Dammit.

Chris: "You should try Puzzle Quest."
Rog: "Okay."

Now I'm questioning my core beliefs that videogames are not a true addiction.

Michelle has tried to convince me to give Tabula Rasa a try. She was in the beta and she had some nice things to say about it, but my reaction is still: "If I'm going to play a shooter, I'd probably prefer an FPS."

I doubt I'm the only person with this mentality. Ever since the Doom days (Wolfenstein even), we've been blessed with high quality shooters. The FPS genre still dominates and it's been seriously refined, plus they've been multiplayer since practically day one.

Stargate Worlds looks interesting, but it's also a shooter.

Even if you compare casters in most MMORPGs, it's the AoEs that make those classes popular.

I don't think an FPS makes a good MMORPG because having your character on the screen is such a strong tangible factor. I'd guess the designers at both Tabula Rasa and Stargate Worlds would agree with me there, they both have third-person shooter designs. The thing is, they're directly competing with what's arguably the biggest genre there is.

Thankfully we have plenty of great FPS games to choose from, but that's a problem for shooter MMOs, isn't it?

Update: Looks like the usual fare, website relaunch and trailers.

  ·  ·  ·

BioWare is set to announce something big for Dragon Age tomorrow. It's close to E3, so who knows, this could be just a release date coupled with a trailer and whatnot. Or perhaps they've decided to make a console version for what was originally intended as a PC-only game. Or it may be connected to Dr. Ray's comments about on-going content downloads.

Dragon Age was one of the games BioWare started developing a few years back as their original property games, like Mass Effect. I was pretty thrilled at the idea, because as much as Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights and KOTOR were fantastic, they were all set in licensed universes and the guys at BioWare are more than creative enough to come up with some damn inventive stuff on their own.

Dragon Age is set in their own unique medieval fantasy world.

When a guildmate mentioned it (thanks Xystian), the idea of a Dragon Age MMORPG put a huge grin on my face.

I'm not starting any rumours, so don't get excited, I don't think that's actually going to happen. BioWare couldn't be developing Dragon Age secretly as an MMO all this time, could they? It does have a 5 year development cycle, but BioWare doesn't develop quick games anyway. It can't be, because it's expected to be party-based tactical combat, right? Well it's very unlikely, because they've also said it won't have the ability to do persistent server stuff like Neverwinter did.

Ahhh but I can dream that the BioWare MMORPG won't be a space opera, especially not Star Wars. For at least a few hours, I'm going to pretend it'll be a sword and sorcery romp.    =)

Maybe they'll consider an MMORPG sequel set in the Dragon Age world. I'm gonna start begging now.

The quote is from a Futurama episode, but it's apt. I'm very sad to hear that Gary Gygax has passed away, I hope he rolls a crit at whatever sort of pearly gates he arrives at.

I've played my share of D&D, plus the RPG videogames that I adore owe so much to Gary Gygax. Just the other day my gf was fiddling with my dice bag (literally, that's not an euphemism), so the subject was on my mind.