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I’ve never played MMORPG games.
Well that’s not true really. I spent a few days back in 2003 playing the beta of “Ragnarok online” spending hours and hours killing what were described as “Jellopy’s” in the vague hope that I might earn enough experience to earn the “Sit Down” skill.
That kind of put me off since it took a long time just to do that, and then when I tried the harder dungeons I got killed almost immediately.
So when the likes of World Of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XI came along I purposefully ignored them in the well-earned belief that they would be just as bad. But these days I see a lot of talk about these games and how great they are (or at least how addictive they are) and decided it was time for me to, once again, take the plunge.
I wanted to make this scientific (heh) so I decided to make a journey out of the whole thing and what we’re left with is something between an article and a bunch of reviews. But I figured right from the start that a review of these games would be difficult since the quality of the experience vastly depends on the quality of the people playing it rather than that of the game itself!
So here goes:
I knew of 4 main contenders for this. They were:
- World of Warcraft
- Final Fantasy XI
- Warhammer Online
- Guild Wars
* side note – if you think I should visit any other major contenders during my journey please let me know via the contact form!
Each comes with a free trial so no problem there. I started with the one I knew least about, which was Guild Wars. I’ve heard people talk about it and was intrigued. It’s different to the other two since you only pay for the client and then it is free to play forever more.
I downloaded the initial client and created an account. It started to get 100mb worth of data from the server, which then let me create my character! Yay! I then had to invent a name that I’ll be able to use throughout the journey. I chose:
Monkfish Logistius
Named after a FastShow character and my Logitech mouse (I’m inventive me).
I was ready to rock! Ready to be plunged into the world of Guild Wars with my Monkish character.
Another download bar appeared. At this point I could only imagine Monkfish was sitting at the city gates twiddling his thumbs while they tried to get the gates open.
During this time I felt it was a good opportunity to see how much the game would cost if I got terribly addicted. So I visited the online store. There was a big, boxed thing at the top of the page that looked the ticket – all the releases for one big price. However I did see some strange “ability packs” or something further down the page, this looked like pay-for Downloadable content packs.
Uh oh.
But, since this was my first go at this I had no idea what impact that might have on the game so I went to make myself a cup of tea and stopped worrying about it.
230 Megabytes later and I was in a fairly busy town! This was starting to look better! So I talked to a town crier chap, and then some military chap, and then some monk chap and then rescued some young girl from some goblin like creatures. But outside the town felt suddenly very empty and quiet. Just myself, some NPC’s and the monsters that roamed the land. Oh, and my pet cat who I’d acquired by being half Monk half Ranger.
Then, while I was in the first town someone asked me if I wanted to join a clan! Well I was gobsmacked, but who and why? I had to quickly figure out the chat mechanism to reply, however before I’d had time to figure it out he (or she I guess) had vanished.
By now Monkfish was able to hold his own against quite a few enemies at once. It put me very much in mind of when I used to play Diablo 2. The missions I went on were ok but they mostly consisted of travelling to one area then back again. If you came back alive that was a bonus. And during all this I felt very lonely apart from Rufus the second (oh yeah I named my in-game pet cat).
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Guild wars, I felt, was basically a new Diablo multiplayer experience. While in many games of the same genre you find yourself surrounded by players nearly all the time (well not surrounded but they’re often nearby) this game allows you to take on large co-op missions just like you could in Diablo 2.
Since some of the development team were originally from Blizzard, the reasons for this are obvious!
Overall it’s a great game and if you loved Diablo 2 multiplayer and want more, this is a must! |
Due to my newfound confidence in my character I decided I should take the initiative and look for a group myself. As soon as I entered the town someone was already asking for a companion for the very mission I wanted to go on! I tried to reply via a “whisper” (private message), however trial accounts cannot send these. I tried to create a group to add him but, again, trial accounts cannot do this. I asked him to create a group, but HE was on a trial account too.
Luckily for me a friend in real life owns the full set of guild wars games and expansions. So a couple of days later we ventured into old Ascalon.
Somebody famous, for that is his name, led Monkfish through one of the story quests where we had to push the Grawl raiders away from a fort. This was fantastic fun and actually felt like I was doing something story based. Playing with a companion definitely added to the experience. Monkfish obviously finished triumphant ready to take on the rest of the game.
And then the trial period expired and so too ended Monkfish’s adventure in the world of Guild wars.
Onto the world of Vana’diel! (Final fantasy XI)
End of my Mmorpg Life article (part one) - click here to return to the articles section
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