MMORPG is not for Me

Here's what I learned this week:

I don't like MMORPGs. 

I tried Final Fantasy, Elder Scrolls Online and Runescape. I watched YouTube videos recommending the best MMORPGs for beginners. It became clear that one has to invest hundreds of hours in learning and gaining XPs before you get to anything interesting. I couldn't stick with any one of them long enough to feel like I could review them. 

             Thirty minutes into Runescape, you're still only interacting with NPCs.

My son talked about "grinding" to gain levels. Grinding! Don't we have enough grinding at work? Our games have to become work, too? No, thank you!

Ten years ago, I played Second Life, but it doesn't really count as RPG, though you can certainly find friends to role play with. They had a sweet Star Trek Federation role play. The first time I played Cards Against Humanity was on Second Life. You could find carnival sims with games to play. I bring it up becuase I liked the social aspect and thought I would like an MMORPG for the same connection. 

I invested more time in Wizard101 this week. I also played Magicabin, a game for Android that Google Play had in the MMORPG category, but if it is MMO, again, you must have to put in hours and hours of play before getting to any player interactions.

In Wizard101 I was able to play with a friend and enjoy the social interaction. For the most part, we were questing in parallel, but we did have opportunities to fight together. My friend, Isaac Lifebringer,  was playing an alt that was not as experienced as my Eurydice Dragonpetal, but he did catch up to me. It was really helpful to be playing with someone who could heal me if necessary, help me find Manna when I was about to die, and generally provide advice. I definitely enjoyed the play more when sharing it with my friend (we were on a phone call together to coordinate).

Isaac Lifebringer and Eurydice Dragonpetal completing the Wizard101 Firecat Alley Quest.

As you gain experience, you level up and get more energy, more health and more Manna. You also pick up more spells when you reach milestone levels. Spells are cards, similar to Pokemon cards that you choose to play. Battles were a lot like Pokemon The Card Game. I struggled with reading the small text and the time limit for selecting a card, just as I do when playing Pokemon. My vision is corrected with glasses, but it's still hard to read the small text. 

Isaac Lifebringer successfully casting a spell. 

When battling enemies together, you can coordinate who will fight which opponent by using the colors and symbols that appear on the glyph. In the picture above, You can see that Isaac Lifebringer is playing at the sun symbol. Eurydice Dragonpetal was playing at the eye symbol. When choosing the spell to cast, you can tell which enemy will be struck by the colored column of light surrounding them and you can choose to attack a different opponent. The animations for the battles are really impressive. 

There's definitely more to explore in this game. There are pets and clothing shops and wand merchants and you can get amazing gear from fishing. Isaac Lifebringer caught a chest containing the cloud mount in another player's home which allowed him to zip around the map. These are aspects I think I will enjoy learning about when I am on Spring Break (from work, not UNC-G). 

My frustration with all the MMORPGs is that the big sense of satisfaction that you get from defeating the big bad is months away, rather than another game that might be 30 hours to complete. I feel like the quests in Wizard101 were meaningful, and manageable in a reasonable amount of time. I did not feel that with the other MMORPGs that I tried. Despite the quests being meaningful on their own, there are so many of them that they can go on forever. Depending on your play style that could be a benefit or a detriment. 

I felt like I really needed to do a new game as well and after a lot of trials, I came upon Magicabin. Magicabin was advertised to be an MMORPG, but it seemed to me to be a single player experience. The story is that Ruby's parents disappeared when she was very young. The only thing she remembers is that her father was a powerful wizard. 

One day an owl brings her a letter from her Dad.

She sets off to find her home. There's lots of meaningless clicking on obstacles to make them go away. The game tells you every move that you need to make. Normally those would be signs of a tutorial, but a tutorial should not last that long, especially when it holds your hand so tightly. The tutorial sections of Runescape and Wizard101 do a better job of integrating the tutorial into gameplay. Conflict is introduced when a couple shows up to claim that they now own the abandoned property. This sets Ruby off on a quest to locate the magical fairies that protect the property from being abandoned. Again, there is a lot of meaningless and boring clicking. After locating one of the fairies, we get our first advertisement. There is no ad-free version available for purchase. 

A note about ads on Android. You can't get out of them! If you click on the X to close the ad, you go to Google Play Store listing for the game being advertised. 

I do not recommend Magicabin. It's even more insipid than those games where the mother and baby are freezing in a dilapidated shack.

I'm going back to playing Clue and Queen on my Android. And NYT Puzzles.