One challenge with all these fun beta and alpha tests (WildStar and Landmark, respectively) is that I don’t want to play too long or too far – because I know when the game launches, if I decide to play, I will have to do this all over again. Also, if the beta is a “doomed to fail” game, I also don’t play too far or too long – why invest the time?
Hitting my 40’s and realizing how precious and valuable my time is finally.
It’s a balance – “free” gaming time (for WildStar, since it is a sub) vs losing out on the launch experience. What if I zoom through the early levels, confident I already experienced it? What if they changed something?
Landmark is free, but as mentioned in other spaces why grind it out only to have to grind it out again when launch happens.
I thought I was outsmarting the process in WS because I played exclusively Exile during beta – so I could play Dominion (the other faction) at launch. I would still have a comfort with UI/controls/systems but a whole new world to explore. However, after playing with the Character Creator for the dominion side and the starting areas (briefly) I’m not sure I am digging the tone of the Dominion.
Dammit, I have preserved the experience I most likely won’t want to enjoy. (lots of guessing here… it hasn’t launched yet!)
Open beta starts on the 8th, and I encourage everyone to try it. This is going to be one of the largest launches of this year MMO wise, love or hate it.
As silly as this entire train of thought is, I find I am far less likely to play through until end of Beta/Alpha tests generally if I am not enjoying the experience, and/or if I *am* enjoying the experience. I don’t want to waste my time / waste the live experience, after all.
For my money, any MMO worth playing is worth playing through many times (at least in terms of leveling) so having done the content before it goes Live isn’t an issue. If I begin to feel during a beta (or a series of beta weekends as it is these days) that I’m doing something that’s not entertaining enough to do twice then I’m likely to drop the beta AND not play the game at launch.
WildStar offers a different problem for me – its just too exhausting to enjoy for more than an hour or so at a time. It’s not just the frenetic gameplay, which I can control to a large extent; it’s the color palette, the art design and above all the horrible font. My eyes ache after half an hour and my head joins them not long after.
That makes it a reasonable option for dabbling with but not for playing full-time. And since it requires a sub…
I think my lack of time to play steers me away from repeating content. I consume content differently (in the old days, race through, get things done, don’t read text or anything because what is the point?) and for WS I want to be enriched by the lore. Doing that more than once doesn’t really have a benefit.
Look at the MMO leveling model and its designed to waste your time. One of my favorite posts here was how the questing model was a planned obsolescence model and I believe that the end game content should be far more robust than the getting there content.
Everything funnels into repetition. You have the same starting areas (per side) which then funnels into two separate starting areas (per side) and at a certain point in levelling you are funneled into the same zone. So after you do the 1-2-1 the first time, you will learn, and experience, nothing new.
When I played 20+ hours a week I didn’t mind it as much (as I was working on getting multiple characters to raid ready, in pretty much all games I played) but since competitive raiding isn’t on the horizon there isn’t much point in me consuming the exact same content in the exact same way, multiple times.
I don’t rewatch tv shows either =)
And I didn’t mean to not mention that yes, its a really frantic game. I don’t get headaches (and already modded out the font) but it does make for smaller chunk gaming!