I apologize to anyone who reads this who is not a video game fan. I promise this doesn't signify a vast change in my content here.
I'm playing Aion lately in a casual way and this game has all the new eye candy and convenient additions, plus some new ones that are cool. But when you peel all that stuff away it's really no different than anything that came before it. Here's a quick list.
a. static and insufficient quests. this results in boring leveling after the first toon. And grinding. crap loads of grinding.
b. endgame content designed to feed the obsessive and well connect players, and completely ignores the casual player.
c. a crafting system that is designed to be a time and money sink and results in items that are mediocre in most cases
d. combat systems that are basically unchanged from the first mmorpgs: chains, cooldown timers, etc
e. level based advancement. I know that at least one recent game has tried to get back to the skill advancement system that UO sported in the old days, but other than that we're still madly rushing to max-level and uber-gear so we can be even remotely competitive. This is especially painful for those of us that are gradually losing synaptic speed.
I can go on and on. Admittedly, graphics have gotten better, UIs have gotten more user friendly and configurable, and otherwise the games have improved in many ways, but fundamentally the underlying structure of the games are the same.
