Current Gaming and MMOs

[achtungexplosiv]

At the moment, I'm not hardcore into any one thing. My general game usage is based around my 3DS while I'm out and about, which keeps me sane on my commutes and when I have a quiet lunch, and my home PC. On the 3DS I'm usually playing Ghost Recon; at home I'm often bouncing about on Minecraft. It's one of those lull periods I get where I'm not intensely focused on somthing in particular, and end up casually playing a few different games depending on the people I game with and their availability. Until recently I was up to my eyeballs in MMOs and I suppose could describe myself as 'between games' at the moment.


General MMO-flavoured notes

I've become an MMO gamer over the years, after initially being highly critical of a genre of game which, as I saw it, you had to re-buy the damn thing every month. The reasons for my change of tune are twofold:

Firstly, MMOs tend to be huge games with a lot of variety in scope, long character progression, plenty to see and do, a lot of freedom to explore, experiment and generally mess around with a wide variety of ways to play such as player vs game content, player vs player, combat, crafting, social activities etc. As living worlds that in theory are updated by their creators with new content and changes, this mitigated the 'subscription fee' niggle I had had.

Secondly, MMOs have communities; the people you play with in groupings of varying size and arrangement in order to accomplish things, so it's a social affair in which friendships can develop. It goes beyond in-game activities into forum participation, websites resource creation and the development of third-party tools that give rise to smartphone apps, wikis, theorycrafting with equipment listings and so on. The entire process can be very rewarding.

Both of those aspects appeal very strongly to me and I've had many years of good times with the genre. A quick overview of my time:

I started out with Eve Online in 2004 some time before the first big expansion, Exodus, was released. That's one hell of a baptism of fire, believe me. Internet spaceships appealed to my interests because I'm a sci-fi fan and I had a few friends that were playing it at the time. After some years and many adventures both good and bad, I burned out and decided to give it a break. I have returned to Eve off and on over the years and am currently subbed (just about) despite the CCP debacles of late.

After some time experimenting with other games, I found myself really getting into Anarchy Online which I had first come accross in 2006 shortly before the release of the Lost Eden expansion. I realise that this way round of playing those two games was arse-backwards to most others, but hey. Several more years of good and bad were spent here doing it all until I suffered a similar burnout and developed an extremely jaded view of FUncom (putting the FU in fun).

Some more random games later (most recently Rift, which I am still technically subbed to but no one I played with still plays and I'm bored on my own) I find myself adrift once more.

At a later point I'll do a more detailed write up of each game, including the various other games I played and didn't stick with for one reason or another.

Comments

[wyrdness.livejournal.com]

I played a lot of minecraft until about 2 weeks ago. I still enjoy it, but I find single player boring after a while and I have yet to find a multiplayer server I truly feel at home on. Most of the servers are completely empty or they're so full that they have to extremely limit what you can do or everyone lags out.

I've recently unsubbed from EVE as well. Again. I keep flitting back to it, determined that I will like it this time, but I always have the same problems. I find it difficult to make any ISK as I'm trapped in Empire, but I can't go to low-sec because I can't afford the losses learning to PvP. On top of that PvE is so bloody dull! Every single mission is just a variation on flying to some empty space and shooting down some slightly different looking ships, and once you figure out how to beat an individual mission it takes absolutely all the (minimal) challenge out of it entirely! :-/ As for mining, that will always be dull (corp mining operations slightly less so for some reason). With all of the above already wearing me down the latest CCP Incident was the straw that broke the camels back.

I briefly considered returning to Anarchy Online. Then I remembered what a horrible grindfest it was, even with the expansions that give a million times more XP per kill than the froob areas. In fact I've not played AO since before they started buffing the graphics I think. Sadly even with the graphics buff it's never going to be as pretty as many newer games.

I haven't tried Rift. After being completely burned by getting FFXIV and Aion when they were new and being so totally let down I wasn't willing to try it a third time.

There are no other MMOs that really grab my attention at the moment. I think I'm very much a niche market though, I want an in-depth crafting system that is also not so overly complex that you need a manual to understand what's going on and doesn't require you grinding on mobs to pick up rare items, but where the items you make are also of use and aren't superceded immediately by any old tat you pick up off the next mob. I'm all for item-degradation in games as a way for there to always be a market for new items, it would certainly make end-game content for WoW clones interesting if their uber-gear was time limited and required you to keep re-acquiring it. I am also completely over PvP, but only because it's always rife with griefers who gank individuals in large packs and/ or are completely over-powered in levels and gear. If PvP in MMOs had a more balanced playing field (such as being completely unable to attack someone X levels below you rather than the kill simply being worthless) I would find it much more interesting.

Umm, anyway, I think I'll stop ranting up your comments now. :p