I have played WoW (world of warcraft) on and off for about 4 years. I had suspended my account for months at a time - there were a few periods of time where the game became really tired. For recent players, that would obviously be the second half of last year where raiders were stuck with the same content for almost a year.
Then Cataclysm came out - and even as a casual player I have "12/12" (completed normal raid encounters), leveled 4 toons to level 85 (including a mage from level 1 with heirlooms), sampled PvP again (stopped again - not into humping pillars), and basically seen almost all of what Cata offers. I had even quit for two months since the game came out late last year.
And I don't play a whole lot.
I don't really care about Heroic raid encounters - it's the same bosses, with a few more fires to stand in and a few more healer/tank cooldowns to press at the right time. The reward to get to Sinestra is simply not worth the hours (and hours and hours and hours) of wiping - I've seen top guilds on normal servers (not the super elite guilds) only now get to Sinestra, after raiding 40+ hours/week for 5 months!!! At a minimum that is 800 hours, or 47 days (waking hours). Almost two straight months of doing nothing else besides raiding, if done consecutively.
No thanks.
In fact, I casually leveled a mage from 1 to 85 in a couple weeks elapsed, and promptly had him raid ready in 1 day (item level 348+). The leveling process with full heirlooms including the guild rewards was ridiculous - the only grind was from 84-85. I think most of the time I was leveling 2-4 times/hour. Now I'm stuck - do I bother raiding with the mage, or hang em up til Firelands? The guild would highly prefer for me not to switch mains mid-tier - I don't even need to ask them, as I completely understand. It would turn into a main-switching fest. Plus they are working on 25 man heroic modes, which I have little interest in. One night they spent 4 hours working on 1 boss, without getting out of phase 1. NO THANKS.
So, why am I blogging any of this? Because I have tried a number of other games to see if anything else will capture my interest. Here is a list:
This was pretty fun. It's a pick-up-and-play game - and actually has some great dexterity (ie micro) requirements when playing some of the harder modes. It does have that fun factor no doubt - but without any form of multiplayer (for the love of god let someone play the towers!), I lost interest after completing the relatively quick campaign and a few challenge modes. Plus no saving or even checkpoints in challenge mode is enough to make one go crazy.
One tip guys - GET IT ON IPAD WHERE IT BELONGS!!
Quick and fun, but buggy as hell. Connecting with a friend took 30 minutes to figure out the house of cards - ie how to start a game without dropping out. Once in, the first hour or so was a lot of fun, but if you log out, don't play for a week, then come back....all the combo's are long forgotten. Lost interest.
Yep, I went back and purchased one of the better RTS's of all time. It still looks great after 5 years - and it is pretty damn fun. The problem is that I don't know anyone else who plays it, and I don't have any interest in random multiplayer. I'm probably not good enough to play them anyways - many of the players there have years of experience. The only downside of the game is that it seems to mostly be about map control, where bases are really just production buildings. But there certainly is a lot of options for interesting strategies, I bet. At $10 bucks for the original game (30 including one expac), it's a great price.
Oddly, I really enjoy watching replays, live streams, and youtube videos. LAGTV is particularly fun to watch, as well as anything by Day9. However, my friends who play it are all into laddering teams, which I just don't find that fun. It's all about Tier 1 units, rushes, and micro - sometimes you make it to the mid-game, but in the Platinum/Gold/Silver levels, all you see is marine rushes, cannon rushes, and 6 pools. Not that much fun - sure there are counters, but microing workers to defend a 6 pool gets old fast. For some reason I don't have any interest in laddering 1's, because it's just not social enough. I'd love to play against other similarly skilled friends, but they're either into teams or honestly are low bronze. In 1's I was low platinum/high gold - not great, but not horrible. I had only played 12 matches 1v1 as well.
My brothers and my friends LOVE this game. In fact, I introduced them to it! However, friftor some reason, I just can't get into it. The PvP is nice, and teamwork is great. To be truly competitive, there is a fairly high barrier to entry in learning all the class abilities, build orders, etc. And with each match at 20 minutes to 45 minutes roughly, this turns into a fairly large time commitment. Plus, it feels that the entire game is kiting - which is what put me off WoW PvP.
Like many, i took them up on the 7 day trial. I leveled a toon to 10, and tried another toon on the other side (defiant) as well. The class customization is quite impressive, even early in the game. Dual specs in WoW can't even compare. I'm sure this leads to imbalance issues in PvP however - which I had yet to try. In fact, I didn't even know how to - but forums suggest it leaves much to be desired. From a UI perspective, it was certainly nice to have all the same keybinds as WoW, but this ultimately is Rift's problem. It's a shiny WoW. UI is more "realistic" and less cartoony, and there are more flashy graphics (like the "Quest Complete" UI - gets old, fast). Plus, all the quests are kill or collector quests. Seriously? Kill spiders for their entrails?? Please, PLEASE, someone innovate here.
Other MMOs
I took another shot at Warhammer Online, LOTRO, etc...but they just aren't as polished as WoW or even Rift. WAR introduced some new ideas in PvP, but I just can't get into the UI. Something feels off, or "cheap". I LOVE the lore of LOTRO, but it gets boring. And micro-transactions to accelerate deeds or whatever is annoying. One thing I really did like was skirmishes in LOTRO, as I have mentioned before. I have thought about DC Universe online, but the PC version has some technical challenges from what I understand.
Summary
Honestly, I am bored of almost every game listed. Looking over the list of PC games in the past 1-2 years, there is very little to get excited about. If you can believe it, I was even thinking about picking up Warcraft 3 and the expac just for the campaign lore!! Some of the most fun in a single player game I've ever had was the campaign mode of War3...which leads me to randomly list some of my favorite games of all time:
- Knights of the Old Republic (gogo Revan)
- Warcraft 3/Frozen Throne (descent of Arthas, story of Illidan)
- Baldurs Gate (turn based multi-character game, group comp dynamics)
- Unreal Tournament - this shooter was the one I enjoyed the most
- Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas - I liked the story and mood of this one the most
- Halo (the original) - First game to offer an amazing coop experience
- C&C: Red Alert - hours of play in the office. Before the days of Micro and APMs...but Soviet Tank Rush FTW.
Older games that I loved back in the day include Ultima 6, X-COM, and Wing Commander 2.
Looking over this list of "top 10 games of all time" according to multiple sources, it's truly amazing how many are over 10 years old:
Innovation in Gaming Is Dead. Until some tiny publisher does something dramatic. We can't play iPhone/iPad/Facebook games forever.
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