MMOs as Girlfriends: Asheron’s Call
She promised a lot. She promised you could go anywhere with her without having to wait. She promised you wouldn’t have to always act one way with her, and could choose to do what you wanted to. She promised she would change and do new and interesting things with you regularly. She wore clothes she made herself, rather than name brands you might recognize. She was prettier than EQ in some ways, but less attractive in others. On the whole, despite fulfilling her promises to some degree, she just didn’t seem as deep or interesting as your last girlfriend, so you moved on after a few months of fun.
She wasn’t like all the other look-alike girls. They were all blondes, she was the brunette. They wore taffeta, she wore blue jeans. All the other girls forced you to act a certain way and go on group dates. She was accepting and open-minded, you could double date or just snuggle up to her by yourself. She told good stories and was constantly scheduling events and coming up with new things to do. She did have a ‘dark’ side but it was easily avoided.
I dated Asheron’s Call’s older sister, Asheron’s Call 2. She was laggy as hell.
She wasn’t my type. I walked by without a second look.
I don’t think you and I define ‘older’ in the same way.
Well, I did get beta, played twice and at the time went back to EQ…
Sort of like a hi, how are you, nice to meet you, have a good life…
Well, I still think Asheron’s Call did the best job of producing a ‘heroic’ feel. No other game has quite captured the feeling of standing in a doorway and holding off a literal horde of monsters. Age of Conan came close, but then Failcom ruined it by introducing the overwhelming system (i.e., if you’re facing more than X number of NPCs, they all get bonuses to their damage).
On a related note, one of the very few games with collision detection between NPCs and players. Yes, it can be exploited or used for griefing, but it also greatly aids the sense of immersion and allows the use of actual tactics (defending chokepoints, tanks actually physically blocking access to squishy support characters rather than relying on the ridiculous aggro/hate/threat mechanism that permeates MMOs). This and the seamless world mean this game was quite a technical achivement. Unfortunate that Microsoft (the publisher) threw it under the bus by failing to market it.
There’s no question there were flaws in the design. The ‘freedom’ of the classless character generation system just meant that players were free to gimp themselves. But overall, if it had even half the visual polish of EQ2/LoTRO/AoC, I’d still be playing it. Heck, I still occasionally think about reactivating my subscription, which is not the case with Dark Age of Camp-a-lot, Vanguard (The Game About Standing In Line TM), Age of Casters, or Borehammer.
She’s was kind of date (for me) that I walk into the resturant, take a look at and could tell wasn’t for me. So I ask the hostess a question and quickly make my way out and give EQ a call.
Yeah, and AC2, so much sadness.
Vald