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There Inc - Propagating the Bad of Society?
An anonymous reader writes "A former beta tester has written up a negative, but interesting, review of the 'virtual world' MMO title There. While it mainly contains sarcastic remarks directed at the game mechanics (or lack there-of), near the end it also claims that There is 'a mirror of the shallowest possible view of American consumerist society.' It concludes by saying that There is missing anything that would classify it as a game, and that as a chat service it capitalizes on 'our society's tendency to believe that being attractive is a prerequisite for being accepted by others.' Should developers try to be aware of whether their game will reproduce negative trends already present in real life?" We recently ran a story on the official launch of There, a game that has its fans as well as its detractors.
I was a beta tester near the very end of the beta. I thought this "game" was really shallow and boring. There was just nothing to do but stand around and talk to people, unless you wanted to pay another $10 to play a game in this "game". "There" was very bad from a technical standpoint, it uses internet explorer as a major engine component and refused to run while Mozilla was my default browser. Then there is the cost of "There". Looks cheap at first, and it is if you were a beta tester (all of the stuff about to be mentioned costs a total of $30 for beta testers). But if your the average player the costs will shoot through the roof before you even play. $20 to start, $30 for sound, $50 for a graphics pack. Then $5 bucks a month. Then the fees to get anything done in there, $5 bucks to buy virtual shoes, $5 more for a shirt, $5 more for a buggy ride. This is all real money. Then your limited to 640x480 res and the poor graphics make a GeForce4 TI 4600 and P4 2.4GHz chug. It's the most lacking and expensive online "game" I've ever seen. Even the notoriously buggy anarchy online played better at launch than There does now.
If you want a good online gaming experiance stick with everquest, anarchy online or dark age of camelot. Heck, diablo 2 or even just something like UT offer a better online experiance. There just isn't worth it.