» Tue Apr 07, 2009 2:13 pm
I have only played one MMO and that is WoW. I've been interested in trying others but I haven't been excited about them as I was when WoW first came on the scene. I had been playing Warcraft 3 for a couple of years before WoW came out, so I was familiar with the characters and the game world. Call it hype. In essence, WC3 had me sold on to Wow before it came out because of the RPG aspect of WoW and MMO's in general (I love a good RPG). Similarly, Fallout 1 & 2 have made me excited to play a Fallout MMO, so much so that I post on this board and Bethesda Fallout forums.
What kept me playing WoW from the day of its release until early in 2007 was at first exploration of the world, second character development (lvling, loot), and of course, socializing. I was enthralled by the games scope and size. Every new area, especially the first play through, felt like a big accomplishment to get to and a new game. Was it repetitive, could it be summed up quickly (as I have seen people say on this forum and others)? Sure, but no more so than a FPS shooter or any other game IMO. I would play 1-2 hours per day, at around the same times. I got to know the other people who played casually like myself, and had fun lvling with others, or helping others lvl. I kept a good balance of work, family, and gaming hours, but I found that when the wifey wanted or needed to stay home on a Friday or Saturday night, I had no problems with it. I would pop open a beer and play WoW all night. Saved me from many dinners and a night out of drinking at the bars that would have been much more expensive than WoW, yet I could still feel "social" in the fact that I was communicating with others. Heck, I got my best friends to play the game (we live in 3 different cities in the US with our respective families) and it was a great way to keep in touch, have fun, and reminice about our Goldeneye allnighters we had in high school.
In the end, it took me somewhere between 20-25 days of total playing time (actual playing, fooling around, idle time) before I maxed out my level as a casual player. I enjoyed the endgame for a little while but it is geared more for the hardcoe players with dedicated amounts of time, so I created another character as opposite of the one I had worked on for 6-8 months (Opposite faction, class, etc). So I played another 16-20 total days before I maxed my second character out. I enjoyed the experience both times. I stopped playing after WoW:BC endgame became to time consuming to find groups to run instances (which could take hours themselves to play through). Overall, I have never played any other game as frequently or as consistently as I did with WoW. Nor has any game I have played taken so much time to "complete" (i.e. max lvl) as WoW did in when it first came out, which I loved.
As a gamer and an investor in IPLY, I am very excited for a Fallout based MMO to be released in the coming years. Good luck!