Same old crappy 'cRPG is dying' nonsense again. Don't you get bored of reviving the same old thread every two or three months?
Anyways, what's up with this ridiculous
"must play cRPG exclusively and grind my ass off" attitude? I don't get it. Seems unhealthy to me. I suspect some people have very addiction-prone personalities.
I play
lots of games. Lots and lots. Last weekend, i've been making maps in
Portal 2 (
http://steamcommunity.com/id/phazey/myworkshopfiles/ <-- check out my maps if you have Portal 2). Loads of fun building those maps! Great editor, by the way. Quality Valve stuff. (i'm a big Valve fan
)
For variation, i did a few rounds of siege on my 2h and then i popped into EU1 for a few rounds of action with my main character and
really enjoyed it, even though it was just a short session.
The weekend before that, i was playing a lot of
League of Legends with a few friends. Also with rounds of cRPG in between. Before that, i was enjoying a
Star Craft 2 (mostly custom modes like
Squadron TD, Space Battle and the
Tug of War type games). Before that, i had a lot of fun playing
Magic the Gathering with- and against friends and family. Before that, i played
Minecraft for a while with a few old friends. Before that, i was playing
Supreme Commander (1 and 2) a lot with a friend (too bad the SupCom community is kinda dead). Before that, i played
Terraria a while, etc, etc, etc.
And i haven't even mentioned all the non-multiplayer games i play(ed), like
Orcs Must Die! (great game, really looking forward to the co-op in OMD2!), the Mass Effect series, the Fallout series, Elder Scrolls (Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim) and the hundreds of smaller indie games out there that are worth playing...
I can strongly recommend:
Keep it varied to keep it fresh. Don't grind. Instead, enjoy and switch it up.
I also participated in the
Guild Wars 2 beta weekend. Bit boring and disappointing, to be honest. The PvE completely bores me. The one 'saving grace' for GW2 is the RvR, but that needs lots and lots of work. It doesn't seem like much of a step forward if i compare it with the RvR
Dark age of Camelot had. Or the PvP from
Darkfall.
Also, to continue on the topic of GW2: i found the combat quite repetitive and very much like 'button bashing'. For example: most classes could be very effectively played by just spamming 1-2-3 rapidly with an occasional press on 4 and maybe 5. Not very skill based at all. Comparing that with cRPG is like comparing apples and oranges. Or apples and potatoes.
I made a quick macro to toggle repeat 1, 2, 3 and stood on the walls defending castles in RvR as a fire mage and had some fun. Then i found out the same macro worked almost perfectly for most other classes.
It was just the same, boring, 'run with the biggest mob you can find but stay near the back' kind of game play you find in dozens of games. It kinda reminded me of
Realm of the Mad God in that way.
I also found the sieging to be tedious, unpolished and quite broken at times... although i have to admit running with the siege golem was pretty cool.
Anyways, enough about GW2. Back on topic:
For me,
cRPG is an adrenaline game that competes with
Battlefield 3,
Counter Strike (Global Offensive),
Tribes Ascend,
Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead,
The Ship,
Day of Defeat, and many, many other adrenaline fuelled multi player action games games i'm forgetting to mention. As an added bonus, cRPG sometimes has a bit of strategy and tactics too. I Love that!
Anyways, my point is: i've been playing games like this since... well... since
Civilization and
Doom, i guess. Enjoy and cherish the games you like, but keep mixing it up and keep it varied, so it doesn't go stale. Even when i played World of Warcraft (back in the day it was just out and my guild was conquering Molten Core and we did silly Tarren Mill world PvP), i also kept playing several different multi player games. I occasionally try MMO's, but all MMO's seem grindy and dumb to me the. I miss Ultima Online.
And i hate how all MMO's are carbon copies of WoW after WoW's success. Pretty silly, if you ask me.
Tera was boring too. So was
Aion. So was
Champions Online. And
Star Trek Online too. All grindy and repetitive. Uninspired.
Anyways:
cRPG will probably never die. At least, not until a game comes along with similar melee based combat mechanics, big battles (100+ players), great character customization and a stable and nice community like cRPG has. Mark my words: cRPG has many years to go yet.
It's a bit like Counter Strike in that way.
What also keeps me coming back is my clan and our teamspeak server. It's very much like a favorite pub or something.
P.S.: I've been keeping an eye on War of the Roses, but that seems much smaller scale and even though the graphics look nice, it seems to have very 'klunky' and arcade-like gameplay.
Besides that and Warband 2, what games could compete with cRPG, do you think?