Demonstrating my typical innate ability to identify popular trends, and then jump completely the wrong way, (and months late at that!) just when what seems to be most of the MMO-o-Sphere is busy unsubscribing from Age of Conan in disgust, and then writing lengthy posts on how bad it is to warn others, I've signed up!
Its a long story, some of which is to do with a coincidental burn-out and unsubsciption of my own, with Tabula Rasa, noted previously. Some of it is to do with my own ongoing psychosis. I think I'm close to inviting a new one of those, by the way; a compulsive necessity to play every MMO and see every made up MMO world. (Yet to come up with a snappy name for it, but do chip in below; [Something]omania.)
Some of it is pure curiosity; its not that I don't believe all these other blogfolk, you understand, but many of the observations are couched in such witty ways (Inadvertently, or on purpose), that I start to feel I'm missing out on the joke somewhat, without the underlying common frame of reference.
Some of it is just that I now only have two MMOs on the go, and need something to fill my time. I mean I've always got that Cure for Cancer on the back-burner, of course, but...meh...
Mostly though, its to do with a very fundamental reason, which I'll come to in a moment.
First, some first impressions, as I only get to do these once! Here's a peek inside the nebulous ramshackle greyness that makes up my subconscious, raw and unedited:
- Why can't I pick DirectX10? I bought this graphics card and a Vista PC specifically for that!
- Patchey patchey patchey patchey...I hear they're down to one a week now! Practically polished!
- Why do I have to press escape six times to reach the login screen?
- The choice of skin tone is hard to see in the shifting moody lighting of this slave galley.
- Its a cloth caster class, that gets massive two-handed swords! That can't possibly work. That's the one for me!
- This business with the shields and arrows is neat, but god knows how I'm going to micromanage my own shields. Best just set them to One Each and hope for the best!
- Spectacular Jungle.
- Demons? I'm only level four!
- Awesome! I'm sometimes a Demon too! Hot Demon on Demon Action!
- Nobody look at me when Demon form ends! Not until I've swapped a hat on and off anyway... my hair is gone!
- Woah...hello lag, my old friend...
- Friendslist sorted - I know I can't beat them to the city; they've played before. But I can win the Pict Nosebone Challenge!
- Just how abusive can I be in these quest chats without actually failing them?
- Civilisation at last!
- Level 6 - still no two handed edged weapon drop. Fear The Oar of DOOM!
- Pict Nosebone Challenge was a draw. I'll get you next time!
- This is ridiculous. I'm a messenger of demonic outer darkness, or something, and now wielding a Pickaxe of DOOM!
- Whaaaaaat!? You can't call it that, even if it is a whorehouse!
- Must look into timeshare villa opportunities in White Sands. Magnificent design.
- Different world, same quotas of monster gunk required.
- Outstanding! Dance Combos!
- Crazy. There's more bags of unlooted treasure here than there are monsters! And just where do I buy more bags?
- Just seen a practical demonstration of why one should be very careful at the top of a climbing wall. Nice splat!
- Groupwork a bit confusing. Am I a tank or a nuker?
- Dead again. I'm glad they're so patient with noobs.
- Getting the hang of groups now. Herald of Xanadu seems to be best as 'off-tank' of sorts, up close, but not aggro.
- Argh! Why....won't...the...snakes....stop...spawning! Tied of these mother*%*&£ing snakes in this mother*^%&ing garden!
- Wish the textures would make their resolution mind up.
- At last! A two handed scimitar, that's bigger than I am!
- Hmm. Another two handed scimitar. I have no idea what any of these stats mean.
- Ewww! Bloodspaltter on the screen! Neat! Fear the Huge Scimitar of DOOM!
- Interesting. I've had this party-wide buff for the last half hour without noticing it. How to tell the rest of the group?
- Ah, I recognise this vast array of unknown skills I have to allocate hundreds of points into, permanently, without the faintest clue what I'm doing. This'll be a Funcom game then, yes?
- Hey! It's the WoW Talent Trees! Click randomly until the points have all gone away ftw!
- I hope there are respecs.
- My character seems to get an inappropriate amount of sexual pleasure from Picking Up Objects. Need to keep an eye on that. Could be trouble later on.
- I see that none of us rolled a Healer, AGAIN...
- Apparently, the work-around for the 'Falling through bridges and stairs' bug, is to relog. Not impressed.
- Terribly impressed! Logged out, forced to patch, gone for several minutes, and I'm still in the group when I get back. Gold star! Wish Tabula Rasa did that. AoC also has Mentoring, another other reason I dumped TR.
- The others have gone to bed. Lightweights. Time to try this nighttime solo stuff...
All in all, a rather hectic and confusing few hours, but I must admit, I've come to miss that; the utter bewilderment of one's first steps in a new MMO. Its mitigated a bit in my case; I've played so many, and many of the basics are quite similar in all MMOs.
Overall, it didn't send me away screaming, so I'll give it a go, and see again at the end of the freebie month. Quite liking it so far though, although I'm cynical enough to recognise a Honeymoon Period when I experience one. Mind you, its nice to have one to experience at all, whatever horrors may lie ahead in the coming weeks and months.
Regular readers may know that I have occasionally dabbled in the "MMORPG" once or twice in the past, so I am quite aware of many of the things that seem to be provoking so much interweb outrage over the title at present, and perhaps in other circumstances, I might have just walked on by, grabbed LOTRO or Vanguard instead perhaps, but this time its different. The principle of the earlier reasons for me flaunting the advice of the internet, and perhaps even my own better judgement, is that within minutes of even starting into the jungle after the shipwreck, I was sharing my experiences with existing friends. We're playing it together. The good, the bad and the ugly; I've got friends to celebrate and/or grumble about it with, and that makes up for a great many cold and mechanical game design and implementation sins. We may indeed, all decide that its rubbish at some point and leave for pastures new, or all settle in for the long haul.
Its such an obvious realisation, I suppose, but for me, a great deal of my MMO life has been conducted alone and in solitude. With the ongoing Tuesday N00b Club in Guild Wars, I'm starting to painfully unlearn those harsh lessons I was taught on Rallos Zek, all those years ago, which were then reinforced by my own continual and repeated severing of all ties within a game I've gotten bored of.
So when one of that aforementioned N00b Club, the same duoing companion who'd stuck by me and humoured me so long in Tabula Rasa, recommended AoC, I felt it was only fair to return the favour. Another of that illustrious company then made the sacrifice of starting a newbie alt on our server so they could come along on the journey too.
That is the real reason I'm playing AoC now - because my friend asked me to; nothing more high-brow, academic or calculating than that. If the game itself turns out to be fun and enjoyable in its own right, that'll be a bonus too! And if its not, well, its all material for the blog...