MMOs I Have Played – Pass It On
Taken from Trembling Hand, I thought this would be an interesting retrospective on my gaming.
How many MMOs have you played? How long did you spend in each one? Which did you enjoy the most?
They're the questions I asked myself the other day, and it resulted in the interesting list below (remind me: why do I still play MMOs, when I haven't enjoyed any of the recent crop?). I figured I'd also throw it open to the MMO blogging community and ask what MMOs have you played?
MMO -- months played -- star rating out of five*
- A Tale In The Desert -- 1 -- ***
- Aion -- 3 -- *****
- Cabal Online -- .25 -- *
- Chronicles of Spellborn -- .5 -- *
- City of Heroes -- 6 -- ***
- Dungeons and Dragons Online -- 1 -- **
- Earth and Beyond -- 5 -- ***
- Free Realms -- .5 -- *
- Guild Wars -- 6 -- ****
- Kingdom of Loathing -- 4 -- ****
- Lord of the Rings Online -- 6 -- ****
- Maple Story -- 3 -- ****
- Megami Tensai Online: IMAGINE -- .5 -- **
- Planetside -- 2 -- ***
- Pirates of the Burning Sea -- .5 -- **
- RF Online -- .5 -- *
- Rose Online -- 1 -- **
- Runes of Magic -- 1 -- **
- Tabula Rasa -- .5 -- *
- Warhammer Online -- .5 -- **
- Wizard101 -- 3 -- *****
- World of Warcraft -- 60 -- *****
*Star rating is an entirely subjective measure of how much you liked it at the time, not how much you'd enjoy playing it today.
Back in the Saddle
So my month long classes are over and I am back to the normal work schedule. Hopefully I can get back to blogging regularly. After not blogging for over a month, it is going to take some getting used to again.
My last month has been filled mostly with work but I did get the chance to game a little bit. Almost all of that was done with Rynala and split between Aion, Guild Wars, and Wizard 101, with Wizard 101 taking over most of our gaming time of the past two weeks.
In Guild Wars, we finished up Nightfall last month and started in on Eye of the North. I cannot say I much care for Eye of the North compared to Nightfall. Nightfall seemed to be the highpoint in the storyline. But then again, I guess it is sort of hard to top the story of killing a god. It does not help that Eye of the North has a bunch of reputations to grind (UGH!) and is not as long as the other campaigns. We only have the last mission and the final boss left and we are not even that motivated to finish. I think it just disappointed me that the last major storyline in Guild Wars was not that exciting. At least it was still better than the terrible story that was Factions.
Aion has been an absolute blast. We initially went and leveled Elyos and Asmodian characters to level 10 on the NA open beta and then went and played on the Chinese servers since the US beta servers are only up every other weekend. We leveled another set of Elyos characters to 10 and then switched to Asmodian and played them to level 15 or so. At this point we stopped because we did not want to burn out on the game before the NA launch in late September. We probably will not touch it before then.
Aion does have me quite excited. A lot of people just shrug it off as a "WoW-like" but I think that is one of the beauties of the game. It feels a bit like WoW while still having new and foreign elements. Something old and something new. Makes it a lot easier to transition. Either way, I think it is a solid game and I hope it does well after launch. I do not want to speak too soon, but I almost think that it might beat WAR is subscription numbers. One of the big disadvantages WAR had (other than imbalances and broken endgame) was it launched two weeks before Wrath of the Lich King. I do not care how good your game is, it is hard to compete with the 800 pound gorilla. Aion will be launching two months after WoW's patch 3.2. By this time anyone who came back for 3.2 will be getting bored with the content and it will still be at least another three to four months until patch 3.3. It will be a perfect time to draw people away from WoW.
Wizard 101 surprised me. I had played earlier this year and got a character to level 8 before quitting. The lack of community tools, guilds, uncensored chat, or friends in the game pushed me to leave. Reflecting over my MMO time over the last few years showed me that as of recently I have become more and more of a social gamer and so it makes it hard for me to get into games like Wizard 101 if playing solo. To combat this, I talked Rynala into trying the game out with me. She might not like every MMO I try, but she is usually always open to at least trying them. Just like Guild Wars, I figured Wizard 101 would be a lot more fun playing it as a team the whole way through.
I created Seth Lifeweaver, the life wizard and she created Victoria Duskrider, the death wizard. For the first couple hours, she was skeptical and thought she might play it for a week or two but it had little to no long term potential. As we progressed further into the story of the game and deeper into the gameplay, she really started enjoying it. As of last night we both hit level 15 and are about ready to head into Krokotopia, the second world in game. Personally, I was surprised when I found out how fleshed out the story and world actually are. I may be a very social gamer, but I also need at least someone decent stories in my game. This is a reason Wizard 101 works for me and Free Realms does not. Wizard 101 is a realized world with an ongoing story. Free Realms is just a collection of minigames thrown into a hub world.
Anyway, it is great to be back to blogging. I just have so much catching up to do in my blog reading for the last month. >.<
Understanding Microtransactions
In the past, I have not been a fan of microtransactions. And while I am still not a fan of content that is exclusive to microtransactions or double dipping with subscriptions and microtransactions, I have come to a peace with the concept overall. This has mainly happened due to Runes of Magic.
Runes of Magic has a giant item shop where you can buy a multitude of items that are a nice convenience. This is the kind of implementation I like. If you do not like microtransactions, you could accomplish anything you wanted in the game without spending a cent. The items within the cash shop are mostly things such as potions to increase your experience gain for an hour, potions to refund your training points (sort of like WoW talent points), mounts, unique vanity outfits, and other items like this.
Furthermore, you do not buy the items directly with cash. You go on their website and buy "diamonds" and then use the diamonds in the store to buy items. It is a similar to XBox live currency.
Two of the aspects of the diamond system I like the most is that you can gift items to other people and you can sell diamonds on the auction house for gold. This benefits diamond buyers and those that play for free. For a diamond buyer like me, I can basically buy gold through a legitimate in-game method and for people that play for free, if they are good at making gold, they can buy diamonds and have access to cash shop goods.
I like this system. It allows me to play when I want to rather than feeling like I have to play the game because I am tied in with a monthly subscription. As it stands, I could see myself spending $15-$30 a month on Runes of Magic between diamonds for myself and Rynala.
Ixobelle recently talked about microtransactions and "buyer anxiety" when it comes to making a ton of micropurchases instead of having an "invisible" monthly payment. I do not think that buyer anxiety has ever been my problem with microtransactions and free to play games. It has always been something more like Syncaine actually talks about in a blog post he just wrote up today. Free to play MMOs have a terrible habit of giving people who play microtransactions a terrible advantage.
The person playing for free will not be able to compete when the paying players can buy gear and weapons that are incredibly better than anything else available in game. Free Realms sells level 1 swords that are better than anything a level 20 blacksmith can craft. In Runes of Magic, it is limited to items of convenience so in the end the free player will be on almost equal ground as the paying player.
I think that the microtransaction model could pick up greatly in the west so long as it kept with a business model of limiting the microtransaction items to only items of convenience, not blocking off certain classes or content as only obtainable via microtranactions, and not trying to double dip with both microtransactions and subscriptions.
Guild Wars, Free Realms and RMT Talk
I am expecting this blog post to come off a bit soapbox-like so free to pass over it as I am just using it to vent a bit.
If you know anything about me, you would know that I have not been a big fan of RMT in the past as I feel it can be very easily screwed up. I feel that RMT and subscriptions do not mix.
My RMT Rules are:
- If you have a subscription fee, there should be NO RMT-only content. With a subscription fee, everything should be obtainable in game and RMT seen as just a path to unlock everything without the work.
- If your MMO is free-to-play, go RMT hog wild. When I play a FTP MMO, I expect that not all the content will be open to me. I want the company to be able to make money somehow, and enticing people to buy RMT is fully acceptable.
What really got me thinking about RMT lately is the difference in models between Guild Wars and Free Realms. On the surface, both are free-to-play MMOs that have some RMT attached, but the way each game handles RMT is different.
In Guild Wars, everything in the game is achievable without paying a cent. If you buy all the games, all the content is there for you to explore and unlock. If you have enough time, you can unlock every item and skill in the game. For those with disposable income, you can go through and buy "Skill Unlock Packs" and "PvP Unlock Packs" to unlock the items and abilities for characters on the account instead of having to work for them in game. I applaud Guild Wars for this because there is nothing you cannot do just by playing the game. I would gladly pay a subscription fee for Guild Wars because their RMT model is non-mandatory and something I would expect to see on a subscription game.
In Free Realms, I believe access to the game is free (no buying the initial game like there is in Guild Wars) and while you can play for free, about a third of the game will be forever locked from you. If you choose to subscribe to the game, the other areas and features will be unlocked to you, but there are still items that you can only get via RMT. So if you want to collect every single item/job/area/ability/whatever in the game, you have to subscribe AND do microtransactions and I have never liked this sort of double dipping.
I am trying to think progressively when it comes to RMT but maybe I am still too old school for this new school market.
Also, I do not understand why Free Realms is getting more MMO legitimacy than Guild Wars has. People talk about expectations of Free Realms breaking a million people in a post-WoW world as if it is something new and exciting when Guild Wars just broke six million games sold last week and does not seem to receive the same MMO legitimacy as Free Realms.
Futher Free Realms Thoughts
I played a couple more hours of Free Realms. I still do not care for it and I think I have discovered all my reasons for that.
First of all, the game still is running like crap on my system. Getting rid of all shadows helped, but I still get quite a bit of graphical lag and the game still does not feel responsive enough. When I press a button, I want to feel immediate action from that button press. It reminds me of the complains people had about the combat in LotRO initially.
Next, I think I do not like Free Realms for the same reason I do not like the Wii. It feels like the game has a general lack of depth too it. I only played overall for about four to five hours, so I did not get too deep into the game but I never felt like the game was anything more than a bunch of minigame centers thrown around the area. I like my games to have depth and story to them. Even Wizard 101 had a storyline to it that you encounter from the very start of the game.
Maybe there is a story in the world of Free Realms, but if there is I did not get a chance to encounter it. A lot of people will enjoy the games offered within Free Realms but it is just not my style. I have never been a fan of minigame collections as I would just rather go play the games they are based off of. Enjoy kart racing? I would rather play Mario Kart. Enjoy being a cook? I would rather play Cooking Mama.
Tobold talked today about how he thinks the average WoW player will not find much to it because there is a lack of long-term motivation that people like me prefer.
The last thing that bothers me is the Free Realms pricing model. They allow you to play free, subscribe or pay with microtransactions. No single one of the above unlocks all content for you. I believe that people that play for free only have access to about 70% of the games content. Even subscribers do not have everything as there are still more things that can only be bought with RMT. As I talked about in a previous post, I do not like this model. I have never been a fan of RMT only content unless you have no subscription fee ever required.
I apologize for the overall crappy coverage of Free Realms but I could not motivate myself to play more. Oh well. It is not like there are not a million other MMOs on the horizon.
My First Foray Into Free Realms
Free Realms is one of the games that has been on my gaming radar for a while now. I did not know much about the game other than it was made by SOE, was free-to-play, had a cartoony graphical style ala Wizard 101, and was aimed at kids but enjoyable for adults as well. I got into the beta just yesterday and so I only got to play for a little more than an hour. I know a lot of people who are in beta are still really excited and are very much enjoying it, so I think there may have been something wrong with my experiences. My initial impression was cautious disappointment, but I feel it may be a problem on my side the most part.
I came into this game excited because I absolutely loved playing Wizard 101. The only thing that killed Wizard 101 for me was the lack of social networking tools. I had one experience in Wizard 101 that was spectacular until the lack of social networking tools completely ruined the experience and made me decide to stop playing and uninstall the game. If the game had an "Adult Mode" that allowed you to chat freely and form groups/guilds, it would probably have overtaken my life for a while.
Nonetheless, all the hype-talk about Free Realms made me hopeful that it would fill that hole left by Wizard 101. At this time, I am not quite sure if I will play it because of some problems that I think are mostly on my side.
First of all, I HATE HATE HATE having to launch the game from the website. I want to fully install the game onto my computer and have a nice little icon on my desktop that I can launch the game from. Having to open up a web browser and launch the game through the website annoys me to no end. Perhaps somewhere there is a full download of the game, but just from what I saw yesterday, it seems you have to launch it from the website.
The second problem, and to me the most important problem, is graphical lag and FPS drops. I do not know if it is because it is playing through the web browser or what, but the FPS on the game are trash for me. I am able to run WoW, WAR and Guild Wars at max settings and keep a steady 60FPS. Wizard 101 was so smooth graphically and never gave me trouble.
When I move my mouse, the cursor is not fast and responsive. It moves across the screen like it is trying to move through molasses. The same goes for character movement. When moving around and panning the camera around, I get significant FPS drops. All of these things combined really are significant barriers stopping me from enjoying the game. Maybe I cannot see the good of the game so much because of these walls in the way.
I did really enjoy the tutorial part, though I think it should be expanded. The tutorial was very interactive and had a voice over narrating most of the game instructions. In the tutorial, they go over moving the camera, moving your character, picking up and completing quests, using the minimap, getting into fights, and cooking. When you finish you are thrown out into the world and given inventory screens, SOE store screens, characters screens and many other things they do not explain in the tutorial. If this game is aimed at kids and not veteran MMO or RPG players, those areas need to be better covered.
I also liked the options to add a Fable 2-style bread crumb trail to the next quest as well as an arrow just pointing you in the direction of the quest.
I still want to try the game more and see if I can get deeper into the game but I need to fix my issues first. Can anyone help me with the graphical issues? Does the game run better in IE than Firefox? (I use Firefox currently.) Is there anywhere I can just download the entirety of the game and play it off my machine instead of having to launch it from the website?