Burnout

Every several months, I get burnt out from playing World of Warcraft. Honestly, it's a great game but it's just repetitious to the extreme.

"Go kill 10 of these rats" becomes "Go kill 10 of these Giant Ultra-Elite Dragonspawns" until eventually its "Go kill 10 of these Ancient Dragons and bring back their ears".

Comparatively, Asheron's Call 2 was also repetitive but for some reason I enjoyed that repetition. Perhaps it was the feeling that around every corner there was something new waiting whereas in Azeroth/Outland/Northrend, its all the same.

Anyway, as you may have noticed from the title, I burnt out from playing my Level 70 druid. The guild I co-created is still thriving but I just can't bring myself to log in and get involved. So I'm busy creating a mage who is at level 33. I've tried levelling a mage before but got stuck around level 27 but I think I'll persevere with this one; she plays well.

In the meantime, I have finished Puzzle Quest. It's a good game and is a different challenge to normal crpgs. A decent 7.5 out of 10.

After that, I decided to finish off the Neverwinter Night expansions I have and am stuck in Hordes of the Underdark. But that too has become a bit repetitious so I wanted to try something else - a little bit different than your run of the mill crpg.

And lo and behold, I find Fastcrawl. A dungeon game that will last for around 30 minutes. I had a quick go of the demo and like it a lot; I may even buy it and give it a proper go.

And finally, my attention swings ponderously to Dungeon Runners, a free game made by my old friends NCSoft (they also make City of Heroes). Dungeon Runners is no World of Warcraft. It's buggy, slow, and even on my machine, runs like a dog. But its very much Diablo-esque, and a lot easier to jump into than WoW, even though its based very much on that Blizzard game. DR does not require membership subscription but if you do pay, you get to have equipment that's otherwise restricted. I probably won't pay membership rates but that's fine. I just want to play something a little different.

The other big deal is that I don't have anyone to play with. One part of MMO's that I don't get is that they're meant to be collaborative games. I wish they would make a game where meeting people was a lot easier...