Games

A bunch of my friends are playing the Warhammer MMO now. They want me to join in, and I'm kind of interested, but I'm not sure. Let's recap our collective gaming experiences. I'll use Steve as my example, since he tends to be the one who gets me to play games.

First off, we have Guild Wars. Steve (and everyone else at the time) got me interested in this. They hyped it up, and when I got to play in those first few beta events, it lived up to their hype. I loved it. I still love it, even if I have trouble finding time to play it.

Anyway, we had a guild, with a guild hall, and we played just about every night. It was great. Then everybody except me quit playing. I kept on, found a new guild, and 3 years later a couple of the guys started playing again, then promptly quit again.

Next up was Wow. Everybody but me started playing. They burned out a few times, at different times, and now I think that only Cid and Derek are still playing it.

Fast forward a few years to TF2. Again, Steve gets me interested, and the game blows me away. I have a whole new circle of online friends because of this game. Possibly my favourite game of all time (except for Chrono Trigger, perhaps).

Steve seems to have quit playing it in favour of Call of Duty 4. Also an incredibly good game, but TF2 is just more fun for me. Plus I can actually see my enemies, which I'm not sure is a failing of the Call of Duty series to make people recognizable in grey/brown uniforms against grey/brown backgrounds, or if I just suck. I think it's both.

Anyway, I bought CoD4 and have played it a few times, but if I'm going to play a shooter, I reach of TF2.

Anyway, a while back Age of Conan was all the rage amongst my circle of friends. A month later nobody was playing.

Moral of the story: My friends are fickle gamers. I know this. I can work around this as I have in the past.

This, however, brings me to my history with MMOs. The MMORPG can be an incredibly good genre. I assume. I haven't fund one worth sticking with yet. Guild Wars comes close, but it's not technically an MMO, because it doesn't have a persistent world. Or a monthly fee. Or idiots killing you when you just want to beat up some monsters.

Anyway, I have tried WoW (3 different 10-day trial accounts, total time played: about 3 days). I have tried City of Heroes/City of Villains (14-day trial account, the character creator was my favourite part). I have tried Lord of the Rings Online (14-day trial account, I loved this gamne but couldn't see myself paying monthly for it).

I don't know if I'm just cheap, or if the MMO business model is inherently broken to me, but I just can't justify paying money each month for the privilege of playing a game I already payed for. Especially when you have to buy the expansion packs to stay competitive, and still have to shell out $15 a month.

LOTRO was the closest I've come to paying for an MMO, and even it didn't take more than a few hours of deliberation. I doubt Warhammer will be the one to break me down, seeing how I love the LOTR universe (except the elves) and don't know anything about the Warhammer universe (aside from there being dwarves who build sentry guns).

So it looks like Warhammer actually has nothing going for it. If my friends follow their patterns, they'll quit playing in a month or two, and I'll have saved $65 (50 for the game, plus a month of subscription).

So yeah, I'll be playing TF2. See you guys in a month.

Why hello there

Making a post with Google Chrome.

I've been using this browser pretty much since it came out. Think that was back in August. Maybe? I forget. It's been a few weeks anyway.

Anyway, it's pretty nice. Things load fast, every site I go to seems to work. Only wish I could customize the tabs so that it always opens my home page instead of the default page it insists on giving me.

So yeah, Chrome. Nifty.

This post was 10 months in the making. So worth it.