Bear with me on this, it's going to be a fairly large one...

I’m quite sad to be sitting here writing this, as I’ve been an avid MMO player for the last 8ish years. They have been a big part of my life as I have spent MANY hours playing them, which is very easy to do.

The list of MMO's I’ve played is fairly decent sized and I shall list them all out and say a little something about each one, it seems like a fitting way to say farewell.
They are lsited in chronological order from the initial date i started playing them.

Xenimus
Curse you EJ Thayer! Curse you! For you have created the game that single handedly sparked my interest in MMO's! sure the game was rough and full of PVP jerks, but it was something NEW and FUN. I spent many hours playing this game only to stop when he started charging to play.

Ultima Online
Once Xenimus went to Pay to Play I started looking around for other games like it, not knowing fully what an MMO was yet. UO stepped up as a few of my friends were playing it and they had an extra copy. So I started up an account and made a character.. played for about 2 weeks before I just couldn't stand it any longer. That game was just not for me.

Everquest
So enters Everquest... as my next game to fill the gap left by Xenimus. The gap was filled indeed! I played Everquest quite intensely (and more so than Xenimus) for several years. This is the game that I base my comparison for all other MMO's Sadly my friends started to fade out from the game, and I started to lose interest, as the graphics were becoming dated, and the UI was just too uncomfortable.

Anarchy Online
Anarchy Online popped up while I was still playing EQ. Some of my friends were playing it, and I decided to join them. It was a decent game, but wasn't ready to be released at that point IMO. Too many problems and instance based combat made me lose interest quickly with this game.

Star Wars Galaxies
After I had finally quit playing EQ, I started to have cravings for an MMO again.. and it just happened to be time for SWG to be released. I jumped on this game and enjoyed it very much for several months.. but then my friends started to fade out, and the game started to become more of a job than a game. So I decided to part ways. Luckily I was already gone by the time the NGE popped up.

Runescape
Runescape was basically a filler MMO that helped sustain me till EQ2 came out. It wasn't fun, it wasn't pretty and it really sucked. But it helped me in a dark time (a time with no MMO to play).

Everquest 2
Ah, the big brother to EQ, the game had a little bit of Nostalgia in it, and a lot of new. I LOVED the game but had no friends that played, so I phased in and out for several years. Until I was able to create a guild and build a whole new set of friends to play. Then life happened and I got too busy to play, and many of those people moved on.

World of Warcraft
I played WOW a little bit during my EQ2 times, as well as DDO, LOTRO and EVE. All of these games were played because I had friends that played them, and I didn't have friends that played EQ2. WOW for me was not much fun at all. I played for a few months and could not figure out what it was that the rest of the world enjoyed.

Dungeons and Dragons Online
DDO has to be the worst MMO I’ve ever played. I despised the way it worked, and hated the fact that it was set in Ebberon instead of Forgotten Realms. This saddened me because I’m a huge fan of Dungeons & Dragons.

Lord of the Rings Online
LOTRO was interesting, but not really for me, some say I didn't give it enough of a chance, but I can normally tell fairly early if I’m going to like a game or not. And it just didn't work for me.

EvE Online
EVE was fun for a bit, I LOVED the hugeness of it, and all the different things you could do. I ended up just mining small amounts of stuff and selling it, never really getting into the guts of the game. It started to be a job too early, and I didn't want to keep playing because of it.

And so here I am, about 8 years later, and having several MMO's under my belt. EQ2 is the most recently played of my list, and I just canceled the subscription for it yesterday. I've finally come to the point in my life where what used to be the allure of MMO's is now the thing I dread in them.

I don't want to have to set aside 4-10 hours at a time to play and have fun. I don't want to have to make sure I stay near the same level of my friends that have more time to put into the game. I don't want to grind levels, or skills or whatever they happen to be called. I just want to sit down and have FUN. Something that is not really possible in an MMO. At least in any of the ones I’ve tried.

Thank you for joining me on this sad journey to say farewell to one of my favorite genre’s of games... Maybe sometime down the road there will be a new MMO that will bring me out of "Retirement" but until then, I’ll be playing games that don't require nearly as much of a consistent time investment to enjoy.

Okay, let me get a few facts out there for you guys, some of you may know this already, but I want us all to be on the same playing field.

• I've been playing Magic: The Gathering off and on for about 13 years
• I've been playing MMORPG games for about 8 years
• My first MMORPG was Everquest
• I've tried to like WoW but I just can't, I just don't like it at all.

Okay, so now that that's over I’m going to talk to you about the WoW Collectable Card Game...

A group of my friends and I decided to try the game out. We all spent about 15 bucks to get a starter deck, and freely exchanged cards so that we could all have a playable deck. By playable I mean, follows the rules of deck building and, is legal for play. They weren't great decks by any means, but they worked.

Decks in WOWTCCG are all about your Hero card. The hero you select to use, dictates EVERYTHING else about your deck. The types of allies you can put in, the types of equipment and abilities you can use, and even some of the quests you can use as well.

My deck is lead by Dralor a Human Rogue fighting for the Alliance. I'm really enjoying my deck and starting to get a feel for how the rogue deck should play. This only makes me want to invest more into the game and make the deck even better. This works out well for Blizzard and Upper Deck, as I’ll want to buy more cards to fill my deck out. I may only get 2 or 3 cards that are even legal for my deck out of a 19 card booster pack. Meaning I would have to buy a LOT of cards to fill it out the way I want - or go to the secondary market and just pick up the cards I’m looking for.

Using the secondary market you miss out on one of the special little surprises of the WoW card game: Loot Cards. Loot cards are cards that you can use in the CCG as well as enter a little code on  them into the MMO of WoW and you get cool In-Game items. These cards are VERY rare, and VERY valuable, you can make a killing on E-Bay if you sold one there.

Over all I LOVE this game! It's so much fun! I like it better than Sony's game Legends of Norrath, partly because it’s a physical card game. I like how I'm starting to 'own' my deck and I want to tweak it and make it better and better.

It looks like Turbine is trying to take a page out of the SOE book.

Not nearly as tempting as the Living Legacy promotion. But a good deal none the less. Unfortunately I just didn't jive with LOTRO enough to want to go back.

Shut Up We're Talking episode #28 is out this week and here is the agenda:

Topics:
Introductions
Listener mail/What we’re playing
Vets being babies?
Screw Imbalance
Exploration and Challenge
Blog of the Week

Hosts:
Darren - Commonsensegamer.com
Karen - Journey’s with Jaye
Michael - MMOG nation
Brent - Virgin Worlds

The topics on this week's show were of good interest to me, I agree a lot with what Darren/John had to say about on the subject of "Vets being whiny". It's standard procedure in business to "lure" in new customers with all sorts of deals, leaving current customers in the corner. The benefit to current customers is not as direct and instant, so they don't realize it, IMO. When new customers come in, be it for a MMO, or a phone company or whatever, the company is going to become stronger and larger. Now that company will have the opportunities to improve itself be it providing new features, making themselves more stable or whatever. That’s a huge benefit to the veteran player, not to mention new blood in the community to add to your guild, or gank if your into pvp.

On the topic of "Screw Imbalance" I have to agree 100%. Make some classes way more powerful, just because a class is more "better" doesn't mean it’s the only class people will play, and it definitely doesn't mean it's the best class. Even in the pvp realm, I think balance is way too much of a focus. Diversity is what keeps these games fun, and that should be the focus, keep the classes interesting and your players will stay interested.

I'd like to take this moment to thank Darren, Karen and the crew of SWUT for mentioning me on the podcast as the "Blog of the week". You guys have been putting out a quality show for 28 episodes now, and I can't wait to keep seeing them come out in the future. Keep it up guys!

Take a listen to the show, and then make sure you digg it!

P.S. Hey Darren, I've completed my task, and added Brent and Michael to my blogroll.

First off, I'd like to recomend this weekly podcast to anybody that is remotly interested in movies, video games, tv or comic books. They are hilarious and put together a very well done show. Ok, now on to the commentary.

This week on the show the guys covered the following things:

• Movies
  The Foot Fist Way
  Australia (trailer)
  
  
• Video Games
  Age of Conan
  Beyond Good & Evil 2 (Announcement)
  
  
• Special Segment
  TRS Gets Fit
  

This week, I didn't have a whole lot of interest in the topics they were planning on covering, but I watch it none the less, because they always have a very entertaining show. The intro was quite amusing, and fit the show since they reviews AoC.

The segment they did on the Wii was hilarious, watching them all razz each other while they play the various games that come along with the Wii Fit.

They gave a pretty positive review of AoC, and Dan seemed excited about Beyond Good & Evil 2

That's about all I have to say on the episode, yet it was very entertaining.