Saturday, May 06, 2006

Seeds of Disaster

The highly anticipated MMORPG "Seed" has been released as of May 2nd. I participated in the beta for this game after canceling my World of Warcraft subscription. Now that the game is public, it is okay for me to post my opinions on the game that was finally going to give roleplayers what they wanted.

Apparently, what roleplayers want is to be able to repair things instead of killing them. Of course, that's when the game works at all.

Seed is without question the worst game I have ever played. Extreme Paintbrawl is better than this game. The client crashes once every 10 minutes, and by then you'll have taken about 4 steps because the lag is so bad the game is virtually unplayable. Of course, those 4 steps will only be possible if the SERVER actually stays up.

The game is played in a windowed mode, so you can't even go full screen on it. At least then your crashes would take place in higher resolution.

I can't put it much more simply than this: I have never played a game worse than this. And that's frustrating, because the IDEAS this game was about were awesome. Unfortunately none of them found their way into the release.

Now, to be fair, Runestone (the publisher) had a lot of pressure to release this game ahead of when they would have liked. Their investors were understandably anxious after 2 and a half years to see some return, and as a result what got pushed out the door was this crappy mess that will almost certainly kill the game before it can even get off the ground.

But who knows? Anarchy Online had a horribly buggy release and is still around and going strong. Judging from the buzz, however, Seed has got to be one of the worst releases of an MMO in recent memory.

So, the search for a replacement for WoW continues, although I'm starting to think that I'm barking up the wrong tree with MMOs in general.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Might I suggest something along the lines of Neverwinter Nights? It didn't really catch on because it needs a collective level of creativity, forethought and commitment to making it "go" that is, for the most part, like sunlight to a vampire for most MMORPG players. They're often lazy and the amount of work they put in to harvesting (gold, points, levels, dragon scales, donkey shit, whatever) is the *only* real counter to their game-laziness.

Oh, sure, may run a guild and the guild gets to a certain size or diversity, and no one wants to be the hammer when you need one. The guilds splinter, fall apart or decay slowly. The end is always the same.

I admit up front that I don't have the time or drive needed to run a NWN server, but I would think that for someone builds D&D campaigns, the game *might* hold a certain level of interest.

*shrugs*

I've all but given up on online gaming, anyway. Excepting small, close-group stuff like Quake with friends and such.

Anonymous said...

Man, the only place you're going to find really satisfying role-playing experience is either with the tabletop group, or on a decent MUSH. You know, I know it, everybody who really likes to roleplay knows it. End of discussion.