The Digital Continuum: Find that fresh feeling

For a long time now I've found myself feeling those MMO doldrums. You know the ones I'm talking about. That mood where you want to play something -- anything -- that's even slightly interesting to you, but cannot for the life of you muster the interest to actually stick with it for very long, even if the game is quite good.

Well, usually for me that involves not playing anything MMO for some time. As you can imagine, that makes my writing here at Massively slightly more challenging. Sure, I play all sorts of other games, but this isn't the venue for discussion about them. It wasn't until my recent beta experience with Star Trek Online that I came across something that gave me more vigor for playing than Beetlejuice has for haunting: new experiences.

Let's take a quick look at my time with Final Fantasy XI. It was the first game where I found a community of people with the same love and interest of all things Final Fantasy. It was also one of the first games where I found a very fun and talented guild of people to befriend. Not only that, it was also the first Final Fantasy MMO! Yes, there were a lot of "firsts" for me in that game and that's most certainly a large part of why I loved it so very much. Of course, it also had a lot going for it in the fun department.

Combat is something we do a lot in games. I mean, a lot. There's more time spent fighting bad guys (be they players or NPCs) than pretty much anything else -- well, except maybe complain. It makes sense, because conflict works as a wonderful axiom for essentially everything else in the game. This is why I'm happy to see more forms of combat in upcoming games, which is largely due to their non-fantasy nature.

There are other methods making a game fresher to an audience that's quite frankly in desperate need of something new. One is to tap into new settings, even ones that aren't all too new but feel new enough that it helps. Star Wars and Star Trek are two very good examples, with the latter being pretty much 100% new to the MMO space. Another is anything based in the future that doesn't lean on fantasy-eqsue cop outs that end up making the game yet another EverQuest clone.

Sometimes it helps if a game has a fresher setting with a design philosophy that isn't exactly new, but new in comparison to current trends. I think this is why Fallen Earth has proven to be so popular with the people that have picked the game up. It also helps that the game embraces its differences -- of which are many when compared to popular games on the market -- and its community wholeheartedly.

Back on topic. It's been a long time since I've played an MMO so much my entire day vanished. This coming year, I can see that happening a lot and that's good. It means more fun for me, and plenty more to write about in the coming months. I'm sure we'll all have plenty of things to discuss when Star Trek Online hits in just over a month. For now, however, I'm going to bask in the glow of freshness.