Posted by Zanya on August 22, 2000 at 12:31:14:
I thought I'd let you all know just what a great game CF is just in case you didn't already know. The reason I finally broke free from CF is because I bought a new computer. That same day I bought a game most of you have probably head of, Ultima Online. I figured, why play a silly text game when I could have really neat graphics? Well, for those of you who haven't played Ultima Online, let me fill you in. IT SUCKS! Yes it has neat graphics, but there is only one race and no real "class." It has a ton of skills which you can disperse a finite number of skill points to as you practice them. So you can basically have any multi-class player you want with enough practice. But talk about practice! You think mastering an invoker is time consuming? Mastering shapeshift, haste, etc. for a transmuter? Nothing compared to the kind of time you have to dump into just one skill on UO. Then there's the PKing. Pking in CF is like a very intricate chess game. If you make the right moves you will win regardless of sheer power. In UO this is not the case. Pking in UO is completely dependent on having a cable modem, a really fast CPU, and one of the various "cheat" programs which hackers have made for the game to allow people to press one button and fire off multiple spells. Lame. And roleplaying is not even thought of let alone enforced. Regardless, I played it for over a year before quitting. Such is the power of neat graphics. Did I mention I payed $20 a month for it? (= After quitting Ultima Online, I tried out EverQuest thinking maybe this game would be more like what I wanted (which was basically just CF with graphics). EverQuest has multiple races and classes and a lever-based ranking system just like CF. There are also a small group of people who roleplay or at least try to. The problem, however, with EverQuest was you had to pay for it. You can't enforce roleplaying when people are paying their hard-earned cash to play a game without losing a lot of money or getting sued. So once again, hardly any roleplaying. In a group you get to hear about someone's mother-in-law and the latest song by Everclear. Also a big bummer about EverQuest is, no PKing whatsoever. You could decide on being a PKer or a non PKer, and once you chose to be a Pker you couldn't go back. But in the 9 or so months I played this game, I could probably count the number of PKers on one hand. Great graphics though, simply amazing. Now if they could just enforce roleplaying and make a better PK system, they'd have a really cool game. Now I am back at CF and couldn't be happier. CF is a wonderful game. You have to put some time into it, yes, but not nearly as much time as either EQ or UO (did I mention I played predominately one character in EQ for that 9 months and was only level 29 out of 50 possible and I played about 4 hours a day?). The mix between roleplay and playerkilling in CF is the best thing I have ever seen. The immortals, for the most part, care about the game and keep things going along a planned course. It's just... well... amazing! In short, don't drool over the fancy boxes in the stores and wish you could afford them or that you had a computer that would handle those games or whatever. You're already playing the best roleplaying game on the internet, and you're playing it for FREE. You can't beat that. Zanya, Menace of the Payed Games, Champion of Thera