Is it Hello, or just Goodbye?

I’ve been playing MMORPGS since 2001, I’ve tried a bunch of local and international games, but only a few succeeded at holding my interest for a long time. There were games I dropped a few minutes after trying them, completely forgettable and utterly horrendous games. There were also some that kept me going for weeks or months. I’m by no means a hardcore gamer, I’m somewhat in the middle, I’m the person who cheats a few hours of sleep saying I gotta go afk for a while when he’s scheduled to go all night with friends either that or I’ll just completely waffle on my desk (well usually i’d crawl to my bed first). Here’s a list of things that keep me hooked to a mmorpg.

Friends

Well, I have to admit that even though a game’s utterly crap or mediocre compared to other games, I’d still be playing it if my friends are in it. Accomplishing something with friends is just priceless, it adds to that “did you remember when we” bank that we could reminisce as we move on to other things later in life. In some cases though, the game is so mediocre there’s so little things you can do that will give you that sense of accomplishment or you can do as a group. That’s when you’re left with just chilling with your friends ^^;. Some of my fondest memories in gaming are still from the games Ragnarok Online, Final Fantasy XI, and Mabinogi where I played with mostly IRL friends.

Armors

Whether I’m using a male or female character, I like it to look good (that’s probably why I don’t play WoW). Of course you can’t avoid looking exactly like the person next to you, with thousands of players and only hundreds or maybe less gears to choose from you’re bound to have a clone somewhere. So what’s the next best thing? for me, non-tradable race/job specific equipments that you work for! the best example for this is FFXI’s JSE and Relic weapons. Other games have dyes like Mabinogi, you wanna rock that Hot Pink Long Sword School Uniform to be unique? Whatever floats your boat.

Game Physics

Nothing drives me nuts more than getting stuck on a pebble on the ground, those invisible walls surrounding object sprites. One game I’ve recently played that comes to mind is Atlus’ NeoSteam. I tried it just because it was Atlus, their console jRPGs are some of my faves, but their MMORPG is mediocre to say the least. Nothing like dying from a horde of monsters because you got stuck on a tiny bush. ffs

Overall Feel

There are a lot of WoW GUI clones out there, we’re at the point where there’s really nothing much we could create that hasn’t been used before. It’s like the template has been set, users like it and are used to it, and producers market what is sellable. What I don’t like are those “cheap” looking games due to the lack of adjectives to describe them. Come to think of it I’ve played this ninja mmorpg before (forgot the game) that had cheap looking user interface and really poor game physics, even the character’s movements looked awkward and ugly. Well, to sum it up, just give me eyecandy and I’ll be happy. (some anti-aliasing would help)

Story

Again I’m just basing this from the games that I have played, but by far the only 2 games that had good stories that I have played are FFXI and Mabinogi. FFXI is final fantasy so it better have a good story, it’s expected. Mabinogi I give a little props to since it’s a Free to play game and from my experience F2P games usually fail at their attempt at giving us a story.