They got me.

Confessions of an MMO dabbler?

This weekend City of Heroes offered a 'come check us out again' free weekend for lapsed accounts, and I bit.  It was always one of my favorite MMO's.  Well I reactivated the account today, why not? I had given up on PC gaming a while back when my friend bought DDO and it was screwing up my computer--or my computer was screwing up the game, whatever.  I got completely fed up with having to upgrade and fix my PC all the damn time, thank goodness for the 360. But now....I'll give it another shot, I always thought the game was fun.

My problem with MMO's is, short attention span (as you can see with all my unfinished 360 games).  I like the beginning when you're leveling up, getting new powers/skills/loot/whatever fairly quickly, and then when it turns into a grind I get bored and move on.  I am not one of these 48-straight-hours-of-gaming type of people, and once you get out of the early beginner levels of a game it seems like that's what you need to be. So I miss out on TONS of content because I just don't want to take the time to level up and access it.

I think Dark Age of Camelot was my first MMO.  I remember when some guy asked me to be a tank, and I got pissed off because I thought he was telling me to die for the team. When I started fighting a frog or something he would stand back and blast while I took all the hits--I thought a tank was someone who died, rezzed, died, rezzed etc.  DAoC was fun for a while, but I would only play until I got to level 12 or so, then I'd start a new character until I got to the grind again, repeat repeat repeat. I'm a solo player, I never liked the groups, so it took a while. Eventually I just lost interest.

If I remember correctly, WW2 Online came next. I loved this game.  I got into it on Day 1 when it was buggy and boring as hell, but the potential is what I loved. My buddy from work came over on the first day to watch, I spawned an infantryman way out in the hell of nowhere and just started walking around. A tank pulled up and offered me a ride and we thought it was hilarious. That game provided some of the most exciting gaming moments I've ever had--creeping through a building to capture a flag, hoping you wouldn't get blasted by a tank, finding a lone german facing the other way--it got heart-pounding at times. Unfortunately I got into it too early and by the time they started fixing bugs and adding content, I had gotten bored with it.

Along came Star Wars: Galaxies. Talk about buggy. I was in on day 2 of this one. In the beginning it was a lot of walking. A LOT.  Until they got vehicles and mounts I spent a large amount of my time running from the shuttleport to my house and back. Then I discovered harvesters and I had a lot more running to do.  I loved this game for the community, for the first time I wasn't soloing ALL the time.  Probably because I decided to be a tailor in the game. Yes a tailor. Here come the comments.  I stayed with this game for a long time and probably wouldn't have left it when I did except for the change they made, where they basically started the whole game over again from scratch. I had tons of great loot in that game, and still loved it until the change. This was the only game where my character reached the upper levels, really the only one I got past 'beginner' status.

Somewhere during this time City of Heroes came along and I got into that one fairly early, within a couple weeks of launch. I think  I must just get into these games too early, before they can work out all the bugs. CoH was fun, but again I would play until I got to the boring grind, start over with another character with new, fun powers, etc etc etc. I lost interest in that one until City of Villlains came out and then got hooked again for a while. I just didn't have the time with Galaxies going on already though.

While I was playing Galaxies and CoH I got to beta test WoW.  The game seemed great. The beta version wasn't even that buggy, it was a lot of fun. But I didn't have time for it in addition to the other stuff.  I could see myself eventually checking that one out, if I had the time.

Then my friend moved to Florida, and got Dungeons & Dragons online.  He begged me to buy it and play. It was his first MMO, and he went and got into it before I had a chance to tell him about any of the other good ones out there. I got it, and started it, and hated it. I just find it boring somehow. Plus, one of the updates completely futzed it up so it would reboot my computer every time I started it. Apparently they fixed that eventually, but I still dislike the game. He refuses to buy another one though and I've promised to get back in it with him.

So now I'm starting up City of Heroes again. It should be fun, there's new stuff. Actually since I've never gotten past level 15 there's a LOT of 'new' stuff in the game I've never seen. But do I have the patience and the time to get up to level 20? 30? 40? I doubt it. So we'll see how far I get. Somewhere along the line I managed to get into a guild, but I've never seen anyone from that guild.  So I can't even do anything with all my loot. Maybe I'll have to track one of them down.