Free 2 Play

Not long ago I mentioned I was a bit of an MMO lover, but in recent times I haven't been playing much.  This means I have never really been around for the whole 'free to play' MMO games in recent times.  While the business model seems to work, I don't particularly like the gameplay traps that most of the games seem to fall into.

A lot of the F2P games follow a very 'eastern' progression model (i.e. grinding), which I personally detest, but F2P extends on this by either emphasising the grind unless you pay to access areas that give better rewards or by providing the rewards themselves at a cost.  Even western games that are now F2P have a similar trap, with D&D online and Champions Online allowing you to pay for the better quests.

To be honest I think I prefer the 'unlimited trial' model of WoW and W:AR, where you can pretty much do everything any other character can up until a certain level, though not everyone will agree.

League of Legends is a F2P game that I am really enjoying though, perhaps because it is not an MMO and has  no real grind.  You can pay for new characters, skins, and minor abilities, or you can use earned points to purchase these items.  A real bonus to LoL is the continual cycling of the character roster however, so every now and then you will get a new list of characters to choose from (plus any you purchase) which means you are not stuck with crappy stock characters even if you play rarely or don't want to pay.  Since most of the 'power up' abilites can only be bought with the 'earned' points, and not cash, you never really feel cheated by not paying either.

But all in all, I have yet to find a F2P MMO that even comes close to interesting me the way subscription ones do, and it seems the majority of the subscription games that have turned F2P are the grind-y ones that I was never really interested in anyway.

Perhaps i am just getting old and MMO-hating rather than F2P hating, we'll see what ToR does for me :)

Social Communities

This is a bit of an introspective post about my own interaction with social, online and gaming communities.
I have always been fairly anti-social, and aside from a small group of close-knit friends I have never felt comfortable in social situations.
Since getting married and now the birth of my gorgeous baby girl I have become even more reclusive, and I think I need to kick myself into gear and do something about it.
Since I do have a bit of a problem with social interaction however, just getting out and meeting new people isn't really my thing, so I am thinking of expanding my online presence somewhat, which is just a little bit easier.

At a professional level I have started doing this a bit, with an increase in my Twitter and LinkedIn presence, and a marked increase in blogging. I would like to become more involved in PerthDotNet but as my wife works part time retail, Thursdays are out of the question for any sort of meet up.

The other area that I am thinking of using to increase my social interaction is through gaming communities. I have always been an MMO whore, from UO, EQ and DAOC in the early days, to SW:G, WoW, EQ2, DAOC, W:AR, and Eve Online more recently (yep, DAOC is there twice, i've been back to that game more than any other). Ironically though, despite being "MMO" games I have only ever had very limited interaction with the gaming community, with the majority of my time spent solo, or in the company of my RL friends. On the opposite scale, a close friend who has always suffered from social anxiety far worse than I ever did was really dedicated to the community in the MMOs we played.

The Eve community on Ars Technica was really the first time I had ever really tried to be part of a gaming community on my own. Unfortunately playing Eve with limited time commitments is an effort in futility, especially in a large 0.0 guild in a low population timezone. Whether I try and become more involved in Eve or pick up a new game such as SW:TOR, I really need to try and become a functional member of a community in the game otherwise I will end up continuing to be a hermit and end up back to where I am now.

Hopefully being part of both a professional and gaming community will help improve my communication and organisation skills, but mostly will get me back into interacting with people and becoming less of a hermit.

p.s. personal blogging is much harder than technical blogging...