"My god its full of microtransactions!"
2008, an MMO Odyssey
Well they done it again. Once again the players are being goaded into spending even more cash on gaming. It is no longer enough for us to buy the game and then keep paying a monthly subscription regardless of whether we actually played the game or not. Nowadays, if we want to "keep up with the Joneses" we have to PAY additional buck to get our hands on goodies which assure competitive character development.
Keeping up with the Joneses phenomenon explained:
In todays MMO games all players have a difficult time having fun if their characters arent powerful enough to win at various tasks at least 50% of time. Losing match after match is no fun at all and only leads to players leaving the game. The only way to save yourself from such a destiny is to pull ahead in character development in time. As soon as the game hits the shelves players start power leveling in order to be among the 5% of people who manage to pull ahead in time and therefore assure themselves a healthy gaming experience. The problem with this concept is this; those 5% of people are usually unemployed. Unemployed people have both the time and STAMINA to keep playing for up to 12 hrs per day. Those PRO gamers leave all the other players (called carebears) in the dust. They raise the time investment bar too high and by doing this they are practically being guaranteed that they will dominate the game. They get to dominate because other players simply CANNOT keep up and so end up being weaker - which for them means getting owned time after time by power players. There is not a single positive aspect of this phenomenon because such games only end up forcing power players to ruin their real lives (and health) by playing excessively and on the other hand casual gamers quit the game they are unable to enjoy.
Unfortunately the story doesnt simply end there, game developers keep insisting on segregating PRO players from CASUAL players by allowing PRO players to pay $$$ in order to get an advantage over cash-challenged players.
Provided that you are willing to cough up money you can get your hands on Age of Conan collectors edition which, among other things includes:
With your pre-order Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, you will be ableExcellent! we now can buy the right to play the game whole 3 days before everyone else for just 5$! The saddest thing about this is that many kids will actually PAY 5$ to play the game with a healthy power-leveling headstart! Its what they had learned by playing other MMO games; power leveling is the only way to experience success and fun in a MMO game.
to participate in the 3-day Early Access Program. Early access period
starts on May 17, 3 days before the commercial release on May 20, 2008.
You may begin downloading the game client files and installing as early
as May 14. With early access, there is a nominal fee of $5, which
covers the cost of the download and includes 10 days of additional game
time.