Past, Present and Future…

My journeys in the world of Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games has been pretty short compared to a lot of other folks out there, but I feel like I have learned quite a bit about the genre and I enjoy sharing my thoughts with you all here.  With that being said, I wanted to let everyone know what I have played in the past, what I am currently playing and what games I look forward to playing.

I get a lot of traffic to this blog from people searching for Jame’s Horde leveling guide, which is fine, and I didn’t realize how popular using guides to play these games actually are.  WoW was a fun game, it was my first MMORPG and I haven’t played anything else like it to date.  I suppose I am an advocate of using leveling guides because I did so myself, so without the hypocritacil banner waving over my head, I will not say it is a bad thing.  It is nowhere near as bad as using bots, or paying a leveling service to get your character high in level…maybe my gaming morals have a limit and the point of playing video game is to have fun.  Of course there are other people out there who only look forward to the end game, PvP, etc…  To me, having fun means more than being the highest level toting the highest rewards from PvP battle or raids/dungeons.  Don’t get me wrong, of course that stuff would be cool to have but since I am a casual gamer at the core it isn’t a reality for me. 

Let me touch on the leveling guide issue again, now some people call them cheats or that they ruin the experience of playing the game and figuring things out on your own or with limited help from others.  I used to play like that and I still do to a degree.  But with all the resources out there on the web these days it’s like being given a test and knowing exactly where the answers are, but choosing not to look at them.  This is where I am, but if I can’t figure something out within a reasonable amount of time and effort I choose to go to the old reliable google search and type in the quest name hoping to get some guidance on my next step.  That is now, in LotRO. 

Back when I was in WoW it was different cause I had played 4 different characters to level 60, 1 to 70, so when I created my last toon, Flamen, the blood elf paladin all I wanted to do was get to the outlands and start doing some dungeons, etc…normal endgame stuff.  But, that never happened for whatever reason, call it burnout, call it reduncancy, LotRO came out and I made the transition over pretty easily without any withdrawal symptons.  I know there are quite a few people out there who stopped playing WoW, went to LotRO, and now have returned back to WoW.  To each his own, I don’t have anything to say about that, do what you like, who knows, with the next expansion I might have to check it out, also one of my friends who plays should be back from Iraq, so I won’t rule that possibility out of the question.  But for right now, I am still happily content in Middle Earth playing my handful of characters, managing a kinship and having a good time. 

What am I looking forward to playing in the future?  Well, Starcraft 2 of course, I am a blizzard fan ever since the first Diablo, it was my introduction to any kind of online RPG, which before that all I had messed with was Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem, etc…so it was a welcome change and I embraced the community like it was my long lost family.  I made quite a few good friends and was in a clan for quite a while.  There has to be more to the gaming world than Blizzard games right?  Oh yes, there is, I downloaded Enemy Territory: Quake Wars the other day and I have been playing that.  It is very fun to play, but has somewhat of a learning curve as far as becoming an expert goes.  I do play FPS but I am not very good, that could be argued by some, but I know my reflex skills aren’t anywhere near all those basement dwelling gamers who are amped up on Red Bull and can spot a roach scurrying from 500 yards away, sniping it between the eyes without hesitation.  That isn’t me.  But, this game is more than run and shoot, there are vehicles, objectives, airplanes, helicopters, jet packs, and much more involved.  Similar to BF2142, which I played the demo of that as well, but not quite as demanding on your system.  I am all about cheap and free games, I guess becoming a MMORPG player and having a monthy fee to play a game has given me higher expectations out of the future games.

Tobold has said in many of his posts that WoW is the gold standard to judge all other MMO’s by.  I have to agree, even when I first started playing LotRO I remember thinking, this is like WoW but better…so where do they go from here?  Who knows, I am no developer, I just like playing high quality games just like any other gamer out there.  I guess what I would like to see in a game would be ease of controls, nice graphics that don’t require a beast of a machine to run smoothly, an indepth storyline, and how about an online world where the economy isn’t inflated within 6 months because of the gold sellers?  Is that too much to ask?  Of course people would argue that it is inevitable, the more money that is pumped into the game will happen no matter what you try to do to control it.  I guess it’s beyond me, no easy solution to creating a perfect game, cause in the end you can’t please everyone all the time, and you are lucky if you please some of the people some of the time.