So there’s a certain MMO launching soon. It recently left closed beta and was intended to start open beta tomorrow (though that’s been delayed).

I was able to squirm my way into closed beta for the last weekend it was open. I only spent 3-4 hours playing (had I realized the beta was about to close I would’ve concentrated on playing more) and that was enough to cause me to pre-order the full game.

In fact I’m not sure I want to play open beta very much. I want the game to be ‘fresh’ when it launches. I really liked what I saw; it felt very story-driven and of my 3-4 hours I spent about 20 minutes fighting things and all the rest of the time exploring and talking to NPCs about the world and what’s going on.

Now that feeling might evaporate in hour 5…who knows? But I was enchanted by the little bit I played and I’m looking forward to playing more.

That said… the nerd rage against this game is going to be through the roof. Heck, it’s already pretty loud due to a certain system that’s been talked about. And that’s before people find out how thin the questing is, how manual the process of finding Point B from Point A, realizing that the few quest givers that are around don’t have ! marks over their heads. And how brutal the game is on your PC. My fans go into overdrive and stay on overdrive the whole time I’m playing.

Many of the ‘convenience’ factors of mainstream MMOs won’t be found here (unless things change…they might).

It feels really old school to me. It feels really story driven. I don’t plan to play with anyone else; I just want to explore the world and read everything the NPCs have to tell me. I don’t expect it’ll be a game I play for more than a month or two, but while I am playing I’m going to want to shut out the world.

But I’m always drawn to controversy, particularly when I’m on the underdog side of things. Assuming I continue to like the game I suspect I’m going to be in a minority. It’s going to be a real challenge keeping clear of threads that are warning people away from the game.

I know there are other narrative-driven gamers out there with the patience to play a game that spools out story the way this one does. But the ‘typical’ MMO player is going to be clicking through text looking for the big action component, not finding it, and ranting online about how awful the game is.

I’m not sure where/how to find like-minded gamers in a case like this.