Ill take MMO's with a Subscription model, thank u!

It has become more clear to me that i have a problem with F2P mmo's and their cash shops.
Although not all F2P mmo's have horrible cash shops with insane prices or pay2win items the problem lies in the fact that I'm a bit prone to addiction.

Nowadays there are not only you buy what u see items in the shop but also boxes / cases which u need keys for to open them.
The keys can drop in game but most likely will not and to see whats inside you have to buy the keys
from the shop. In this way its more like a lottery and its a pure gamble if anything good will come from the boxes.

When you are a bit prone to addiction you keep wanting to buy keys to open boxes because of "what might be in the next one"
IRL its pretty easy to stay away from things like that but when they start putting stuff like this in the games u want to play it can be a bit of a problem.



F2P seemed like the holy grail at first, you don't pay for a sub, you don't feel forced to play the game because you are paying for it, you download and play, don't like it? no problem just uninstall, its not like u payed for it.
but because of these shops and the amount of money i spend in them id rather go back to the subscription model, because in the end its way more cheaper for me then F2P.

I LOVE Betas but i HATE Betas!

These days every new MMO invites people to closed or open beta tests. Compared to some years ago they are more previews of the game than actual testing as far as most people are concerned and you even can get beta access to games when you pre purchase the game (TSW, GW2 ..)

When i hear / read about a new and upcoming game wich genre sparks my interest i always sign up for beta testing, there is something about beeing able to play the game before anyone else and seeying a bit of the developing phase of the game that makes me signup for these "tests".

When entering the game for the first time i am really excited and try to gather as much info as possible and actually try to beta test. When i encounter a bug , dont feel a certain mechanic is right etc. i will write a detailed report about it.
Soon after that i kind of forget that i am in a beta test, and for example the next beta test weekend i will just play the game like it just went live and then the downside part starts.

At this point i am feeling that i am ruining the game for myself by playing through content i have to go through again when the game goes live for real so that makes me want to stop playing, i absolutely hate to invest time and effort in building a character that will be wiped over and over again, it feels like such a waste of time and effort.

The next beta test i dont even bother to login anymore and actually start to get annoyed by the game, i just want it to launch already.
In case of no NDA watching youtube videos of people who dont seem to have my problem and play like crazy even enhances this feeling.

Another point that is troubeling me is that so much detailed information about an mmo is out in the open before the launch these days that gives me a feeling of information overload. information that you would normally obtain in chunks when you just play the game now hits u in one massive blob and the feeling that i need to absord all that to be able to play the game when that really isn't the case

so i LOVE betas, but i HATE betas!

how about you?

Too many Games?

Recently i started to feel a little nervous about the amount of games that get released nowadays and the urge to play them.

Back in my Early gaming days there was a big gap in between game releases. I played Quake2 until my fingers bled, competed in online tournaments with the clan and then Quake 3 came along and it was rinse and repeat.

I started playing MMO's and when i started playing City of Heroes that was all i did, i only had one game icon on my desktop and didnt feel the urge to play something else whatsoever.
only after a year of playing i heard about Warhammer Online doing its beta and was close to launch.
I played the beta and was hooked and did not look back for THREE YEARS.
during that 3 year period i looked at a few other games, mostly in another genre but nothing serious, i was a WAR player and was really happy with that.

Always playing the same game makes me feel in control, i know everything about that game, i know what to do, how to craft, play all characters etc. it makes me feel ZEN somehow.

The last two years the game industry has been growing so fast that new games release almost every week and because of it i get distracted alot.
I play multiple games these days (SWTOR, WOW, BF3, APB, Saints Row, Skyrim etc...) and like to play them but i feel as if i am playing them all half assed and that breaks my ZEN feeling and makes me nervous for some reason.

I am still waiting for the next MMO to come along that makes me want to keep playing it without so much looking at other games (mmm maybe i can replace that with the word Girlfriend as well ;-) )

Does anyone recognize this feeling? too much games too little time and not playing them for 100% makes you feel (insert feeling)?

Try before you Judge?

I was one of the people who actually never played WOW.
My MMO Life began with Auto Assault followed by City of Heroes , WAR, CO, AION, RIFT, SWTOR (and some F2P stuff in between, APB, STO, ROM)

Although i never played WOW i was with the WOW Bashing Crowd,"U Play WOW? LOLOL". the stuff i viewed and read about the game never made me feel like i wanted to play it.

Recently some friends went back to wow and kept asking me to join them and just try it out. they sent me a free trail and on a rainy weekend i finally did.

My first impressions weren't that good, i really disliked the graphics and UI and the wall of text quests (just coming from swtor).

I decided to just keep going for a bit and after a while i started to notice the seven years the game has been running and saw all the things that the MMO's i played copied from WOW.

Conclusion, When you can see through the outdated GFX the game is actually pretty fun, its really smooth, bug free, content packed and so many people play it that you can get into dungeon runs or battlegrounds almost instantly. it still has negative points ofcourse but thats not the reason for this post  ;-)

Don't ever judge a game before you got to play it yourself (well at least try) you might be plesantly surprised!