Shades of Twilight

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I was just mucking around on the various gaming sites as usual, and came across this piece of saddening news – Tabula Rasa is shutting down come Feb 28, 2009. Now, I’ve always had a soft-spot for sci-fi MMORPGs. In fact, after I left Everquest 2 in 2006, the guild told me if I ever got onto Tabula Rasa, I was free to establish a guild there as a branch of the main guild.

Look at my history of MMORPGs – Anarchy Online and Entropia Universe. These 2 are sci-fi MMORPGs, although admittedly, I didn’t stay long in them. In fact, even City of Heroes can be considered a sci-fi MMORPG in a sense. I even dabbled in Face Of Mankind, another sci-fi MMORPG in beta at the time, and left it soon after due to the rampant PK-ing. Major problem – most players there aren’t from Singapore, and it would be hard to make friends and play together if they are always sleeping when I’m awake and playing.

In fact that’s a major problem with most MMORPGs that I play in.

Well Tabula Rasa was released in 2007, but I never got around to playing on it. Probably the burnout I felt after leaving 2006 was still there, and I never realy got the urge to get onto another MMORPG.

My first peeve with MMORPGs is that PvP ganking is prevalent. While I don’t mind PvP so much, I do mind that I get killed for no reason other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In some MMORPGs, high levels just camp newbie areas and kill them for fun and sport.

Why do I hate PvP so much? Because in MMORPGs, the results of PvP usually is based on your attributes. If you have a cookie-cutter optimum build character, you’d usually come out the winner in a PvP. Your level also plays a part – a level 60 will cream a level 1 anyday.

Now in other PvP oriented games like Battlefield and Counterstrike, it doesn’t really matter. It’s the skill of the player behind that character that counts in the results. If you can do a snap-shot to the head and get a kill, you’re skillful. You deserve that kill. In MMORPGs, your level determines the result.

Which suck, totally.

Especially if I’m the level 1 trying to kill rats to get some gold to buy equipment, and consistently get killed for the fun and laughter of a level 60. Some MMORPGs implement a “safe zone/level”, where if you are under level 10, for example, nobody can kill you. However, think about it – once you hit level 10 (or whatever level) and the safety net is removed, you get killed again by level 60s.

Secondly, I hate the grinding in MMORPGs. You just keep killing the same stuff over and over again to get XPs to reach the next level. And why do we need to gain levels? So that new areas are opened up, and we rush to level 60/90/200 just so we can join raids on the end-game monsters.

Third, I hate the uber loot. Your character is considered weak (“gimped”) if you don’t have that cool Sword Of Blasting +10. People will camp the monster that drops this for DAYS just to kill it and get this sword – and even so, the monster may not ALWAYS drop it. It sucks more if you need to kill that same monster for a quest. These high levels will chase you away (or even kill you) if you want to kill that monster for a quest, because there may be a CHANCE it will drop that cool uber sword and only YOU can get it (since you killed it) and not them.

Yeah, after writing all these, I feel that I don’t want to go back into another MMORPG. I’ll stick to COD4 or FarCry or whatever.

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