Roleplaying games

No I don’t refer about the game itself. Read on, you can have a laugh maybe:

Last week I had finally some free time from my job, so I decided to try DDO:Stormreach.

I heard that there was a 10-days free trial key, so decided to try it. I went to the site and requested my key, then downloaded the client. 1.7Gb isn’t a joke, even with a DSL line (I have a slow 640kb one, took about 7-8h). However this wasn’t a problem since most MMORPG now have insanely big clients.

Finally, when the download ends, I am being told I must click on the link in the email (the same that contains my trial key) to access the account system to create my username/password.

I fill the LONG form with all the data, then I see the “submit” button isn’t active. I wonder what the hell is happening (is a graphic button, so I can’t do anything if doesn’t work). I decide to refresh the page, losing all the data I’ve entered, and fill the LONG form again. Nothing. I can’t submit this form, so I can’t create my account!!

I decide to try logging in from the account site homepage and make it: manage to register myself and create my user/password. Then I start the DDO client, to discover that it needs more patching! What I just downloaded the client, and is old ? why they don’t update it? I don’t know how much data it was, but at least another 200-300mb of downloads.

Then AT LAST I am at the game login screen. I type user/password. A pop-up windows informs me that “user or password is incorrect”. What !? I try again several times, but nothing. Then I try logging in the web account server with my user/password and works fine.

So, WHY on the website my user/password is ok, but in the game no? why I can’t log-in?! I activated my serial since I see it under the active subscriptions, so that’s not the problem!

Result: I GAVE UP . I’m probably going to try WoW or go back playing EQ2. I wasn’t really able to try DDO, despite wasting almost 2 days of my time. I wanted to try it badly, but I couldn’t win against such terrible forces of evil!

I wonder how many potential customers are losing every day by acting in this way… I have no words!!!

I recently tried one of those new free MMORPG, “Tales of Pirates”, and was both fun and at same time disappointing to see that there was still the “camping” present since the first days of Everquest…

For those who don’t know what it is, is quite simple: in a certain location spawns a powerful (or even not powerful) monster, that once killed or performed a task, gives you a very powerful item who everyone wants. So, there are thousands of players on server but the world is one: what happens? that people sits nearby the spawn point and try to kill it as soon as it appears!

In many MMORPG the first party that does damage to it gets the loot, or recently in a better way the party that does more damage to it gets the loot. But is really fun to see groups of people battling over it, trying to get the reward

I just asked myself from a gamedesign point of view if is a cool thing or not: it sucks because people with lot of time can always get the loot, while the more “casual” players will almost never be able to get it (if is really so powerful and sought). On the other hand, this solves the problem of having too many people getting powerful quickly. I remember in Dark Age of Camelot that when you kill a named NPC all players in the party gets a powerful item. I don’t think that this is really the solution, to give all the party members a reward for killing it - makes the game progression too fast IMHO.

Anyway talking about that MMORPG in particular, seems quite nice. It’s free, but is one of those “use real cash to buy items inside the game”… so as always you’ll see people that spent lot of money on it leveling to lvl 60 in a few days thanks to the uber powerful items they bought… I have yet to understand if in the end you pay more that way than with a regular subscription!

When was the last good commercial RPG you played? ok, except NWN2. Nothing comes up, huh?

Surely you can find some cool “action-rpg” or the so-called “Japanese RPG” like Final Fantasy, Suikoden, and so on. But what about Troika RPG ? good old-school rpg with thousands of stats and skills, really hard quest and long lifespan? and a game like Vampire bloodlines? with adult content, and not only those cute-lovely-anime characters that personally I can’t stand anymore?

Well unfortunately the whole CRPG commercial sector went mad. Everyone is either:

1. making the ultimate (boring) MMORPG with subscription
2. making the ultimate (boring) FREE MMORPG (just to charge you for every single item you buy that is above level 1)
3. making those cute-lovely-peaceful anime/jappo RPG where characters have 3 stats
4. making an action rpg, where the RPG component is 1/10 of what it was in Diablo 1…
5. simply NOT making a rpg

and so on. The situation is dramatic, really. As an old-school player I can find hope only in indies. Spidweb, Winterwolves or hopefully new forces will be strong enough to provide some decent old-school CRPG.

Because I have enough of MMORPG or cute-anime characters!!!!