My Corner of the Interweb

Collect this...

Mood: Pensive.
Music: Tokyo Drift, Teriyaki Boyz.
Game: Rock Band (360), Call of Duty 4 (PC), Rainbow Six Vegas 2 (360), Hellgate London (PC), MMO Beta (PC)
Book: Nothing.
Watching: Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.
Weather: Cool, Drizzling.

I just pre-ordered Age of Conan. A couple of the guys from IJSMP pre-ordered it, and that was pretty much the trigger for me to go ahead and get it.

I admit that I'm somewhat skeptical about the game. As with any title that has a lot of hype, rarely does it live up to expectations.

The game itself looks pretty much like any MMO. Quests, characters, levelling...however, this game is the first to be unapologetically rated M (Mature) for language, graphical violence, and sexual content. The world promises to be a lot more rough and tumble, and with any sort of luck, the player base will not be a bunch of kids. (Wishful thinking, I know.)

The part that I'm concerned about has mainly to do with the fact that I wonder if I'm completely jaded on MMORPGs. Since EQ, (and WoW refining it...) the genre hasn't really changed. Make a character, kill little thingies, gain experience and loot, get stronger, kill bigger thingies, rinse and repeat. Eventually, you get to a point where you need you and a group of your friends to kill the thingies, and then you wait until more thingies get added to the game. I think I'm pretty much done with that aspect of MMORPGs.

I've never really been loot-oriented...yeah, I'll grab gear and loot when it's available, but I don't go looking over complete lists of all the gear in the game and make a checklist of what I need, where I can get it, and plan my gaming sessions to advance myself in that manner. Never have. I'm all about the experience with friends, crafting, and commercial systems.

Having said that, most MMOs move in a completely different direction. Now, the big thing is PvP, solo and team. Siege the city! Take the castle from fellow players! Compete in tournaments!

That direction is no different than the MMO cycle I mentioned before...except that instead of trying to stay ahead of the developers, strategy and gearwise, now, you're staying ahead of other players. You can imagine how that goes over. It becomes a race of who can spend the most time in game, racking experience and loot so that you can beat your fellow players. Clever, devs...clever.

Conan is a mix of all that stuff.

So why bother?

Well, the guys are playing (at least to start...) and so it'll provide a few weeks or months of diversion. And there's always the chance that the game is actually engaging, and can hook me for a year or so.

So with all that, why the hell did I order the collector's edition?

For those not in the know, a collector's edition of a game release is often a version that costs anywhere from 10 to 40 dollars more. In this case, it's about 40 dollars more. What do I get for the added money? A map, a book of art, a soundtrack CD...but in this case, I also get some in-game stuff.

When you pre-order from places like Amazon or EBGames, you often get an in-game thingie as an added bonus. Amazon gives you an "amazonian bow" while EBGames gives you a ridable woolly mammoth. (So it's EBGames for sure. Ridables are cool. Weapons get replaced a lot during your play...but a ridable? You can ride that shit forever.)

But if you get the collector's edition, you get two other in-game things: A ring that gives you an experience bonus (Hell yes.) and a drinking cloak that gives you free drinks in every tavern in the game.

Sucker that I am, it was the drinking cloak that did it.

I think, fundamentally, I'm a role player at heart, and the idea of being a drunken archer or barbarian is really appealing to me.

So yeah...I shelled out additional cash up front just to get free drinks in an RPG.

What can I tell you?

Posted by Glenn at April 6, 2008 01:24 PM