Skipping around blogs and I’m reading complaints and complaints and complaints about the state of SL. Some saying they have had just about enough and are ready to pack things in if LL dont get it together. Some just generally complaining about lag/voice/inventory/video glitches. Then I looked at Veyron’s blog. It hit me, theres a lot of people out there that have never played mmorpg’s (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) They have NO idea what game problems are or the growing pains these other online programs go through. So.. lets start with the basics. I played a game called Everquest 2 (or EQ2) a Sony MMORPG. To get me up to speed with the rest of the players I had to buy:
The initial game:
EverQuest II $19.99
the expansion sets:
EverQuest II Echoes of Faydwer $39.99
EverQuest II Desert of Flames $29.99
EverQuest II Kingdom of Sky $29.99
EverQuest II The Splitpaw Saga $7.99
EverQuest II Fallen Dynasty $7.99
EverQuest II The Bloodline Chronicles $4.99
Total cost before I started my first avatar: $140.93
I noticed that this expansion set is coming out soon:
EverQuest II Rise of Kunark $39.99
If I were still playing EQ2 would bring me up to $180.92
The monthly fee is 19.99 per month.
(btw, I’m Canadian, I havn’t figured in the exchange rate)
When I started playing EQ2 I couldn’t move, the lag was so bad, the graphics are dark and dismal. In order to see the really nice graphics you see in screen shots on the Sony website you have to set your graphics card up so high that trying to do anything is painful. In these games you do quests, go out and kill something in order to get a reward. To accomplish this, you set your graphics card back down to the minimum.. so in essence you look like a blobish kind of humanish thing killing some other blobish type monster thing. With each expansion brought out brought on a new set of problems. More lag, more glitches, more problems.. until Sony figured out what all was wrong and tried to fixed them.. and fixing the new problems never seemed to include fixing the old problems from the last expansion.. or even the expansion before that. Did we complain? Yes, loud and long.. but we kept playing and kept complaining. Anything I see in anyone’s blog is nothing new to me, been there-done that-got the game boxes.
Second Life: $9.95 per month or $14.95 per month for my avvie and my plot of land. Yes I had to lay out about $50 or so to get that land but its still a far cry from the $141 forked out for a game I only played for about 5 months. I figure I’m getting off cheap.
As for problems, I complain yes, but when I complain I usually laugh and think THIS is nothing! NOTHING!!!
Also bear in mind.. the Lindens are trying, we see notices of them trying to fix this or trying to fix that we get a new client to download about every 2 weeks, to me that is proof right there that they are doing something… and they are trying.
So, Veyron to answer your question.. YES other mmorpg’s have problems just as bad if not worse but the difference is the players pay a lot more to put up with them.
If you want a real good story about truly lousy customer service and companies NOT listening to their clients, ask me about Star Wars Galaxies sometime.. thats a horror story to end them all.
(PS) yes I know a lot of you are paying teir, I was leveling the playing field by using the minimum basic SL account prices and the minimum account mmorpg prices.
YOU ARE SO DAMN RIGHT! I hate to see all that ranting going on, especially on the comments on the Linden Blog. It doesn’t matter what they post there, you can be sure that amongst the first ten comments there’s at least one person ranting about things that don’t work for him/her.
From my point of view as a web developer and sysadmin, it’s just not fair. The Lindens put such a big effort into this game and provide a platform for our pleasure, trying to make it better and even more enjoyable for us while at the same time handling all those nasty bugs (which are a normal part of software development and can not be avoided!).
It’s true, SL is still far from perfect, but if it was as bad as some people say, why did it’s population grow from 3 to over 8 million people in the last few months? Why are they often more than 45000 people online at the same time? If you hate SL that much, why the hell are you still here?
i agree with you Dinee, a lot of mmorpg have lots of problems and they dont even tryu to fix them.
the only one that does it right in my opinion is Guild wars but that cant compare since its instance based and its free per month
at least LL is trying to fix things, little by little.
I totally agree with you, I used to play Ultima Online, and gah..when the lag monster gets ya there, you are usually in a deep dark dungeon with your best weapons/armor and pet, which are all gone, when you log back in *sigh*
On another note..I know you love collecting avatars, and I saw this video on Appearance mode with tinies…here is the slurl http://slurl.com/secondlife/Osaka/177/90/651
and the link for the video..just click blog and then scroll a couple of posts..
http://appearancemode.blogspot.com/
Elusyve, I used to play that too, was my first mmorpg and remember that happening well, saved up my gold for this uber axe, only to get hit with bad lag and lose it to some other player that was camping bodies. Ahh the good times.. lol
DW and I already have that avatar shop on our lists, he has the penguin (featured in the vid) and I have a small grey kitten.