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Venturing Out Into the Murky Waters of Free-to-Play
By Cameron Sorden | March 17, 2008
Now that my Shaman in WoW is raiding Kara on a regular basis and starting to get his feet wet in the bigger raids, I’m in a bit of a predicament. Aside from one or two ridiculously rare items that require absurdly expensive components, there’s nothing else I can buy that my Shaman needs. The only upgrades come from raiding or PvP, and since I don’t PvP (the irony of being on a PvP server and making that statement does not escape me), all my upgrades will come through raiding with time. Since we only raid a few days a week, though, I find that I have some free gaming time and don’t quite know what to do with it.
My plan was to level another Warcraft character up to 70, but after some reflection, I’m kind of WoWed out. I’m having a blast with the endgame raiding scene, but I’ve done the 1-70 content so much at this point that doing it again seems more like mindless zombie work than a fun diversion– not surprising since the 1-60 game has been pretty much the same, oh, since launch three years ago and I’ve taken countless toons into the 40s and a number past 60. So what to do? Clearly, it’s time to fire up another MMOG to play on the side of WoW. Scott’s post this weekend made me want to give LoTRO another shot, but when I tried to patch on Sunday they were having some technical difficulties (the news post is gone but their servers exploded, apparently). This inspired me to hunt down some new fare, and I thought I’d give a few of those free-to-play MMOGs a shot for once. I tend to have low opinions of them as a category, so I thought I should at least try them before slamming them all the time.
I had trouble deciding what to play since there isn’t really a lot of information out there on free-to-play imports. I remembered that there’s been buzz lately about Mabinogi, so I stepped into their open beta, and I also downloaded GPotato’s Rappelz and Flyff. Rappelz and Flyff weren’t very impressive in my opinion. They had some neat things about them, but Rappelz was sluggish and the interface sucked (turning me off in the first five minutes), and Flyff, while cute, colorful, and action-oriented, is very grindy. After a little research, I found out you can’t even get quests until you’ve proven yourself by getting to level 7 through slaughtering bats around the starting town. That, plus a lack of direction, immediately turned me off of what could have otherwise been an interesting game. Of course, both of these games held to the same, classic, MMORPG formula for combat and leveling. If I want that, I’ll probably just go play a AAA game that has it.
Mabignogi, on the other hand, was interesting. I was intrigued enough by the game that I’m actually going to play it for a few more days and withhold my commentary until then. There are a number of things I don’t like about the game, but there are also some really cool things about it which make it a fresh and interesting game experience for me. I might also see about getting in touch with their community rep and asking a few questions– I can tell you now that it’s worth your time to download, and it has a better tutorial system than any other free to play game I’ve played.
In the meantime, we’ll see what holds my interest for my off-WoW hours. It’s kind of fun digging into games I’ve never tried before instead of bouncing around my old favorites. LoTRO might just have to wait for a while (I lost my special pricing anyway since Turbine doesn’t care about early adopters who stop playing for a while– bastards).
Topics: Random |
March 17th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Did you try MapleStory yet?
March 17th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
A long time ago, yeah. 2-D is meh.
March 17th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Try Mythos, probably the best diablo clone until D3 comes out. It’s nothing to hold your interest for a long time because it’s in beta and doesn’t have a whole lot of content, but it looks really promising and big content patch is coming.
http://ww2.mythos.com/mythostavern/
March 17th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Yeah, I did try Mythos too. I couldn’t really get into it.
March 17th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Me either, Mythos can’t hold my attention for more than 10 minutes or so, but then I couldn’t stand D2 either.
Game Dev: “Hey, let’s make a hack-n-slash game where they have to click 10,000 times to kill mobs!” Marketing Guy: “Hey! Let’s make our own mice for when the players keep breaking them!”
I hear Rappelz gets cool when you can do the dungeons, but yeah the engine is clunky as hell. It’s actually fun if you can manage to find a group, which has been few and far between.
Actually that brings up a point: does friggin EVERYONE solo in those F2P games? I’ve NEVER seen groups or even seen an LFG. Well, except in Archlord because if you’re grouped auto-loot is turned on so you don’t have to bother clicking the mob to loot it. LAZY!
I did install Mabinogi but haven’t actually played it yet other than making a character then logging out.
March 17th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Additional comment: I see quite often people say “I don’t much care for questing,” and “I don’t like holiday events,” and “I don’t like crafting,” and “I pretty much don’t like anything other than whacking foozles.” *glances towards Troy from Voyages of Vanguard*
Sometimes I just can’t help but wonder: if all they want to do is kill shit — basically Diablo2 in 3D with a persistent world — why NOT just play a F2P game rather than forking out $15/month for games that have all the stuff they don’t like? The F2P grinders have all the foozles you can whack and they respawn in 5 seconds for more foozle-whacking!
March 17th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
but after some reflection, I’m kind of WoWed out.
I do seem to recall you saying something about HGL when you got bored with WoW too… *ducks and runs for cover*
March 17th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Yeah, I’ve been meaning to go back and re-review HGL, but now is not the time. I’m not really looking for a Diablo clone at the moment.
I want something worldy with lots of customization and sim-house building style stuff…
March 17th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Despite Beau Turkey putting me to absolute shame and getting rich in Vanguard, I’m not quite so certain I even want to fool with housing there. I love adventuring in the wilderness but my gods, SOE cranks out some downright fugly interiors in their games. EQ2, SWG, and VG all hurt my eyes when I walk inside a building. That, coupled with the fact that while I am certainly enjoying the leveling process, once I’m done with that, I don’t necessarily feel VG is the type of game I’d have an alt in and no one is sure where the hell VG is going to end up.
So, for housing, I may end up biting the bullet someday and getting one in LOTRO if I could get one in the same neighborhood as my kinship is in. Sounds like more housing customization is coming soon and the Legendary Items in the expansion sounds awesome! A weapon (or whatever) that levels with you and grows its own personality and becomes its own mini-quest-hub? Too cool.
Oh, for F2P, have you checked out Perfect World? It’s still a grind but has more ‘normal’ stuff like WASD movement (far cry from perfect but it’s a start) and jumping and plenty of actual quests. It’s even readable! The grind so far hasn’t seemed as painful as something like Flyff or Silkroad in any event, and the world seems pretty diverse, plenty to explore. Don’t quote me but I think it may even have crafting and stuff? It’s something for a quick diversion but so far I haven’t been able to spend much time in any F2P game. I still like checking them out for some sick reason.
March 18th, 2008 at 5:47 am
Gah, I just realized that Scott also suggested Perfect World. Guess I have to get my eyesight checked again.
Count me in as one of those people who adore housing, crafting, all that fluff stuff that the ‘GRRRR me HARRRRDCORE!!’ people seem to despise so much.
March 18th, 2008 at 8:54 am
I like it all, I love having choices in games. The more, the merrier. My attention span is the butt of many jokes among my friends so… *ooooh shiney!*
I like having the hardcore stuff, even if I don’t play those aspects (raiding, pvp) in a “hardcore” style, whatever the hell that is. I love having fluff too. Housing, crafting, RP stuff, social stuff, cosmetics… it’s all good.
Oh and I only mentioned Perfect World because, among the F2P crowd anyway, they seem to have the opinion that it’s among the least painful of the bunch.
But then again, they also too often say it’s the closest F2P to WoW. 
March 19th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
This game looks great, definitely going to try it and support innovation. Btw turbine runs specials every so often for people if they want to get in on founders pricing but I am a bigger fan of the lifetime subscription. They ran one at christmas time and prolly will again next year.