Massively Multiplayer Online Games

Upon out of nowhere, I stumbled upon RIFT. Being a semi-huge MMO (RPG mostly) fan, I like to test around and try out new MMO out there. Let me talk about myself first about my gaming experience in the MMORPG category. It all started with Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds back when I was in high school. I started playing around the summer of 1999 I believe. The game still exists now, but I haven’t register for my account for a while. I usually re-register at least once every year for their anniversary event. I have also played other f2p MMO games, but not really fond of many of them. They got boring really quickly as well as hacks and bots all around. This is not to say p2p games don’t have such thing, but when someone pays for subscription they mostly will think twice before using such hacks since using them will cause their long effort in developing their characters into getting banned. I also played Final Fantasy XI Online since October 29^th, 2003. You can say that this is actually my birthday gift since the game went live on October 28^th, 2003 (which was my birthday). I preordered the game, but it didn’t arrive in my mailbox in college until a day afterwards. I am currently still subscribed to FFXI and enjoy the time with my Linkshell as well as many of the new expansion and add-on available. I also enjoy foreign MMO games as well. One game I played was Yogurting JP which is no longer in service. It was a school themed 3D MMORPG where you have to clear different classroom or stages in order to rank up and to go up a grade. However, due to lack of communication I didn’t play it for long. The last time I played it was when they introduce a new patch with the egg capsule machine. They’re quite fun since some of them dispense these card that makes you dance.

During the time in NexusTK, I made many friends and tried out many new online games. Some of them that came to mind were QuizQuiz and Ragnarok Online (RO). QuizQuiz was a short lived game that never actually went commercial. It just kinda stayed in Beta phase and then died off due to the lack of players. In QuizQuiz, you can configure your avatar as much as you want with items you buy. The main thing I remember about my avatar is that he has a big green bandana and is sucking on a lollipop. The main quiz game I play in there was actually Olla Olla, a typing game where you have to be very quick in typing the sentence displayed after every round. If you are the first to type the sentence, then your bucket goes up. If you fail to type the sentence or fail to type it in time, your bucket goes down. After certain amount of rounds you either earn IQ or you lose them by failing. There’s also a game called Survival OX, this is a True or False game where 32 players are pitted against each other. This is a battle of elimination where you choose if it’s true (O), or false (X). The goal is to be the last man standing by moving to the O or the X side. You can trick your opponents by going to the incorrect side, then at the last minute switch side. Another game was a game show type trivia game about computer and video games genre. Unfortunately all of the game except the Korean version died off, the Korean version got renamed to Q-Play. You can find the similar sprites in the Nintendo DS game called Ping Pals.

I’ve never really got too interested into RO. I did play in the Alpha and early beta, but didn’t get too interested into it until emulation of the server came about. RO was a grind fest…a huge grind fest. After certain amount of levels, it just got too boring to continue. I remember cheating in RO too. Yeah, I know I’m a cheater blah blah blah. In the early RO beta phase before you have to pay for the game, there are bots. APE (or monkey?) bot being the most popular one is one advance bot. It has a map of your location, and it set to auto walk around and kills things and pick up items while you are away. This is mainly due to packets being sniffed out and due to lack of security in the game. That experiment was rather short lived. The game didn’t really get too hooked; this is probably because of the lack of people I know that plays the game. I’ve always been a loner in the game and not many people to play it with. When emulation started for RO, I kinda jumped in and played with it as well. There was the AEGIS (real server that RO uses) and then there was the YARE. AEGIS was stolen and YARE was developed by a person. Early days of emulation of RO was buggy for YARE. AEGIS was also complex to set up since you have to have a dedicated system just for it and set up MySQL and whatnot. Took a long time to get AEGIS up and running, but it was worth if, for the short amount of time of messing around. In YARE, I was also an early tester of it and played a tiny part of bug editing but I was never a coder for it. I had zero programming skills. The only code I played with was the walking code. Back then in early YARE, there was this huge bug with walking around. You would always end up jumping back and forth or running slow. I only slightly fixed my compiled server by changing a line of code. I don’t remember what it was though. Being a GM is always fun, you get to summon a whole load of monster and turn on PvP…but wtf everyone tries to kill you as soon as you turn PvP on lol. Even though I was a GM, I am also vulnerable to attack, except later on, I edited a card that gives me 100% avoid so every hit always misses me. And then I stopped playing altogether.

Yet another game I play was Maple Story…except I never played the US version of it. That only lasted 1-2 days, the emote is kinda cute though which I had posted long time ago in my Xanga blog. I also played Gunbound as well. To those that have never played Gunbound, it is turn-based tank game. My first “tank” style game is Gorilla in the Q-Basic format. BASIC is an old computer language. Being a kid, I have absolutely no knowledge in computer when my father first bought a 486 computer. Since I have the freedom to mess around with computers, I learn computers through trials and error. One of the games included was QBasic Gorilla and Nibbles that my brother and I loved. We somehow stumbled into it and had fun playing them. Gorilla is a tank game, although not a tank, where you go against a second player. The goal of the game is to throw a banana into your opponent and kill them. You input the angle and the velocity and watch your gorilla throw the banana towards your opponent (or away…). The other game that is similar to it is Worms. Although I had the game long ago in this 1000 games collection that I had, I didn’t know about it until my friend Billy told me about it. I was hooked at first as well as Worms 2 that came later on. Worms was fun whether you play it against computer or players. In Worms, you move your worm and try to kill all of the opponent’s team worms. You have various types of weapons at your disposal and you’re supposed to knock down the health of each worm to 0. When they die, they also suicide and explode themselves so neighboring worms will get hurt as well. As for Gunbound, you have various tank available to you, and each tank have different supers and attack type. If the room owner also allows item usage, players can also use items when it is their turn to power up, heal themselves, or enhance their attack. Players can have multiple lives or team lives, and the player or team last standing wins the game. You also gain points to spend to freely customize your avatar.

Although I should test many new MMO games, not many really interest me. If a game really gets me hyped, I would actually go and play/subscribe to it. However, that is rather hard to get me hooked because I’m more into what things are there available to do, how often, and things like the maturity of the players. What is a turn down for me are the players in that particular game. If most of the people are being an ass, the game won’t be enjoyable and the game gets uninstalled. The community in the game is more important to me than the graphics and gameplay. It’s not to say that graphic and gameplay is not as important, there is just so much in consideration when playing an online game. As for now, I will slowly talk about games I have played, am playing right now, and future games that I may play.