Roleplaying games

Today I woke up and this question puzzled my mind. Seriously, I’m the only male, roleplay fan, that hasn’t even only tried to play WOW for 5 minutes? not even the free demo? probably yes!

To be honest I never ever approached that game because I was quite confident that… I would have been addicted. Knowing how good are the Blizzard guys, I suppose (because, as I said, I just saw some screenshots about WOW and that’s it) that I would have been “enslaved”.

I know another friend that entered the beta program, played the game for 10 minutes, and commented “it’s magnificent, a masterpiece” then quickly uninstalled it, and gave the beta copy to another friend, all this just to avoid to vanish from real-life! he has a family and a daily job… quite hard to play WOW and have to work/feed someone at same time!

Also considering how many ads you see everywhere for “WOW Gold Sellers”, I suppose that only looking at that you can get a good estimate on how that game can be popular.

Who knows, maybe one day I’ll try it - but surely not now. I’m too scared to disappear from real life.

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!!!!

Raids sucks!!! yes, they do.

I still remember some years ago when I was working in an office, and my cousin was a student. He was bragging all the day because he was doing raids. He was an EQ addict, playing an insane amount of hours per day (more than 10-12h!!). So obviously he had leveled up much faster than me, when I was just level 25 he was already level 50+.

Now one day, with his help, I manage to get around level 45-46, so that I can partecipate in raids too. They were doing a small raids in East Wastes. Ok so I am all excited after what my cousin told me, expecting the unbeliveable from the raid.

But what happens ? first, the meeting. Some people are late. Others arrive, notice that most are missing, so start saying “BRB GOING TO BUY/SELL SOME STUFF” - and so on.

Result = 1h passes before all people are finally ready to start the raid.

Ok, I wait, then finally everyone is there and I start to think “now the full will begin!”.

No, I was wrong again. We must reach that particular location so we can enter the plane of Fear (or another thing, don’t remember now, too many years have passed!). We have to walk for interminable minutes to get there. Then do some fights on the way.

Another hour wasted.

Then finally, the raid starts. What a disappointment. Surely we were killing uber-monsters that I would never have been able alone, but was not fun. A giant mess where all tanks were screaming, casters casting, etc. almost zero strategy.

And surely, zero fun. Then after we found a no-drop item, the usual battle to get that item. Minutes and minutes wasted discussing who should have got it.

Well, after 2-3 raids, I canceled my EQ account. I went back playing some months later, but starting a new character. The real fun was when you start up and are an harmless druid/necro/wizard/warrior level 1. The first levels up to 20-25 are the most fun experience of EQ, definitely.

Unless you encounter a powerleveler or a gold seller - then you’re doomed!