I beta tested a game recently that has now had it's NDA raised, so I'm free to talk about what a depressing experience it was. The game is launched next week and may do OK: it's called Alganon, and my experience of its closed beta test lasted all of a week.
I'd looked forward to the game without reading too much about it. What appealed was the idea of a skill system that would continue to improve you while you were offline - a system very well implemented in Eve Online but not (to my knowledge) in a fantasy MMO. Essentially, you set a skill to increase while you're not playing the game, slightly levelling the playing field for long time players who have invested their cash in the game without being able to play 24/7.
After excitedly downloading the game client, it took me about five seconds to start to become disillusioned. And it's not like I normally give games a fair try too - of my gaming friends, I'm normally one of the more resilient (several of them tend to fail to get past the first month nowadays before giving up). But this time was different because of the impending doom of the very first screen.
Let me take you back about two or three months. I'd read about a free MMO called Runes of Magic: a free to play World of Warcraft (WoW) clone that looked really impressive. I downloaded it, played for about a week, but failed to talk any of my friends into giving it a go. That wouldn't have stopped me (none of my RL friends still play Istaria, for example) on it's own - the truth was that Runes of Magic was essentially WoW lite and if I wanted to play WoW, I'd play the real thing: I'm not exactly loaded, but I'm happy to play a small monthly fee to get the best game experience.
But loading up Alganon - a presumably pay to play MMO in the making - it was the Runes of Magic feeling all over again, but if anything more so. From the loading screen to the graphic style to the GUI to the skill trees to the health/mana system to the, well, everything, it seemed like a clone. The offline skill system I'd so looked forweard to was bolted on as an aside rather than a major game mechanic, adding some bonuses. Perhaps those bonuses improved dramatically with time, but it was obvious Alganon was the worst kind of WoW-a-like in ever other aspect.
As I said, I only played for a week, but in that time I saw absolutely nothing that made me want to stay - a pretty damning indictment for a fan of the genre. If anything, it was very depressing - to think that a bunch of imaginative and talented people had seemingly thought, 'the only way we can justify ourselves is to make a game that's like WoW in every way possible'. If the industry carries on in this fashion, the future is looking far from bright - which is at least good for games such as Istaria.
I should thank the makers of Alganon though - it's saved me a lot of time, because I won't even bother with beta tests from now on, let alone playing games in the first month of release. Instead I'll ignore the hype, wait for the 'real' reviews after launch, and then make a decision on whether to take a dip. Although I've said that before I'm sure...
On the bright side, as I've always played a character called Algenon in MMOs (more than a decade now!), at least I didn't have to face the ignominy of people thinking I was the kind of person that plays characters called Legolis or Gimloi in Lord of the Rings Online!
If you're interested in looking into the game Istaria, visit the official website at www.istaria.com
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