Posters Name: Kagato
Posters Email: kagato@mwgl.org
Subject: Games Becoming Mostly Pointless?
News:
EuroGamer.com has an editorial titled Mostly Pointless, in which the author goes blasting the current crop of massively multiplayer RPGs for being empty levelling treadmills. The frustrated author also takes a few swipes at the titles in development, for hopping on the bandwagon without having anything fundamentally different to offer.
It doesn't help that the current crop of MMRPGs are mostly bland, shallow and ultimately futile. The only connection they have with more convential role-playing games is that you can run around killing monsters, gaining experience points and raising your stats.Being that several titles mentioned are rather popular in sales and online player numbers, his words may be falling on deaf ears. I sorta agree with his point, but at the same time, I just can't pull myself away from EverQuest.
Unfortunately that's about all you can do, as developers seem to have lost track of what a role-playing game is all about. There is no story, no role-playing, no exploration, no character development and no real sense of progression beyond the race to reach the next level and raise your stats. And when you do reach the next level all it means is that you can go out and kill some slightly more powerful monsters, earn more experience points and go up another level. To quote Denis Leary, "Have we turned into gerbils? People are paying money to walk up invisible steps over and over again."