Crunch time

Song of this post:
Zoot Woman - Hope In The Mirror

Release of The Chronicles of Spellborn is looming on the horizon, and I for one will keep my fingers crossed that things work out as well as they can for us. ;)

Lots of work hours have been put into the game in the last few weeks - that is, more than before even ;p - and slowly but steadily the game world feels truly alive, with a (somewhat) balanced population, themes for different parts of the world; and so much hooks for future content already! ;D

So close to release, I decided I'd finally get a better look at what other MMOs play like. I have been playing EVE Online and World of Warcraft for a while of course, and while I've slowly grown bored and annoyed of the former and increasingly fond of the latter, to the point where I've actually set out to be Death-Knight-ready (a level 50 char on all the servers I have chars on) for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, I hadn't tried any other MMO out there.
This changed with me getting a copy of Warhammer Online as well as City of Heroes and starting to play around in both worlds, trying to get a feel for how it's been done in other games.

WAR was a disappointment so far. The UI isn't intuitive, nor very easy to read/understand, and despite the rather epic intro movie to the game itself, starting in the world of Warhammer feels like a let-down from all the high and mighty promises; it's just another chain of "go talk to guy x over there", "kill x of monster y1", "now kill x2 of monster y2" and so on. I haven't tried PVP yet, nor Realm VS Realm, but the PVE experience so far has been lacking.
Visually, it feels several years behind the curve, and something about the font used for NPC names and text just makes me want to punch my screen.
A colleague said it had "been positioned as the save alternative" (to WOW) and went on to say "it's basically this industry's Pepsi" -- to which I could only reply that it feels more like the organic decaf Pepsi light to Blizzard's Red Bull. Yes, I'm disappointed enough to make a Pepsi/Red Bull comparison...

COH on the other hand has been pretty nice so far. Character creation alone would deserve a whole post of praise already. Once in the game, it's more run-of-the-mill missions, but having rectractable claws and regeneration powers (yes, I did make a Wolverine-hero, sue me!) along with a gritty atmosphere pulled me right in. Having an awesome extra-gadget in the form of a jetpack helped, too. Nothing's quite as cool as rocketing through a sprawling city's skyline and dropping a good deal of punishment on the bad guys. Death from above alright!

That reminds me: I so want a cyperpunk-ish MMO! Give me a game based on the Shadowrun universe and you'll have one loyal customer and fanboi for sure! Just don't f*** it up or I'll f*** you up...! ;p
I really thought I might have to consider getting a separate Vista install to try out the Shadowrun PC game, but then I read this rather scathing review and I think it's in the "I'll f*** you up" category, so I don't think I'll be spending any money on that...

Oh well. Enough of my ranting for tonight.

Ta-taa!