Cinco de MMO
Yesterday was the nicest weekend day weatherwise that we've had in the Seattle area since last Summer, so of course I spent a lot of it indoors. Because I'm a recluse, I guess.
I bought the Hobbit last week and watched it, and then I watched my extended-version dvds of the entire Lord of the Rings. These are very long, about 4 hours per film, so I mostly watched 1/2 a film per night during the week. I finished off The Two Towers Friday night, and The Return of the King on Saturday morning. (And I did get out on Saturday, I walked to Fred Meyers and back, about 1 1/2 hours total.)
I also watched a lot of the making of The Return of the King (about 3-6 hours for each movie, I didn't watch anything from the making of the first two movies though). All of this put me in a 'high fantasy' mood and made me very nostalgic for my old Everquest barbarian shaman. So on Sunday, I downloaded Everquest and played it for a bit.
I haven't played any MMOs since City of Heroes closed in November. Meanwhile, it's been more than 10 years since I played Everquest, but I actually tried to connect to my old accounts. I'm fairly certain I remember the account names for both accounts, but I couldn't figure out the passwords. I also think that I had a different e-mail address back then -- I was using Sprint instead of Comcast for my internet service. It's been a long time. But in any case, I mostly played on the Test Server back then and I didn't want to do that again, so I was probably planning to create a new character regardless, so I made a new account.
My overwhelming desire was to walk around in Halas and Everfrost, the old starting location of the barbarians. But they've changed a lot in the game, and after working my way through the tutorial I was dumped into a green, swampy sort of place. By that point I'd already been playing more than an hour, and despite all the changes they've made since I left, the age of the game was very apparent, no more so than in the unexciting combat where you target a rat, hit attack, then sit back and watch your newbie character swing awkwardly and miss, over and over. By the time I realized I was nowhere near Halas, I was ready to log off.
But I was interested in trying out a few other MMOs. I did some research -- there are a lot of MMOs out there these days. I tried to download one called Allords Online (I think it was), which had a lot of Steampunk mixed in with fantasy elements, but after an hour of downloading, it crashed at the final installation step.
One thing I discovered was that a lot of these lesser-known free-to-play MMOs were "gender-locked" by class, meaning that usually a fighter type was always male, a healer was always female, etc. (though some games varied this a bit, I saw one where clerics could only be male, for example). A lot of people don't like this design approach, but it kind of descends from when fantasy games were not MMOs, such as the original Diablo and Diablo II. I can see how it would save money for the designers. I did not try any of these games out, but then I ran across a game that kind of fascinated me (for all the wrong reasons). It's called Scarlet Blade (or, in the East, Queen's Blade), and in this game you aren't allowed to play a male character.
A lot of fantasy games get accused of sexism and objectifying women -- it's common for males to wear far mor armor than females in many of these games. Recently Blade & Soul got hammered for taking this whole thing too far, it got called things like "Blade and Boobs". But Scarlet Blade pushes this even farther. Not only is every character female, but a nearly naked female with bouncing boobs. Your only clothing (at least in the low levels) is "lingerie" which amounts to impossible-in-real-life bathing suits and painted-on pieces of cloth (or whatever it is) that defy gravity and logic. This is a game based around T&A, and pretty embarrassing for a lot of reviewers that I came across.
And yet, the graphics were very good, and the world looked interesting. It's kind of a post-apocalypse science fiction setting, in which all the player characters are constructs (organic constructs I think) specifically created as warriors to defend the human race. So at least they have some sort of explanation for their setup, beyond the obvious one of "we like looking at bouncing boobs". (Later in the game this gets even stupider, as all characters can fight in giant mechs, but ones that expose their bodies in the front. How is that supposed to be safe? It's not, but you can still watch boobs bounce.) There are a very few male npcs that you run into, and giant robots that are more or less masculine-looking, but all other npcs are barely-clad females as well. I downloaded and played the game, and it's mostly a generic MMO with a lot of kill-ten-rats type quests, but I kind of enjoyed it, especially after suffering through a first-generation MMO in EQ. The combat was more exciting, the visuals more exciting, everything was more streamlined and intuitive.
Women play this game, too (of course). I read comments on the game's reviews and trailers on Youtube and glanced at their forums, and I saw several that made a point of saying "I'm female and I play this game" (sometimes in a graphic signature, or whatever). It's natural in MMOs that some guys simply don't believe that women play as well as men, but it's especially sad to have that in a game with only female characters. At the same time, it's very clear what Scarlet Blade's target demographic is, so I guess it's not suprising.
As I said, there are a lot of free MMOs out there, so I plan to try a couple more of them out. I'm not convinced any of them will suck me in like City of Heroes did, but I had fun yesterday. ^_^
I bought the Hobbit last week and watched it, and then I watched my extended-version dvds of the entire Lord of the Rings. These are very long, about 4 hours per film, so I mostly watched 1/2 a film per night during the week. I finished off The Two Towers Friday night, and The Return of the King on Saturday morning. (And I did get out on Saturday, I walked to Fred Meyers and back, about 1 1/2 hours total.)
I also watched a lot of the making of The Return of the King (about 3-6 hours for each movie, I didn't watch anything from the making of the first two movies though). All of this put me in a 'high fantasy' mood and made me very nostalgic for my old Everquest barbarian shaman. So on Sunday, I downloaded Everquest and played it for a bit.
I haven't played any MMOs since City of Heroes closed in November. Meanwhile, it's been more than 10 years since I played Everquest, but I actually tried to connect to my old accounts. I'm fairly certain I remember the account names for both accounts, but I couldn't figure out the passwords. I also think that I had a different e-mail address back then -- I was using Sprint instead of Comcast for my internet service. It's been a long time. But in any case, I mostly played on the Test Server back then and I didn't want to do that again, so I was probably planning to create a new character regardless, so I made a new account.
My overwhelming desire was to walk around in Halas and Everfrost, the old starting location of the barbarians. But they've changed a lot in the game, and after working my way through the tutorial I was dumped into a green, swampy sort of place. By that point I'd already been playing more than an hour, and despite all the changes they've made since I left, the age of the game was very apparent, no more so than in the unexciting combat where you target a rat, hit attack, then sit back and watch your newbie character swing awkwardly and miss, over and over. By the time I realized I was nowhere near Halas, I was ready to log off.
But I was interested in trying out a few other MMOs. I did some research -- there are a lot of MMOs out there these days. I tried to download one called Allords Online (I think it was), which had a lot of Steampunk mixed in with fantasy elements, but after an hour of downloading, it crashed at the final installation step.
One thing I discovered was that a lot of these lesser-known free-to-play MMOs were "gender-locked" by class, meaning that usually a fighter type was always male, a healer was always female, etc. (though some games varied this a bit, I saw one where clerics could only be male, for example). A lot of people don't like this design approach, but it kind of descends from when fantasy games were not MMOs, such as the original Diablo and Diablo II. I can see how it would save money for the designers. I did not try any of these games out, but then I ran across a game that kind of fascinated me (for all the wrong reasons). It's called Scarlet Blade (or, in the East, Queen's Blade), and in this game you aren't allowed to play a male character.
A lot of fantasy games get accused of sexism and objectifying women -- it's common for males to wear far mor armor than females in many of these games. Recently Blade & Soul got hammered for taking this whole thing too far, it got called things like "Blade and Boobs". But Scarlet Blade pushes this even farther. Not only is every character female, but a nearly naked female with bouncing boobs. Your only clothing (at least in the low levels) is "lingerie" which amounts to impossible-in-real-life bathing suits and painted-on pieces of cloth (or whatever it is) that defy gravity and logic. This is a game based around T&A, and pretty embarrassing for a lot of reviewers that I came across.
And yet, the graphics were very good, and the world looked interesting. It's kind of a post-apocalypse science fiction setting, in which all the player characters are constructs (organic constructs I think) specifically created as warriors to defend the human race. So at least they have some sort of explanation for their setup, beyond the obvious one of "we like looking at bouncing boobs". (Later in the game this gets even stupider, as all characters can fight in giant mechs, but ones that expose their bodies in the front. How is that supposed to be safe? It's not, but you can still watch boobs bounce.) There are a very few male npcs that you run into, and giant robots that are more or less masculine-looking, but all other npcs are barely-clad females as well. I downloaded and played the game, and it's mostly a generic MMO with a lot of kill-ten-rats type quests, but I kind of enjoyed it, especially after suffering through a first-generation MMO in EQ. The combat was more exciting, the visuals more exciting, everything was more streamlined and intuitive.
Women play this game, too (of course). I read comments on the game's reviews and trailers on Youtube and glanced at their forums, and I saw several that made a point of saying "I'm female and I play this game" (sometimes in a graphic signature, or whatever). It's natural in MMOs that some guys simply don't believe that women play as well as men, but it's especially sad to have that in a game with only female characters. At the same time, it's very clear what Scarlet Blade's target demographic is, so I guess it's not suprising.
As I said, there are a lot of free MMOs out there, so I plan to try a couple more of them out. I'm not convinced any of them will suck me in like City of Heroes did, but I had fun yesterday. ^_^