I’m on a bit of a MMOG-break at the moment. I’m coming to the conclusion that the longevity of a game may be less to do with the game itself and more my own frame of mind when approaching it; this year I spent several months in Star Wars: The Old Republic, hitting the level cap and doing a few operations, a month or two in The Secret World, and about a week in Guild Wars 2. It’s not that Guild Wars 2 is a bad game, it’s perfectly splendid, but I just haven’t been bitten by that “must play it” bug; there comes a point every now and again (I’ve blogged about several over the past years) where I need to take a break from killing a certain number of things by activating hotbar abilities to cause damage. With the Paralympics just finishing, hot on the heels of the Olympics, I’m feeling a similar way about Olympian endeavours; 25-odd days of top-notch sport have been fantastic, but a bit of a break now isn’t unwelcome. Four years is probably overdoing it slightly, but a bit of time pottering around Skyrim, engaging in turn-based World War II-ish fights in Silent Storm: Sentinels (now available from GOG, hurrah!) and perhaps madly shooting in Borderlands 2 at the end of the month might well recharge the old batteries for a proper go at GW2 or something else MMOG-y in a while.
Enjoy your break. I think GW2 is fun but (dare I say) not very compelling. There are only so many human towns you can defend from centaur attacks before you think — oh, just take over the town, I’m off to pick lettuces.
It’s kind of telling that one of the reasons I am looking forwards to MoP is that I’m a bit bored of hotbar combat too, and some fun pokemon/farmville/ panda adventure gaming to do while chatting to my guildies is seeming quite appealing.
True words. I’ve taken breaks like that ever since blogging and from gaming in general (also other things such as reading which I do a lot of) and it’s always for the better! puts some stuff in perspective and shows you what you really want and what you can do without :)
I’ve waited a long time now when it comes to MMOs, I neither played SWTOR, TSW nor WoW in years, so to me GW2 is wonderful on so many levels. it’s an exhausting genre at times though – enjoy recharging your “wonder batteries”! ;)
Sounds very familiar, everyone goes through that phase one time or another. One can only hotbar-kill so many kobolds/rats/generic wildlife before the brain needs a break, I suppose.
I’m feeling quite similar and have also been taking an “mmo-break” over the past couple of weeks.
Replaying Final Fantasy 9 in anticipation of MoP is proving to be tremendous fun.
You sir have earned my respect. Silent Storm and its Sentinels are fantastic fun. Games that answered the call of turn based combat that Jagged Alliance 2 sent out in those pre-3d days. They lived for a great number of years on my machine succumbing only to the inevitable march of technology that was my DVD drive being thrown to the same box in the corner of the kitchen that the floppy drive disappeared to some years before. To find a DRM free version of the game is available, I shall be investigating that with cash and cards in hand. Memories of those games… sneaking into buildings tracking the ghostly outline of enemy movement sounds in the floors above, unleashing a torrent of bullets into the ceiling, revealing a dead body at ones feet and a convenient new staircase. Destructible terrain is fun.
Guildwars 2 has been my return to MMO gaming after a few months hiatus. I’m finding it refreshingly different. A positional combat system that rewards movement over stand and deliver button sequencing, thumbs up. Questing is dead!, two thumbs up. Content consists of running around a map until one happens across where the ‘shit is going down’, and joining the fray. The game rewards exploration and discovery. Brilliant. And its pretty, the world that is. I chose the Asuran engineer and loved that character creation. my resultant cat with dogs ears and tree stump of a body works wonders wielding her flamethrower and grenades. An entire combination of things so randomly bizarre I still don’t believe it. Flamethrowers are of course second only to shotguns as weapon of choice in any fantasy world. And I have yet to meet an elf or a dwarf or an orc. I will melt them to ash when I do.