Are you experiencing lag? Click here to make it go away. [hide]
Five Things I Hate About MMORPGs
From World to Warcraft to games that have reached insurmountable levels of shitty like Runescape, the internet is flooded with MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games for those of you who have been living in Alabama for the past 10 years). And I can't stand it anymore.
MMORPGs emerged as a subgenre of RPGs (role-playing games); of which I'm fanatical. There are a few distinguishing characteristics between MMORPGs and RPGs.
1. You have to play with other people.
It's one thing to encourage online play; it's another to make it mandatory. As an antisocial, reclusive computer nerd, I'd like to pose a question to the game industry: What possessed you morons to believe people will pay money to be forced to deal with other people?! You could at least give us the option of a "Single Player" or "Story" mode.
I'm not just bitching for no reason, either. If you've ever played MMORPGs before, you should be all too familiar with the horror we call, "the newbies."
Not only are the newbies super-annoying, but nobody ever steps into help the newbies out, so they end up wandering aimlessly asking questions to every person they meet until they give up on the game and play something fun. Which brings me into my next point:
2. You have to pay money to keep paying money.
World of Warcraft costs $20 at the game store. On top of that, it's $15 per month to play the damned game. What if we want to skip the initial $20 and download the trial (but still pay the $15 per month to play the game)?
Tough shit!
You need a CD key to play the game (even though you're also paying $15 per month for a game that uses BitTorrent to distribute the game patches because they don't want to waste their precious bandwidth).
3. You always seem too weak.
So you've forked over $35 to play the game, and the first thing you notice is that you're an insignificant weakling.
If you wander an extra 200 pixels to the right, you get raped by a green drop of slime. Better stick with the red slimes unless your social elitism offers you a party to join.
And no matter how much time you spend on leveling up and developing your character, once you enter the PVP area you get destroyed. What a bore.
4. You never accomplish anything.
Every enemy respawns. As a direct result of this, you can never accomplish anything. Oh, sure, you get that Quest EXP and move on to complete more trivial tasks. But do you really have an impact at all?
In a single-player RPG, killing a boss (usually) means they're dead for the rest of the game. In a MMORPG, there is no point to anything because nothing ever changes. Go ahead and kill that Level 22 boss all you want-- he'll just pop right back up in 5 minutes for someone else to kill him and claim that quest reward.
5. There are too many cheaters.
As if MMORPGs didn't suck bad enough, you will inevitably run into people who decide to piss money away on a game and then allow a computer program play the fucking game for them. As a result, you always lose out because they mine, smelt, and sell things while they sleep and can afford lavish, expensive equipment while you're stuck with your rags and your rusty dagger.
There you have it. I play single player RPGs almost exclusively. (I also play multi-player first-person shooters when I have friends over.) If I wanted to get immersed in a large, complex social environment, I would go to pep rallies and wear designer jeans. MMORPGs are a waste of time and money. Fuck MMORPGs!
10 people online.
Got some feedback, comments, suggestions, or want to call me an asshole? Send it to kobrasrealm@gmail.com.
