MMO Addict. Finding the right MMO.

Blog of an MMO addict trying to find the right MMO. From Linux gaming to reviews.

Author: gaiusmarius

According to this report on the F13.net forums, City of Heroes players have been receiving in-game messages from Cryptic Studio's inviting them to beta test Cryptic's Champions Online Game.

[quote]Let's not pretend for one second that the MMO industry is a friendly place, full of friendship, flowers and bunnies. When a multi-million dollar product and dozens of jobs are on the line, competition will be fierce and taking market share (read: players) from your competition is going to be a basic business practice.

However, there are lines you don't cross because 1) even competition should follow some rules of professional conduct, and 2) it opens the door for everyone to do the same thing to you. Representatives of Cryptic Studios crossed this professional line in the sand recently by going into City of Heroes / Villains (CoH/V) - their old product, which they sold to NCsoft - and, using PMs sent through the forums and allegedly through in-game message systems, attempted to lure players into the Champions Online (ChampO) beta test - their new product.{...}[/quote]

There is an official comment on this from NC Soft over at the official City of Heros forums :

[quote]Those of us here at the City of Heroes® franchise wanted to take a moment to comment on solicitations our players may receive from outside sources -- either in-game or through our message board system. We would like to acknowledge that we know these kinds of communications occur. It is unfortunate that people do this...but we also recognize and accept the fact that ultimately, we do not have control over the messages our customers with valid accounts send one another. Although we cannot stop someone from initially communicating with you - whether it be RMT (real money transaction) related, another game company trying to lure you to their competing product, or general spamming...we are in a position to investigate the situation (and potentially take action) once a solicitation has occurred, for it is a direct violation of our Rules of Conduct and EULA (End User License Agreement).[/quote]

I was never interested in any of the games mentioned, but I am now even less interested in Cryptic's Champions Online.

A quick glance and reviews of the MMO's I have played:
Gods and Heroes: Great game, I liked it, no one can be sure on to what it would have become.

Age of Conan: Great in theory, but we need the devs to knuckle down and start doing things quicker.

WoW: Great game if you like the same old stuff each day, the community is pretty ordinary.

Eve: It's a great game for people who like that sort of thing - sci-fi sandbox, the quests are quite dull but what you do is what you do, there's endless possibilities and it takes a lot of time, which is kind of meh if you want to wait around doing nothing until you have the right skills.

Guild Wars: Boring to me, I didn't know if there was any end-game, it's quests are unique and has a whole storyline but I just got bored and the graphics are too anime-like for me.

PotBS: I didn't like it.

SWG: Too hard, quests and map sucks, I really couldn't find head from tail.

EQ2: Tries too much to be like WoW.

My introduction to multiplayer games was around 1999 or some-time when Age of Empires 2 was the game to have, I played on a 56k connection at my home in the country, 50c to dial, $30 a month for unlimited downloads, 56k speeds, excellent. I always got around 40k speeds, if I dialed into the city number I would get slightly higher, but the cost to dial was more expensive.

After gaming with strategy games from the likes of Age of Empires and Rome: Total War and also some FPS games, I soon got broadband as soon as it was available and that is how I got into more serious multiplayer gaming...

I played a small MMO game called A-Tractor - now known as The Universal, a cute game that has a player driven economy and is always in beta, and a small community, that was the first MMO game I ever played, apart from browser based MMO's (if you can call them that). I played that on and off...

At the time of the South Park episode of Make Love, Not Warcraft I was introduced to WoW - by the episode of course, I bought it from my local EBGames and brought it home to install on my system - a P4 with a 6600GT and 1GB RAM. The package had no CDKey so I was screwed and I bought a CD Key online off a popular retailer and started playing, I leveled a Human Paladin by grinding - not questing, as I thought it was the easiest method - oh the woes of a noob to Warcraft. I got it to 60 and joined a DKP raiding guild and raided MC on our raid days, I played until BC and got to level 70 and quit, thus ends that period, I went back to FPS and other MP games. I returned and leveled several other characters and played off and on and got back into it more seriously at the release of WOTLK, I now have a Dranei Mage (80) and a NE Boomkin (80) and 1 horde 70 warlock and a horde undead DK (80)... I play the game frequently to do daily CD's and sometimes play for fun but I am awaiting more content and only play to raid.

Around the time of Gods and Heroes being advertised I got into the beta and played that - I have been a heavy ancient time fan and wanted to play a Roman-themed MMO for ages and I played this until it was closed, I was heartbroken, so I had no MMO's to play, until I found AoC.

During one of the phases of my WoW breaks I was following AoC and managed to get into the closed beta, managed to download and install the game on my crappy computer and it didn't play - no surprise. So I upgraded my computer completely and now have a Q9300 and 9800GTX with 4GB of RAM. I managed to get into early access and played a ranger until level 60 and at the time the content was quite dismal so I quit and returned recently and leveled a barbarian to 80 mainly on quests with help of grinding groups, transferred to Bloodspire and now am waiting for paid transfers so I can go to Cimmeria, as it's dead.

I am however, still finding the right MMO for me, AoC wont do it I don't think, as IMO honestly it might be a lost cause as there's not enough financial backing and the company making it hasn't got the best of track records... So I am sad to say I think AoC is a highly niche MMO kind of like Vanguard.