Three Games I Can't Face (Again)

Three games I often think about, but which I could never return are raising their heads with me lately, the first being Eve-Online.

I was invited back by a friend, whom wanted me and my three decently trained (for 2012) accounts to go back in to the game, and run mining operations for him.  If you're not aware, mining in Eve is pretty much staring at rocks, you have to be in a special place, and busy with other stuff to let your game time turn into this monotony.

He assured me there's loads of new stuff, "since you like mined Xel, there's loads"... But my heart just wasn't in it.  I did install the game, and try a free account for like 25 minutes, until I got utterly bored with it and had to stop.

My main problem is probably the style of game play, I loved Eve, I played way back before the new engine.  It was a clicky menu fest then, and it seems twice as much so now.

Though I still love the Armageddon!

The next is World Of Warcraft, I don't often get invited back to WoW nowadays, but when I initially quit I was asked perhaps every other day.  With the release of the movie however, my interested was peaked, and so I took a look... 

What have they done to my beloved Stormwind?

I just can't, I can't face it.  But I look back on my appearance on "Shut Up We're Talking" (which incidentally spawned this very blog) and I remember saying that damage & level inflation would devalue and dumb down the game... Boy, was I right, or was I right?

The third, and final one, is CubeWorld.  I was big into this when it came out, I begged a friend to lend me his account before I bought it (which he wouldn't - *cough* tight wad) but buying into it, was great.  It mixed Zelda with Minecraft with a proper olde tyme Adventure feel.

I had high hopes it would become part of my regular rotation, unfortunately, development seems to have utterly stopped, and it blows in the wind like dust from my gaming bones.

Do you miss an old game?  Do you insist you have quit a game, or stopped subscribing to it?... Let us know what it is in the comments below!

I'll never pay to play an MMO again...

That is a bold statement, as a player with a major elitist streak in my past, many years in vanilla WoW and later versions, running guilds, running corporations in Eve and having some damn fun whilst doing it, how can I sit here in 2015 with tall that in my past and say I'm not going to pay to play an MMO again?

Well, Russia is one source, with games of the quality (damn high) and quantity of WarThunder, World of Tanks and other titles it's hard to say why to buy into the idea of paying subscriptions.

More traditional MMO's like Lord of the Rings, you can access that game free, but pay for content, and if you've paid for content you then still get access to it when you stop paying...

World of Warcraft has the opposite model to this the moment you stop paying they cut you off, your dealer cuts you off, and you loose that world, and to some extent you loose yourself, because in these MMO's we, as players, invest a little of ourselves in those character, they are us as we walk and live those virtual lands after all.

So, to be cut off from them leaves us wondering, leaves us missing them... But that pull, in the current economy is not enough to make me want to pay.

It's not essentially Sophies Choice is it... Sub to play a game, or eat better food... I know as a bit of a fattie, I'm picking the food, and so that leaves me playing free to play games.

Dungeons and Dragons Online has graced these pages 5 years ago, though not as good as Wow it was there, LOTRO also, there are others I've tried.

So, if Blizzard come out with a new game "Titan", whatever that maybe, what would I do?... Well, the first thing is read all about it, but all that time I'd not be thinking "yes yes yes"... I'd be thinking "how much how much"... and if it's more than a dollar, I'm out of there, I'm not paying £29.99 for a title then £10 a month any more, ever.

Is this a sign of the times?... I suppose it's a sign of my maturing, and choosing to spend my time more carefully, as I've gotten older the amount of time I have to play has lessened.  So, if I get an hour a night, that's 7 hours a week, that's then what 28 hours a month... so just over a day... If I'm paying a £10 monthly subscription, those companies have to run their servers 24/7 I get that, but I'm paying £10 for 1 day... That's expensive.

The counter argument is "play more", playing every day that's 33p ish a day... That's cheap, but who as an adult, as a real person, with a real life who has time to play every day?... Every hour of every day even for some titles to achieve what you need to as a top notch achiever?... Not me...

Students maybe, people with that ability to run on 2 hours of sleep... But not me, not a middle aged man.

What shocks me about this whole feeling I have is that, I'm actually at a time in my life where I could spend on games, but I don't want to, the price per play time does not stack up, free is much more liberating and I never have that niggling feeling that; if I put that title down for a week, I'm loosing out; for free, I can't loose out... And the title itself can't, though it has to run 24/7 server power and time is very cheap now, more so than 15 years ago when I became an online player.

And that server time and cost for the publisher can be offset by premium or shop offered items in the game.... This i believe is where AAA MMO titles now have to go.

Five years ago, I'd have had the opposite opinion, if I went back and asked myself, even in the pages of this very blog I've said that, but I have to say now the opposite is in my mind.  I want to play for free and spend maybe a little now-and-then on top-up items.

Where does this leave the next generation of MMO's for me...

It leaves me hoping, maybe in vein, that they are free to play.

Elite Dangerous - Longevity

I've said many things about Elite Dangerous on these pages, and I keep going on about it, so I have to admit I'm interested.  I'm not happy about being interested, but one just has to watch the game being played or even see screen shots and you're instantly engaged.

As an old Elite hand and a Frontier Fervent Fanatic I have a series of expectations about the game, and in comparison to Eve-Online I had to admit the idea of paying once and not being a subscriber appeals.

One of the main problems I had with a subscription is that as a married man, working and trying to live life, the amount of game time I get is quite limited.  In a week I might only get to play an hour or two, so paying to subscribe to a game for the other 166 hours that week annoys me, it is just such a waste.

I however do understand why companies need to fund their service, they need to pay the developers yes, but they also need to pay to keep the lights on, and server bandwidth is not free.  It is cheap, but it's not free, energy is very costly also.

So, they're running their game server and you're paying.

However, this isn't the funding model Frontier Developments have seemingly declared for their title, they've stated that you will pay once for the title and play there after.

The multi-player information then does state that the connectivity will be a mix of peer-to-peer and server infrastructure, this makes sense as all the dynamic market elements and what players know as "Open Play" must have some short of server back-bone, despite what some players would lead you to believe.

My question to Frontier Developments, and I have posted this off to them, has been "How in the long run do they plan on funding the server", essentially I ask because the kick-starter funding literally funds the development to a point, and the amount funded is not huge.

One pays for the game also at purchase, either now for £50 in BETA or later for £39.99 (estimated), but that's it?

I can not really understand how a server is going to be funded without some sort of revenue, players will stop joining, sales will plateaux and fall.... So, might more micro-transactions appear?... Just as there are currently skins for sale?... Might a subscription be introduced for "Open Play"... Perhaps the game falls down to Single Player only, or Group play only?...

Personally I miss my adventures hosting the Frontier Club, where peeps sent in their disks with saved games, I copied them back to everyone else's disks and mailed them back... Good fun.