Now, try not get caught up in the "Hell" part of the diagram, because frankly I have no idea what MMO hell is like (Wait, I take it back, here it is) Or MMO Earth for that matter. While I read Funcom...Riddle Me This by OpenEdge, I went through a series of flashbacks from previous conversations I had in several MMOs. Although not conversations I necessarily participated, I recall having a familiar reaction every time I saw the familiar phrase. Almost always the conversation had near the exact same phrase, "I'm just staying here until ____ comes out." For Age of Conan the inserted game was Warhammer. For Warhammer, the next game was Darkfall. In EVE the game was JumpGate: Evolution. Suffice to say, at this time you can insert SW:TOR as the next game that we're going to finally make our "real" MMO.

And every time I saw that, my brow furrowed and I mentally sneered at them. It seemed so horribly obnoxious. A planned temporary stay in an MMO? A trial perhaps, but who would be so obnoxious as to lead an MMO on like a woman who wrapped a man around her finger until her real boyfriend came back from vacation. The nerve! The gall! An MMO is designed to go on for years after all, if you didn't plan on staying for the duration, why be there at all?

That thought stewed with me for some time, and I tried to rationalize it out as best I could, why I must clearly be right despite my own prior MMO hoppings. I would ultimately come to believe it was because of the plan. When I came to a game it was at least with the intent of staying as long as I could. That seemed far more reasonable.

But that could do nothing to satiate the thoughts that nagged at me. It reeked more of naivete than good intentions. What good was it to be part of a persistent world if you weren't just as persistent in your personal existence in this world. Only then did it finally dawn on me; I was depressed. Not in terms of existentialism, but I was depressed at the thought that I wouldn't actually stay with the game forever, and with such futility in mind, why should I even bother? Why should I buy the next shiny new game, if I would only purchase it while wistfully looking at the horizon for the next MMO that was really going to be "the one" this time? With an outlook like that, it was like playing an MMO after the announcement was made that the servers were shutting down; You were just passing the time.

One could say the point of games was to pass the time, but who actually approaches a game thinking, "I'll get this much closer to death!" You look forward to actually having fun, not the explicit goal of passing the time. I've long since gotten over this, acknowledging that I'm here to have fun with people if I can, and if I'm going to stay for years on end, it will be because I haven't stopped having fun, NOT for the purpose of feeling more permanent.

Do you ever feel like you lost the fun, waiting for the next big thing? 

 

I'll be damned if you need a caption to know what this is.

Circles. I hate circles a lot to be honest. I can never draw one correctly, it always turned into an oval or just seemed obnoxiously uneven. I much preferred geometric shapes; angular, flat lines, strong, clear, decisive. Despite that, I have been informed on more than one occasion that when I speak, it is in the form of a circle, that it does not seem to have enough of a conclusive point. This has been brought up enough that I feel I must finally address this directly.

And so, I have to ask myself. "Is that a problem?" "Of course it is!" you could argue, and I would no doubt see your point. After all, if there does not seem to be a clear message being spent, why should you read this at all. I could just make a post with just the word, "Spaghetti" and even I would feel guilty for how much of your life I took away because of the time you spent reading that word, and pondering the point. Even at this moment, I don't seem to quite have a point, do I?

A more accurate image to represent my writing

But to those who say I speak in circles, I try to make the circle the point itself. (Don't try and visualize that. Really.) While everyone loves to make a point and be hailed as right, I do not actually expect people to always agree with me, rather, my goal is make as vague a statement as possible so that it's just difficult to disagree because there's nothing definitive being said. Rather, I want people to read them and think. Not quite like the spaghetti example of wondering why you're wasting your time reading this, or what could Riknas could have possibly been trying to tell us.

Instead, I hope to push forward something a bit more akin to American Zen (Though not nearly as metaphysical), to think yourself. Sure, you could quite easily come to a conclusion of your own, but it is just as simple for someone to read the exact same thing and come to the opposite conclusion, as we have seen evidenced in countless forum posts, flame wars, and has been demonstrated between our very unlike-minded bloggers, Tobold and Syncaine (They even use the opposing blogging sites! Proof I tell you, proof!)

To finally conclude my conclusion about inconclusive conclusions, to which you may conclude is just as much of an inconclusion as the prior conclusions; Do you really need to be fed an answer all the time? A much stronger degree of self-assurance in one's beliefs can be the result of having spent a lot of time on the fence thinking about it first. Is it still a grind if it's fun? What is it to be hardcore? Will you achieve spiritual enlightenment by the end of your thoughts? Probably not, but who knows? Think about it.

No, there isn't one to rule them all or one to find them. This isn't a LOTRO post. While I appreciate comments about how awesome I am (I have a self-esteem issue you see), and appreciate zealots following me and tell me I'm right the entire way, I hardly think it would kill me to make a post that goes out to the fellow bloggers. Now, I don't know how many of you have your own blog sites for when you post, be it a professionally done one with private hosting on that (Kudos to those of you that do,) a basic blogger or wordpress website (Like myself, or the famous Tobold) maybe you post on a social network site or on to a LiveJournal. Perhaps you feel you don't write enough to be worth putting up. Or do you just want to keep the thoughts in your head (No problems there)? Suffice to say, I want to talk about the MMO rings of the blogosphere, and a bit about getting involved in them.

First, before you try and figure them out, notice them. Not just seeing it, but being consciously aware of them. GAX, MMO Voices, and just about (if not all) all of the Ning networks are the most obvious kinds of a blogging circle, a social network. Not quite MySpace, it creates a room for us to all essentially boost our ratings (Though not purely for that of course) by compiling people of like interests into one site. It makes sense, doesn't it? Even for the most narrow minded, it's nigh impossible for us to put up our own blogs and not read those of anyone else. It's that much easier to notice some other posts text, and that much easier to become a regular reader of a certain blogger.

The other two phase are debatable on which is more visible, however I will start with what is the most visible in the literal sense. Blog Rolls. The above image is a good example of Blog Roll. Now, this is most frequently used on personal blog sites, or custom designed ones. Quite frankly, it would be sort of awkward if Ning networks tried to make an apparent blog roll for everyone. Even with tiny text, it's already sort of cramped there. Regardless, it's the next best way to keep a constant shout out to blogs you recommend. It's a kind gesture to put someone on your blog roll, and you get the warm fuzzy feeling when you see yourself on another person's.

OKAY, NOW IMAGINE A DARK ROOM WITH LOTS OF SINISTER FIGURES IN A CIRCLE

Unfortunately, I don't have a picture to properly convey the last kind of ring, so I trust in your imagination and your literacy skills. The last kind of ring is the least official of the rings, but can be by far the most effective. I'm not even sure what you'd call the name, however if I had to give it a word I would make a toss between "Friendship" and "Partnership." I would consider the former the most likely rationale, however Partnership would be the most broad way of explaining it. What I essentially speak of is a bond between bloggers, that they essentially exist as a group of friends, all sharing support as much as they can. These folks may very well also have each other on blog rolls, but they also comment on each other frequently. Unfortunately I can not point to a clear person or place where this is frequent or obvious, but isn't too hard to pick up on if you follow a large number of blogs and note how shout outs relate into blog rolls.

So, what does that have to do with anything? Well, again. I put this out to all the people who really like to blog, want to get, be, or are serious about blogging. This has been done before no doubt. But I'm not actually aware of one for this specific topic, at least not in the blogosphere. I essentially speak of the design of an unofficial blog pack. Akin to VirginWorlds, and the EVE Blog Pack. I'm not saying leave MMO Voices, or Giant Bomb no. But I do encourage the bloggers to go to Blogger, WordPress, or SOMETHING. It doesn't have to be crazy hand drawn graphics on a tablet or some premium site, but go there, get together, and post stuff there. Heck, it doesn't have to be different (Heck, I put this stuff up sometimes before I put it on my own site.) Hit up your fellow Voicer and smack their new site onto your blog roll and start your own blog rings to make the community that much more active.

This is my call to arms, and I'm signing off! 

Making fun. It's a funny little phrase if you ask me. Usually, it's used in the context of mocking something, and entertaining ourselves, right? But when you think about it, and go to the literal roots, it's essentially to create fun of our own. That's often what we do with sandbox games; we're given tools, and we make our fun with the shovel and pail (or pods and laser guns, swords and noobs, whatever applies to you best.) Regardless, at the moment I'm finding another issue with me at hand. My progress in Aion has been slow, and it has started to make me think. Unlike some of the other big time bloggers who have grown and gotten older, taking the casual route, I'm still able to be a hardcore gamer. My gaming sessions are typically long, and then there's long periods of working, and then back to a long period of gaming rather some constant flip flopping and then having some brief moments of rest, etc etc. Ultimately, my schedule allows for it, and so I take advantage of it.

That said though, for someone who spends so much time involved in MMOs, my actual time spent playing MMOs has declined drastically, it's not even close to being "hard core" anymore. When I played EVE, Darkfall, LOTRO, City of Heroes, the list goes on, they were for extensive sessions. And yet now at most I might spend three hours playing Guild Warswith Andras a couple times a week., and what started as long sessions in Aion have become quick one to two hour sessions, the only thing keeping me on, being my desire not to lose bonus XP accumulated from their "Rest" mechanic, "State of Repose." While usually there is the double XP for how many kills equivalent to how many hours we've logged off, Aion players get a %20 bonus to mob kills, with one mob equating to 1% on our bonus XP bar (Essentially capping at 100 mobs with bonus XP) . However, I digress.

Rather than hardcore gaming, I've instead been indulging in my executive gamer far more, I read about MMOs and talk about MMOs, replacing much of the time that was spent playing them. in fact sometimes it feels like a chore to even log on, after all I could be relaxing, reading, or writing a blog about my last game session. Am I just playing this for the sake of PEG? It's possible, as I feel the newest shiny game tug at me; Fallen Earth, Champions Online, I could be playing them, but I won't pay for more than one subscription game at a time due to limited funds. And so now I must make fun in a game with a fair bit of grind. On one hand, I'm not facing the same eager joy I'm so familiar with to play a game every day, until I lose the will to play. However, on the other hand I don't feel quite tired of the game either, it hasn't lost all its steam. Although it may drag as it gets near the seventy-minute mark, I enjoy most of the game time as try to perfect my use of the game's combo system. I'm not having a blast, but not burnt out either. Am I just learning moderation, becoming a casual gamer, or something else?

Okay, so the title only works so much, but after I see that Funcom is making its Fourth MMO I can't help but wonder. I try to say I don't actually act as a "fan boy" or "hater", but in reality its hard for any human to not have a little bias. Personally, I suffer from an underdog-love-syndrome that instantly attracted me to Age of Conan, (Though it didn't hurt that I enjoyed Dreamfall) And I had previously looked into Anarchy Online for the Free Play Blog while GAX was around. But, liking the core of a game doesn't change the fact that these guys make a lot of mistakes.

First, AoC looked like it would be their chance at redemption, but ultimately followed a very similar route to Anarchy Online's release, which albeit is something that all recent MMOs have suffered from. That said though, can you think of any company that has such a large community that simply hates it? SOE and (most recently on the list of angry people) NCsoft have developed a group of people who have sworn off these companies for ruining their game (SOE) or shutting them down unfairly (NCsoft). Consider this though, these are companies with large umbrellas of MMOs and still have reasonable player amounts and still have supporters,(FanFaire and HeroCon being visible displays.) But look at Funcom, they've collectively worked with the miniscule number of two MMORPGs, and have managed to fuel so much rage both times, that never quite compares to the fires that came around later.


Getting to the Point

But the thing that I wonder then, if these guys have set so many fires, how is it that they manage to keep pushing forward? Two titles, one's getting an expansion, another is getting a complete overhaul; Anarchy Online is supposed to be fitted with the same AoC graphics. And even more so, they have two more titles along the way! From what I can tell, this is clearly an Indie development team that knows how to use a shoe string budget when they need to, but are working off the same big money investments that AAA MMOs are supposed to get, so they know how to take these losses and keep working with them despite never-ending setbacks. The only question that remains though is, where are they getting all this money from in the first place? Complain all we want, we can't deny that they're still here, and presumably successful. Is there something that silent majority is seeing that the largest vocal minority can not, or is there a stigma that simply makes us shout so loud we don't realize the numerical differences are so small?