I got my first console by trading my Pokémon cards for 2 Gameboys and some random games. Then I traded the Gameboys & games for the original PlayStation, NHL '98, and Driver 2. (Who says the bartering system doesn't work?) Anyways, the PS2 had already been released and finding original PS1 games was becoming increasingly difficult as they had started to become phased out. It was just my luck that the Real Canadian Superstore still carried PS1 games, and it was here that I found Final Fantasy VII, The Legend of Dragoon, and Syphon Filter 2 at bargain prices.
I had never played a Final Fantasy game before, and I didn't know what to expect from the game I had just purchased. The cover and the description on the back of the case looked promising, so I took a chance and spent the money I had saved from chores and birthday gifts. Boy, did I ever get my money's worth. The first night, I couldn't put the controller down, and I became immersed in a story that captivated my imagination. The graphics were so-so, the cutscenes were amazing, the combat system was exciting, but the story was what had me hooked. I found myself developing an emotional connection to the characters, and I played the game religiously everyday after school. When I reached the end of the first disc, I was shocked to find that Aeris (or Aerith depending on who you ask) was killed by the big bad guy, Sephiroth. This was the first time I ever felt sad for a character in a game, and it drove me to keep playing and chase Sephiroth through this beautiful, fantasy world.
What worked really well for FF7 was the ensemble cast of characters and the story-telling ability of the game developers. Like a good movie, each of the characters develops as the story unravels and you find yourself either loving or hating them. As you play through FF7, you find yourself visiting the home towns of your party members and exploring their backstories and identities. The developers found just the right balance of plot and action to make this game addicting and one of the most highly rated games of all time. I still find myself dusting off the game and playing from my save point before the final confrontation with Sephiroth in the Northern Crater.
RuneScape
It was 2001 and I was in the 7th grade when my friends told me about RuneScape and asked me to play with them. At the time, I had played very few PC/online games with the exception of Neopets (Yes, I was that guy) and I didn't know what lay in store for me. Like FF7, I became addicted, but this time, the reasons were different. I wasn't particularly awed by the story in RuneScape, yet I became obsessed with the online play and the character progression that drove me to keep grinding level after level.
The online experience was uncharted territory, and I loved every second of it. It was only a decade ago, but the Internet was a different place and people were much nicer and a lot less cynical than compared to today. I found myself not only playing with school friends, but complete strangers from across the globe.
One aspect of the gameplay that I particularly enjoyed was the player vs. player (PvP) combat. In RuneScape, there was a designated area of the game world called "The Wild" where you could attack and kill other players and not just computer controlled monsters. If you attacked another player, you would become flagged and have a "skull" hovering over your head. Kill another player that is "skulled" and you get all their items. Die while skulled, and you lose all your items. If you die while "unskulled" you keep your 3 most valuable items. The Wild became a place where friends and enemies co-existed in an intricate balance of life, and the risk vs. reward element was highly captivating.
The Wild was a dangerous place and by yourself, your chances of survival were slim. Most people would form teams and split the loot obtained from shared kills. I was one of those people, and with some newly-made friends, we formed a strong team and dominated everyone in our level group. We ultimately decided to make the team official and turned it into a clan. As a clan, we recruited more members and organized massive wars with other established clans. At our peak, we had 70 members and were undefeated in our war history. This form of group play was definitely the highlight of my time as a RuneScape player. There was a strong feeling of kinship and camaraderie between clan members and many competitive rivalries developed between clans.
Unfortunately, the same character-driven gameplay of RuneScape that had kept me hooked had started to bore me. The constant leveling had led to burnout, and I wasn't having fun when I wasn't participating in clan activities. Also, the game controls were very limiting. Everything was accomplished with mouse clicks with the keyboard only used for chatting. You would click to move, click to fight, click to use items, and click, click, click... That, combined with the outdated Java graphics, eventually made me quit RuneScape and move on to World of Warcraft.
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft (WoW for short), for me, was the complete package. It had extensive lore and stories that had been established in the Warcraft series and the online, social gameplay that I had come to love. Once again, friends had recommended the game to me, and I became an addict. I quickly leveled up and found myself in a guild called "Carpe Plectrum" (Seize the lute). We were small, but became a tight-knit group of friends and slayed several foes together. Some of my clan members from RuneScape had come along for the ride and we found ourselves enjoying a fresh, new RPG experience.
What appealed to me was the beautiful game environment, the character progression, and the focus on group play. WoW differed from RuneScape in that it required groups of players (5-25 people) to tackle the player vs environment (PvE) challenges. They had an "instance" system where groups of 5 players would form a party to kill monsters and bosses with the reward being new gear for your own characters. There were 3 different roles in the party: a tank responsible for taking damage and controlling the monsters, a healer that heals other players and keeps them alive, and damage dealers that deal massive damage to kill the monsters and bosses. Bosses had unique abilities that required different strategies to kill them. In addition to these smaller 5-player instances, there were also larger 10 and 25 player raids meant for guilds. Raids were basically an upscaled version of instances with more difficult bosses and better rewards. I pushed our guild to form a raid group and we enjoyed moderate success killing bosses together. We used a voice chat system called Ventrilo to communicate with one another and coordinate our attacks. Not only did Ventrilo help us take down these big, bad bosses, but we also got to know one another on a more personal level.
PvP combat in WoW was also different compared to RuneScape. Depending on the realm/server you played on, you could attack members of the opposing faction (Alliance vs Horde) in almost any location. This led to fierce rivalries between the factions and a lot of random player killings (also called "ganking"). The controls in WoW also afforded more flexibility and control compared to RuneScape. You could bind keys on the keyboard to specific character abilities greatly improving your skill as a player. Two players with the exact same gear and character attributes could vary greatly just by the way a player controlled his or her character. So even though there was some degree of player "skill" in RuneScape, it was vastly more prominent in WoW and made the game even more satisfying.
But unfortunately, like RuneScape, WoW became stale and repetitive too. Every expansion focused on leveling up to the maximum level, getting new and better gear for your character, and killing some new boss in a slightly different, yet familiar way to old bosses. (There's only so many ways to stay out of that patch of fire on the ground.) It seems like this problem is inevitable in online multiplayer role-playing games since there is no clear "game over" where every boss is dead, and you've accomplished every single feat in the game. The WoW developers have tried their best to fight this with the release of new expansions and game content, but the overall experience is too familiar and too repetitive for long-time players of the game. The graphics, which were once stunning and revolutionary, are now starting to become outdated just like RuneScape was when I first discovered WoW. These problems create an unavoidable and limited lifespan for online games, and I think that players will ultimately abandon ship once they find something better. Hopefully, that something better will be our 319 project!
No comments:
Post a Comment