Why Are Some New MMOs Terrible?

You’d think as time goes on and technology improves, newer MMOs would be…. better? I’m not talking about gameplay, as whether a game is good in terms of gameplay is completely subjective. I’m talking about a game’s graphics and mechanics. Just look at Mission Against Terror from Subagames which just launched in North America in September 2010. I hate to say this, but the game is absolute trash. You may be thinking – sure it released in North America in 2010, but it could have been available in Asia for much longer, much like Digimon Battle from WeMade Entertainment, Monster Forest from AsiaSoft, and Uncharted Waters Online from Netmarble. – but that’s not the case here. Mission Against Terror LAUNCHED in Asia in late 2009, making the game less than a year old.

That means Mission Against Terror is newer than Alliance of Valiant Arms from ijji, newer than Wolfteam from Softnyx, newer than Combat Arms from Nexon and much newer then S4 League from Alaplaya, but if you looked at the game you’d think it was at least 7 years old. Visually, the game stinks. Unfortunately, we like to pretend graphics don’t matter, but graphics do matter. How about in terms of gameplay? Wolfteam and Combat Arms each have 25+ weapons available in their item stores, Mission Against Terror has like 8. In terms of level designs, the game fails even more. The game’s developer – Kingsoft just COPIED, literally copied, the famous De_Dust2 map from Counter-Strike. I’m not suggesting that the two maps are similar, I’m saying there are identical – because they are. What about the game’s music? Sure, I didn’t go into the game expecting a splendid musical score like the ones I found in Ragnarok Online or Sword 2, but I expected something. To my surprise, the game literally stole the Pirates of the Caribbean main theme. It plays in the background randomly while you’re gaming. How shameless can you get?

Mission Against Terror, sadly, isn’t the only new game to disappoint. Avalon Heroes from Alaplaya also sucked. Erebus Travia Reborn and Fists of Fu from Outspark were both bad games too. I say bad because there are better alternatives to all of these games. Fists of Fu isn’t a terrible game by itself, but compared to very similar games like Dragonica Online from Gravity, Fists of Fu does suck. If Dragonica didn’t exist, Fists of Fu would be decent. I know this article was a bit negative and I’m not always so angry, but seriously – Mission Against Terror is such a bad game it hurts.

I’ll end this post with a bit more positive stuff. Company of Heroes Online from THQ is a blast. I played the game during its beta and really enjoyed it. If you never heard of it, it’s basically Company of Heroes (The retail PC game), except with more features. Yeah, they made it completely free to play and added more features. Craft of Gods recently went free to play and it’s a decent game too. I would never consider paying for it, since it’s a pay to play MMORPG gone free to play, it’s decent.

Back to S4 League and Combat Arms!

I tried getting into Eve Online the other day, but once again failed. This is like my fourth failure, as I’ve downloaded and installed the game four times now only to quit within a few days. Luckily I can try the MMORPG free trial every time, so it doesn’t cost any money. Luckily, every time I quit playing an MMORPG I can always go back to playing S4 League and Combat Arms. Two MMOFPS games that have been my “fall back” games for quite a while. Whenever I get bored of playing an game, I just go back to these two titles and I’m good to go. I’ve been playing these games for years and yet S4 League from Alaplaya and Combat Arms from Nexon keep me coming back for more. It doesn’t really make much sense, as you’d imagine an MMOFPS would get boring after a while, but it just never does. Of course I try new games as well, it’s just that when I quit playing the new MMOs I try, I can always go back to these games and have fun!

I remember going through like five random new MMORPGs in one day. I played Neo Online, Pet Forest, and Azuga: Age of Chaos from PlayOMG and unfortunately none of them kept my attention. I played them for a few hours each actually, so I gave them a fair chance. Then I jumped right into Luna Online from gPotato. I already had an account with them back when I used to play Rappelz, so trying Luna Online was convenient. Luna was a bit weird though. The game played off as a cute MMORPG, and the whole cuteness of it made the game feel awkward, as players were younger kids, but NPCs were adults. I dunno. I just felt I couldn’t connect with the world. Right after playing and quitting all of these games I jumped in MapleStory from Nexon, which is my third “fall back” MMORPG. A game that I feel I could play often without ever getting tired. MapleStory is my favorite side scrolling MMORPG by far and also my favorite 2D MMORPG. The game just has so much to do, it’s hard to get bored of it!

I honestly can’t answer why these games are entertaining, even after I’ve played them to death. Even after playing Atlantica Online from Ndoors for months, I was able to jump right into S4 League for some instant fun. The thing about MMOs that make them so fun, is that you can jump right into them. MMORPGs on the other hand, you need to grind for a while before you can get to the fun late game content which includes PvP and raiding. In PvP MMORPGs like Kingdom Heroes and Aika Online, you need to play for a month at least before you can experience the fun PvP content towards the mid-end game. So players do need to commit a lot of time to those games before they can get to the fun bits.

I’m sure some of you guys have your own “fall back” or “back up” MMOs / MMORPGs as well? Mine are S4 League, Combat arms and to a degree MapleStory. What are yours?

Social MMORPGs Are Ridiculous

I tried playing one of those social MMORPGs the other day. I think it was Secret Builders and the game was so bad it’s ridiculous. There are so many browser based MMORPGs out there with an emphasis on social interaction. Games like Littlest Pet Shop Online, Habbo and OurWorld for example play almost exactly like Secret Builders. Players simply walk around and, get this, chat. That’s it. All of these games rely on people interacting and chatting with each other. I mean, the game has a cool historic component to it, where you can learn history by completing quests, but I predict no one actually cares about this bit.

I can’t believe so many people play these games. When I played Secret Builders, the game was absolutely packed. Every single map in the game had players in it. Think about Secret Builders is, it’s not really a game. In 3D MMORPGs like Soul of the Ultimate Nation from ijji and Rappelz from gPotato, you can at least kill monsters and gain levels in standard MMORPG fashion. In these social MMORPGs though, the only thing you can really do is talk with others. Unfortunately, since these games are designed simply for chatting, most guys look for girls to talk, but these people don’t realize that there aren’t any girls on the internet, so they’re just wasting their time.

I wouldn’t mind these games so much if they had more things to do. At least social MMOs like Gaia Online and eRepublik have a purpose. Same with ShowUp from Snail Games. It’s a dancing MMO but with a social component – not a social MMO with a bunch of crappy flash games on the side. I guess on the positive side Secret Builders has a housing component to it same as OurWorld, which is a good way to stay busy, but I feel these games don’t offer enough to “do”. I gave both of these games a sincere attempt, but I couldn’t stay hooked on either. I’m not condemning these MMOs, as they do have larger playerbases, so people clearly see things in these social MMOs.

If you have any social MMOs – enlighten me. What am I missing? Why do you guys play these games?

MapleStory Got a Lot Better

I originally started played Nexon’s flagship MMORPG ‘MapleStory’ back in 2006 and played it for a good two months and quit after reaching level 40. Just last week I decided to re-download the game and give it another try. Naturally, I created a new character to try out one of the game’s many new classes. I decided to play as one of the new Cygnus Knight classes, more specifically the ‘Thunder Breaker’ class. All I can say is wow! Leveling up in MapleStory got A LOT easier. It only took me an hour to reach level 10 and I made it to level 30 in 4 days of casual playing! Back when I played the game in 2006 getting to level 30 took me over a month!

So what changed since I last played MapleStory? Well…. a lot did. Nexon has always been ‘well known’ for keeping their games up to date with content updates and patches. Nexon’s other titles – Mabinogi, Combat Arms and Dungeon Fighter Online have also enjoyed consistent updates. The last few ‘major’ updates to MapleStory ‘Cygnus Knights’ and ‘Aran’ really expanded the game though. The Cygnus Knights expansion added some 5 new classes to the game, each with multiple job advancements, as well as countless new ‘maps’ and quests. The Aran update was much smaller, but still added a good deal of content to the game. What really sped up the game’s experience gain since I last played was the countless new quests added to the game. The best part of these new quests were that many of them were ‘chain’ quests, so there was always something to do. To this point, I never had to ‘grind’ to gain experience as I would always have at least one active quest at any given time.

Anyway, I guess the point of this post is to point out that Nexon’s MapleStory is an awesome game that changed a lot since release. It’s not nearly as ‘grindy’ as it was when I first played. If you haven’t played it yet, definitely check it out. It’s a lot better than all the MapleStory clones out there (ie. WonderKing / LaTale / Wind Slayer).