| JUST WHEN I THINK I'M OUT... THEY PULL ME BACK IN!! (Robert) |
| Written by Robert Kendzie | |
| Wednesday, 28 February 2007 | |
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Originally posted on 11/9/04 I must be some kind of glutton for punishment. Yes, I've started playing Star Wars Galaxies again, pretty much because of the whole Jump to Light Speed expansion that just came out. Call me crazy, call me irresponsible... every now and then I just have to go back and get my MMORPG fix. The thing is, I don't even particularly like massive games. It started with Ultima Online. This was before I started playing Warhammer, and I had just spent several months completely failing to recapture the glories of my former days as a dungeon master. Well, someone told me about UO, I was blown away. After all, I had even dropped a few bucks on Meridian 59, if you can believe that. The amount of depth that UO promised was something else again, however - I lived in that world for about 10 months, playing a variety of characters and thoroughly exploring the virtual landscape. I especially liked trying out different kinds of play-style, and getting really immersed in a character. Ultimately, though, I had to make myself stop. I was just spending too much time on it, and frankly, it was freaking me out. How's this for an embarassing confession: my favorite character was a Master Lumberjack. Sure, he was also an Archer, a Creature Tamer, and all-around woodsman, but I was actually spending an awful lot of time chopping virtual trees. The fact that I was also earning a lot of virtual bucks doing it (why the heck were so many people interested in becoming master carpenters?) just increased the surrealism factor. At a certain point, I just had to admit that i had a problem. I was squinting a lot, my wrist was developing repetetive stress injury, and I was neglecting my real-world friendships. Deciding to quit cold-turkey, I gave away all of my virtual posessions, uninstalled the software, and chucked the discs in a dumpster. I swore I would never get involved in a massive game again. Of course I fell off the wagon. When I moved back to the East, there were a couple of weeks that I was out here alone before my wife arrived. I had a friend in California who was getting into Everquest, and he said we should play together some time. I broke down and got the discs. EQ only lasted two months for me, though - while I was really impressed with the graphics and the scope of the virtual geography, it was far less dynamic than UO, and I tired of the whole kill/loot/level/repeat paradigm pretty quickly. The lack of roleplayers was also a bit of a disappointment. Yes, I'm one of those kinds of players. After that, I was pretty sure I was done with the whole Massive Game thing - for all of the cool stuff that these games contained, they were always lacking one thing - meaningful content. Oh, I dabbled a bit - when UO renaissance came out, I actually got it just to see what was different. That lasted all of four days. Deciding to see what the fuss was about, I took a peek at Anarchy Online, but I couldn't get into it and only looked at it for two or three nights. Curious as to why such a robust genre of games kept failing to live up to expectations, I wrote a treatise on what was missing from MMORPGs and how the problem could be fixed, but filed it away as an impossible dream. Then Star Wars Galaxies came out. When SWG first hit, I saw a lot of things that I liked - in fact, it was as if Raph Koster had been reading my email and knew exactly what I wanted in a game. How the skill trees were organized, the scope of the content, the wide range of possible character types, PvP combat, even the way that entertainer professions were handled - it was all brilliant. I loved it and began playing with abandon. You see, I've always been something of a Star Wars Geek. Not totally hardcore, mind you - but I have always loved Star Wars games. I can't tell you how many hours I spent playing the original TIE Fighter game. That was what hooked me, ultimately: the chance to actually play the role of a TIE ace, shooting down Rebel scum and then bragging about it in the Canteen afterwards (or alternately, going down horribly in flames and lauging about it later). For two months I was once again playing Waaaaaaay too much, to the point that I realised I was getting back into bad old habits. What saved me was the fact that the game was incomplete: the space portion of the game had not been completed yet, and heck there weren't even any landspeeders yet. I decided I'd be better off chucking in the towel and leaving the option to come back once there were actual TIE fighters in the game. Which brings us to now. So far, I'm quite happy with JTL... but not too happy, which I'm actually grateful for. Yeah, it's entertaining, but I haven't felt the return of the old mono-mania I used to get. It probably helps that the "ground game" has gotten a lot crappier in the intervening time, what with various fixes, patches, nerfs, and the general migration of the player base on to newer and more exciting games. So, I'll hang around for a bit - maybe shoot down some Rebel scum, and try to enjoy myself. But honestly, if I stay much past two months I'll be surprised. For all it had going for it, SWG is a typ[ical Massive Game, and like most of the other games in the genre it's all about grinding. Ultimately, grinding is what kills it for me. Now, I do know a way to make a massive game that doesn't focus solely on grinding, and is actually interesting, but it entails doing somethign that Raph Koster would never do. I'll let you try to guess what it is, but I'll save that secret for my next rant, cause it's already late and I want to log in for a bit. ^_^ |
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| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 28 February 2007 ) |