Avoiding Fantasy MMOs

Fantasy is not my favourite genre.  With a few exceptions I have not much clue of who is who among fantasy authors – the only author whose books I have read a lot is Terry Pratchett. I do not dislike fantasy – I just have difficulty to show any extended interest in it.

For MMOs, my first 4 MMOs were categorised in different genres (Anarchy Online, Earth&Beyond, EVE Online, Star Wars Galaxies) and I got my introduction to fantasy MMO with Final Fantasy XI. There are certainly some quite good fantasy MMO games out there, but I do find that I am perhaps in some cases less tolerant and less patient with fantasy MMOs than with some other genres.

Good or bad, I see little reason to go back to World of Warcraft, LOTRO, Everquest 2, Dungeons&Dragons Online or Age of Conan. Or try Warhammer Online or Aion for the first time. Guild Wars and Saga or Ryzom are perhaps my exceptions – in particular Guild Wars’ quite strong story part and interesting skill system and mission/game mechanics still has made it fun to play. And one reason I will likely try out Guild Wars 2 despite the fantasy genre.

But if I look at any part that may be less than stellar in a game I have certainly had more than enough of farmers and others wanting me to kill boars/wolves/orcs/trolls/dragons/elves/whatever. Similar mechanics but with some other genres seem to work out better for me.

How important is the genre for you? Does it matter at all?

Virginworlds 100

The Virginworlds podcast has reached a big milestone now, with show #100 being released. I am a big fan of the podcast and the web site in general. Brent provides some quite enjoyable podcasts on a wide variety of what may be included in “the MMORPG genre” and has a nice list of related news items. And all that with a clean web site design which makes it easy to read and browse.

The first time I learned about the web site was in the EQ2 Daily forums, as a I recall when Brent “The prognosticator” had made some reviews of a couple of different podcasts – my memory is a bit fuzzy here though. After that I started to visit the web site and also picked up the podcasts when they started, although I did not become a regular listener until sometime in their late 20s I believe.

I have only listened to a bit more than 1 hour of this 3 hour show at the time of writing, I like it so far. And people looked at me strangly on the underground when laughing and smiling at the montage – can’t have that…;)

I am sure the rest of the show will be great as well, so do pick it up and listen to it!