Originally I hadn't intended on answering what "it" was until early december. But, after telling you guys about my frustrations with the comic, I figured it was time to tell you guys what IT is.

See, I would prefer to be doing in-game comics. That is essentially the life blood of GU comics. And since we're gamers, "Gaming News" comics and comics about console games were supposed to be semi-rare little delicacies to keep us reading about the rest of the industry. But, of late, there hasn't been a single MMOG out there that could hold my attention. They all fail on some level.

I admit to being cynical, curmudgeony, and hard to please. But, every game I play shows promise initially and then poof it disappears in a cloud of "class balance", "risk vs. reward", "pvp tweaking", or some other "minor" element that ends up effecting the feel of the whole game. Hell some of them have even failed (for me at least) because they were simplified to such an extent that even I, a severly casual player, could complete everything I wanted to complete in a matter of months.

I'm not naming names or targetting anyone specifically. But I am pointing a finger at the whole damn industry. Hell, I'm even waggling said finger, and telling said industry to "get off my lawn".

I guess my point is to tell the MMOG devlopers:
Shape up guys. We're paying $15 per month per game to be immersed. So stop ripping us out of the game by giving us bad graphics, bad animations, bad game play, bad customer service, stop forgetting to play the game yourself, and for the love of purple fuzzy monkeys...

Stop listening to the vocal minority!

I want a purple fuzzy monkey...

I look at it this way- nothing out there is perfect, so I go with what appeals to me the most. Right now, that is Eve and, to a lesser extent, EQ2. Vanguard comes out soon, and I'll give it a shot and see, but in the end, there is only one type of game that wins my heart wholly- Table-Top RPGs, cause ya just can't beat the ambiance of friends, pizza, sodas, and cats chasing rolling dice

As for the direction of the comics, here's my $0.02 for what it's worth (probably less than the two pennies)- If you do art based on what the masses want, and your heart's not in it, it will show, and the art won't have the same soul. Go with what the heart says to go with. If it's not popular and tanks, hell, at least you stuck with your principles, but somehow I don't see that as being a very likely outcome.

I'd still be playing table top games with my gimps, but we're spread all over the country now. And I'm getting too old to make new friends.

I openly weep with joy over this comic.

Serisouly though, I haven't played in MMO in long while because I just don't enjoy all that crap Woody just pointed out. They do say it is the little things that matter and it seems MMOs are no different. Of the MMOs I've stopped playing, it was because of these stupid little things that distracted me.

A long time ago I came to a discovery, most of the enjoyment I got out of MMOs were the people, not the game. I'll sticking with this forum and these people for a long time so take this comic where ever you want Woody. Not to imply I don't like the comic, because I do, but I have a feeling this community will have a big [positive] impact on peoples additudes towards the comics regardless of what they are about.

{edit: Breandan, I so agree, and like Woody I wish my players weren't God knows where}

I think part of the answer to your search for the perfect game involves breaking away from the Fantasy Genre. The market is supersaturated with Elves, Dwarves, Magic, and Dragons. The MMO market is by and large a war of "Our orcs are better than your orcs."

The first company to release a well balanced and fun Sci-Fi adventure MMO will strike it rich. Star Wars Galaxies could have been that game, but they blew it. Big time. So now we're stuck waiting for a decent entry into the MMO market that doesn't have anything remotely fantasy about it.

Woody,

I know how you feel, we all remember that feeling we had when we very first played an MMO, which was an awesome feeling and we are still searching for a game that made us have that feeling. My first MMO was FFXI, which led me to your site since I was curious if they had FFXI based comics and you came up in google back when the game first came out in the US.

FFXI was the all gooey bask in glow feeling for me at least and now it seems like every mmo is the same. Same plot, same grind, same crafting more or less. Warhammer online will be a rip off of warcraft as far as designs go, there is only one game that has my curiousty and that is Star Trek Online and that wont be out anytime soon.

No matter what mmo we play, we will never truly be as happy as we were with our 1st mmo at first. We need something new and different and fresh and I dont know what game will give us that anytime soon.

EQ was great, played for 4+ yrs. But nothing since has been able to hold my attention, including EQ itself when I had the bad sense to go back.

Is there truly nothing new under the sun?

My current addiction is now limited to patching my current game every couple of weeks, but never actually logging in.

I did wan't to add another plea to the industry, if I may.

-Please stop replacing game design with focus groups and exit surveys.

Also, the more I try to get back into MMOGs the more I realise that I want a sandbox world, but that the prohibitive cost in time and money to do one right means that it will be a very long time before one worth playing sees the light of day.

I'm not looking for the perfect game. I'm looking for a game worth paying to play. There's a tremendous difference.

The game I play mostly I find fun, beautiful, ok customer support, and pretty good game play.
Not everything in the game is exactly what I want. There are features that I personally would wish to see differently but I know that others out there enjoy the features themselves.
If the developers truely always listened to the vocal minority we would have games that constantly shifted and were not even close to the same from one week to the next, including doubling back on where it was a few weeks before. There is not just one vocal minority. There are many.