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| The tale of Mal. A story of a man and his yearning for a MMO he can call home |
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| Written by Malucio |
| Monday, 19 January 2009 00:47 |
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Hi, my gamer name is Malucio and I play MMOs... and if you are on this website you probably do as well. I have been a gamer for several years and over this time span have played a wide variety of MMO games. Some I have loved, some I have hated and some I can’t understand why they were even invented. Through all my hours of grinding, leveling and attempting to be useful to the range of guilds I have been a part of, I am still yet to find that MMO that I feel I can call home. This is my gaming story so far. My first MMO was WoW and it opened my eyes to a complete new world of gaming. I played this game for three years solid and was convinced that there was nothing else in the world that would ever get me off of it. Then one day while sitting back and smashing away in Alterac Valley on my shaman a mate rang and said he was going quit for a game called Lord of the Rings Online. I was aware of this coming out and was also aware of games such as Warhammer and Age of Conan were on the distant horizon. This said individual had convinced me to jump the WoW ship and give Lotro a try. The first time I jumped on I was a little taken back. What? MMOs can have graphics that aren’t cartoony? What? MMOs can have a community that don’t call each other "noobs" or spam chat with witty connotations about the Chuck Norris phenomenon. This was a bit of a shock at first, but one I quickly became familiar and comfortable with. Now, Lotro was and still is a great game, but the one item for me that is lacking is the almighty PvP environment. I can already hear the faint screams of "what about monster play?" Well there is that aspect of the game, but you have to roll another toon on the "evil" side to play it, of which you are max level and it feels more like a grind than PvP fun. Given this, Lotro has been one of the better MMOs I have had the pleasure of playing. It has brilliant graphics, great story line and lore, great crafting options and a great community, but it lacks the PvP action that I sometimes need to fulfill my killing desires. Along comes Age of Conan. For those of you that were in the unfortunate pile that played this game, you will know what I mean when I say this game was an almighty ball of frustration. That’s about all I have to say about that, oh and the fact that it stole 3 months of my life. Apparently the game has become a lot better and if you like the style of combat and graphics this might be worth looking at again. Saying this, on a recent announcement Funcom have cut the servers down from 49 to 18, so I still have the highest reservations of ever playing this game again. After drying my eyes from the AoC disaster I went back to WoW. My thought process behind this was, well there is nothing better out there that suits me as a fully rounded game than this, so I guess I’m stuck with it until Warhammer comes out. So I turned off my public chat and proceeded on my merry way. Getting back into it was fun for the first week or two, but then it just felt like the same ol’ stuff to me. I needed more of a challenge and no matter how hard I tried to ignore it, the community’s maturity level as a whole was something that I personally could not gel with. So I gave up the MMO until Warhammer came out. Warhammer, Warhammer, Warhammer! To be honest, I thought this was going to turn out to be another AoC disaster, but on a scaled down version. At the start of playing this game everything was going as smooth as a launch possibly could. Everything was going fine I was in a great guild, was playing with mates and relatives, was leveling at the same rate as most and was generally enjoying the game play. Then I reached the content close to endgame. For those that were playing it and left probably left for similar reasons to myself. The PvP (or RvR) aspect of this game was great, but what was the point of doing awesome things such as taking down keeps and generally smashing faces if there was no real reward for it. This became frustrating and in the end became more of a grind that a fun objective. So back I went to Lotro, enjoyed it, no PvP, got tired of it and decided to give Warhammer another go. Jumped back on last week and am quite impressed with the changes. RvR actually means something now with players being rewarded well for their efforts. The battles are big and intense and there is a great sense of satisfaction in wiping out 50 guys with a group of 25 mates and allies. So for now Warhammer is where I will probably stay (for a while at least). There are a whole bunch of MMOs coming out that look awesome such as Darkfall and Star Wars Old Republic, but if I can give any advice from my own personal gaming experience it is to wait about a year after a game has been released before jumping into it. From this you will be able to tell important things like how the population is going and hopefully the game has had a decent amount of time to progress and develop into something more wholesome. Now my views on the gaming experiences I have put forward are mine and mine alone. I know that not everyone is going to agree with my statements on the games I have mentioned, but isn’t that half the battle of the MMO gamers life? Trying to find a game that you and your mates like (or can put up with) so you can enjoy the gaming experience together. There is no other style of game I enjoy better than the MMO, but I also believe that there is no other style of gaming that is more frustrating, or harder to please the masses. There is always room for improvements and there is always going to be criticisms on how each game is structured, but in the end, the freedom and mate-ship you feel when playing these games makes all the little irritating discrepancies disappear. In closing, if you have found the game that is the right fit for your style of game play and you feel at home in, I wish I could feel your sense of comfort and achievement. But if you are like me and are still searching for the elusive "right fit", I feel your pain and the MMO search will continue. |
| Last Updated ( Monday, 19 January 2009 03:17 ) |
