Wait. Wait. Wait. RUNRUNRUN! Wait.

Hey you. This is a online gaming post. There’s some political stuff below and also a movie review. If you’re not into gaming, move along. Nothing to see here.

OK, now it’s just us geeks.

All apologies to “Patience”:http://www.thudfactor.com/archives/003251.php, but I have lost mine with Star Wars Galaxies. Especially after I read NeenerNeener.net’s Top Ten (or So) Reasons N3 Dropped SWG, which effectively demonstrates for me that the game doesn’t get any better as you advance. It just becomes more frustrating.

OK, this was my day on SWG:

I logged on, very excited because last night I discovered I can hire computer-player stormtroopers to follow me around and shoot stuff. Well. Will be able to. At the moment I could only hire Imperial red-shirt flunkies. But that was OK! Here, I thought, was the thing that I didn’t know that was holding me back. I trot them out on a seek-and-destroy mission, and a mob of flying hellbeasts I would never, ever have come close to without much, much more firepower spawns ON TOP OF ME, killing me and my red-shirt “pets.” Great. Now I don’t have any faction points to buy more flunkies.

So I fly off to Tatooine because the place I’m at isn’t very well populated and I want to see if I can find someone to play with. You know, get a hunting party together. I do find someone, and on the way to the meeting point I’m attacked and killed by a Rebel human player, but hey. Them’s the breaks for being an overt Imperial, and I don’t take it personally. I reclone and head for the medical center — I know people other people will need healing after this raid, and role-playing the dutiful first-aid person I want to help out where I can.

A Rebel has camped out in the medical center, and he’s blowing away the patients. This *does* offend me — not from a behavior standpoint, but from a standpoint of game mechanics. Earlier in the day I had tried to heal a Rebel player who came into the med center, but wasn’t allowed to do so because I was an Imperial doctor. They’ll step on my role-playing there (just because I’m Imperial doesn’t mean I’m without medical ethics!), but they won’t keep someone from camping the sick and wounded? Whatever happened to the Geneva convention?

It gets worse — although being killed effectively made me a non-combatant until I agreed to participate in player-vs.-player combat, I apparently earned a “temporary enemy flag” for committing the sin of healing a fellow Imperial _in a hospital_. So Campy the Rebel blew me away again.

I logged out soon afterwards. Because it was time to go to work. And suddenly work seemed much more fun anyway.

This evening I logged in to do about an hour’s worth of what I loosely call “adventuring” (no plot, no coherence, “go do this, go do this, thank you I don’t have any more for you, no you didn’t achieve anything” passes for adventuring in SWG). But I wanted to do it somewhere more quiet, somewhere where I wouldn’t be killed by roving Rebels but I could still roleplay my being a declared Imperial. So I head off to the Imperial base on Talus. First I have to go to the starport, and wait eight minutes for a shuttle to Corellia. There I have to buy a ticket to Talus, and again I have to wait eight minutes. Finally at the base, I pick up a couple of nearby, low-money easy missions.

One of my missions has materialized in very close proximity to hostile creatures. As soon as they notice me, I’m dead again.

And for the twentieth time today I think: this is a _game_? I’ve had more fun at the dentist’s office. Oh please, Ms. DDS, bring that tartar pick closer. Just don’t make me run one more SWG hunting mission.

You know what? I think I keep playing this game so I won’t feel stupid about the money I’ve already spent. That’s a common con technique. I forget what it’s called. Anyway. I think I’ve gotten wise to the con.

So anyone know any MMORPGs of more substance?