We Fly Spitfires – MMORPG Blog

A screenshot of RIFT as, right now, it really is the only game I'm playing for free

I’m not a fan of free-to-play. Never have been, it’s unlikely I ever will be and, to be perfectly honest, my mind boggles as to why it’s so popular. OK, I get the money aspect of subscriptions but let’s be realistic here, it’s not as if F2P really is free. You still pay one way or another, probably the same amount as a sub eventually, quite likely even more. I mean, even before I could play a game like Everquest 2 or Age of Conan I’d have to shell out for the race and class that I prefer. And then more for broker access. And more for bank slots. And character slots. And bigger quest journals…

F2P also comes with all the headaches and distractions of having opportunities to buy extra items shoved in your face constantly and the driving motivation of developers ambiguously twisted. Give me an old fashioned, straight up subscription over F2P any day. Even if you only played two hours a week, it’s still great value, so much to the point that I think anyone who doubts it probably needs to re-evaluate their concept of value for money. Even playing only a single measly hour a week, you’d be hard pushed to find activities that were cheaper than $3.75 an hour. I guess you could go for a walk in the park… but make sure you don’t stop for a coffee on the way.

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The incredulous, exuberant, marvellous paradigm of multi-role perfectionism - the RIFT cleric

One of the reasons that I’m not a fan of the Advanced Class system in SW:TOR is because it fills you with hesitation and regret. Having invested four or five hours into your character, you’re suddenly forced to make a huge decision that’s going to impact your playstyle forever more based only upon a tiny Codex entry and a brief glance at skill trees. Furthermore, you sometimes have to pick between giving up any chance of tanking or healing and become a full on DPS only class. The Jedi Sentinel/Sith Marauder and Gunslinger/Sniper are the examples in question. Just why, oh why, would anyone gimp themselves to such a degree?

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No ever goes for the bright pink lightsabers

I always knew I was going to get SW:TOR, right from the moment it was announced, but it wasn’t until the subject was being discussed in the the comments of my last post that I started to ask myself exactly what I was expecting from it. To have fun, for sure, but what else? To be honest, I’d never given it much thought.

My decision to pre-order SW:TOR was a no-brainer really. It’s a MMO, it’s Star Wars, it’s BioWare. Duh. The founders of the company themselves could’ve gone on camera and viciously insulted my mother and I still would’ve pre-ordered the game (although I might have grumbled a little about it). Lack of slander aside though, it was also never a secret that the game was anything other than a ‘WoW clone’ (kinda unfair to call it that really but you know what I mean) so at least from that perspective I expected a pretty generic themepark MMO, similar in gameplay and design to most of the mainstream MMOs released in the last few years. Plus, I expected polish ’cause it had BioWare and buckets of money behind it.

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That bastard stole my name

I can’t play characters that don’t have good names. I don’t know why but it’s just wrong somehow. To me, the name of my avatar embodies his personality, his spirit, his role. Call it roleplaying on a low level nature. I don’t walk around spouting “hail, kind sir” or what-not but I absolutely have to a name that suits my character. Very occasionally comedic, often always serious, the name has to be right because without one, I simply won’t make the character or, worse yet, find myself deleting them after a few hours of play.

So many times I’ve had an itch to try a new class but have put it off for weeks because I just couldn’t come up with a name that felt right. Other times I’ve sat staring at the character creation screen for what felt likes hours on end just trying to come up with a name I liked and wasn’t taken. It’s not as easy as one might think. Thinking up with a suitable name that fits the race, class and my imaginary background for my proposed character can be rather tricky.

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I know what you're thinking but the game is nowhere as fun as this screenshot makes it look

I believe in an effect called critical mass, particularly in social dynamics, especially when applied online. The more momentum something gains, the more likely is it to succeed and the more likely it is to generate it’s own self-momentum and perpetual growth. There comes a special point though, a moment in time when a certain number or percentage or stage is reached when this snow ball effect actually kicks in and the appropriate critical mass required has been achieved.

Usually the expression critical mass is expressed in a positive way (except of course when you’re talking about meteors plummeting towards the Earth and what not) and it can applied to a whole variety of situations. Web sites, for instance, have a critical mass and when a certain number of visitors have taken notice of a particular site, it becomes somewhat easier for that site to get noticed. It’s kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy, one that makes perfect logical sense – the more people tweeting, liking, +1′ing, commenting and generally discussing something, the more people will sit up and take a peak. It’s exponential growth.

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Tier 13 armour. Suddenly my level 85 Warrior is completely obsolete.

Maybe hate is a bit too strong a word but ironically enough, for someone who’s been an avid (very avid) MMOer since 1999, I’ve come to realise lately just how much I dislike the end game of the traditional MMORPG. So much so in fact that in my recent return to WoW in the past month I’ve taken to deleting my high level characters and making new alts instead.

It’s not just that I find the low level game in WoW more fun than the high level, I think I actually feel that way about pretty much every MMO. If I look back at my history of playing, ever since the original Everquest, I’ve always preferred the journey of leveling up, or even low level PvP, to that of the end game. In EQ2, for example, all I pretty much did was re-roll alts with my guild so we could have fun with the low level world PvP. Unfortunately though it seems also like a lot of games are becoming more top heavy now by making the leveling process faster than ever before and creating more and more grind locks at max level to keep folk from leaving when they hit the cap. I’m not trying to pick on it but obviously WoW is the main offender in this area.

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Diablo 3. The MMORPG of tomorrow.

For a long time people have pondered the idea of MMOs that didn’t utilise the traditional Holy Trinity model of playing (i.e. groups requiring a tank, healer and DPS classes… although interesting enough the original Holy Trinity included crowd control instead of DPS but I digress) and wondered if games could ever exist without it. While some MMORPGs skirted around this idea of trying something new, to my knowledge none of ever fully succeeded in breaking away from it. Yet. Indeed, I believe that Blizzard are going to be the first to do so and, just like the huge number of industry trends they set with WoW (love ‘em or hate ‘em), I have little doubt that they are ultimately going to be the ones responsible for killing the Holy Trinity off for good.

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