On to happier news: Lizards! Yaaay! Lookie:
He still isn't tame, of course, but we're reaching a point where chilling out with him in front of the tv might become an option. We do that with our beardies a lot and I don't see why our new friend here couldn't get used to it at some point. Well, I guess sharp, nasty teeth and a dangerous tail-whip might be a bit of a point, of course. But hey, who's gonna be a pussy about that? One day he'll be all nice and big and we can walk him around outside. It's a shame he'll never bite the faces off random kids, but I suppose we could always look into buying a dog.
We're having a bit of a furniture battle here right now. Our neighbour is getting rid of her epic large leather sofa and since we always wanted a bigger one, well... yeah. Lucky us. Problem is, we now have to find a spot to put the old, smaller sofa when the new one takes its place. And, while I'm not particularly proud of it or anything, I'm just that much better at interiour decoration than Claire. And we can't agree on a place to put the old sofa. I hope she'll give in and let me decide. But you know how it goes - "I have the vagina, I make the rules." Sigh.
Our exploits on Guild Wars 2 might have come to a bit of a halt. We've played so many MMORPGs now, from WoW to Everquest to Age of Conan to god knows what else and we've reached a point where starting a brand new toon, killing 25 boars and LFTank till the level cap and farming tokens till full epic gear has become more than a bit stale. The game is still great, we love our little guild and all that, but behind the pretty facade of artistic pixels, it still feels like the same old game.
Sure, some games change the pace of the combat system, other games add an interactive story or remove the tank-healer-dps trinity, but at the end of the day, they're all World of Warcraft with different visuals. I'm exaggerating a bit here, of course, but the basic gameplay simply doesn't change very much. And we're bored.
The problem with the tremendous success of WoW is how everyone just plays it safe and doesn't really come up with anything new. Of course you'll see that everywhere in the gaming industry. Just look at all the Modern Warfares, Assassin's Creeds and Need for Speeds out there, to name a few. Play it safe, release the same stuff over and over again, go with the things that you know will sell. And how innovative can you really get with an MMORPG, anyway? There will always be weeks upon weeks of leveling your toons, followed by weeks, possibly months, of repetitive grinding for gear. Or go with the "no endgame grind" option and people will whine about, well, no endgame.
I suppose it's all down to attitude and expectation. Don't like the endgame grind? Bored of leveling yet another toon? Stop playing, plain and simple. Perhaps it just isn't realistic to expect new MMORPGs to be enjoyable for several years without taking long breaks from it. I have friends and family members, who still play WoW like crazy, every day, countless hours. They all moan about how boring it has become, how much the community sucks, how it's no longer what it used to be, but for some fucked up reason, they're always on there. Never to play anything else. Not for more than a week or two, anyway. Makes me think. I look at some exciting new game and somehow I hope this could be my WoW, my addiction, the one game that keeps me happy year after year after year. Utterly stupid.
I hate repetition. I hate routine. When I first got into MMORPGs, I was excited with the idea of experiencing a role playing game with thousands of others, making new friends, competing with others and actually playing a role. You know, become your character and what not. Yeah, we all know how that works out. First of all, most MMORPGs are designed to make you HATE every player around you. They grab your quest items, roll on your loot, leave your group in the middle of a dungeon and without their help, you're a worthless maggot. Even Guild Wars 2, the game, which aims to make playing with others more enjoyable, will fuck you hard if your dungeon party sports at least one complete idiot who screws up the puzzles, timed events or the slightly more complex boss battles. One asshole can ruin the gaming experience of everybody around them.
MMORPGs also burst your "I'm the greatest hero around" bubble. Got that epic Hackmaster +5 you're oh so proud of, because it's a really rare drop from some incredibly tough boss baddie? Well, everyone around you already has one, too. They probably have the +12 upgrade as well. And you don't. You're not special in any way. Chances are, you're just average. If you're lucky. And don't get me started on role-playing and people acting in character. There are no rules, there's no moderation, everybody has their own interpretation of "RP" and in most games, the vast majority of people just won't give a fuck. When you look at it, MMORPGs are like super slow, repetitive RPGs, which force you to team up with a bunch of people you hate. I miss Skyrim.
We're taking a break from GW2 right now. We're gamers, we're stupid and I'm pretty sure that some stupid shit like TESO, which we currently don't care about one bit, will become incredibly attractive a few days before release and then I'll start bitching about it a month later. But in the meanwhile, we're having some mindless fun on ME3 multiplayer. Of course that's also repetitive, with its one game mode and its dozen or so maps, but we can play that as a duo, without anyone interfering, without putting up with anyone's bullshit, without grinding for epix or spending two weeks leveling a new necromancer. Jump in, play, done. Nice and simple. It's nothing to keep you busy for countless months like MMORPGs are supposed to do, but it's a nice distraction from the boring grind.
-Cat
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