PVP Centered MMORPGs

These games really bring me down. I've never been much of a man for PVP, but I've always done it within whatever MMO I've played (with the exception of EQ). It's fun, but not my primary interest. Unfortunately, however, the past few year have released nothing BUT pvp centered MMO's, and this, sucks. Most of which I didn't bother to play, but I did play a few, I tried to give them a shot. Vanguard was my first world pvp experience. I got a view of the people who enjoy pvp, and their mindset. I won't say it was a bad experience because vanguard wasn't actually built to be a pvp game, and therefore you had a fun game with pvp thrown into the middle. If you're familiar with vanguard you know it didn't do well, and many people couldn't stand the game due to all of the bugs and playing issues. If you were able to get passed all that, you'd know that vanguard had some amazing aspects that made it a lot of fun. The classes are what made that game good.

I later tried Darkfall, a game many viewed as vaporware for a very long time. I managed to play a bit after launch, and I was very happy with how the initial game started out. It had the atmosphere that you were free to do whatever you wanted, even if that wasn't entirely the case. The game became boring once all the alliances started building, and the clan vs clan type of wars began to surface. I prefer things on a smaller scale, and once the game got going, everything went big, real big. It was no longer fun, and you were immensely restricted on what you could do, because the consequences would kill your ability to play. I'll say in general though, I did not like the mindset of the people who played. It didn't seem right for these people to play an MMO, it just felt like the game wasn't an MMO, and that I didn't really belong, so I left.

The next and for the love of god I hope the last game on this list, is Aion. This game has not been out for very long at all, but many people played it when it was available in China. This is where I realized that no matter what MMO I play, if it is even remotely centered around PVP, I will see the same type of people. I haven't fully given this game a chance, but I can tell I won't be staying for long. There are many reasons, really, the root of them being that this is a korean MMO. Koreans play MMO's different than we do, and I know that. NCSoft did there best to port this thing for America, but I can see the faults. Aion is simply a grindfest, and a boring one at that.

There's a lot of small things that make Aion a drag for me, and honestly it's those little things that bother me most. The targeting system, the hotkey detection, the quest structure, the zone layouts, the lack of seperate paths/race areas. It just feels very closed in, and I felt as if I was being forced to do things I didn't want to do. Hell I've barely even gotten to SEE any PVP and I'm already bored. They are hoping that the people who enjoy PVP a lot (not me) will push through and live off of the PVP aspect. My fellow Legion members are able to do that, but I'm struggling, really I am.

I just miss the old MMO's, it seems like they only one still functioning as a stable/enjoyable MMORPG is WoW, and I've played that thing to hell and back, and I don't want to anymore. Everquest and WoW were the only two MMO's that managed to hold me for at least a year, and it's really sad. Everquest is old, and in a state where it can never be the game I once played - and WoW is following right behind it.