But this entry really isn't about all that. After all, between Luke and I having no 'net and Matt having a house full of sick kids, only Morgan was even able to make our Midnight Runner game, and odds are, he just played Mass Effect 3 instead.
No, what I'd like to talk about is the degree to which The Old Republic starts to waste your time after you've completed your first story.
As you may recall, I've adopted a "log it as you go" system of time management. That means I've been jotting down how long I spend on various endeavors, including how I game. And that includes how much time I spent playing Old Republic last week.
Last Thursday, for example, I got Kelynn back on track after a couple weeks off playing Tasia. I finally restarted my vicious Trooper's main storyline. That involved heading back to my ship and contacting my boss from the holoterminal on board.
Now you have to understand that, despite my best efforts when buying the damn thing in the first place, my machine seems to be on the low end vis a vis playing Old Republic. In particular, my loading screens seem to take much longer than everyone else's. Pretty much every time we're doing a Guild run that includes a conversation, everyone else loads first and gets to the first dialogue option, then waits around for my slow ass machine to catch up and get involved. Once I've loaded the conversation, we're good....everyone moves at the same pace until the end. But that first load is a bitch.
What's more, that extends to every load screen. I'm always the last to arrive at a Flashpoint and, because it takes so long for me to load back to the fleet and then back into the instance if I die, standard procedure during a wipe is to just wait around as a corpse and get revived by one of my guildmates when they get back in to the zone.
In other words, every load screen I see is a serious pain in the ass, even more for me than it is for most other players, and it's no picnic for them.
Right, so load screens suck. Let's count how many I had to go through to get my story started again, shall we? There was the one going from the main part of Carrick Station to the hanger. A second from the hanger to my ship. I have a conversation with General Garza, and she tells me to meet her on Coruscant. So load screen three gets me from my ship to the Coruscant hanger. Four gets me from the hanger into the spaceport. I talk to Garza and get my mission. I need to go back to Tatooine. Fine. Load screens five and six take me back to my ship. Seven and eight get me from my ship and out of the hanger onto Tatooine proper. I rescue my contact without any more load screens, but getting into the hanger of my ship where my other contact is waiting is number nine. I find out what I need to know and get back on my ship with number ten. Garza wants to debrief me on Coruscant. Despite the fact that she was perfectly willing to discuss the disposition of known Republic traitors over the holoterminal before, this mission needs a face to face. Okay, so eleven and twelve get me back onto Coruscant. Garza tells me to get my ass to Balmorra. Thirteen and fourteen to my ship, fifteen and sixteen to get to the surface of Balmorra proper where I can finally get shit started. At which point I'm too tired to actually do anything and just park in the cantina and call it a night.
I've got it logged. That whole runaround took two hours and sixteen minutes! In that time, I scored a tiny fraction of the experience points I needed to level up. I spent all but a handful of minutes of that time either staring at load screens or running around through places I've already been. What's galling, however, is how unnecessary it all was. If they'd just had the decency to put the contact on Balmorra and have Garza brief me onboard my ship, they could have eliminated 75% of the load screens and not wasted so much of my time.
And maybe I'd have played Old Republic since last Thursday.
Gabe from Penny Arcade had the same complaint about the bullshit runaround. When I first read his post, I thought he was being overly dramatic. Now that it's happened to me, I can see his point. My time is precious. I've become even more aware of how precious lately. Have I got time for a game that thinks my time is valueless? I don't know anymore.
This question comes to me at a crucial time. My paid for time runs out one week from today on March 20th, and I'm not sure if I'm going to renew. Old Republic holds a lot of attraction for me. I like the stories. Granted, I like Tasia's story more than I do Kelynn's, but keeping up with the Runners demands that I play Kelynn more. And there is the guild. We've had some fun times Flashpointing our way across the galaxy. Hell, we came up with our own bullshit tactic! As a subset of the guild is the fact that I get to play with my brother once a week. Time being what it is, especially on his end with the 4 1/2 year old and 1 1/2 year old underfoot, my ability to game with Matt is pretty limited. Being able to shoot shit up in Old Republic together is a pretty rare thing.
On the other hand, there are other games. Guild Wars 2 is on the horizon. So are Mechwarrior Online and Mechwarrior Tactics. Lord of the Rings Online, Star Trek Online, and Dungeons & Dragons Online are all free to play and available now. So it doesn't have to be Old Republic.
The question is, do I still want to play the game?
Kelynn, Level 36 Vanguard, Balmorra
Tasia, Level 29 Sith Sorceress, Alderaan
Alia, Level 12 Jedi Shadow, Coruscant
Leanra, Level 3 Imperial Agent, Hutta
My renewal was in 3 days, and I pulled the plug.
ReplyDeleteI just don't want to play anymore. I made a poor choice in starting character, but I had no way of knowing that back then.
If we want to keep gaming, there are many free to play options out there. We just gotta avoid PVP.