Loading screens. How I loathe thee.

World of Warcraft has once again promoted itself as my 'full-time' game of choice of late. I've tried other massively online games, as I enjoy the genre immensely. Correction, I have a perception that I enjoy the genre immensely. Truth be told, most new MMO's these days hold my attention for one or two weeks before crashing headlong into the categorization that all game designers hold in high dread - 'Meh'.

Since my posts of late have been lacking enough fastidious fussiness and aggravation, here goes my breakdown of what's wrong with the current batch of MMOs.

Everquest 2 -Its not unreasonable to assume Sony had plans of building upon the success of the original Everquest. Those ambitions quickly vaporized, as an aura of 'fail' quickly surrounded EQ2. A graphics system that required Skynet's younger cousin to run in addition to lack of content, quickly had gamer's feeling nostalgia over EQ2's predecessor.

Lord of the Rings Online - With the 'one Intellectual Property to rule them all', LOTRO should have raised above its status as moderate success (ie it hasn't been shut down yet). More than one gamer has commented "I just cant get into this game..and I don't know why". Ive suffered the same syndrome, only to have my wife solve the mystery one fateful day. She looked over my shoulder...

"Why bother playing, its like World of Warcraft except...boring".

And that's the truth of it. Whilst the zones are beautiful, they lack variety especially in the long haul 1-20 level zones. Endless areas of trees, hills and thousands of bloody bears (seriously this game could be called Bear-World). Reading and watching Tolkien seems more entertaining that playing Tolkien.

Age of Conan - The train-wreck of a launch has been well documented. Take note game designers. Do not list features on the back of the box, that are not in the game. It raises an aura of smoke and mirrors from the outset. AOC arrived with big promises, but fell on its face due to technical hitches and a 'poof and its gone' endgame. The one deal breaker for me was the lack of consistent world design. Instead of traversing my character in an expansive fantasy land, I always felt as though I was stuck on a small path between lots of pretty backdrops. Its a toss up whether Hyboria is populated more by monsters or loading screens.

Warhammer Online - Arguably one of the best marketed MMO's of all time. The developers were all over the gaming press for months promoting the large feature-set, all aimed at the singular focus of skull-bashing Player vs Player combat. Soon after release, the MMO kiss-of-death soon arrived, aka the 'server merge'. Like Age of Conan before it, Warhammer lacks an engaging world. The whole playing environment feels stale, more akin to deathmatch zones strung together.

Ask World of Warcraft critics why its success eludes other games, and you'll hear responses along the lines of its a 'dumbed down' game for the masses. Relegating Warcraft as the McDonald's of gaming completely misses the point. Blizzard struck gold, because they realised what others have not. Players want a tangible connection with their characters and the virtual world they inhabit. They don't want a bunch of levels clumped together, or poorly animated plastic looking avatars equipped with generic looking loot.

I'm really hoping the next generation of Massive Games shift their emphasis back to creating compelling adventures in compelling worlds. Get rid of loading screens, small worlds and bears. I'm hopeful for Aion, but on current word of mouth it seems Champions Online went the 'great characters - bland world' route.

My hopes once again gaze towards Star Wars : The Old Republic...

Do MMORPGS feel too safe and comfortable?

I played Everquest back in the 'old school' days. That time was defined by danger. Everquest players back in the day would sweat, scream and be turned into shivering wrecks. All due to the result of being able to lose items upon death. All was happy if you could run to your corpse and recover. No problem, goods intact. Things took a dark turn if your avatar happened to buy the farm at the bottom of some hardcore underground labyrinth that was impossible to solo. The result being, your hard-earned loot was locked on that corpse. No magical reset key to save the day. Cruel you might say? Difficult you might say? Terror-inducing you would be correct.

A whole scene emerged of players hiring (or begging) other players to host rescue missions to recover loot. Friends were made, and loot was recovered. But not always. To this day, those Blackburrow Gnolls permanently hold some hard-earned loot of mine, I'm sure of it.

Now this scenerio would be completely foreign to the now-a-days MMO players. Death means a short run and a trivial penalty. Death has become the slightest of irritations. I've partied with players in World of Warcraft that will even use death as a quick teleport method of travel.

There's something not right with all of this. Death in gaming has a tradition of being something to avoid. We've spent money in arcades playing against it. There are high-score leaderboards on XboxLive to demonstrate victories over it. And now we have MMO's treating it as 'meh'.

Everquest was harsh, granted. I'm sure as World of Warcraft players, having our epic items corpse locked at the bottom of Naxx would induce some sort of temporary psychosis. That said, Everquest was fun. There was no plodding through dungeons, with one eye on the screen and the other watching TV. As a player, you were focused and nervous. Excited at the challenge of playing with skill so you didn't have the embarrassment of running around naked asking for help in getting your stuff back. It was a fantasy world with risk and danger. Modern MMOs feel too safe and cosy in comparison.

There's no going back to the hardcore days at this point. Corpse locking items would be seen as madness by a player-base cultured towards more methodical gameplay. But is it too much to ask for some sort of increased ambiance of danger in MMOs? Dungeons should feel a touch nerve-warcking surely? A group should have to run away from a dragon sometimes. These are classic fantasy conventions that are being lost in the treadmill of leveling that has taken over game design.

Lets feel scared again shall we?