Brujo Loco wrote:Wish I could play something else and that It grew on me.
Haven-Št had that feeling since EVERQUEST 1 back in 1999.
What a glorious time to be an MMO Player, everything was fresh, new and the world was Wide Open, free to explore and plunder off its riches ...
Over time all games have worked, reworked and iterated on the WOW principle, there is nothing so far I believe can be squeezed of the old formula anymore. We need new gaming, something like the skill and wait in real time system of EVE Online applied to something else.
I've never tried he
roin myself, but I've heard that addicts get a wonderful experience from it at first, and basically spend the rest of their lives fruitlessly chasing and trying to recreate that initial awesome feeling once again...
Sounds pretty similar to how I've felt when it comes to MMOs: those first times when I started playing UO, Everquest 1 and Anarchy Online back in the day, were truly magical. And every time since then, when I try a new MMO, the pleasure centers in my brain are trying to re-live that original feeling, only to be disappointed.
I think both because no matter how good they make a new MMO, that initial sense of wonder and discovery when setting foot for the first time on an online world, will never come back.
And also because back then they crafted those worlds as living breathing entities that seemed to exist for their own sake, and you were invited to explore and discover as you wished, and at your own peril. Since the WoW formula took hold, online worlds just come across as a linear patchwork of quest areas haphazardly put together to burn through while you level, with everything finely tuned to simply service the levelling treadmill.
That being said, if you are looking for something different in the MMO space, give
Age of Wushu a try: while it's not perfect, it does completely do away with the WoW formula. So much so that your first dozen hours or so you will be pretty confused, while you try to figure things out (a clunky interface and translation from the original Chinese don't help either).
There are some lacklustre quests at the beginning, but these are simply extended game tutorials to (badly) introduce game concepts and mechanics, and progressively give you the starter set of skills and some cash to spend: once you complete them (after a couple hours), you won't see quests again, and face a sandbox PVP world to do as you will.
It also features some form of offline skill training (though not exactly in the same way as EVE), and you don't have to grind on PVE mobs to level (actually, killing PVE mobs is worthless, aside from gathering some crafting mats).