so much faster & easier. Plus there are tons of dungeons you can go in, which are a lot of fun, don't require quests, and don't really feel like grinding if you do them with a good group of people/friends. Same goes for raids. But I won't get into all that.
I'd say for a lot of people, playing MMOs, or at least WoW, is all about PvPing, raiding, and socializing. Not about walking, questing, and grinding.
Heretica(Quote) (Reply)
Hmmmm. Well you're right, that's a lot more then walking, questing, grinding. Again, not anything I'm actually interested in unfortunately :( I've never liked PvP. People take it so seriously… get all trolly and abusive… only dappled a little in Diablo 2, and I think that was enough. I've always prefered besting bigger and badder enemies in regular PvE over fighting real people. The fact that beating the bigger and badder enemies in MMO's means leveling forever, or requires you too join a guild, is what puts me off in that regards.
Still, how long would it take to the point where you get these speedy mounts and high level gear and teleports? It's it relatively fast compared to other MMO's? Or are we still talking 50-100 hours of prep? How does one earn gear from a mainly PvP orientated play style anyway? Do you get them from the dungeons? What kind of levels do you need to be to survive them?
Yeah, I'd say MMOs are mainly a social thing for people too. Guess it's just a shame that I'm so unsociable :P I don't mind a little game with friends every now and again, but I'm talking a 20 minute game of Left 4 Dead or something. I get enough social fulfillment from my everyday life; games are my own private little escape from the world. I'll save the MMO's in the advent that I lose everything and need a place to wallow in self pity lol.
Project_Xii(Quote) (Reply)
I've never liked PvP either, but a lot of people do. In WoW, you can get a lot of rewards for PvPing, through battleground tokens, Honor points (not sure if they still have all this stuff, I haven't played in a while), etc. that you earn through battlegrounds and PvPing. If you do arenas, different pieces of gear are available for purchase once you reach different arena rankings.
"I've always prefered besting bigger and badder enemies in regular PvE over fighting real people."
Same, which is why I liked raiding a lot, and I think you could enjoy it too.
Still, how long would it take to the point where you get these speedy mounts and high level gear and teleports? It's it relatively fast compared to other MMO's? Or are we still talking 50-100 hours of prep?
Yeah, that' what I'm saying, they've made everything so quick and easy now it's ridiculous. They're definitely trying to appeal to more casual gamers (like you) who don't want to wait till level 40 and earn 1000 gold before they can get a mount. I think you can get your first mount at level 20 now? And it costs a ridiculously reduced price. You could get that in a week of gameplay if you really wanted.
Anyway, I'm with you on the antisocial thing, too. I'm lucky I don't have much social interaction at my job. Being such an introvert, dealing with people is exhausting! I can definitely appreciate that your gaming time is your alone time. :)
Heretica(Quote) (Reply)
I think you've learned by now MMOs are anything but a regular video game. At one point in time it was the stigmatic norm to expect four-hour long raids in some MMOs. A lot of them have been toning them back, shortening them down, making them easier, and requiring less people to do. Half of the MMO experience is the journey–you are supposed to accept the fact that you could be playing this game for months and months or even years and watch it change and unfold before your eyes. More Persisant World MMOs like Eve thrive on this sort of stuff, having even tech, crafting, and political maps change drastically.
You can't walk into in MMO expecting a typical gaming experience like any other. That was my first mistake as well–looking at the idea that it would take hundreds of hours before my character was enjoyable to play. It's not a meal you have in one sitting–it's literally a multi-month holiday feast. You have your portions for the day and then eat again the next day. And as much as I hate analogies, that pretty much works. LotRO tells me I've played 2 months, 3 weeks, 3 days, and 9 hours on my character, or 1,929 hours. This is over a four-year period. You may think that's grossly immense for a play-time in a game, but I can tell you right now I'd be laughed at in that game to admitting such LITTLE play time (probably even further laughed at if I chalk up to maybe half of that time spent on role-playing).
And it's not like MMOs are the only type of game you can spend copious amount of time in. I suppose it's no surprise that some of my most favorite games are the ones with dozens of variables and no endings (Medieval II: Total War, Mount&Blade, etc.). To make progress in these sorts of games, you HAVE to spend a lot of time in them. A lot of people don't bat an eyelash about this in Bethesda games because the action is much more active and you can take it in at small bits, but MMOs require a hell of a lot more.
Agamemnon(Quote) (Reply)
I have to agree that choosing FFXIV as your first MMO ever was probably a bad choice (unless it was secretly on purpose because you knew you wouldn't enjoy it and thus you could stay away from MMOs forever after playing such an awful one).
It's disappointing to hear that the game seemed so slow and boring to you. I have friends who loved the game, but they're MMO veterans (and FFXI veterans), so they didn't need as much hand-holding as someone completely new to the genre. It's also disappointing to hear that nothing was soloable – because that was supposed to be one thing they were "fixing" in 14 from 11 (in 11 you HAD to group for ANYTHING/EVERYTHING).
I am curious, though, how different your experience would have been if you'd maybe picked up a friend's already-developed character in WoW and had that friend play alongside you (on a separate account). Showing you the ropes, letting you try out all the skills and fun stuff that comes later in the game.
Heretica(Quote) (Reply)
I know they dev team behind FF 14 are adding a lot of new things. This is a game I want to re-visit when they add an in-depth tutorial. Project should make a journal with his experience in WoW. He can sign up for the trial :D
bilingue(Quote) (Reply)
Gah! X( Why is everyone trying to get me to play MMO's now? The results will be the same!!!
This has much less to do with FFXIV itself, and more about the fact that I've discovered I don't like the MMO genre. Yeah, FFXIV is bad, but that's cause it just hasn't gotten to the point where it can disguise those core elements properly yet. They're just out there, plain and raw. Other MMO's might be able to cover up the walking, grinding and questing better, but it's still just that. I thought that would be enough to get me addicted to a game; now I know it's not.
Whether I'd played WoW or Rift or Conan or DC Universe, I can almost guarentee this article would have had the same outcome. I mean, would things REALLY have progressed any faster in WoW? I'm sure I would have spent the same amount of time doing the exact same thing; fetch quests, crafting and wandering. I found FFXIV slow and boring, but I'm sure someone who has played MMO's before would have said it was normal paced. I just wouldn't know.
Ultimately it comes down to the time thing. I just don't have the time or interest to sit and develop a character for no reward other then 'you developed your character'. I can do that in games like Diablo, sure, because that's fun, fast paced and crazy. MMO's are work, especially if you're not interested in playing with others. Quests in FFXIV can be soloed, by the way, just not wandering around taking on random enemies. I'm sure people would tell me that's the same in any MMO though.
Also, I don't need a game that's going to last me a year. At last count I have 450 Steam games and 250 console games, and I've probably only finished 1/3 of them. It bugs me that there's so many left unfinished, so much so that I get "gamers remorse" if i waste my time. Like when Sims 3 came on steam and I grabbed that, I spent an entire day playing it, and afterwards I had the worst guilt/remorse ever. I wasted an entire day playing the Sims 3! NOTHING happens in the Sims. It's a pure time sink, and nothing more. No story, nothing that expands my knowledge or experience.
MMO's feel like the same thing. I'm just wasting my time. I have hundreds of perfectly good games, most of them ones I've spent years trying to find or collect, and most those weird or niche cult classics. It's far more rewarding for me to play them then to grind my MMO characters leatherwork skills to level 15. Woo…
So yeah. As I said in the article, it's not the genres fault. For people who have the time to spend, or only want to buy and play one game every few months (or years), or want to play with friends, they're perfect. I don't fit any of those catergories, so MMO's just aren't for me. I don't expect I'll ever have a need to play one (unless my Steam account somehow disappears or someone robs me blind of consoles).
So no, Bili, no WoW journal. Ever :P But you're right about the FFXIV team adding stuff. Since they sacked the entire old team and got in the new one, it seems the game might be headed in the right direction. They've already streamlined it a lot in one patch, so I'm sure by the time it comes to PS3 it'll be good for you to play.
Project_Xii(Quote) (Reply)
Whoa whoa whoa, way to put words in my mouth there, Proj. I'm not trying to get you to do anything. I was purely musing. O_O I'm not interested in MMOs anymore, either, so I surely wouldn't try to convince someone else to play one. In fact, I just started playing LaTale and was disappointed to realize it's an MMO. Same with Dofus and Wakfu, but at least those all seem casual enough that I can play them solo or with my bf and enjoy it for a while. Nothing like a pay-to-play MMO.
Anyway, I'm glad you finally scratched your MMO itch and got it over with. ;)
Heretica(Quote) (Reply)
Oh, sorry I replied to your comment, but I was sorta replying to both you and Bili. He kinda freaked me out, going from FFXIV to suggesting a WoW journal. Wtf dude!!! You might as well be waiting for me down a dark alley with a coat full of EverQuest! :D
I'm going to continue checking in on FFXIV, since I find it fascinating to see a game "evolve". I've never really got to witness that before. Team Fortress 2 is about the closest thing, but that was a pretty good game to begin with. The most recent FFXIV patch already changed a bit for the better. I want to watch a bad game eventually become a good game. Maybe.
If what Ag says about LotR is true, it'll be very interesting to see what happens with FFXIV. Maybe eventually I'll like it! Course, when they start making me pay I may have to rethink that…
Project_Xii(Quote) (Reply)
Yeah, I suppose I'll keep an eye on the evolution of FFXIV too. But I doubt I'll be wanting to play an MMO any time in the near future. I'm so thoroughly over them, it feels kind of weird.
Heretica(Quote) (Reply)
It's hard for me to explain why I like Online Gaming so much.
bilingue(Quote) (Reply)