Ah, the refined world of online gaming...
Well, I've thought of lots of political and science type things to write about, but I never pick up enough energy to get them down. Instead I'll blather on about gaming...
Around 9 years ago I stopped playing MMORPGs. They were boring, consisting mostly a idiots running around killing each other for no particular reason and with no particular purpose. I'd had some fun in UO, but there was just no way to avoid the irritating parts, due to the glut of people speaking leet in town and to bugs that allowed people to wreak havoc in town. I tried a few others, but they were usually at least as bad, didn't have as much to do aside from combat, and had way to much grinding required. So I gave up on finding anything decent.
I did hear in early 2003 about this new game coming out called Shadowbane that sounded interesting. They were going to have player guilds that owned player run cities and player run shops, and would have full scale sieges between competing cities, plus contested resources (mines, lumber, etc), and a system of professions. It all sounded like it would be much more interesting. But for $50 + $13/month I was skeptical, and when initial reviews said that it was filled with bugs, I forgot about it.
Then a few weeks ago I heard that it had been made free to download and free to play with no restrictions (a lot of other games are free only for the first few weeks or levels) so I went ahead and downloaded it and installed it. I'm playing on a business laptop, so I didn't expect much from the performance, but it worked OK. There are some visual bugs (for example, trees move quite a lot when you get closer to them, which is irritating since they'll often move right where you were walking and you'll have to go around) but the first few levels seemed fun and interesting.
That's before you get promoted to the "mainland". The starting area is for new players only, and prohibits attacking players. Once you hit level 20 (only takes a day or two if you fight in groups, which they've implemented quite well) you have to go to the main areas (which is actually several large continents split by rivers, plus some islands), where PvP is always allowed. I didn't expect that to be a problem, since it sounded like they had good ideas about guilds and since group play worked so well during the non-PvP part.
Unfortunately, it seems very difficult to form up a group on the mainland, because you almost never see any players (the land is too big, since it is something like 20 times as large as the beginning area, which seemed about right or maybe very slightly too small) and when you do, they're named things like PimpSmakinBizach and they kill you instantly unless you're also between level 70-75 (which is the max), and they say things like "Yo! Wh0'S tHy p1mp d4dDy?!". Did I mention that since the land is so large, and you always start at your guild's city, these people are almost certainly members of your own guild?
Just to suck a little more fun out of the game, it is much harder to level on the mainland, since you can only easily take on tough enemies in groups (and if you fight easy enemies, you actually get 1 xp each, out of 100,000+ needed to level). Then there's the "discipline" rune thing, where you can only pick specialized disciplines if you can kill some really high level monster who maybe sometimes drops something (meaning that you can't do it unless you're in a large group and with some high level people, who will probably take the rune for themselves anyway). And as I said, you can mostly never find any large groups.
My suggestion: how about not letting your own guild members kill you? Not that they should want to, but since people clearly do... Better yet, how about making it so that anyone who kills someone in a guild is automatically marked as an enemy of that guild (kill on sight by the guards), which would make people stop killing off their own guild members in a hurry. They'd still need to make the world smaller, and make it a bit easier to gain disciplines. Maybe also have some way to show where are enemies of a guild (so the guild can go out in groups and hunt them down if they are rampaging about the countryside, or go lay siege to their town if they are a rival guild). And while I'm dreaming, maybe we could have some things to do in the game that don't involve killing things or running long distances? (there are two primary mmo quests: 1 - kill tough monster X, or at least N common monster Xs, and 2 - take useless item Y to random person P in distant town T)
I think the real problem though is the other people. I'm not sure what the solution is. I've tried playing World of Warcraft on a private server, and that was fun for a few weeks, but eventually the missions start getting hard enough that I can't do them solo, since they weren't designed for that.
It could be because I'm mostly a "casual" gamer. Which isn't to say that I don't like computer games, or that I wouldn't play D&D all day long if I didn't need a job :) , but I like to play for fun rather than for competition. I don't want to kill all other players, or even be the #1 player. I'd like to explore, find new things, complete new tasks, and have fun adventures with people I like. So right now, it comes down to Facebook, where I'm playing Imperial Galaxy - a cooperative turn based space RPG where I'm voluntarily playing a lower rank than I could because it is more fun that way - and PackRat - I have no idea how to describe it, but I play it cooperatively even if some other people I've seen clearly just steal things from other players just to be irritating.
If you've made it this far, do you know of any games that I might like?
Around 9 years ago I stopped playing MMORPGs. They were boring, consisting mostly a idiots running around killing each other for no particular reason and with no particular purpose. I'd had some fun in UO, but there was just no way to avoid the irritating parts, due to the glut of people speaking leet in town and to bugs that allowed people to wreak havoc in town. I tried a few others, but they were usually at least as bad, didn't have as much to do aside from combat, and had way to much grinding required. So I gave up on finding anything decent.
I did hear in early 2003 about this new game coming out called Shadowbane that sounded interesting. They were going to have player guilds that owned player run cities and player run shops, and would have full scale sieges between competing cities, plus contested resources (mines, lumber, etc), and a system of professions. It all sounded like it would be much more interesting. But for $50 + $13/month I was skeptical, and when initial reviews said that it was filled with bugs, I forgot about it.
Then a few weeks ago I heard that it had been made free to download and free to play with no restrictions (a lot of other games are free only for the first few weeks or levels) so I went ahead and downloaded it and installed it. I'm playing on a business laptop, so I didn't expect much from the performance, but it worked OK. There are some visual bugs (for example, trees move quite a lot when you get closer to them, which is irritating since they'll often move right where you were walking and you'll have to go around) but the first few levels seemed fun and interesting.
That's before you get promoted to the "mainland". The starting area is for new players only, and prohibits attacking players. Once you hit level 20 (only takes a day or two if you fight in groups, which they've implemented quite well) you have to go to the main areas (which is actually several large continents split by rivers, plus some islands), where PvP is always allowed. I didn't expect that to be a problem, since it sounded like they had good ideas about guilds and since group play worked so well during the non-PvP part.
Unfortunately, it seems very difficult to form up a group on the mainland, because you almost never see any players (the land is too big, since it is something like 20 times as large as the beginning area, which seemed about right or maybe very slightly too small) and when you do, they're named things like PimpSmakinBizach and they kill you instantly unless you're also between level 70-75 (which is the max), and they say things like "Yo! Wh0'S tHy p1mp d4dDy?!". Did I mention that since the land is so large, and you always start at your guild's city, these people are almost certainly members of your own guild?
Just to suck a little more fun out of the game, it is much harder to level on the mainland, since you can only easily take on tough enemies in groups (and if you fight easy enemies, you actually get 1 xp each, out of 100,000+ needed to level). Then there's the "discipline" rune thing, where you can only pick specialized disciplines if you can kill some really high level monster who maybe sometimes drops something (meaning that you can't do it unless you're in a large group and with some high level people, who will probably take the rune for themselves anyway). And as I said, you can mostly never find any large groups.
My suggestion: how about not letting your own guild members kill you? Not that they should want to, but since people clearly do... Better yet, how about making it so that anyone who kills someone in a guild is automatically marked as an enemy of that guild (kill on sight by the guards), which would make people stop killing off their own guild members in a hurry. They'd still need to make the world smaller, and make it a bit easier to gain disciplines. Maybe also have some way to show where are enemies of a guild (so the guild can go out in groups and hunt them down if they are rampaging about the countryside, or go lay siege to their town if they are a rival guild). And while I'm dreaming, maybe we could have some things to do in the game that don't involve killing things or running long distances? (there are two primary mmo quests: 1 - kill tough monster X, or at least N common monster Xs, and 2 - take useless item Y to random person P in distant town T)
I think the real problem though is the other people. I'm not sure what the solution is. I've tried playing World of Warcraft on a private server, and that was fun for a few weeks, but eventually the missions start getting hard enough that I can't do them solo, since they weren't designed for that.
It could be because I'm mostly a "casual" gamer. Which isn't to say that I don't like computer games, or that I wouldn't play D&D all day long if I didn't need a job :) , but I like to play for fun rather than for competition. I don't want to kill all other players, or even be the #1 player. I'd like to explore, find new things, complete new tasks, and have fun adventures with people I like. So right now, it comes down to Facebook, where I'm playing Imperial Galaxy - a cooperative turn based space RPG where I'm voluntarily playing a lower rank than I could because it is more fun that way - and PackRat - I have no idea how to describe it, but I play it cooperatively even if some other people I've seen clearly just steal things from other players just to be irritating.
If you've made it this far, do you know of any games that I might like?