I’ve been playing MMORPGs for a long time. I started the year Everquest came out, and save for the occassional break between games, I’ve pretty much always been active on one or another.

In all of these years, I’ve never once hit the level cap.

Oh sure, I came close on World of Warcraft (67 priest I think) and I often wonder why I’ve never once accomplished this dubious honor. Well, after much meditation on this subject (minutes and minutes, in fact) I think I came to the conclusion. Instead of blaming my own resolve, I think I’ll do instead what comes instinctively to humans as a species: I’ll blame someone else. MMORPG developers, all of you, pull the old bait and switch on your consumers. At first you mask grinding with quests and other shit but by the time you’re painfully close to the level cap all pretext of distraction is removed. Fuck you, you’re grinding. I suspect the reason they do this is because they reason they already have you paying, and you’re already that close, so you’ll surely endure those last few levels of pain because the glory of a maxed character is forever.
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Worlds.com. Ever heard of them? Me either. But apparently back in the day, they filed a certain patent that is so broad, it appears to be able to cover every MMORPG and most MMO’s to date. For those who don’t want to read the wall of text, the patent covers every and any “System and Method for Enabling Users to Interact in a Virtual Space”. Worlds.com decided it was time to act on this on Decemeber 24th, (come on, where’s your christmas spirit guys..?) and threw the proverbial gauntlet at the feet of NCSoft. And they didn’t just go for one of their games either, oh no. Worlds.com claims it infringes on every MMO NCSoft has released to date. And if you look over the patent, it would appear they can actually do this.

This one is going to turn into a hurricane, first NCSoft, then SOE, Blizzard, the sky is the limit. I wonder if Sony are regretting having released HOME about now…

In a world with so many MMORPGs on the market, it can be tough to decide which games have actual content, and which are just meant to be profit machines for companies. The latter seems to be happening more often recently as companies fear to break the ‘be like World of Warcraft’ mold for fear of making no profit. This causes the market to turn into one bland, singular blob of mediocrity in our games. It’s for this very reason that this gamer in particular cannot recommend any new MMO releases this year. So what are we left to? Well not much.

Despite all that I’m about to say, I want to make it clear that I’ve played my share of MMORPGs (and still do.) I do not dislike them, I do however see many, many flaws in them. I would like to outline a few popular MMORPGs with established (or not so established in a few cases) playerbases so that you– the gamer- can decide what is worthwhile and what isn’t. The first thing this gamer can advise however, is to avoid any free or web bases MMO like the plague (you’re going to get exactly what you pay for.) So what’s good? What’s bad? What’s just plain laughable? Well it all depends on what you’re looking for. Let’s start out with the most popular and work our way around from there…
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Above: What we played.

The release of Age of Conan was hugely successful. Many turned out to buy what was to be a revolutionary MMORPG. The combat system alone was to bring the genre out of the rut it had gotten into, and make it a far more active experience. It was also to be the best PvP focused MMORPG since Dark Age of Camelot, with an active risk/reward system giving out the best gear in the entire game.

The sun looked bright around release, shining on the release of AoC and blessing it with a record breaking amount of pre-orders. It was hyped to not only match WoW, but beat it into the ground, I even gave into it against my better judgement and bought it at launch. Alas, we all should have known better.

The first sign that all was not well on the good ship Conan was probably the somewhat significant cut of DirectX10 features from the game. Graphically AoC was set to be a beast, only bested visually by games such as Crysis.

Above: What we expected.

The cut of DirectX10 features showed that this was not the case, and set in some fears as to whether FunCom could handle even DirectX9 graphics smoothly. At release these fears were not allayed in the slightest, with many players left with abominable performance on otherwise brilliant cards; memory leaks were discovered left right and center, and patch after patch seemed to only generate more issues among those who were originally able to play. Content post level 50 was reportedly unfinished, which was a crucial issue, considering the leveling speed was comparatively fast as opposed to other MMORPGs. The omens didn’t look good for the future.

Above: What we actually got.

FunCom continued to make promises, after the first month was over very few of those original players remained, and the community at large took a wait-and-see approach. Could FunCom bail out their boat in time? Or would it just sink like many began to predict.

It’s December now, so what have they done? They’ve had 6 months to patch the leaks, and attempted to make us all believe that November is the new July. For one, their PvP system seems to finally be implemented in full. A few tweaks are probably necessary as is with any major patch to any game, but at least the main draw of the game is now actually existent. A whole new level 80 area, Ymir’s Pass, has been brought back from the box of cut-content and fleshed out into a real zone for end game players looking for a fresh new alternative.

Above: Ymir

FunCom mysteriously seem to have managed all of the class boards to contain the same amount of whining, which is the closest thing to actual MMORPG balance, so they are actually making an attempt to please the fans.

An expansion is already announced to be in the works, and DirectX10 is reported to be in the finalising stages before it is pushed out onto the public beta servers. So perhaps by February, it will be July.

MMORPG = Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. 

I don’t see the word “dating” in the above acronym.

Before I continue, let me get something straight first: I don’t have any complaints about people hooking up through online games per se. That’s cool; you managed to bump into someone who shares the same interests as you (as do a bazillion other people, no doubt), and it’s way better to meet someone who at least shares your interests than meeting someone from a random bar, or a dating site.

If you could help it, though, it’s best to steer clear from checking out that cute pally in your guild.

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To pretend to be someone one is not, or is unable to be in real life, has always been a favored process to release stress and forget about most life’s problems ever since the ancient Greeks created the Tragedy as a form of entertainment. Playing a role, a projection of one’s personality under ficticious/imagined circumstances, possibilizes the experience of feelings and situations that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.
Generally seen as a healthy sublimation of one’s aggressive impulses, in a Freudian manner, role playing shows its dark side when sometimes the actors become consumed by their own characters, inverting the transfer process, which may result in severe personality conflicts within the actor’s mind.

Ever since the dawn of the gaming industry, developers have spent a lot of their time creating games based on magical fantasy worlds where knights, wizards, dragons and damsels in distress were more than mere possibilities. There was a will to interact with these stories in reaction to centuries of spectating them. After years of toying with the limitations of A.I scripting, the bread and butter of the RPG genre, the Internet finally provided the necessary tools to connect role players worldwide and make them mutually interact inside virtual dynamic worlds, huge online theaters where every actor played an independent and unique role while affecting others at the same time. Thus MMORPG genre was born from the RPG and proceeded to replace its predecessor gradually, while not completely, attracting a considerably larger and more diversed fanbase and spawning an unusual amount of success and response.

However, what game developers failed to predict was how seriously some people would take this form of entertainment. Even though an excess of dedication of a player over a video game is taken as a benefit for software companies, since it usually translates on a larger income, growing obsessive behaviors towards a video game can generate hazardous effects, both game and real life based that will consequentially damage both players and developers.

Over the last few years we have heard of people who ruined their lives, commited suicide and even murdered others over MMORPG-related issues. Now, it is absurd to think or claim that this game genre carries some kind of curse or that its a threat to public health, but these facts clearly illustrate that something is indeed wrong with the way some players face it. What was initially intended to be a way to relax people is becoming more of a new source of problems and worries for those who use it. Though this social phenomenon might be a shadow on the role video games have started to play in our society, it is quite a fact that the MMORPG genre, with its so called “freedom” and “social interaction” has given birth to some of the most controversial cases and situations ever spawned by the game industry.