On MMORPGs

Truth be told, I have never found a truly great MMORPGs. I've seen terrible games and decent games, but never one that's truly shone. Those who I've raided with will probably kill me for saying this, but the best fights I've experienced were the final tier 5 bosses in World of Warcraft. Most fight mechanics can be summed up as gear check, don't stand in the ____, or a single easily mastered gimmick (at least, it should have been easily mastered). Both Vashj and Kael were different. More than anything else, they were coordination fights. All twenty-five raid members had tasks vital to the raid. Even the most recent raid destroyer, Algalon, doesn't measure up.

With Vashj, the dance came in the second phase with various types of minions and a unique shield mechanic with the entire battlefield in use. Teams of three would each cover a quadrant for elementals. These would climb the stairs heading for Vashj in the center. Each that reached her increased her damage, and more than a few made the fight unhealable. They were also in charge of ending the phase by bringing down the shield. A regular intervals, a poisonous elemental would spawn in place of a regular which was killed for its core. This core needed to be passed up the stairs to one of the active shield generators at the top. I say passed because the person caring the core could not move, only throw it. Think of it as ultimate frisbee with the other team trying to kill you. The rest of the raid couldn't relax either. They had to deal with the striders which feared anyone in melee range away and the Elites which would quickly chew through any non-tank. These also spawned on set timers, so the goal was to have one die just as the next of that type was spawning. This fight was so tightly tuned that everyone was key to our success. Victory here truly felt like an accomplishment.

None of Kael'thas's phases were nearly as complex in and of themselves. The trick that there were FIVE of them, and each built upon the previous. They needed to be completed properly, in time, and with the corpses in the right places. Again, this wasn't a fight where simply making numbers go up would necessarily save you.

Those days are pretty much gone now. I don't blame Blizzard for wanting to reach a larger audience with it's endgame, but the raid-wide execution challenge just doesn't seem to be there. Algalon tries to recapture this flame a bit, but the fight really centers on two peoples judgment. One opens black holes at times that won't kill the raid, while the other chooses the right black holes to closes. Everyone else just does what they always do. That's not to diminish the contributions of anyone to this fight. There needs to be a lot of damage and heal throughput. One death will be the end of an attempt. I just mean that the intricate dance is missing. I've seriously heard the melee apologize on this fight for just having to stand and stab with the exception of the don't stand in the crash/big bang mechanics.

I've also taken up City of Heroes in the last year. The variety of powers and character creation options are fun, but the game itself is quite bland. Missions aren't particularly varied, and the maps are mad of quickly recognizable generic building blocks. I recently got my first level 50 (the level cap), and my reaction is "Now what?" These flaws were readily apparent even back when I was on my first free trial month, so why did I purchase a subscription? It's simple. I know three other people who play the game. This one fact means that this otherwise forgettable title suddenly becomes a fun place just to hang out. It's worth the $15 a month for just the Skype chatter (and yes, I know the Skype part is free and completely separate).