Ramblings of a depraved gaming madman or pure genius? You decide.

Author: Torak

It my blog and I'll cry if I want, cry if I want to.........sure just what everyone wants to read more bashing on a particular MMO. I generally don't like to do this but I'm in a mood today....

Ok, so I have this new EQII expansion that my wife gave me mainly because she hates me or something, thats the only reason I can think of because she KNOWS I don't like SOE games. I sat down this afternoon bored because the kids are sick (what else is new?) which effectively destroys our weekend giving me lots of time to troll around and moan about  the good old days of our gaming, much to my wifes dismay.

So I log in. Now I only tried that Fae thing in a trial when it released so I don't remember to much other then the fact it didn't leave to much of an impression on me.

So I make a Wood Elf after deleteing like half of our old toons because I didn't do the station pass which gave me like a hundred extra character slots I guess, until I get to the manageable level of 5 or 6. I go to the fae land and I swear its like a Winnie the Pooh simulator. First I gotta go kill some snakes because they are eating all the fairy flowers or some nonsense, the NPC sounds like Christopher Robbins mother, which I promptly begin looking around for. After that challenging task which got me to level 3 just because I stood there and shot the snakes for a few minutes, I gotta go look for some grobins, goblins or whatever, who are apparently pissing in the lake and making everyone generally unhappy. After dispatching them, a little girl with the voiceover of an adult trying to sound like a little girl ask me to kill buzzy bees for her. At this point I'm looking for Pooh and Tigger to bounce up and ask me to help collect some honey because Pooh's tummy is rumbly. Alas, Pooh must have been playing WoW today because I didn't see him or Tigger, I can only assume they were on a raid somewhere in Horde territory because thats how I envision Pooh, playing an Orc doing that Vanilla Ice dance, but I digress. After I get the buzzies for her she ask me to fix her frickin coat for her. Now I'm a parent of three. Like I need to play "daddy can you help me..." in my video games as well.
Anyway, the mom goes on about how the little girl lost her favorite dolly after some pirates took all their belongings and left them on the island and I'm like "look lady you are damn lucky they didn't rape your  sorry arse and kill the lot of you" and that ended my trip to happy fairy land.

Off I go to the new dragon guys...yeah they are evil. Evil is good, evil in an MMO should be better...or so I am hoping. (no I never got to play City of Villains, my wife played it like a year so does that count?) The first NPC is standing there with a blank look on his face so I'm like "whats up?" He goes on about some poachers trying to hunt the same crabs we want. Grrr...now we are talking, our food, right? We need to muscle these guys out. So I turn around and there are like 90 of these winged birdguy poachers standing no more then 3 steps away, looking at me. Flightless apparently. I thinking to myself, "what the hell, the NPC is just standing there all day watching them kll and eat our crabs?! Lazy bastage". man they should put me in charge, I would get this entire area in order in no time flat.

So the whole group of winged but flightless birdguys watches passively while I dispatch 4 of their bretheren with not so much as a wink. They never batted an eye. I am now assuming the reason they no longer fly is because they must have forgotten they can. Then Mr. Dragon dude NPC, satisfied with my thinning of the poachers from 90 to 86, informs me of some other, to stupid to fly, winged miners stealing our rocks. Geez, the nerve. So take care of that problem and at that point, not feeling particularly "evil" I figure, well if all we have to worry about in our kingdom is bird people who don't have enough sense to either run or fly away from me or at least help each other, they don't need my help...Thank you and good night.

Have you ever played Gothic 3 or Oblivion? Why is it in some RPG's, the stories and task are actually interesting / fun / and dare I say challenging and in MMORPG's, the content in EQII seems better suited to an episode of "Bob the Builder" or "Tellatubbies"? On top of it, can you say "linear do my quest or don't play" type game design???
WTF is that? I played Gothic 3 today and its like 10 times the MMO of any MMO except without the players, which is a bummer because I coulda used the help when the orc patrol from the Army that just sacked our little kingdom, saw me and castrated my ass and when they did, the f*ckers took my weapons from my damn body! WTF is that? The damn NPC's griefed and looted my arse. I could hear them laughing while they took my sh*t saying how I "won't be needing this anymore". bastages I'm telling you.

I want my damn sword back. Frickin Orcs. Not only do I need to go find the damn patrol again but I need to kill the dude who took it to get it back IF I can even find him. (or else reload and since I suck at remembering to save)

Anyway, I think EQII has seen its last of me...at least until they raise the challenge level a tad more or at least get some writers aside from Winnie the Pooh extras. Not even my kids where amused with it. They are off playing "Club Pengin". You ever play it? You should take a look, lets just say it puts most MMO's to shame not to mention its a blast to play. Its a flash based MMO targeted at kids.

I really hope that turns around one day because I would really enjoy an MMO with some sort of content written for a adult and not a deranged 6 year old trapped in an adults body.

So I have an Orc to go find now.... and no, I have no will to pursue EQII any longer, it had its chance 2 or 3 years ago when it launched and I struggled a guy up to 30 or so doing his stupid class quest and then they did away with all that letting everyone "just pick" their class at creation because that was "more fun" and lord forbid you get to feel any sort of accomplishment in an SOE game.

Like I said, its my blog and I'll cry if I want to :) If you read this far its to late to say just don't read it if you don't like my opinion.   /wink

Anyway, good gaming and enjoy it. We are lucky that we have such trivial things to bitch about.