Tharkis Olafson

I have played, or tried to play, darn near every MMO that exists. I still don't really care for the F2P games. Here is a couple of examples why.

1. In my opinion F2P and "freemium" games just cost more to play. You have to buy bag and bank slots, the ability to carry gold, houses, mounts. Generally things you *need* to actually play the game. I'm not talking about loot here.

2. Quality.. No I'm not talking about graphics or gameplay, some F2P games are more beautiful than many of the paid games out there. However, when you can't even play the game because you can't download it, or after you get it installed it won't even run there is a problem. There is even more of a problem when the forums of said game are filled with the same problem you are having and no fixes.

3. Community.. Some F2P games I am told, have a great community filled with plenty of people just jumping at the chance to help a new person out. Alas, I have yet to find one. I can't count the time I have asked a question in general chat and have either heard crickets, or I get "ROFL lawl "

4. Fun.. Some of the F2P games are fun, but most aren't. Alot of them have very little in terms of depth of a storyline. I like a good balance between small quest hub style quests and epic storyline quests. Many of the F2P games I have played focus more on the former, but I feel the latter is what gives a game it's "flavor". It draws you in to the world and keeps you leveling to see what unfolds.

5. Spamming. Gold spamming seems to be WAY more prevalent in F2P games than it is in paid games..

6. Bazaars, vendor bots and tents.. I don't know how many times I have finally gotten to a main city in whatever game only to be lagged to death by the 30,000 vendors set up in the middle of the city spamming their wares. Most every F2P game seems to have this problem.

7. Crazy ass control schemes that can't be changed. I really don't like click to move, using the arrow keys, etc. I want to be able to map my keybinds any way I like. There are quite a few games I thought I could get in to until the keybinding issue got in my way.

In summary, I am not against F2P games. I just haven't found one I like yet. I'll be honest, I have much the same issues with the paid games I have tried. The only F2P game I ever really liked was Dungeon Runner, I actually ended up paying a subscription for it because I had such a good time with it. Of course, NCSoft decided to cancel that so, I pretty much just play WoW anymore.

As of December 1st I will be taking down my in-world business.. To be honest, it's been a long time coming. LL has completely destroyed SL in my opinion. This was just the straw that broke the camel's back. I hope they are happy with the results.

Well.. Technically Legend of The Red Dragon was my first MMO.. Then I guess diablo was the second closest. My first "traditional" MMO was Dark Age of Camelot. EQ had no appeal to me, and I saw a buddy playing DAOC and well, it looked cool. But I didn't try it until the Tribes clan I was in decided to start playing it..

Yeah I agree, I love these types of entries. Game design theory is something that affects all players no matter what the game. Regarding the article, something I always enjoyed about DAOC was that when you finally hit 50 you embarked on an epic questline that took you all over the world and required the help of friends to complete. Though now, I think they craft stuff better than the epics, but we need to bring stuff like that back into the game. Or better yet, what about having standard quests PLUS a sort of randomized epic questline that starts at level 1. Each step would be different for each player, as no one lives the same life as someone else. NPCs would react to you based on quests you have completed, even reference them in conversation.. "Hey, you're that guy that slayed the dragon!." That kind of stuff goes a long way for me.

I loved Dungeon Runners. Sure it was repetitive, sure the F2P part of it kinda limited you but the game was absolutely hilarious. I loved the old school "Diablo" feel to it. It's one of the few titles I'm going to truly miss.

I would like to create new races and I look forward to the space combat.

Yeah, I really wanted to try this game out but every time I hit the login button, my router reboots. Doesn't do it with any other game, but happens every time I try to log in.

Not really but I am excited that my alts can get mounts earlier.. Makes life so much easier! I hope it goes live tomorrow, but I'm not holding my breath either.

This is awesomeness for the scripters. However I fail to see how it coincides with N. Korea at all... I just hope the patch also addresses the group message delay problems as well.

Weird.. I can't remember when group chat actually worked properly.. I think it's had issues for a little over 2 years now with no resolution. I just checked jira issue VWR-1298 to verify it.