Since then, my husband has gained a rank on his Klingon and he and I have quested together Fed-side, and even done a couple of the PvE scheduled events together Klingon-side. I have been going to bed earlier the past few nights, so my own gameplay has been spotty, but the wonderful thing is – no worries; I just match his rank when we group and all is well!

He is also very enamored of the Duty Officer system and is taking it extremely seriously. Tipa has referred to Doff management as Facebook-style “cow clicking,” and I have never played a FB game so I can’t comment on how close that comes to the mark, but at any rate, it’s helped me set a new criteria for what I’m looking for in any future MMOs I play. In fact, one of my only existing concerns about Guild Wars 2 is that all of the minigames I’ve heard about so far involve competitive gameplay of some sort (bar brawl, keg rugby, shooting gallery) and what I really want is something with a non-combat focus and in which I do not need to compete against other players, but can still advance my character. I don’t need it to be all of the time. Just some of the time.

More and more I’ve been thinking about the MMO features I prefer and how they affect my enjoyment of the games I play, such as how greatly world travel and level-gating has impacted my husband’s and my enjoyment in LOTRO. These are old issues, familiar enough to MMO players that we have our cute slogans and practices, our static groups and our spousal leveling contracts, but something about wanting to enjoy my time in Tolkein’s universe and feeling thwarted instead of welcome every time I tried to share my gameplay with someone outside of a PUG made me snap, and I have decided I just won’t put up with these kinds of things anymore, no matter how intriguing the subject matter or setting of an upcoming game. I think this is what made it so easy for me to pass on the launch of SW:TOR after one beta weekend, my other reservations notwithstanding.

If I were to have a New Year’s Resolution this year (I haven’t made any), it would be: I will not participate in another spousal leveling contract.

There was an excellent forum post put up at MMORPG.com recently, called The Tao of Arenanet, that explains Guild Wars 2′s features in light of ArenaNet’s design philosophy and thus attempts to show why GW2 is not merely a collection of features that may or may not be represented to some degree in other MMOs such that they are interchangeable. I have been arguing this in a more or less incoherent fashion, here and in forum and blog comments, for the past two years, but this post says it so much more eloquently that I now tip my hat and say, “QFT.”

I actually did the unthinkable this holiday season: I re-subscribed to STO to bridge the month before it goes free to play. Me! Re-subscribed! I’m not sure that I’ll spend any more money on STO past this subscription, but I was so impressed by the changes to the game that I wanted to throw some cash Cryptic’s way, and this way I get to keep playing prior to January 17th. Which I have been. I have even given running missions Klingon-side a try, trying to see how much I can level between PvE missions and Duty Officer management (which are so much more amusing than the Fed-side DOff missions) and no PvP whatsoever.

Despite the furor on the forums about the Star Wars-inspired glowing lirpas and bat’leths that Ferengi!Yoda was handing out until earlier this week, I was a bit disappointed that they didn’t look more like the lightsabers they were decried as. One of those “all this kerfuffle over this?” moments, to be sure, but I find that is often the case on the official STO forums, where if you aren’t angry about something, you’re a fanboy.

Obligatory Glowing Lirpa Shot

Aside from making Mr. Randomessa extremely jealous over being able to play the game while he waited until he couldn’t justify paying $15 for as many days of subscription, I have also dipped into the Foundry missions (a whole new level of fun) and have been catching up on STO podcasts. I have also found possibly the only Star Trek Online forum that isn’t full of bitter naysayers at the Trek BBS (my home on the internet when my husband and I were mainlining DS9 a couple of weeks ago).

Oh, and I’m trying out the diplomacy missions for the first time and am still running races in Q’s Winter Wonderland, which, again, goes to show how much I appreciate non-combat and non-competitive options for gameplay. I tried popping in to Guild Wars’ Wintersday celebrations and popped out again rather quickly for that very reason. Tis the season not to fight anything, for me.

I have to say that unlike most MMOs where I do like being in the thick of pre-orders and the surge of new players embarking on their first journeys together, STO was one of those games where you didn’t get a whole lot out of being an early adopter (unless you were a lifetime sub from the start) and coming in later means I have so many parallel paths of advancement that I don’t expect to run out of things to do for some time. Of course, this also means that all of my content stories will be old news to those who ranked up to Admiral last year. Oh well; time to delve deep into the Foundry, I suppose.

And then I jumped off.

Mr. Randomessa and I stopped playing STO only a few months into our year-long subscriptions, citing several conflicts of interest, from my aversion to what I felt was excessive space gameplay, to his PvP burnout Klingon-side, to our disappointment with the crafting system, among other quality-of-life issues. We left just as the Episodic content was starting to get underway, but by that time our enthusiasm was spent and we didn’t delve too deeply into the weekly episodes. We didn’t write off the game completely, however, opting instead to wait and see how the next year would change or improve things.

Having ranked up to Lt. Commander on a new character, I think the wait has been well worth it. The most praise I have to offer is for the Duty Officer system, which adds a compelling means of non-combat advancement – something I’ve been wanting in MMOs for as long as I’ve been playing them (are you listening, ArenaNet?). Since usually this comes in the form of crafting in other MMOs, and crafting is generally on a separate XP bar than adventuring, the Doff system, for the first time in any MMO I’ve played so far, allows me to rank up even if I’m not actively completing missions or engaging in patrols. I cannot express how tickled this makes me; over the past week I leveled twice just from having completed Doff assignments. This also partially resolves the problems caused by having a singular leveling path for all Fed and KDF characters (which I have previously criticized), in combination with the ability to “skip” missions (which I should also mention is an awesome feature!). Combined with Squad Support putting an end to our need for our spousal leveling contract means that Mr. Randomessa’s and my leveling options were just blown wide open.

Second is the extra love being added here and there, from the occasional voiceover (Bioware has nothing to fear on that front, to be certain), to inserted cutscenes, to chairs you can sit on without using an emote (a feature I haven’t seen in any MMO I’ve played other than WoW). I’ve participated in Q’s Winter Wonderland, had a snowball thrown at me, fawned over other characters’ fashion choices (I’ve never been the type to ask “where did you get that outfit?” let alone spent much time trying to emulate them, but the new additions to wardrobe have unveiled this tendency in me and allowed me to indulge my love of the fantasy genre even within this universe), and remembered how cool it is that I can make a Cardassian given the character creation tools Cryptic has provided me. I even got a “boo, hiss” tell from another player for running a Cardie, which was surprisingly satisfying.

For the Republic! Er, wait, what game is this again?

I must also give bonus points to Cryptic for adding the ability to purchase Cryptic Points in-game through the exchange of refined dilithium. I feel this is Perfect World’s hand at work, since PWI’s other games also tend to feature the ability to exchange (exorbitant amounts of) in-game gold for cash-shop items. That the option is there is always a plus in my mind, just as I appreciate the means of acquiring Turbine Points through gameplay in LOTRO.

In short, STO has added or improved on a lot of features that Mr. Randomessa and I dreamed of from the start, and we’re more than ready to jump back in on the F2P launch date. We also can’t wait to check out the entries on the Foundry, which from the reviews I’ve read make even greater use of the engine than Cryptic does at times. There are only a couple more items remaining on our wishlists, including being able to see our Doffs on our ship when we explore the interior, and the ability to have quests and/or combat take place in ship interiors.

It remains to be seen how long I will be excited about STO before my love of fantasy settings begin to chafe again – costuming aside – but I still have my active LOTRO gaming sessions to scratch that particular itch. My free 10 days in STO ended yesterday, and I was loathe to log out that last time, hoping instead to see how just one more of my Doff assignments would end… and then another… and then another….

You know how it is, new shiny MMO experience and all.

…

“Oh, I noticed you’ve been having fun on your alt – what is that? A [healer]? Well, I just rolled up a [tank] while you were doing something else so that your [healer] has someone to run around with later.”

…

“Oh, I noticed you were playing your alt and I logged on to join you, but my inventory’s full of crafting goodies and the superior [implement]‘s leagues away from you; I’ll catch up with you when I’m done.”

…

“Oh, I noticed you were online crafting and I’m leagues away from the superior [implement], so I logged off and killed some time doing something else; let me know when you’re done.”

…

And this is how given a game we have fun playing together, set in a world we adore, with a price tag we can’t refuse, we have two level 35s, two level 28s, and two level 26s between us, we forgot to log in to pay our housing upkeep last month, I’m playing Champions Online, and Mr. Randomessa is playing Skyrim.

Call to mind single player RPGs such as the iterations of the Elder Scrolls, GTA, or Fallout series. Do you consider these to be sandbox RPGs?

Why or why not?

Now imagine that these games had a massively multiplayer component. The same game, but with the floodgates open for thousands of players at the same time, with NO other changes made to the game. The multiplayer versions of the above games are, in your view:

Why or why not?

Although I did note several similarities to WoW in the gameplay I sampled (rest areas being the most glaring one for me right off the bat), it was the Bioware traits that I ended up having most of my problems with. That’s right, I realized I don’t like Bioware games. I could have come to that conclusion when I never got farther than 10 hours into either Dragon Age: Origins or either KOTOR, but instead I figured I just didn’t like single-player RPGs. With dozens of blissful hours of Skyrim firmly behind me, I can kiss that notion goodbye, so it must be something that Bioware does that doesn’t sit well with me.

Considering where I left each of my prior attempts at Bioware games, I think I can safely say that that “thing” mainly is: trapping me.

[Beware spoilers below if you don't know much about the first 10 hours of DA:O, KOTOR, or KOTOR2]

I left DA:O the night I arrived in that town that is being besieged by darkspawn every night – the one you can opt to help or leave to their fate. I quit because prior to making my decision, I tried to leave and return to the town I’d been doing errands in earlier in the day, only to find that it had been destroyed and was no longer accessible. That left me with nowhere else to go. Sure, I could have denied my help to the townspeople, or chosen one of the other two story paths set out for me, but frankly what I wanted was something, almost anything else. I wanted to be able to go places in the world, even at my own peril, and DA:O said I could not. So I quit.

I left KOTOR in the sewers, after collecting Mission and her Wookiee friend and killing what felt like a bazillion gang members in as many rooms. I simply grew tired of sewers; I wanted to leave the sewers, and with my options being “continue fighting in the sewers” or “go dueling” I chose “none of the above.”

So, I thought, finally, maybe KOTOR2 would be more enjoyable? And this one seemed to be breaking the mold! No sewers! And I made it off the starting planet, and the second one, too! But I ultimately accepted my fate on Nar Shadaa, after cozying up to everyone imaginable and destroying a yacht just to get my ship back, only to remember that there was a Jedi to find and train with, and by that time I realized to my dismay that I no longer cared about any of the whole mess at all. Whatever juice Bioware uses to make so many others feel immersed and invested in their games, I must have been dosed with the antidote.

[end spoilers, if you were watching for that sort of thing]

It turns out that I simply do not have the patience for staying in one environment that Bioware demands of me. I have never fancied myself a sandbox lover (especially given the MMO interpretation thereof), and I love me some well-crafted and portrayed lore and cutscenes, but at least in most MMOs I’ve played I have a variety of locales I can move through in a relatively brisk manner, or, barring that, a variety of activities I can undertake to advance, even within the same environment. Side quests in Bioware never seemed to satisfy me the way they do in other games with main story threads like Guild Wars or LOTRO. Playing pazzak or swoop racing was not a substitute for tasty alternate story content, in my view.

So I tried to keep an open mind when I played SW:TOR last weekend. I wanted to like SW:TOR badly. I was raised on Star Wars  (feel free to insert childhood anecdotes that many will have also experienced) – we share a birth year and everything. It’s fate! But in the end, I was a little surprised by how much SW:TOR did not gel with me, though in hindsight the experiences I detailed above make it a no-brainer. I played a Bounty Hunter, a Smuggler, and a Sith Inquisitor, and it wasn’t until the third that I started to feel a bit immersed in the world, since it was the first story where I didn’t feel I was trapped in the environment by a stolen ship or a contest I needed to gain rep to participate in. Also, Seethe is the best power of any character or race in any MMO ever to exist. But by then the beta weekend was ending and I didn’t get to cash in the interest that had just started to build up.

I also had a huge problem with the way Bioware morality is assigned. More than once I boggled at the choices that led to Light Side points over Dark Side, and felt like I had to choose between “staying good” and doing what I felt would give my character internal consistency. I saw replies on various forums saying that these choices ultimately did not matter, since you could “grind out” LS/DS points of your choosing doing flashpoints, but since gaming the system is a playstyle I don’t participate in, I didn’t find the notion very comforting.

I also had a problem with the options for multiplayer that SW:TOR offers. I’m tired of people scoffing at Warhammer’s open groups or Rift’s public groups as though they are such unoriginal and failed ideas, when they are the only two games I can think of that offer such a seamless way to join with more than 3 or 4 people in the open world (and content that can be easily found and tackled with groups of such large sizes to boot). There are heroic areas with elite mobs in SW:TOR, but they are just as static as the non-heroic areas (or, they were on the level 1-10 planet). I could have grouped, but there was nothing compelling me to. By this I don’t mean that I would only group if forced to by content that would kill me; I mean there was no overarching area threat that could have benefitted from players banding together to deal with it, nor a mechanic to allow that to happen organically. And I get that that’s not what Bioware is going for with SW:TOR, and more’s the pity for it.

As for the stories themselves as presented, I thought they were all right, my favorite of the three being the Sith Inquisitor story. In fact, I wish now that I’d started with it, but that brings me to another problem I’ve always had with Bioware’s take on SW:TOR, which is to tie gameplay style with story. I didn’t want to be a mage, I wanted to be a heavily-armored rocket-shooting crowd-controller, but it turns out that that story didn’t interest me as much, so it was off to be a mage I went. I played as a purely Light-Sided Sith, which amused me although my dialogue options tended to be boring. I’d have thought it’d be more interesting to play against type, but it didn’t play that way, so I ended up making up my own interesting quips in my head, and when you’re doing that in a Bioware game, I think you’ve missed the plot.

I think that rather sums up my experience playing this and other Bioware games rather succinctly. I’ve missed the plot. I wanted to like it, I’ve heard such excellent things about it, and I’m not terribly opposed to the traditional MMO-ness of it (I am still playing LOTRO, after all). I’m just out of phase or something, stubbornly immune to, or incapable of appreciating, Bioware’s charms. I’m sure that every one of the negatives I listed above have made their way onto someone else’s “must have” list, and so, with something like a kajillion pre-orders, I’m sure Bioware can do just fine without my support.

I do, genuinely, wonder if the sales will sustain themselves into ongoing subs six months or a year down the line, and think it will really depend on how quickly and robustly Bioware adds content (no mean feat, with voiceovers to add for everything). Tying gameplay to story means that I don’t think everyone will play through every storyline just to see how the story goes, there’s bound to be repeated content across factions, and as it stands it’s easy to see the fallout from your various dialogue choices by escaping out, so curiousity won’t drive that bus too far, methinks (and locking people into their dialogue choices without a means to back out would summon a hue and cry that could be heard from Alderaan).

I don’t think SW:TOR has anything to fear from other upcoming MMOs coming down the pike, except from people who have already admitted that SW:TOR is only a stopgap on the way to another anticipated game (and I wouldn’t bet there are terribly many of them). The only people who would leave other than that are those who have no particular attachment for the IP or company loyalty, but rather will play anything with “MMO” and “new” written on the tin. People who are playing because “it’s Star Wars” or “it’s Bioware” aren’t going to go anywhere, because, well, it is what’s written on the tin. They are its target audience, and they are well loved.

In closing: enjoy, target audience! I’d be pretty excited right now, if I were you.

Whether it’s because the technology has finally been able to catch up to the graphic quality I expect and envision in a fantasy world, with years of improvements on previous Elder Scrolls incarnations like viable 3rd person view and NPCs that don’t trigger my uncanny valley horror reflex, or some other factor, I don’t know. All I know is that Skyrim is the first single-player game I’ve truly enjoyed enough not to quit before the end of the first act.

So it’s the case that I enjoy the sandbox elements of Skyrim, the removal of rails, the ability to go spelunking without a care that I might run into an invisible wall, or that I can’t leave a town until I’ve sufficiently pleased enough inhabitants to obtain passage elsewhere. But I also enjoy the elements of convenience; that when someone mentions a town to me, it appears as a landmark on my map, and that once I’ve traveled there in person I can hop back at any time. I like that I can learn my skills by using my weapons, or I can find someone who excels at that ability and pay for them to train me.

I know that there are elements of these features in previous Elder Scrolls incarnations, but in the wistful talk of some gamers who would love to see something like Skyrim translated into MMO form, some of these, such as fast travel, are the kinds of features that would be shouted down on any gaming forum. I commented on my love of Skyrim’s fast travel on Keen’s blog, only somewhat facetiously, but it did get me thinking about the ways in which Skyrim has only served to make me more excited about Guild Wars 2.

Everyone acknowledges that GW2 is a themepark MMO, not a sandbox. Some have helpfully offered the term “sandpark” to describe the ways in which ArenaNet has blurred the edges of what we have come to think of as “themepark” play. Yet what people generally think of as sandbox when it comes to MMOs is far removed from what I experience in Skyrim. It sometimes seems to me that when people want an MMO to be more like a sandbox they want it to be more obtuse, explain less to the player, remove elements of convenience as though these are what make a game a themepark. Yet I keep seeing features in Skyrim that remind me of my time playing Guild Wars 2′s demo.

In Skyrim, huge text floats over my head when I discover a new location or obtain or complete a quest. I can track every single quest objective in my journal all at the same time. That I can choose which to complete, and in which order, is merely icing on the cake; I always know exactly where I can go to get something done, while still retaining the freedom to veer off and do something else entirely.

In my demo experience of Guild Wars 2, the UI is more prominent, with an event log keeping score in the corner of the screen. However, I rarely found myself having to talk to an NPC to contribute in some way to completing a task (although I could if I wanted to). As in Skyrim, sometimes I merely followed the shouts of NPCs to a place where something big was happening; more than once I just had to follow the smoke to a fire.

Is there a main storyline to Guild Wars 2? Yes, as there is in Skyrim. But do I have to do it at once, or even at all? As with Skyrim, the answer is no. I can ignore that green diamond as easily as the quest marker in Skyrim, and simply fill my roster with “Miscellaneous” (in Skyrim), or pick up eggs and place them in trees to please the Raven Spirit (in GW2)… and incidentally, when a dragon in Skyrim landed, breathing fire, I pummeled it with magic and sword alongside several screaming NPCs, and was reminded of doing the same in Guild Wars 2 at PAX Prime.

Scouts in GW2 serve the same purpose as that random person you meet in Skyrim’s towns who  “tell you more about” the inhabitants, unlocking the location of the mill, the market, the nearby farms, and the taverns so that you can talk to and help the inhabitants there. It’s just that GW2 circles those spots on the map for you and dots them with a heart. Even features such as learning skills based on weapon and magic use are features that ArenaNet has implemented in GW2 and “feel” similar to the way in which I get better at one-handed sword use in Skyrim.

I “learned” how to make specific alchemical potions by combining “optional, optional, and optional” in a similar manner to how we have seen crafting demonstrated in Guild Wars 2 as well.

I wish that rather than hard terms such as “themepark”, “sandbox,” or even “sandpark” we could recognize that such games run on more of a continuum. When we speak of sandbox MMOs providing player freedom, we are so often only referring to freedom to create content (which is not a bad thing depending on whom you ask and what the content is) but not freedom to explore existing content, which is what I happen to be much more interested in. Guild Wars 2 might not provide much of the former outside the WvWvW realm of the Mists, but in my opinion it does offer plenty of the latter, in a manner surprisingly similar to that of “vanilla” – sans mods – Skyrim.

While it is true that we have not been racing to endgame (we only dinged level 33 this weekend), we have been amassing several hours of playtime across multiple alts and crafting professions. We have each purchased deluxe houses in the Falathorn homesteads – that’s how we know we’re serious! – and have begun decorating in earnest. Two of our alts, a Hunter for him and Rune Keeper for me, even duo together on odd days. And all this without PvP! Although I suspect that some of the more vicious bidding wars Mr. Randomessa has gotten into on the Auction House for crafting materials are serving as a form of PvP “high” for him….

In a refrain I have heard elsewhere by Minstrels, the class changes in Rise of Isengard have breathed new life into a class I had struggled with since around level 25. My Minstrel is now level 39, having gained three levels last week, and I have been enjoying tackling the Epic Story quests solo, in addition to skirmishing. I feel more sturdy and powerful than ever, and am seeking out new challenges to test the limits of my damage-dealing capabilities. Having unlocked more than the initial two free skirmishes, I was surprised to find that several of the later skirmishes were much easier than the early ones. I had much more fun and success running Attack at Dawn, Thievery and Mischief, or Stand at Amon Sul than I ever managed solo with Siege of Gondoman or Trouble in Tuckburough, which has made skirmishing a more fun and rewarding experience across all my characters.

Of course, with the tiny army that is our Captain and Loremaster combination, we’re still doing well with Tier 3 skirmish challenges, which I lay at the feet of Mr. Randomessa’s newly-acquired Lynx pet; enemies simply melt away before his stealthy kitty swipe. We’re also doing well with the Hunter/Rune Keeper pair; I was interested in trying the Rune Keeper for some time already, but upon learning more about its skills and realizing that in the healing attunement it’s essentially a Prot Monk, I was sold. With LOTRO’s slower-paced combat, this actually feels like something I might be able to do (and enjoy doing), and so far I’m liking healing with my RK more than I ever did on my Minstrel.

Sadly banished to the bench is my adorable Hobbit Warden, who, although invincible and mighty, just wasn’t a playstyle I really enjoyed at level 17. She’s resting comfortably at Michel Delving, cooking up a storm for the rest of the team with occasional overnight stays in Esteldin to craft jeweled goods and runestones as well. In the meantime, we will need to make some decisions as to what quest pack(s) Mr. Randomessa should buy to add variety to our alts’ leveling paths. Hopefully, one or two will round out the content he already has through the Isengard expansion; thanks to my VIP status, I have already earned enough TP to purchase the rest of the content should we still be playing at level 50, 60 or beyond.

To close, one more complaint from the premium member: no permanent swift travel unlocks in the LOTRO Store, Turbine? Really?