It's come to my attention that World of Warcraft is now free to play. I was surfing around on the internet, looking at a wiki for some Fallout information, when 47 different ads instantly assaulted my browser and I, claiming "NOW FREE TO PLAY!" Of course there's a catch, the game is now free to play, but only to level 20. When I played the game, the first 20 levels were always somewhat exciting to be sure, but how is that going to give players an idea of what to expect when they finally ascend to the endgame? Blizzard is giving a free taste of, in my opinion, the best part of the game but they're not quite giving the whole picture. In my time, at level 60, I was raiding all of the damn time and I was bored as hell after the first two or three times I ran through each of the raid areas. Unless you're a hardcore MMORPG gamer, I would stay away from WoW even if they are promoting a free 20 levels of fun. All you'll get in the end is a waste of 20 bucks a month and a huge pain in your ass.
That all said, my dislike of MMORPGs stems from a long line of them that I used to play. Here's a quick rundown of each and every one that I had a chance to play:
The first online game that I played was Final Fantasy 11, and I played it for a good year or two. The game itself was able to feed my love of RPGs as well as my love of the Final Fantasy world. Tucked neatly within the horrible, horrible level grinding were useless quests that gave little to no reward, and thus no reason to complete them. After coming to the conclusion that continuing to play FFXI was just a huge drain on my bank account and a worthless endeavor, because no one in that game besides White Mages was actually able to find a party, I looked to another MMO for a reprieve. WoW satisfied me for another year or two, but the fun of the game quickly fizzled out after my Shaman was nerfed time and time again. When I went from being a decent damage dealer and jack of all trades to merely a pathetic healer for my raid groups, I lost all of my want to play. I quickly moved on to find that City of Heroes could only hold my interest as long as I could continue to create new heroes. The bland combat and repetitive buildings only fueled my frustration. I believe that City of Heroes lasted me maybe a month or two. The same issue came about with Lord of the Rings Online. Though I love the LOTRO world and the very idea of playing inside of Tolkien's rich, expansive world, the game itself fell short of the novel's delivery of the experience. The last MMO that I attempted to play was Dungeons and Dragons Online. Here I experienced a great deal of soloing as a Paladin, but once I moved to another class, I was unable to do anything by myself. DDO ultimately suffered from the same problems as WoW.
My issues with each and every one of the above games came right down to playability. I can play Dragon Age over and over and I don't need to wait for five other nerds to log on to do anything fun. Once I reach the end of the game, my experience has been fulfilled and the end of the story ensues. Normal games reward a player for reaching the end by completing the story or allowing the player to see the aftermath of their choices. MMOs steal that experience away. The story is unfortunately never complete and the fulfillment never comes. So each player continues to shell out month after month, attempting to collect all of those armor pieces and that last special pet so that his character can look like Santa and ride a Reindeer during Christmas. But who wouldn't want to do that for 20 dollars a month?
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