Year-End Gamers Rant 2009

Goodbye to 2009!

This was not a gamers year unless you classify console-gaming as a hardcore gaming experience, I for one do not.

We started off our normal sugary goodness of WoW (World of Warcraft) expansion in “Wrath of the Lich King” which to most WoW players was a major let down. The same ole, same ole – grind 10 level, work on factions, gather badges, collect achievement points bull that has been running this game for the past 3 years. Blizzard has catered to the new players and removed all access quests and made this once interesting title into a never-ending quest to hmmm……nowhere, with guild life being made almost extinct unless you play casually and most raids being run as pick-up groups. Of course at Blizzcon, they didn’t fail to mention their exciting new expansion will change all that. “Cataclysm” is supposed to be the return to the beginnings of Vanilla WoW and make everything all better and all shiny and new, somehow I doubt that.

We also saw the end of Mystics “Warhammer” an unimpressive rendition of what could have been an excellent game. I realize that most games are hard to keep balanced in a PvP (Player versus Player) setting but this game worked overtime to insure that the Order annihilated the Destruction at every battle and when coupled with several bad patches made the game unplayable. Content patches were sketchy and nothing to keep you interested except running around looking for enemy to kill and terrible instances.

Hey Mystic Devs: Wake up! You have to have a viable enemy to keep any players aboard.

Then we come to SWG (Star Wars Galaxies), the game that just won’t die no matter how bad SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) tries to screw it up. This title was reduced to a handful of servers when Bioware announced their upcoming MMO, “Star Wars – The Old Republic”. It appears that the old fans of SWG (I count myself in this number) are thinking that maybe we can find a bit of what was lost when SOE had that massive brainfart we consider the NGE to have been. The thing I find most amazing about SWG is the largest server left in this once great game is Starsider, the one created for the roleplayers, because from its conception, you lived the experience, I think Sony forgot that part.

We also collectively saw the beginning and end of “Darkfall” or as we love to call it, “Darkfail”, this title offered gamers the ultimate pvp experience and delivered nothing but lag and an unplayable gaming experience.

In the second half of 2009, there were 2 titles released that offered something a bit different to the MMO Gamer – Fallen Earth is a true sandbox style game that has everything going against it – small independent backing, small title, relatively no lore to speak of and yet is still somewhat succeeding on its one server with excellent reviews behind it.

The other title is Aion released by NCSoft and considered game of the year in the Asian Markets. Aion has the backing, the lore and the opportunity to be a truly great game if you like grinding and grind is what you do. This scares me as games that have this much grind to get to end-game content, there is normally not much there when you achieve this remarkable feat. We will see…

2009 was not a banner year for MMOs, but there are titles on the horizon that might make 2010 better for us computer geeks that love the thrill of total immersion into online life; on my list of games to look for are TOR (Star Wars: The Old Republic), STO (Star Trek Online) and GA (Global Agenda) one thing all of these games have in common is a step away from Fantasy and a step up to SyFy – this has to be a step in the right direction.

Negativity is not my strong suit, but it is in my wardrobe - Momologic