I posted part of this as part of a comment on Blessing of Kings: Disengaged, but I thought I'd post it here, as well. Maybe I can get off my behind and start actually writing stuff up on my gaming blog. :) Consider this as a snapshot of what I'm playing, MMO-wise.


The Secret World - I'm still mucking around in Kingsmouth. I felt the starter bit for the Dragons was pretty poorly done. (Give me a tutorial mission where you give me abilities and then take them away at the end? Not too smart.) I think Funcom's problem is that they when they did the quests for TSW they got too enamared of ARGs for everything and not just for Investigation quests. This game really feels like you need a second monitor with a browser open looking everything up all the time. Personally, combine that with the ability to eventually learn all the skills in the game (though you can only use a few at a time) and you get the situation where you feel like you're spinning your wheels without any direction. If they had taken the idea Guild Wars 2 used and an obvious story thread to follow, plus a few stock 'archetypes' for abilities I think they would have kept more folks subscribed. It also wouldn't have hurt if they had put something more interesting in as the starter zone. Zombies and the Lovecraftian/King atmosphere are both rather overused at this point in time. I eventually want to push through the content and see everything, but I feel like I'm fighting the game to see it and not working with it. :sigh:

The Old Republic - Right now I'm just leveling characters to 50 to see their class stories. With the new expansion coming I'm not worried about doing anything with my other 50s. Leveling characters is a lot of fun because I'm seeing how Bioware intertwinned the stories among all the classes, plus I love seeing the little callbacks to the KotorR games. This is the game I'm spending the bulk of my time at the moment. Being able to do what I want, when I want has really invigorated my desire to log into an MMO and play.

World of Warcraft - I was pretty burned out by the end of Dragon Soul, but I hung in for my guild to help give it some leadership stability. I've leveled three characters to 90, but with all the dailies and the alt-unfriendlyness of the expansion, I've pretty much gone into hibernation with it. All I'm doing is logging in to see if I can get my other binding from Baron Geddon once a week. My guild is still raiding, but with the changes in raiders due to folks leaving at the end of Cataclysm they picked a raiding time that doesn't work for me. That's ok with me, but it does mean the normal "I need to be on and prepared to raid" efforts aren't keeping me logged in. I have done LFR and subbed in on some normal mode runs, but I have to say that T14 is pretty 'meh' for me. That may be just DS burnout lingering, but it may be that I'm very tired of trying to stay on Wow's Red Queen's racetrack of progression.

Guild Wars 2 - I had been leveling a Charr with my son and we were having a blast with the content. Luckily both of us are in sync with how we like to play (both completionists about things) so that made the leveling very fast and smooth. I've also been messing around with a Norn guardian. While I tend to do the best with melee classes, I normally wouldn't be quite so exuberantly extroverted as she is. It has been a fun change to play a character so different in tone from my usual choices. I need to get back to the game, but that's one thing I really appreciate about GW2 is that I don't feel like I have to log in or else I'm wasting my subscription fee.

World of Tanks - I downloaded this to just see what it is like, but unfortunately work decided to eat my extra free time. Right now SW:ToR and a tiny bit of WoW playing consume my free time. But as someone that loved the old board wargames like Panzerblitz, Tobruk and Squad Leader the idea of manning my own tank is irresistible.

Edit (Mar. 10, 2013): Thanks to my sharp-eyed son for noticing that I had my ToR mixed in with my WoW. That should have been "level three characters to 90", not to 50. >< Fixed now.