MMO's; WoW, DDO, others and why I'm burnt out.

I like to reflect on MMO's a lot lately... more than I like to play them recently anyways. What is it that makes them compelling? Why do I want that next level so bad? How is WoW still going so strong when the dev team seems to be intellectually on par with retarded monkeys?!?

*cough*

Anyway, what are the essential ingredients that make an MMO good or bad? How did WoW get to be so big while seemingly better games (from a certain PoV) lag far behind? I think there's several reasons...

1. WoW was made by Blizzard
Let's not ignore this Elephant in the room, I may have overstated this in my Starcraft rant but Blizzard has a rather massive reputation from their early games that may only now be starting to tarnish slightly for those on the fringe only just waking up from their fanboy(girl?)ish haze. Blizzard cashes in on this reputation every time they put look over function, fan service over real innovation in new releases.

But only a little, like a rain slowly eroding a mountain range.

2. WoW was made by Blizzard
I'm not cheating here, WoW was essentially the beginning of the end of my belief in Blizzard as an amazing company in terms of innovation in gaming, but WoW in of itself was a great example of it in some forms. No one can claim a better MMO around that time, and that I place other games over it now could be considered opinion... or attributed to burnout. We had the practically trademarked Blizzard cut scenes, (initially) great story & lore and a fairly friendly support staff (not so much now).

3. WoW is easy to understand
...almost pick up and play, and when the next expansion, Cataclysm, comes out... it'll be even easier. This is something I don't like now, but when I got into WoW it was my first MMO and I'll admit I was noobsauce; this is perhapes the most important thing. Most other games have a steep learning curve, and often the veteren players of these other games; often ex-wow players themselves, can be very negative to WoW players that join their game.

4. Warcraft strategy games
The awesomeness and story of these games built the world for WoW to exist in, while I believe the story has been modified slightly(read: raped) to suit the game mechanics and encounters Blizzard brought in over time, it's still fairly good overall and often the big bosses are compelling threats that you can feel need to die. Sometimes this feeling was dulled after killing a boss a hundred times... sometimes this feeling was amplified when a boss wouldn't drop your loot after said 100 kills.

So... I'm burnt out; why?

I guess the formula is no longer all that engaging, not all that interesting. I'm enjoying DDO though; I think that it's not WoW and has a lot more thought and freedom in defining my character.

Then again; I'm hoping to have a legendary soon, so mebbe I'll stick with WoW long enough to swing it at something! :D

P.S. I apologise to any retarded monkeys that may be reading this blog.

Starcraft (2) Sucks

It's been a while, but I can't allow myself to miss the opportunity to rag on starcraft and the recent sequel: Starcraft 2; Wind of the Fanboys.

Before I really start to lay it in, let me say that both starcraft games are good strategy games and both have pretty good storylines with SC2 giving us the practically trademarked amazing cutscenes that we expect of Blizzard...

But here's the question: is it fun?

And I came out of playing the single player with this answer "meh".

I was driven to finish the campaign because of the cutscenes and the story... but I'll never touch it again for several reasons...

1. Achievements blow
   
2. The strategy for every mission is "Here's a new unit for your arsenal, build crap tons of it and WIN!" with few exceptions
3. The "branching storylines" claim is, as always, a plate of bullshit and chips.

Hey, games industry, you want to give us a true "branching" storyline? That means a story that can have remarkably different endings. Having one or two facets of the story slightly different does not count! Oh look, I chose mission B instead of mission A, I HAS GREEN BOOTS INSTEAD OF BLUE!!! GO ME!!!

*sigh*

A lot of people have been drooling over this game, and the reason they invariably give me is "SC was the best strategy game ever", when I ask why that is I get this response "It's perfectly balanced". All I have to say to that is zerg rush; and SC2 appears to have taken the safe route when it comes to sequels and pretty well transplanted the units and game system from it's predecessor almost unchanged, although they did throw in a few new units and the system has been tweaked within an inch of it's life...

I'm not interested.

Of course, you might have heard of the stupid rearrangement of battle net that apparently Activision has pushed on players, I have no comment because I'm not playing this online. If playing the original taught me anything it's that some korean kid will be my first challenger and he'll be sporting top end units while I'm still building my first barracks. Fuck no!

(and yes, I know about the ranking system and I don't care :P)

However, there is a glimmer of hope: mods. Apparently you can do quite a lot with user made content, this is something I haven't even looked at but a friend told me that you can get complete mods that will turn your SC2 into Warcraft 3, american football and all sorts.

Might be worth a look... but Blizzard, next time take a bloody risk and shake it up a little, eh?

Oh, and anyone looking for a GOOD strategy game, I point towards the amusing Dawn Of War... which reminds me, I should pick up DoW2 sometime.