My cocaine

- "Hi, my name is Pieter and I'm addicted to MMORPG's."
- "Hi Pieter", the room shouts.

It all started with a review version of Everquest 2. You get dragged in so quickly in the world of Norrath, the endless amount of quests and fantastic large worlds in which you find new things on a daily basis. This goes for any MMORPG by the way. There are little concepts that work so addictive and after logging off, you can spend days roaming around the community forums or developer website. After all, in a dynamic world, weekly changes are made and you better keep up to date if you don't want to stay hopeless back after a couple of months. Often people think that MMOG's require too little skills but you'll need quite some strategic insight if you don't want to eat dust too often.

Another comment that often comes up is that "every MMOG is a bit the same". Also this isn't always true. Indeed, MMORPG developers often loan stuff from the competition, but there are a lot of different concepts. I've played many MMOG's and of all these titles, RF Online looks to be competing for the title of "strongest concept". The game is a mix between Fantasy and Sci-fi and at first glimpse looks a lot like the Final Fantasy series. There are also quite some differences you'll notice with the rest of the MMOG's out there; you're able to find out the level of your opponent, the only indication you get is a small blue light that lights up when your opponent is equally strong or just a bit stronger than yourself. If it isn't turned on, you'll easily be able to defeat him but won't gain experience points by doing so. Another remarkable difference is that you don't need to buy upgrades for magical spells. The more you use one, the more powerful it will get.

RF Online is a big hit in Asia and hopes to be able to pull off the same stunt in Europe and the US. Probably it will succeed in that as this game has a fantastic concept, nice differences that keeps the game fresh compared to the competition, and beautiful graphics that can take on the biggest names in the genre.

Partly however, as the game also has its downers. The controls are clumsy and the game is part of the category of "potion spammers" which more or less means you'll need to get a stock of potions and manna and use those during combat. Without potions you can't take on opponents of your own level even. In my opinion this is a slowdown of the action as you always have to be struggling with your inventory to take a potion. The inventory itself isn't always that handy either, you'll constantly have to drag the items you want to sell to the inventory of the buyer. This in contradiction to most RPG's where you just have to push the Sell or Sell Quantity button.

Conclusion


Finally, these inspiring words of a man with an addiction:

I've been clean for two hours and feel great!
From some corners of the room a short applause starts.
Why would I give up my only comfort in the world of too short and uninspired games?!
I can just avoid a can of cola and show my middle finger to the rest of the room.