MMORPG

Maybe it's just me...but it seems more and more of the universes I like are moving to MMORPGs. For those of you who don't know what that means...a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (or MMORPG) is where you purchase a game for $40-50 and install it. Then, depending on the title, you get 30-60 days of free play in a massive world that could take years to explore fully. This sounds great, but then after the 30-60 days, you have to start paying $10-20 a month to keep going.

First off, before people start flaming me, I realize that the fees are to maintain the servers and to pay the people who maintain them both in the physical and content sense. While the prospect of this ever changing world sounds great to the gamer in me, the cost is the key. Mostly, I would have to say, my problem is the sour I've had in the past. The only game that I've tried to be involved with from a community standpoint is Diablo II. For a short while, it was great online...then all you get is people who seem to fall into a few categories:

1. Begging - They stand in town and spam messages to the whole game asking for gold / runes / weapons / protection / quest items / etc / etc.

2. Player Killers - I think this one needs no explanation. I know some people enjoy dueling, but when I'm questing I don't want to be killed by a sneak.

3. Duping, Mods, etc - This is what killed Diablo II. People hacking or modding the game to make super weapons or characters or to copy one good weapon 50 times.

Some people might call me a whiner or a loser cause of these complaints, but it made the online portion of Diablo II hard to swallow. They created a ladder system to stop some of this. It is supposed to stop people from hacking but they've already reset the ladder once due to dupped weapons. While I would be upset at a character on there being erased when he is free...what happens when I get deleted in the game I pay $15+ a month for cause I found something or got something that was "bad" and I was deleted. Then would they be giving me back my money? Nope. Also, there is no way to try before you buy. Say I pay $50 and I hate it. Ok. I stop it so it doesn't charge again. I'm still down the $50+ for the game and the month. Then what do I do with it?

Again, I sound like a whiner, but it's not right that the latest Matrix and Warcraft games are MMORPGs. If I want to know what happens next in either world, I would have to play them. I wouldn't have minded if they were stand alone games and I would have bought them. But MMORPGs are a new breed and without the ability to try one without losing a fair amount of money, it's hard to adopt.

Sadly, it seems more and more games are going this route (Final Fantasy, Warcraft, Matrix). So, it seems, I'm being left behind since I can't devote 20+ hours a week to gameplay.