Not If You Paid Me: Tera, Diablo 3

Ironically perhaps, given my recent musings on the joys of beta-testing I've decided to forego two fairly major offerings this weekend.

I never played Diablo or Diablo 2. I don't really like Action RPGs. No, that's too weak. There's no "really" about it. The last action RPG I played was Dungeon Siege, which I bought on release back in 2002. I only played it a couple of times. I can see the case on the shelf from here; hasn't been opened in a decade.

Is it the gameplay that doesn't work for me? I don't think so. Dragon Nest is actiony as all get-out and I love that. Run into a pile of mobs, hammer the mouse button, slam them into the air, shoot a bunch of furniture and see it explode...what's not to like? Nor is it the over-the-shoulder three-quarter, third-person perspective or the relatively small characters and mobs. City of Steam has all that and I love it.

It's the pointlessness of it all, I think. I'm very aware that whatever "point" any of this stuff may have has to be self-imposed. I'm not about to argue that there's some ur-significance in playing MMOs that's absent in other forms of video-gaming. And I strongly believe that no leisure activity needs any more "point" than that when you've finished doing it you're glad you did and might even consider doing it again.

No miss, I am not "looking for action"

That's not a feeling I get  when I spend time on an action rpg. The sub-genre seems to strip-mine the larger, slower version (do we call that the Inaction RPG?) for the raw ore of killing stuff and grabbing loot. It's like having an iced bun without the bun.

Maybe I'm doing A-RPGs a disservice. I haven't really played one for a decade, after all. And I'm not going to start with the D3 Beta. I might take a run at Path of Exile though, if only to see how a New Zealand developer's take differs. I don't think I've ever played any kind of RPG from Down Under.

That's D3 out of the running, which leaves Tera as this weekend's possible free preview candidate. Tera is at least an MMO, which makes it inherently interesting, to me at least. I've read plenty about Tera and all its multifarious controversies, from the prurient character modelling to the legal catfights, the in-yer-face advertizing to the contested claims of originality. None of that bothers me enough to put me off giving it a look for free.

The screenshots and videos look attractive. Nice scenery, bright colors, amusing very large monsters. I do like a very large monster. Should be worth a download, no? Well, I got as far as reading the FAQ.  And I got as far down the FAQ as the part about using Alt or Esc to bring up a hotbar to do stuff and only using the mouse to attack. Oh, and "The one tip every TERA player needs to keep in mind is that survivability depends on not standing still." No. Not even No Thanks. Just No.

Big world, small horizons

I'm not interested in having to run about all the time. I'm not roleplaying the frigging Duracell bunny! If I have to dodge when something's coming my way, fine, that I can handle but don't tell me I have to keep moving or I'll move alright, all the way to another game. And don't force me to use the keyboard to open hotbars or menus when you could just put the goddam things onscreen and let me click them with the mouse. FFXIV tried that and look how well it worked out for them.

I'm already sufficiently apprehensive about the GW2 controls and combat. Acid test for that comes in just under a week. I don't need to spend this weekend trying to unlearn twelve years of MMO muscle memory for a couple of sessions in Tera only to have to do it all again only differently in a few days. For Guild Wars 2 I'll make the effort. For Tera? Not going to happen.

Just a boy and his skinned cat looking for adventure

Shame, really, because all SOE's games will be inaccessible for the whole of Monday and I might have given either of these a fair go. Not to worry, plenty more fish in the MMO sea. Maybe I'll take a look at LotRO's fifth anniversary party, explore Loong some more, pick back up where I left off in Allods, do some sub-20 Rifting, try to complete Eye of the North in Guild Wars, see if I can get out of the starting village in Aerrevan...