I went into Gamestop (Boo!) to simply buy the Final Fantasy 1 and 2 combo for the GBA when one of their workers more or less forced me to buy WoW instead. I didn't want to get wrapped up in another online game with an increasingly hefty monthly fee so I was reluctant, but I did enjoy the RTS series and the lore so I decided to give it a try.
Let me just say that I only played Everquest briefly and did not enjoy my time there. I considered myself an Ultima guy and the whole 3D look of the world threw me off with its terrible pixelation and hilariously bad character art. The concept of “fetch quests” and “kill X amount of X” was pretty new to me, and the quests seemed well thought out and connected to the world. I had an insane amount of fun with the game and played for many years off and on. I even convinced my now fiancee to play it and she joined me for many a quest.
The graphics had charm, the gameplay was solid, and the community was vast for better or worse. The accusation is thrown around a lot, but it really did take ideas from other games and polished the hell out of them. I've never enjoyed a by the numbers theme park MMO like I did World of Warcraft. I'm still on the fence about buying the Mists expansion though, as I'm not sure I have any Azeroth left in me at this point.
As for my promise, it doesn't count as an MMO purchase if its just an expansion, right?!
I hung up my adventuring boots for good when I lost my interest in WoW. Sure, others have come and gone. I've played everything from the cheapest of indie games to the then unheard of free to play Asian titles, all the way to almost every big budget release that has been put out. I've enjoyed the atmosphere but I've never been hooked like I was in my younger days.
And then the realization hit me that I am getting older, and all this time I thought I was searching for the next big thing when in reality I was trying to reclaim the nostalgia of a time when this was all new to me. They make improvements in the industry every so often, like the Old Republics story or Tera's fast paced combat. But there is always something out of whack or disjointed that I used to believe was because the developers weren't trying hard enough and it wasn't as good as it used to be.
It will never be as good as it used to be.
No amount of changes will give me the same feelings of joy I had when I was a teenager, sailing across the waters of Sosaria with my guild as a horizon of new experiences waited before us. I'll never have the same kind of smile as I did the first time I saw my first Jedi on Tatooine. Dungeon runs will never be as sweet as they were the first time I took my darling into the Deadmines and tried to teach her how to take down Van Cleef.
Enjoy what you have, gamers. Look for the beauty in it and cherish the good stuff, because it will eventually end and you'll find yourself a bitter junkie looking for that one last great fix that does not exist.
As for me, I'll pick up my blade one more time on August 28th. I'd like to think that this will be the one to recapture the magic, but if not, I hope to at least shed a little blood on my way out of this crazy lifestyle we call MMORPG gaming.
After all, a promise is a promise.
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