Updates, Community or Core Game

As usual, it's life in AoC that's brought this pondering up.

When I had all three in CoX, I was ludricrously happy for 3 years, but of course, after 3 years, the core game finally started to look repetitive, so it's on hiatus. But because of the frequent, decent updates, and great community interaction on the forums between players and devs, it's still being paid for in the hopes that I can go back to it when the core game doesn't feel so same-old.

LoTRO has insanely plentiful updates and Turbine tends to be fairly good at fixing crap that breaks (with the exception of a few tech bugs here and there.) The board community has been decent, but the server I chose is feeling kinda empty. There's a disconnect with any people. The core game itself has neat design ideas...but travel feels slow, things nickle and dime you with moneysinks and timesinks, and combat is such a clank/click bore.

As a result, I'm not really very heavily into LoTRO because the moment-to-moment aspect of the game just feels a little lacking. I'm supporting it because of its design decisions, innovative touches, and its lore. The cheap subscription price helps the decision a ton. It's worth it for me to pay the price of a restaurant meal every month just in case I ever need to scratch an itch for old-school polished nostalgia.

Guild Wars. Well, I suppose I'm still in to Guild Wars. It's just back burnered for when I want to play a completely solo-challenge sort of game. Because community...haha, don't make me laugh. I don't even want to talk to anyone I don't already know in GW. Updates make very little difference to me in GW, though they go on from time to time, normally PvP tweaks and fixes. The core game works for me as a soloist 'hard mode' or 'farm/grind' game. Decent enough.

I'm worried about WAR. So far I can't predict updates or community (though I intend to find an Oceanic server this time around since things have turned out so well in AoC,) but it's the core game that gives me pause.

Now I need to quantify that by saying that I've not even tried it, so final opinions will have to wait until I actually play the dang thing, but what I've seen of the combat makes me bite my lip. It looks slow and choppy. It's the WoW style clonk clank click. If my day-to-day fights are going to be visually boring, I don't know if the other icings on the cake will hold my interest.

Of course, making the effort to find a good community will at least get one anchor in place, and we can only wait and see if the updates for WAR are any good... But yeah, that's my main worry about WAR's core game.

Conversely in AoC, I think the core PvE experience feels great. I love melee fighting (not sure about the spellcaster bars, but yeah) and the work of the motion-capped animations never fails to impress me. I can feel the power of the mount under me as its muscles flex with each step. I'm happy to run around and farm stuff like me street-sweeping in CoX just cos it feels so damn fun. (I'm probably in a minority in this aspect.)

The AoC board community stinks. But the Oceanic community that is on Gwahlur has been pretty durned friendly, there's still at the moment what feels like critical mass (for survival, if not growth), and of course, the guild I'm in is a sturdy support at the moment. If it doesn't implode or lose key members, I'm ready to go where the mass goes.

Updates. Ohhh. Dear. Every time Funcom makes an update, my heart just keeps sinking and sinking further. It's like this game is being run by schizophrenic RoD imms that are being forced for monetary and other such reasons to make updates NOW. Every patch there's a "Oh god, what are they THINKING?!" reaction, and none of them want to talk to you to explain the rationale either. If there even was one in the first place. Or if they do, they're bluffing through their teeth to paint a rosy picture.

I get scared and worried because not only to the personal threat of some system that I'm used to changing around, or being unable to play the way I like, but because every time they do this, more people hit their breaking point and leave for greener pastures. It's really sad.

You know, reflecting on it, it's exactly what's happening at work as well.

I keep facing the question of: if I still like the core game, and they haven't fubared it YET, should I still be sticking around? If the inevitable crash and burn may end up happening? On the offchance that they can actually turn things around?

And how do I make this decision with other people haemorraging away at the same time, throwing some complexity into the various factors?

*sighs*

I think my answer is to wait-and-see.

If critical people leave, I'm gone as well. For now, the moment-to-moment aspect is still satisfying, or livable with. I'm hoping things will turn around. Not sure though.

I just need to give myself check-and-look-back-and-review deadlines. Probably October and December. See how the "state of the game" is.