blog
Aritcle
Sticking to a new game: why is so hard?
Category: MMO Ranting Game: Default Posted on Jun 24, 2009 8:27 am
Well, since the past year I’ve been looking for a MMO to settle and dedicate my gaming attention. This came since I’ve stopped with Ragnarok Online by the time I started attending college and when I returned I found out that my guild had disbanded and my friends had moved to other games, so I lost my motivation to keep playing RO. That was probably the worst thing that happened, since most of my friends are now distributed among five or six games (and I didn’t like any of them).
I’ve had, since then, tried to find a game that could suit my tastes with fast paced action, high customization and a not so tiring grinding (since I don’t have that much time to dedicate to MMOs anymore). That has been a hard thing to do, not much for the grinding since even if it’s too much I’m somewhat used to it, but all the games by now seem to have full of pretty animations for the attacks – that slows combat a lot – and the new trend among developers seem to limit my freedom of choice by cutting down my class choice by race and faction. C’mon people, if D&D got rid of that stupid rule and everyone praised it, why are you guys doing that on my online games?

So far, three games got nearly the line of getting me hooked:
Holic Online was nearly everything I asked, it was only lacking faction battles and PvP, and that was about to come with the Holic 2 Expansion… then English-language Holic … Ok, there’s Latin American Holic 2, and I can speak both Spanish and Portuguese, but I won’t go with all the trouble of making my characters again and grinding all the way to a high level again, aside from that, most of the friends I made playing the game were in northern Europe so they won’t understand nothing of the game, that was goodbye Holic for me.

Sword of the World has a been a solitary grinding journey, and while I enjoy the game a lot, I need the time I don’t have to keep grinding and evolving my characters according, I just dislike leaving them AFK grinding. I can’t hope but feel like not logging in the game when I only have like two hours to play, since I know I’ll most likely be online by four or five hours and be sleepy during the classes next day. And also, there’s also the problem that people on low levels rarely interact, maybe this is the let down of MCC-system.

Shin Megami Tensei: IMAGINE… man, Megaten has been my favorite gaming franchise for a long time, the games of all the series never let me down, and the MMO is awesome, it even has a noticeable storyline (!) – that’s something it has to be praised for – that it’s somewhat loosely connected to the early games of the series (thanks Aeon-Genesis to let my play this SNES gem in a language I understand) but, it all comes down to thing that it’s hard as hell, just like in the console games, and you know, I prefer to spend my time trying to complete my third NOCTURNE run on my PS2 and trying to see the finals of all the paths than playing it online… maybe once I finish it I’d like to keep playing it online, but not now.

So, now I ask, why it’s so hard to find a game to get you hooked? Maybe, it’s because you have lots of other things to do that take away time that could get you involved with the game, or maybe, it’s because since you’ve had a good experience with a MMO in the past you expect the new game to have things that you enjoyed in the game you played previously?
I don’t know, I don’t believe in the thesis that quality is dropping today, such poor supported games rarely survive in the market today, just look how Age of Conan is sinking and what happened to Tabula Rasa, and hell, I have to admit that Netgame support was becoming crappier each day and became just a shadow of it was in the early days of Holic. I believe it becomes more related to attachment to the people that play with you.
So far, Holy Beast, Neo Steam, Perfect World Shaya and Cabal weren’t my king of game, they let me down in many aspects, and RF online, I have to admit that I was pretty intimidated by the chatting on global channel, maybe I should give it a second chance.
Anyway, my vacations are coming so I’ll be able to try new games; Fiesta Online and Jade Dynasty are waiting for me. And about you who are reading this, do you also find hard to staying with a new MMO? What are you planning to try next and why?
My best regards and have fun!
"I'll keep my journey until I find it..."
Ariticle url: http://my.mmosite.com/blog/bf1def636adfd28cd80d55deaf37c021/blog/item/16f55ba6028a62b4af1715f32a625fe7.html
