Another game discussion...

so PC Gamer's latest DVD had "Alganon" on it...Alganon is an MMO kinda game, rather like the others...My experience with these things is limited, played Guild Wars for a while a couple of years ago.

Guild Wars you buy the game (which I did for next to zip), and it's free to play after that. You can cover a decent amount of territory solo (well, by hiring NPCs for your team), but ultimately it's not very interesting. There were a fair number of folks playing at any time, each "town" had some dozens of players standing around looking for a group, or various Guild players. Random self-selected groups don't work too well. A couple of folks seemed a bit too Leroy Jenkins to me.

Alganon is of course similar...but without all the players. I think I maybe saw 3 or 4 total. It seems heavily oriented around the "crafting" crap, which does not interest me. Opponents only occasionally drop anything interesting. I happened by a beach in one area where the opponents, which looked a lot like green gorgons without the snake hair, were the same level as me--level 8. A little further south, they were blue, and level 30. ???!!! How can you have a level 8 area next to a level 30 area?

I got killed a bunch of times...actually that aspect is kinda cool: you turn into a spirit, respawn back in town, the world is now black&white/gray-scale, and you can run back to your body--or go exploring around a bit, because as a spirit, you can't be re-killed, in fact for the most part you can't even see the opponents. Once you are back to your body, you can reclaim it exactly as it was.

It is entirely too easy to sign up for quests that are WAY above your level, which does argue for a team. So let's have some NPCs to hire to form that team--I realize the MM part of MMORPG means other players on your team, but I prefer solo gaming, so I don't embarrass myself or anyone else. (GWs hire-able NPCs weren't all that great, they didn't level up as fast as you, so after a while they tend to be more cannon fodder to distract an opponent.

Alganon's crafting stuff seems really complex, time-consuming...forum posts do indicate that's where the best loot comes from, but seriously...the game is about crafting???

So at Level 10 I ran into a disastrous bug...I had just bought a chunk of training from the Ranger Trainer in Adrok, and decided I would re-arrange my skills bar (bottom center), and I managed to simultaneously delete every single one of them with some tray mouse-click...that is a serious bug. Basically killed the game for me. I have reported it, but I don't expect to get much resolution. In fact, if there isn't one that simply restores me either to right before the training "purchases" or simply puts my lost skill items back on the bar, uninstall occurs later this week. At least I didn't pay for it or anything.

In any case, it appears to be a game that very few people are playing. The map stuff shows a pretty darn large territory to wander through, which would be great if there was a good way to avoid quests that are way to far above your skill level, and if others were playing such that you could get onto a team, and if there were better loot drops.

The game also seems very oriented around getting you to pay for things on the outside, things which would make you considerably stronger. Lots of things in the in-game economy are obscure at best, and you have to buy a lot of training.

Oblivion is so much better than this...