Some letters

[mangosteen]

Dear Blizzard,

It took me two whole months to get bored of World Of Warcraft. I have been overwhelmed by the tedium of soloing the game, as well as the eerie realization that I'm older than 85% of the players there; the grammar and spelling in chat was killing me. However, your content held up for two months, and that's not bad at all. So, thanks for the fun.

Love,
E. K. Mangosteen

---

Dear JetBlue,

Thank you for making BOS<->NYC flights a viable option again for those of us without Amex Corporate Cards. Please continue kicking everyone's ass. The whole "We just have to be cheaper than the $458 round-trip walk-up fare (but of course no actual corporate customer ever pays that)" thing that Amtrak was pulling got really tiresome. Keep up the good work, and I fully expect to be availing myself of your services soon.

Love,
E. K. Mangosteen

---

Dear Brain,

Look. Bubbeleh. If I could find an easy way to instantly re-wire you for foreign language vocal sentence production, I'd do it. As it stands, the tech isn't there yet, and I'm just the slightest bit peeved that we haven't been able to reach consensus on being able to speak more than one language. If you insist on wanting to learn foreign languages, this is part of the deal. I don't care how anxious you get about the prospect. If you don't like it, take an interest in Latin or Sanskrit. Otherwise, we're doing things my way.

Love,
E. K. Mangosteen

Comments

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

Now try A Tale In The Desert.

The players are generally older and very friendly. Plus I can hook you up with cool people and resources. 8)

[ottah.livejournal.com]

I joined a guild so that I can solo in WoW if I want to, or run in a team otherwise...also, there is a really good spread of ages in my guild (we have 3 generations of one family playing).

[drwex]

I agree. Doing an MMO by oneself isn't really the point - play NWN if you want that. I find that the maturity on the RP servers is generally higher and I've suggested at least a couple of good guilds you could get involved with that are of your age. *shrug*

[mangosteen]

All true, and I'll think about NWN or Morrowind once I put the magic smoke back in my games box, but there's a larger issue.

In WoW, there's nothing really new in the game as you advance. You beat up different polygons with bigger numbers attached. WoW is actually a pretty static world, when you get right down to it.

I was also under the impression that servers pretty much filled up in sequence, and you created characters on the next open one, else you end up waiting 30 minutes in the queue. Is this incorrect?

[drwex]

I do not think the game is particularly repetitive, though there are certain basic patterns that are repeated. You learn these patterns and then numerous variants on them. Then you hit 60 and get into the end game, which is TOTALLY different. Or do PvP, which is also completely different. However, you're correct in that the world itself doesn't change.

Server population is a variable thing. It depends on how active people are, where they've migrated to, etc. I've found that all servers sometimes have queue wait times, particularly at extremely popular hours. I've seen this be as long as 3-5 minutes, never longer (well, except for the recent wave of login bug/screwups - Blizzard put up some hasty defenses against a determined duper attack and it's resulted in generalized lag because the server is taking longer to validate the authenticity of characters and objects.)

I don't find that one server is better or worse than another in this regard, though the people in the first 5 days of the new RP-PVP servers reported it being very crowded. But usually after a week that's gone.

You can create characters on any server. Certainly they push you towards newer servers in an effort to balance out population, but Blizzard know that people want to play with their friends.

[caulay.livejournal.com]

Queues for Argent Dawn (where ahf and I play have not been bad lately (<10 min. if at all).

You can choose to create your characters on any account that you wish, Blizzard will just suggest a server based on current population levels.

And I second drwex that the players on RP servers are much more mature.

[kalimar.livejournal.com]

Of course this is the eternal problem. Is the MMO just a shell around what is essentially a big chat room? Or is the MMO interesting in it's own right?

I can't say for WoW because I've never played it, but from the MMOs I have played the "interesting in it's own right" goes away too fast and then it basically turns into a chat shell with repetitive things to do between chats.

NWN has the advantage that fan created content is pretty common and while the quality varies, there are some truly inspired fan creations that are as (or more) interesting than the regular game.

Morrowind has a contruction kit, but I didn't see much online in the way of fan created content. I may not have looked hard enough for it though.

[reddragdiva]

Game chat is the latest communication medium to go from decadence to barbarism without passing through comprehensibility in between — the unspeakable in pursuit of the unintelligible.”
    — Oscar Wilde on l33t

"stfu n00b"
    — Mark Twain

[koshmom.livejournal.com]

Try www.puzzlepirates.com. While there's some crews/flags with dorky teens, there's also quite a few adults that find the game fun. I've been playing pretty consistently for 2 years now, and I haven't bored of it yet. I think that says something for the game.

[koshmom.livejournal.com]

oh, "Midnight Ocean". Don't even try "Viridian", it's full of kids, pretty exclusively.