Recently, I finally started to hammer out the details of what could be called a gaming system. Before I can talk about gaming or gaming systems, it would help to see where I have been. Since, I have chosen the PC MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game) to be the platform for this system, I will start with my experience of free MMOs.
It was many years ago that I started playing MMOs (actually started with Guild Wars, but I am saving that for another time). It was only after Guild Wars that I went in search of free MMO games. I learned of them by chance through an ad for Maple Story. I had not played MMOs before this time for a few reasons. The first being an internet connection (we did not always have one), the second was money for monthly payments, and the third was how addicting I knew they would be. After getting my own place, computer and connection though I tested the waters.
Maple Story was probably not the best choice to start with in the free MMO world. I came to it with open curiosity and an open mind. The fact that it was a 2D platformer never bothered me. Everything else unfortunately did. From troll encounters to gaming issues, I simply stopped playing. To go into more detail I would need more than just this one paragraph, therefore, I will discuss it at length in the next post.
After a month or so of Maple Story I searched again for other games. I learned about Flyff or Fly for Fun very early and gave that a try. My experience with Flyff was much better than the former. The game mechanics were solid and the player base was friendlier and helpful to some extent. This game was also well established, so there were many quests and few balance issues. It was also quite fun to be able to fly around the game freely (after getting to level 20). I had the greatest luck with a mage that I steadily trained to be an elementer, but I never got further than level 50. This is where the game started to lose my interest. It simply took to long to level at this point and the grind has always been rather dull even in the beginning levels. What’s more, the quests had little variation and the dungeons felt pointless other than item farming or quest experience (of which you often needed help). Overall, the greatness of the class system could not make up for all the other dull features, even flying.
Soon after I found another game: 9Dragons. I was in heaven for many weeks. 9Dragons introduced a good deal of unique and interesting features that truly inspired me. The first was its level system. You gained chengs much in the way you gain levels, but every 12 cheng you needed to re-align your chi in a clever little mini-game. Now that is some thing I doubt I’ll ever see again, anytime soon. After re-aligning your chi you would ascend to the next level, such as from losing self to gathering chi. The down side was it became challenging to compare levels.
Another unique feature was the training of new abilities. You had to go to a specific training ground depending on what kind of skill it was; for instance, you could only train chi kung abilities at a chi kung training ground. Once there another mini-game pops up, and you must win it in order to use the ability freely. The down side to this was the skill leveling that was to follow. To max out almost any ability it literally took hours of fighting or just standing there training it. I would leave the game on as I did various other things letting my avatar train healing skills or buffing skills. It became tiresome very quickly.
The last interesting feature was the clan and map systems of 9Dragons. There were 6 beginning clans that you could chose from. Each had essentially the same 4 class types, but each clan had different codes of honor and ethics. Each clan also had its own starting area. What followed was unique map setup. The 3 ‘good’ clans shared a map following the starting area and the 3 ‘evil’ clans had theirs. Only by reaching the fourth map, could all the clans be found in one area. The downside here was that the clan conflict was more about good versus evil than anything else. The final let down was another very slow leveling system. Furthermore, the game was in beta at the time, so quests ran out quickly.
After I tired of 9Dragons (after 3 characters, the furthest at 3 Chengs short of Five Dragons) I found its supposed copycat: Silkroad. My experience with Silkroad was short and mixed. Its graphics were stunning, and the ‘character selection’ was interesting. It was nice to see a semi classless system that was not determined by character (as far as I know). You could even choose your starting armor (light, medium, or heavy). The game did take some time to adapt to and sometimes I was wondering what to do next. Questing was straightforward and the battle system was somewhat enjoyable. In the end it was the bots that did the whole thing in. I did not even wait around long enough to try out the job system of trader, mercenary and bandit.
Oh the bots, not the dreaded bots. A plague on all MMOs. Here was my first discovery of such abominations. Silkroad had probably the worst bot infestation that I will ever encounter. Furthermore, I think I know why the bots were so bad there. Bots are basically players on autopilot. What is worse is that people use more than one of them. You can sometimes see a string of bots that look exactly the same moving along the same path, doing the same actions. So in game, my competition for kills was not with other players but with bots, lots and lots of bots. The skill system was horribly designed; if you gained leveled too quickly you would eventually not have enough skill points to learn the abilities you needed to survive in the higher levels. There was a solution, but it was a monstrous time consuming task. It involved a bow, a few key abilities and a weeks worth of constant build up. Not for level, but for ability points. Many people don’t have that kind of dedication so early in a game; therefore, they would use bots in stead to train their characters for them.
I played a few other games as time went on. I can recall playing 2Moons, Trickster and Shaiya (I would go into detail, but I have already said enough for now) before finding a diamond in the ruff: Perfect World. Perfect World is the best free MMO that I have come across to date, and it is also the last in the list of MMOs that I have played. As this post is already becoming longer than I expected it would be, I will leave it for another day. Until then, enjoy the tidbits below.
Random Encounter: Trolls
I have had many random encounters in the past weeks, but I chose to start the bestiary off with trolls. Since the internet is my life, I thought this choice rather fitting. Trolls are usually found under a bridge or ‘where two places are linked.’ The internet is nothing more or less then a long series of interconnected places, giving trolls innumerable bridges to crawl under. Although, their favorite places are chat rooms and forums. I’m sure by now everyone who has ever surfed the web has encountered a troll at least once, but never realized it. The funny thing is trolls often do not know what they are; this is one good way of identifying them. Another way to identify them is to bait them with key words like ‘boobs’ or phrases like ‘you suck’ and ‘your mom.’ Finally, there are trolls that act like them (semi trolls), those that try to act like them (baby trolls) and others that act in a manner similar to them (female trolls).
Trolls, in my early experience, were usually bad news and left me grumpy as they have a natural ability to spread hate and annoyance. There are a limited number of ways to deal with them: you can ignore them, leave, outwit them, or call on a mod or moderator to banish them. Most solutions to this problem involve tolerance which I have slowly built up over the years. Outwitting is usually my favorite option, other times I ignore them and leave them in the hands of others. Regardless this problem with never go away as long as there are bridges for them to hide under.
More detailed information on the different trolls and their abilities can be found in the Bestiary. (Disclaimer: Most of my random encounters are actually going to do little to help me in ‘leveling up.’ Some of the bestiary entries will be just for fun.)
Status Page Update
I made a few changes to the status page today. The first change may seem small but is major for me. Just the other day I was reassessing my professionalism. It turns out I didn’t know exactly what I meant by ‘professional’ when I first qualified it as an attribute. Professionalism, for my purposes, mostly meant how good I was at spelling, grammar, and editing. I suck at spelling, and no matter how hard I try I can never seem to improve. I always spell their ‘thier’ and writing ‘writting’. I know they are spelled wrong, but my fingers still put down what they are use to. Consequently, that is what really made my professionalism so poor. I’m fair or better in grammar and my editing is around there as well.
I decided to expand professionalism to include certain people skills: talking to strangers, talking on the phone, negotiating salary, and interviewing. I should also include overall appearance. The reason I include these is that I can do well in most of them but my heart is usually pounding 50 miles an hour. Once an introvert always an introvert, I guess. I can start a conversation with strangers, excel in customer service, and even talk on the phone well. I just can’t do as well outside of a work environment. I avoid the phone at home, shy away from neighbors (hence the reason I find being called Shy fitting) and dread ever getting another job in the service industry. This is all very bad if I want to be self employed. Thus, I have updated my professionalism to fair, even though some qualities in there are very poor indeed.
Two other small things to note are a new weapon: Red FAU Novelty Pen, and a new ability: doodling. I chose doodling because I have done more of that in the last 10 years than drawing. I even have a scrapbook full of my better doodles.
