So, up until recently, I was heavily involved in playing Shroud of the Avatar. It’s an okay rpg-like game, but there was a substantial learning curve involved and a heavy financial burden that was necessary in order to even become a somewhat productive member of its society. Sure, you could play for cheap, but like most things, cheap meant living cheap, and it was never really that much fun. But right before it was released, I invested heavily in the game, paying an absurd amount of money for a house and stuff (mainly a tiered system for joining), and even after that, I never really felt like I was going to become one of the better classed citizens around town.
You see, a lot of that was because in order to be one of those better-off citizens, you pretty much had to invest in the game back when it was in its kickstarter faze of existence. But I didn’t know about it until much later, so my chances of ever investing heavily in the game (and getting something out of it) never could happen. It’s like investing in Facebook AFTER its IPO. Sure, you might make a few dollars, but you were never going to make the CEO-like profits that you would have gotten by investing before the IPO. You were always going to be a second-class citizen.
So, while I haven’t completely left that game, I realize there’s not a lot for me there, so I’ve invested in going back to a previous game, one that I invested in since the beginning: Star Trek Online.
Now, Star Trek Online is one of those weird entities out in the MMO world, mainly because it probably should have gone out of business a long time ago, but lived long enough to be able to sustain itself and then reinvent itself as new Star Trek entities came on the scene to make it viable again.
And eight or so years ago, I paid about $300 for a lifetime membership, which means that I’m still racking up free money and benefits from the game that have made that initial investment completely worth it. But that’s not to say that I haven’t made it worth STO’s time either. I’ve put a lot of money back into that game, buying ships, in game zen currency (to buy other stuff) and even entire expansion sets when they were appropriate. It’s one of those games I’ve always felt was worth the price, even though I might have kicked myself almost every time I shelled out another hundred or so dollars.
But if you love Star Trek, and oh yes I do, then it’s really the perfect game for you. A lot of the game is grind, where you’re doing things that are just completely time consuming, like training skills so that you might one day actually use them, or fighting bad guys on some washed out planet so that you can build up enough of that faction’s marks so that you might one day be able to buy some ship engine you’ve always wanted that can only be bought by that faction’s store. Stuff like that.
But it’s got all of the pew pew you could ever ask for. And I figure that for the next three or four months (or until the next WOW comes along), I’ll be playing it on an almost daily basis.
And shelling out stupid money from time to time.
Cause that’s what they do best. Take your money.
And that’s what I do best. Give away my money. Not sure I’m all that satisfied with that realization. But I’ll be fighting some Romulans, so I’ll have to think about that later.