Discussion: Online worlds

I have been playing online for many years now through Microsoft’s service for the Xbox called Xbox-live - now days I own an Xbox 360 and various games in different genres. I suppose that all games played online in a way lets you have an so called avatar since you always have you Xbox alias, but in this discussion I will be talking about a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) called Phantasy Star Universe (PSU).

Like any MMORPG you create an avatar in the beginning of the game, letting you personalize your character quite a lot. There are just like in World of Warcraft (WoW) different types of characters – all with different abilities. The four races in PSU: humans, beasts, CASTs (a form of android) and Newman. Humans are the middle-way so to speak, the do not posses any special attribute both has a balanced profile. Beasts on the other hand are strong and when they reach level 20 they can transform into their beast form. There are four type of beast form to choose from all with their different attribute. CASTs are like androids, one part human and one part machine, with their specialty in guns. When reaching level 20 they can buy special weapons called SUV-weapons. Newman is best described as a type that has magical powers. They can therefore use wands and rods.

As I said when you first start playing you get to choose your character type and then start changing its appearance – which can take a long time since there are a lot of options if you want to. I did not go that deep into it. I should say that I only played the demo and not the full game but all the basic components are the same since I know people who have the full game. Anyhow, once you choose your character – in my case a beast – and get in to the game you start out in your room. Not much here but some places to store things and a wardrobe where you can change your clothes. There is one important thing in your room if you want it to be. There is your robot which you also can store things in, put most importantly you can – explained in a really easy way – feed him and make him grow and once he reach a certain level you can take him with you on the battlefield. The robot also has different attributes when transforming depending on what kind of things you feed it with.

My first thought when walking out of the room was that it was only me in the whole world, but after looking around I found a cube where you could change universe and I picked the first one and suddenly there was a lot of people everywhere. Your starting place once out of the room is a space station and it is here you find the easiest mission. So I started out by doing it, either you can do it yourself or joining a group. I played alone just the get acquainted with the controls and the fighting system. It is a real-time based fighting system which means that you get into a room with many enemies and try to strike all of them, in other words it is not round-based. In the beginning these enemies are hard since you only have level 1. The leveling system is exponential so you level up pretty fast in the beginning. When I had been playing a while I started to understand the messaging system. It looked like cartoonish bubbles and you could also make your face appear both in the main screen for everyone to see or only in the party you where in. The whole style is extremely Japanese, which is not strange since it is a Japanese game made by Sega. I could go on about everything you can do and all the different planets you come to but it just does not feel that relevant. You can read most about the game here and here.

What I found most interesting is that my three hours went so fast. I could easily see myself sitting here for a lot longer trying to reach a higher level, leveling up my weapons and increasing them in strength by upgrading them, as well as feeding my robot and taking it with me in battle. Most of all it is the community-feel that gets my attention, that is: talking to people with bubbles, selling things to each other and hoping that you will not get scammed (which happened once and I am still pissed, but out of courtesy I will not post his/her name).

I have tried WoW and it is easy to see that there are similarities in the two games with the exception that WoW is a lot bigger and has more depth. Still as a light version it works well. The fact that you pay for the game – both PSU and WoW – makes it even worth since you feel more obliged to play it. It is addiction and you put an economical value on it as well. It is a brilliant and also scary combination. That is one of the reasons why I have not been playing WoW more; since I know that my amusement with games and gaming culture will lead to the problem with me sitting in front of the TV or computer a lot. It is the same reason why I do not fileshare – since I know I would download a lot of music and movies.

I also thought that it was funny that once you got into a group of people that you like you almost always only played with that group and if someone new joined there was a sort of getting into the group-feeling – that you needed to pass this test to be able to continue playing with that specific group. Otherwise you simply got kicked from the group. Overall my experience online was just positive – as it almost is every time I go online. Of course there were some idiots in this game too, who for example wrote the same message all over the screen so you could not see anything. But then again idiots can be found anywhere. Maybe not the best way to end, but it is a valuable lesson.