A gamer's renunciation - why NCSoft has lost my business

I play a lot of games.

This probably doesn't come as a shock to anyone who knows me. In addition to playing a lot of games, I also play a wide assortment of different kinds of games. Shooters, espionage, strategy, adventure, platformer, music.... the list goes on. But my all-time favorite games belong to the fabled Role-Playing Game genre. And within this genre is the hugely popular MMORPG - Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. I'm sure you're familiar with them: World of Warcraft is by far the most notable of these, but Everquest, Final Fantasy XI, Warhammer Online, and Runescape also come to mind. While these games boast different mechanics and each have their own merits and strengths, the ultimate goal behind these games is the same: to provide an immersive, enjoyable alternate world.

NCSoft is a company that deals primarily with producing Korean MMORPGs and collecting subscription fees for playing these games. Games that they have produced include Guild Wars, City of Heroes, Lineage, and Aion. Now, down to brass tax - what's my beef with NCSoft? Was I jilted? Jaded? Did I suffer some horrific experience at the hands of the masters who held my free time in the palms of their hands? Not really.

I've been having a bad taste left in my mouth from NCSoft for a while now, and I've never quite placed the source of this feeling until now. Basically, NCSoft games all seem to suffer from the same problems, which I have outlined:

1. NCSoft games suffer from a clunky, clumsy User Interface.

This is a flaw that seems like it should be easy to fix, but has plagued virtually every single NCSoft game to date, with the only exception perhaps being City of Heroes. You can expect a UI that ranges from blocky and slightly unpleasant to downright fugly. Aion - a game that is otherwise very beautiful - has an extremely mediocre UI, and the parts of the UI that feel natural are blatantly cloned from WoW. Now, poor UIs are excusable if the game is otherwise solid. But if I'm paying $15 per month to play a game, there is no excuse for a user interface that makes my eyes hurt. Not when I plan to be staring at it for a couple of hours a day.

2. NCSoft games offer dull, generic worlds with very little emphasis on lore or backstory.

When I play any RPG, I expect to be drawn into the story. In every NCSoft game I've played yet, the story starts out relatively strong and cohesive, and while you're playing through it, you're thinking to yourself, "Hey, this game is pretty cool. I like where this is going." Well, savor it while you can, because once you get over the initial starting area XP grind and quest-fest, you will feel abandoned. Not being driven by a central plotline would even be acceptable if the worlds that NCSoft offers didn't feel so uninteresting and cold. NPCs, both friendly and hostile, seem robotic and generic. Areas do not feel unique and exploration seems like a fruitless endeavor. Aion seems to be an exception to this, as exploration seems rewarding (at least to me), but its inhabitants didn't seem to have much character. Enemies in particular were uninteresting.

3. NCSoft games follow the same formula - grind.

I don't mind grinding. I come from the days of hardcore gaming, where we weren't coddled through our levels. It was the school of hardknocks, and if you played poorly in the early game it could have had dire consequences later on. So difficulty is -not- the issue when it comes to grinding.

The problem with grinding in NCSoft games is that it is boring. And not just normal boring, like average grinding. Mind-numbingly, sanity-tearing boring. Killing NPCs does not feel rewarding, and there aren't many different places to do it. At least in other MMOs you can generally choose between multiple areas for levelling. Lineage is perhaps the most infamous for requiring too much grind time.

4. NCSoft games lack innovation and inspiration

Let's face it - WoW changed the face of MMORPGs forever. NCSoft is NOT the only company that blatantly copies how WoW does its thing. But when you charge a subscription fee for playing your game, you had best come up with something original and innovative to keep your players around. With the exception of City of Heroes, NCSoft games seem to all be WoW clones - from the way skills and spells are used right down to the UI. Why should I pay the same price that I would pay to play WoW to play a WoW clone?

Can NCSoft ever redeem themselves? Maybe. But they've got a high bar to reach. Blizzard has outdone all of its competitors when it comes to customer service, generating new content, and keeping their game updated and stable. Until I see that NCSoft has decided to actually produce original, stable, quality content, I will not pay to play another one of their games again.