I like to think I’m a fair man when it comes to talking about computer games. When Bioware does something good, by my estimation, I’ll be on the front line telling everyone about it. When Bioware does something bad — again, by my estimation I need to stress — I’ll be as cutting and scathing as I can be. In other words, I’m not a Bioware fanboi, but nor am I a Bioware hater, either.

I also like to think that I can judge an MMO pretty well these days after playing a wide array of them for over a decade, often for long periods. “Been there, done that & got the t-shirt…” doesn’t even remotely begin to explain my background with these frustrating, addictive, OCD-friendly pieces of code that have worked their way into my very DNA over time.

And as it so happens, just lately I’ve been doodling with the trial version of an MMO that I’ve played in the past, but thought I’d revisit at the moment because, honestly, I’ve been bored. I wanted something to do particularly on these cold weekends (I’m in the southern hemisphere), when neither my wife or I particularly feel like venturing outdoors.

Now, I’m not going to name the game in question because the game itself is irrelevant. It could be just about any MMO ever made because it’s what the game was making me do that I found so offensive.

Yes folks, it seems that after all this time, I’m finally sick of the grind. Even with an open mind, and hour upon hour to kill, the thought of running back and forth across a map to kill critters which slowly increased in toughness — with slight changes to their name to show this — was enough to make me almost throw my PC out the window.

Why do we play these games? Where does it lead us? What does it achieve? Who cares in the end? Why aren’t they FUN?

There… I finally said it. MMOs just aren’t fun. Even when you get to the “cool stuff” at the end of an MMO, like raiding, or PvPing, more often than not it’s full of frustration and time wasting and unexpected moments of sheer misery compared to what they should be offering, given that we call these things “games”. And that thing, once again, is FUN.

So I was standing in the shower earlier tonight — a great place for thinking — and it occurred to me that for all the crap that people hang on the concept of “story” in TOR (and I confess, I’ve found plenty to criticise myself including the fact that if our race is dictated by the background we want… or our background is dictated by the race we want, then we aren’t playing a very fun or open RPG for starters), that this could actually be the thing that saves TOR, and ourselves, from mind-numbing boredom.

Honestly, at this point in time, I don’t think I could play another “traditional” MMO from start to finish (and by “finish” I mean the level cap), but if a game can tell me a story, and keep me interested in that while the character grows and levels without me noticing then, hell yeah, this could be a good thing.

Of course, it doesn’t get Bioware completely off the hook with other aspects of the story but, in terms of simply keeping my interest and keeping me in the game, story is where it’s at. It blows my mind to already read comments from people about wanting to skip the storyline elements…!