Beware of Fhatt the Novice Scout!
So I finally got my trial copy of Star Wars Galaxies to work (just needed to install one other little program). I've been playing that off and on for about a day now and I'm stumped as to how MMORPG's have managed to work and capture an audience. True it's a great concept and should work, in theory. But then again Communism works in theory. So what has made this concept work?
Ok, so we all like to feel like we're connected to the rest of the world and that we can continue to be social creatures without ever having to leave our rooms, but does an MMORPG really do this? From what I've seen so far I'm gonna have to spend the majority of my 2 week free trial just leveling up in order to accomplish anything else. This progresses as follows: find small wood-land (or in my case sandy) creature, attack said creature, kill said critter, raid said creatures corpse for goods, repeat. Not a whole lot of excitement in this process after the first couple times through. And of course at the lower levels this is a slow process since you're weak (and prone to be killed by a giant beetle). Thankfully (or maybe not), the Star Wars universe doesn't contain that puzzling feature were wild bees or killer plants carry around loose change. Of course without the coinage that enemies normally drop in RPGs I have found no way to pay my instructor to teach me new skills (a necessity for leveling up). The only other way I've found to make money is to take on missions. Of course these missions have all repeatedly ended in me lying on my back after I've been knocked out by the latest hoard of vicious bunnies that were terrorizing the moisture farmers.
But back to the main problem at hand. Eventually you'll level up, and then you can join with others and really start to do things in groups. Explore new worlds, seek out new civilizations, the whole nine yards! But of course for me my computer is too slow to handle this. If I get within those 9 yards of a large settlement it can't handle it and starts to chop right up. But then again I'd rather not be in that city anyway because I have no real desire to socialize with these people anyway. With all that chatter going on I lose track of everything going on.
In the end I guess I can see the allure of MMORPGs. For some it is the dream of making your own adventure with your friends, who just might happen to be halfway around the world (although more likely just down the hall). But that's just not my cup of tea. I'm too social to sit around and waste my time killing little vermin over and over again. And even once that's over I'm not social enough to socialize with all the fellow players and join parties to go raid some village or whatnot. So if you happen to be playing Galaxies and see a dark-skinned, horned, loner Zabrak sitting out by a campsite outside Mos Eisley keep your distance. Otherwise I may be forced to engage you in a bloody battle to the death, which will invaritablly end in you looting what few possesions I have on my corpse.