Gah! MMORPG’s are making me horrible at action games

I’ve been totally spoiled by MMORPG’s.
Most MMORPG gameplay is too easy and might as well come with a guarantee that you will succeed.  As long as you stick to the clearly labeled areas and monsters that are appropriate for your level, it’s smooth sailing.  After a while, you can almost shut off your brain and [...]

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What’s Bad about Champions Online?

Even though I’ve been enjoying my time with Champions Online, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have some major problems.  Many of the problems are because CO is a brand new game.  Hopefully some of these problems will be fixed by launch.  Unfortunately, CO has some core problems that might be more difficult to manage.
This is [...]

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Champions Online: I’m having so much fun!

I can’t seem to stop playing Champions Online.  I’m having so much fun with this game.  It’s so stupid because I’m spoiling my experience for when the game finally goes live.
When I do finally leave my computer, I find myself thinking about strategies on how to best build my characters or how to be better [...]

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Champions Online: I’m finally done patching!!

UPDATE Cryptic finally released a standalone patch.  Go here for more details.  Hopefully this should fix all the patching problems…for now.
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I don’t understand exactly how, but I’m finally online.  I know I said I was done with the idiotic patching for today, but I saw a post in the mmorpg.com forums and I figured it [...]

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Things I hate about MMORPG’s: Crybabies

Anything that involves any sort of competition invariably has its share of crybabies, whiners and complainers.  MMORPG’s seem to attract the absolute worst of the worst.
1. Cheapasses
This is the group of people who whine endlessly about anything that might cost them a few extra dollars.  They threaten to sue when the server goes down and [...]

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Things I hate about MMORPG’s: Crafting sucks!!

In most MMORPG’s, crafting and gathering is one of the weakest and most boring part of the game.  It feels tacked on…an afterthought that hardly gets any of the developers’ time and effort.  It’s almost always agonizingly boring and, in some cases, can be a significant risk factor for carpal tunnel syndrome.  It is a [...]

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Things I hate about MMORPG’s: LONG recharge times

I thought I’d have some fun venting, so I’m going to start a mini-series of rants about MMORPG’s.  I know that long recharge times is a minor issue, but it annoys the heck out of me whenever I play Age of Conan.
In general, I enjoy Age of Conan’s combat system, but I absolutely hate the [...]

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I HATE achievements and reputation grinding

I hate it.  I hate it.  I hate it.
The sad thing is that achievements and reputation grinding are now a common ‘feature’ of so many online and console games.
It is basically cheap and fake content.  It’s a way to make people keep playing without putting in the effort of creating real content.
It is directly targeted [...]

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I’m addicted to Guild Wars again

My lesson learned over the past year is that new games aren’t always better than old games.
I’m such a gearhead that I gravitate towards the new and shiny.  But in the MMORPG world, new and shiny typically means incomplete, buggy, unbalanced and disappointing.
Over the past year, I’ve tried the following MMORPG’s:

Age of Conan – My [...]

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Free Realms is too cute…

Sony Online Entertainment’s Free Realms launched yesterday (really, really late yesterday).  As expected, they flubbed the launch.  The official website was basically down the entire day, providing absolutely no information for impatient players.  SOE did set up a Twitter feed, so there were little dribbles of information coming out, but I’m sure plenty of people [...]

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