It’s been a long time since I’ve dared to immerse myself in an MMORPG.

I was hooked on EverQuest back in 1999, which was a bad thing.  Back then I had trouble shaking the game off.  It was a new frontier for me and, well, I got addicted.  I don’t blame the game, I blame myself, I just want to make that clear.  But it did gnaw at my soul.  I let it, and after three or four years, there was nothing left to eat at, so I finally broke free.

I’ve spent the last five or six happy years not getting addicted to MMORPGs and repairing the damage I let EverQuest do to my psyche.  After EQ, I tried out Anarchy Online, which I thought was flawed, but fun, and I particularly enjoyed the fact that you could solo effectively for so long.  I played that for five months but it never really clicked for me - thankfully - and moved on to Dark Ages of Camelot, which I was psyched for, but couldn’t grab me for more than two weeks.

This sounds like a bad thing, but I was proud that I had become impervious to the lure of the MMORPG.  I smiled happily and told fellow gamers, probably with an air of condescension, that I was very specifically not playing DAoC or any of the other MMORPGs on the market.

Final Fantasy XI: Online came out a bit after DAoC and that didn’t even last more than seven days.  Though I do blame FFXI for that.  The game was a piece of crap.  I really don’t understand why anyone played it.  I thought the original EverQuest had a steep death penalty.  FFXI’s was ridiculous and it was nearly impossible to actually GAIN experience to.  I loathe FFXI.

I also played Star Wars: Galaxies for about a month and a half which was more out of masochistic boredom than anything else, EverQuest II for literally a day and never logged in again, City of Heroes for about five or six weeks which was fun but I felt like I never got anywhere, Guild Wars - if you could call Guild Wars an MMORPG, and finally…

World of Warcraft.

This, I played for about two months.  I stopped because I got bored somewhere halfway through, about level 29, and also because I recognized some of the old soul-sucking despair I felt while playing EverQuest so long ago.  It goes something like this: “Oh God, oh dear God, why am I still playing this?  Why am I reserving five hours of my Saturday so I can walk around picking berries on the map to raise my gathering skill to 300 or whatever?  Why?  WHY?!?!” and even though you ask yourself these questions, you still begrudgingly log in and do it anyway.  You recognize that you are essentially throwing your time away on an activity you no longer enjoy, but you do it anyway because you’ve already invested so much time in your character(s) and the online friendships you’ve formed that the MMORPG has literally replaced all other forms of entertainment for you and you don’t know what to do with yourself anymore, so you just keep logging in, because you hate it and you hate yourself for doing it, but at least it’s familiar and, in a way, comfortable.

I call this “MMORPG Sickness”

See also: Grinding.

Or maybe it’s just me.  I’m sure at least some people have experienced what I have with these types of games, just as I’m sure others derive actual pleasure from these games, for years even.  I don’t speak for everyone.  Suffice to say, I have a long, turbulent gaming career with MMORPGs.  So I quit WoW even though I thought it was kind of cool and a step in the right direction.

Now, WAR is out.  I skipped Lord of the Rings: Online and Age of Conan mostly because I didn’t feel like upgrading my PC, but also because I heard they were kind of clunky.  I know a whole bunch of others not even worth mentioning have sprung up as well, but people have been talking about WAR for awhile, and though I’ve never played any of the tabletop Warhammer stuff, I can attest to the fervor some people display while talking about it.  And I heard it was very WoW-ish, but better.

And it is.  I’ve talked a lot about non-WAR stuff and I hate to cut this short, but I think the following can summarize my current opinion of the game: I bought it on Friday.  As of last night, I already have a level 14 Marauder on the Vortex server.

Sigh.

I’ll talk about it more this coming week.  If you’re on Vortex, feel free to say “hi.”

Well, it’s been a busy week as suggested by the lack of posts.  Even aside from gaming, September is always a crazy month.

Particularly when a new MMORPG comes out.  Yes, as I mentioned last week, I picked up Warhammer Online (referred to as “WAR“).  So my Now Playing this week is going to be brief.  I haven’t had a chance to pick up Force Unleashed yet, but I might this weekend.  Other than that, I’m going to stick with WAR for awhile.  S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl is fun, but I can only focus on one RPG or open-ended title at a time.

Well, to coincide with their new 16 gig and 120 gig Zune models, the Zune masterminds have released firmware 3.0 and a Zune software upgrade to version 3.0. I knew nothing about this, to be honest.

So I’m holding off my review until I have some time to play around with the new version of both.

The good, thus far:

• WiFi connectivity to the Zune Marketplace. Okay, cool.
• Games? Check. (These install when you update the firmware.)
• FM tagging? Sweet! This allows you to tag a song while you’re listening on the radio, so you can download it later. This may be the best feature ever. I absolutely loathe when radio stations don’t announce the title of a song, either before or after.

More on all this later.

This week is going to be busy.

I have now officially put Final Fantasy Tactics Advance aside. It is a frustratingly boring game after a certain point. I am not permanently putting it aside, but for now I have bigger fish to fry. I also put aside Neverwinter Nights for the time being. Really, the beginning is just too damned boring.

On Friday, I purchased S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl (the original, not S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky which is either out already or is out sometime this week) and I am hooked. For those that don’t know, it’s a very open-ended first person shooter with some RPG elements, like ranking and extensive quest systems. It’s also very annoying for completionists (yay!) and very, very addicting. I’m going to be focusing on this until it’s done.

However, as you can see from my other post, Too Human just came! So I’m probably going to juggle the two for the next week or so.

As for portable gaming - a friend recommended Lock’s Quest for the Nintendo DS and I find it very engaging so far. It’s basically a Tower Defense-/Pixeljunk Monsters-type game with a JRPGish plot. I’m only about 45 minutes into it thus far, so I’m not sure if the game has actual RPG elements to it, but regardless it’s fun.

Oh and Star Wars: Force Unleashed is out this week. I loved the demo, and I’ll pick it up for the Xbox 360 before the weekend. Or maybe for the Wii…but probably not.

Lastly I should mention that a few friends are recommending Warhammer Online. Now, I have kind of a “thing” about MMORPGs. Ever since I broke my addiction to EverQuest back in 2002/2003, I’ve done my best to stay away. But my friends make a good argument in favor of at least trying it out, so I’ll probably pick it up on Friday. Sigh.

After weeks of waiting, my free copy of Too Human finally arrived. Thanks, PepsiCo!

Undoubtedly, this will be in my Now Playing post later tonight.

The original Mercenaries was one of my favorite console titles, ever.  Yes, ever, and I’ve had a console in the home since birth so many moons ago.  I loved the open style of the game.  It basically felt like a three-dimensional Jagged Alliance, and I love Jagged Alliance, and so I loved Mercenaries.

Mercenaries 2: World in Flames is a love-it-and-hate-it kind of game.  Some games are generally good, generally bad, or fall in the love-it-or-hate-it category, like Braid, but Mercenaries 2 has the distinction of being hated and loved simultaneously, both by myself and by many others I’ve spoken to.

It is an excellent, fun game but it is blatantly glitchy.  I honestly have not played a game with this many bugs since The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall back in the late 90’s, and that game was just a disaster.  But that game, too, was wonderful even with its myriad bugs.  Mercenaries 2 falls into the same bucket: it is extremely frustrating at times, and will almost definitely annoy even the staunchest supporter, but it offers so much regardless.

The pros: Very open-ended, lots to do, rather long game if you are a completionist and want to see everything through.  Lots of weapons to mess around with.  Lots of varied vehicles to purchase, steal, drive, and fly.  And lots of destruction.  ”World in Flames” is a perfect title for this game, because the destruction you cause will generally remain throughout the game, and you cannot help but smile when you see the smoking wreckage of some building or another - a disaster you caused earlier - as you fly past on the way to some other mission.

The cons: Well, let’s see.  I’ve mentioned it’s glitchy - and it is - but it isn’t game-breakingly glitchy, just annoyingly so.  Though some of the glitches are beneficial (in a cheap way) to players.  You can google for these if you’re interested.  I also have a massive problem with the AI.

There are dozens of “high-value targets” to capture or kill in this game.  The method is this: You go in, subdue a specific guarded human target, call in a helicopter to extract the target, and load the target on the helicopter.  Mission accomplished.  Now, the complaint isn’t that these missions are tough, or that you have to do a lot of careful work blowing up buildings around the target while not killing the target himself, because that’s the challenge.  That’s fine.  The complaint is that the enemies that are supposed to be protecting and guarding this target will happily shoot and throw grenades at wherever you are when in the vicinity of an HVT, the result being that the enemies tend to kill their own HVTs.  And if you’re trying to play through the game without killing the HVTs, this becomes really frustrating as you have to restart the game to “revive” the HVT.  At least you can save the game after the HVT dies and restart and he will be alive again.

Thus the real challenge here is trying to make sure the the AI doesn’t kill your target for you, if you play this way.  Basically, you have to protect the HVT from his own faction.  I don’t think I need to spell out how terribly stupid this is.  In fact, I dislike this far more than any glitch the game has.  This needs to change in any potential sequels.  But I have a feeling it won’t.  It’s easy and cheap to develop AI routines that are nothing more complex than “shoot at player.”

Despite this, and despite all its frustrating elements, the game is hilariously witty and doesn’t take itself too seriously, and you shouldn’t either.  Take it for what it is: a game chock full of mayhem.  It’s a wonderful title and if some of these glitches get patched up, it will be even better.  I recommend it to anyone.

One thing you’ll get to know about me is that I have absolutely no patience for interfaces that are not constructed with ease-of-use as its primary feature and focus.  There are many examples of this which I will cover in coming posts, but the one I’m concerned with right now is the Wii.

Adding friends to the Wii is a very confusing and complicated process.  I’m still honestly not sure how it works.  Apparently, you have to click into your address book, which is nested about three menus deep, and add the Wii code of the person you are befriending.  Then they have to do the same thing.  Then you have to wait some random allotment of time for the two of you to magically “synch up” or something.  Then you are friends.

The fact that the Wii interface has three different menu nestings for different things isn’t exactly simple either.  Yes, it doesn’t take long to navigate through everything and find what you are looking for, but to be honest, even after finding the address book I wasn’t sure if I was at the right place because it really makes no mention of the process to add friends.  It doesn’t offer any kind of confirmation, either.  The person shows up on your list, but you cannot even send the person a message until you’ve been synched.

This is just weird.  People have been adding “friends” to online lists for years now.  ICQ, AOL Instant Messenger, MSN, Yahoo! Messenger, Xbox Live, PlayStation 3…etc.  The list goes on.  You click and type the username or email of the person and viola! you are friends.

Sure, maybe a confirmation is in order like with how Xbox Live manages friendships, but that should be the only inconvenience put to either “friend” in the process.

In other words, I like the Wii, but the Wii interface is generally a flashy, cool-looking piece of garbage.

Another week…

I’m not yet done with Mercenaries 2: World in Flames.  I know I promised a review some time ago.  That’s the beauty of being one’s own editor - I can pick and choose games and play them at my leisure.  Suffice to say I like the game a lot but it’s also one of the buggiest games I’ve encountered since Daggerfall in the early 90’s.  But I do promise I’ll get to a full review soon.

As to what else - yes, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is still in my Nintendo DS.  No, I’m nowhere near done with it yet.  Also, in celebration of my upgraded PC, I’ve been installing things.  Sam and Max: Season Two episodes for instance, via Gametap, and I purchased that iD Super Pack I mentioned yesterday as well.  My newfangled PC equipment along with the Saitek Eclipse II keyboard I just purchased, might entice me to finally play through Doom 3 and its add-on, which were a part of the pack.  I might also run through Quake 2 again, one of my all-time favorite online AND offline First-Person Shooters.

And last but not least, I finally reinstalled Neverwinter Nights: Diamond Edition, which has both expansions and some other premium modules on the DVD.  When I first bought it, I primarily used it for module design, which basically went nowhere.  I ended up writing a few scripts and functions that some other developers incorporated into their own code, but that was it.  And then I shelved it.  I couldn’t remember why until last night.  After muddling around in the albeit deep character creation process for awhile, I was dumped unceremoniously into the extremely boring intro of what is probably an extremely boring game.  I vaguely recall getting out of the tutorialized area a few years ago and then permanently quitting the single player campaign, well before either expansion was out.  I think this, plus a nostalgic memory of Planescape: Torment, is what drove me to try my hand at programming.  I may or may not continue playing the Neverwinter Nights campaign.  I hear the second expansion is really good.  And I have Neverwinter Nights 2 sitting here somewhere as well, just waiting to be cracked into.  But that’ll have to wait for another month.

And I’m still waiting on Too Human.  I guess PepsiCo sent it to me via media mail, which is taking forever.

I should have posted this sooner, but this weekend, Steam is offering the iD Software Super Pack for 50% off - only $34.99. This has all the Doom, Quake, Heretic, Hexen, and Wolfenstein FPS games, plus Commander Keen, plus all the mission packs and everything else. Here’s a full list:

ITEMS INCLUDED:

• Commander Keen
• DOOM 3
• DOOM 3 Resurrection of Evil
• DOOM II
• Final DOOM
• HeXen
• HeXen II
• HeXen: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel
• Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders
• Master Levels for Doom II
• Quake
• Quake II
• Quake II Mission Pack: Ground Zero
• Quake II Mission Pack: The Reckoning
• Quake III: Team Arena
• Quake Mission Pack 1: Scourge of Armagon
• Quake Mission Pack 2: Dissolution of Eternity
• Quake III Arena
• Return to Castle Wolfenstein
• Spear of Destiny
• Ultimate DOOM
• Wolfenstein 3D

Note: This doesn’t include Quake IV or Quake Wars.

Still, that’s a helluva lot for 35 bucks.

Also, Steam released all five X-Com games on Thursday and right now they are on sale from $14.99 as a package deal to $13.49. This includes X-Com: UFO Defense, X-Com: Terror from the Deep, X-Com Apocalypse, X-Com Interceptor, and X-Com Enforcer, and I’ve heard they run fine even on 64-bit Vista. If you’ve never played X-Com, you should get this pack. Some of the finest strategy games ever conceived.

I’ve been messing around with Google’s new beta browsing experience: Google Chrome.

It’s funny, not even a week ago I was thinking “hmm, I wonder how long until Google gets their claws into the web browsing business,” and here it is a few days later. I had no idea this was being worked on.

I’m a staunch Firefox user. Internet Explorer is the devil for so many reasons, not limited to its absolutely horrible interpretation of CSS.

Google Chrome seems interesting thus far. It doesn’t seem terribly different from Firefox, for instance, though I much prefer the way it manages downloads and bookmarks (it’s a lot quicker). If you check it out, let me know what you think.

You can grab it here.