The Daily Grind: Keep fishing or cut bait?
Filed under: New titles, Opinion, The Daily Grind
A new MMO comes out. You've read the reviews, Watched the promo videos. Changed your desktop to show the buxom model on their cover art. Subscribed to the newsletter. Read all the developer interviews. Attended the chats! Participated in the lively banter between the lead designer and the people of a well known community forum! You've made your own guild before you even got to play the game! You pre-ordered the special collector's edition, and the game's theme music is on continual repeat on your iPod!The fateful day comes, you install the game and ... well, it's a decent enough game, but it just isn't what you expected. You play it for a few days, and then start wishing you hadn't given away all your gold and sharded your epics in your old game. And maybe you suddenly regret telling the raid leader just exactly, precisely what you thought of him. So do you stick with the new game? Or return to the old? How long do you give a new game to grab you before you erase it from your hard drive, put the disks on the shelf, and call it a decent effort but just not the game you wanted to play? Just the free month? Until you reach the max level? Or just fifteen minutes perhaps?
The Empyrean Age is born in fire
Funcom announces names for early access servers
ION 08: John Smedley keynote shows off Free Realms and The Agency
Vivendi leaks a possible Wrath of the Lich King release date
SOE's The Agency and Free Realms will offer RMT services
MMOG Podcast Roundup: May 9th - May 16th
Massively goes to Seattle: A wrap-up of ION 2008
Player vs. Everything: Game-hopping like a madman
Ask Massively: Age of Conan survival guide (for your computer)
ION 08: Taking an MMO community from pre-launch to live
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-09-2008 @ 9:51AM
GRT said...
Generally, the free month. But I don't uninstall it. I leave it installed for the inevitable free period that they offer old subscribers once they get the game working closer to what they promised.
Reply
5-09-2008 @ 10:34AM
koehler83 said...
Well LOTRO sucked me in long enough to actually choose to pay for a 3 month subscription after the 7 day free demo. It didnt do enough to make me decide to continue paying after that. It wasnt hard getting my 3 months out of it though.
I wouldn't have kept FFXI after only a week.. but after a month it hooked me for 4 years.
So I guess if you still have my attention after a month, its gonna be a long haul.
Reply
5-09-2008 @ 11:11AM
Theadrick said...
In some cases I drop it after 30 minutes or so (Asheron's Call 2), and in some cases it may suck me in for awhile longer:
DAoC (coming from EQ) kept me playing for around 6 months before I went back to EQ.
LoTR about 2 months during beta, after which point I went back to WoW.
EQ2 a week or so.
So far I have spent most of my MMORPG time in EQ1 (from '99 to '04) and WoW from 04 to present.
I am currently in the Mythos beta and enjoying that, and am going to wait a month or so to try AoC.
Reply
5-09-2008 @ 12:47PM
Leshrac said...
Theadrick - our MMOG track records are very similar; I too was an EQ1 junkie, and then later a WoW fanatic, and I also tried EQ2 and LotRO with mixed results.
I've learned to never say never when it comes to MMOGs. I see all of these people come to my guilds message board(s) to say "goodbye", I never say goodbye since I'm not always 100% sure that I'll leave the game for good. I've tried and re-tried EQ2, LotRO, EVE, AC1, AC2, Lineage 2, Tab Rasa, SWG, etc, many, many, many times.
For me these games (MMOGs) are living, breathing and evolving worlds, they can and will change over time. So, what I experienced last year may be different from what they offer today, or so I tell myself, which is why I re-sub and re-sub again to old games expecting different results.
5-09-2008 @ 11:58AM
Lemmo said...
Sometimes there's a feeling of betrayal that comes with it. Like when you back they hype engine of what could be a great game, and it just falls short, you're kinda jilted because it means you bought into their marketing, not their product.
Reply
5-09-2008 @ 12:48PM
Leshrac said...
Yep, which was me with Hellgate:London - man, did I promote that game heavily. And I really felt betrayed.
5-09-2008 @ 2:09PM
Bob said...
yeah I was one who heavily supported hellgate as well, and really gave the developers a LOT of slack. Once I got shafted and was denied the second place in the launch halloween video contest just because I asked a couple questions on the forums....
and the weeks of drivel that followed...
I left, and I will never look back at them.
you still owe me prizes for second place in the video contest flagship! Damn you!
Reply
5-09-2008 @ 5:09PM
mietha CAG said...
Well, let's see, since I started played EQ I have tried EQ2, SWG, AO (the best besides EQ, btw), WoW Beta (FAR better than live), WoW, Dungeon Runners, Kingdom of Loathing, EQOA Beta, LOTRO Beta, Auto Assault beta, FFXI beta, City of Heroes, and probably some more I'm not thinking of at the moment. Went back to EQ last month after an almost 5 year layoff. It is STILL the best MMO. I honestly don't think anything will ever surpass it, and long as they keep updating it.
Reply
5-09-2008 @ 5:44PM
Brenda Holloway said...
I restarted on EQ1 as well, after going through WoW and EQ2 (I still play EQ2). I don't know what it is about EQ1... but I suspect it's just first game syndrome; you always look back at the first MMO you really got into with fond memories.
Reply