Online strategy games vs. mmorpg

I used to love playing MMORPG games but it takes up a lot of my working time and not to mention the memory space that it eats when I login and beside I still need to login to my work applications. On top of that it also eats up a lot of my time with my family on weekends. And so I decided to stop playing games at all. But I’m addicted to games and old habits die hard, it doesn’t take long for me to start playing MMORPG games again.

Then I discovered online strategy games, well, since these types of games do not require any downloading (which may take days) I thought I give it a try. I have played a few but none can capture me from sticking to the games for long, as soon as I was under attack and all my armies wipe out, I quit. But then I noticed the hours that I spent on this games is not long, I don’t really need to monitor it all the time, I spent more time on work and with my family on weekends. And so I started to look for one that suits me more. It turns out most of the strategy games are more or less the same and I think to myself why not another try, at least the hour spend is less than MMORPG games.

It has been about 3 months now and I am still playing WWII (I’m not here to promote this game, there is still a lot of bugs in this game and quite a number of players quit because of it, so play on your own risk). I’m starting to prefer strategy games than MMORPG, reason, because unlike MMORPG where you hunt monsters to level up, strategy games has less use of leveling, in fact you can start doing battle with other players as soon as you are out from the newbie protection period. I find battling other players is more fun than hunting monsters (or maybe I am just sick of it already), you got to strategies your move, plan carefully, get information on your opponent and do on researches. You don’t have this in MMORPG, I mean sure you can join alliance and do an alliance war and battle other players (which you can do that in strategy games too) but you hardly do that. In most MMORPG that I used to play require consent from the other player before you can do battle. In strategy games you are constantly doing battle with players all the time, even when you logoff. Now that’s require a lot of strategy, especially when you logoff cause you do not want to find that you have been attack when you next login.

When I attack other players (excluding weaker players) I always have the anxious feeling what will be the outcome and yet I have to wait, sometimes in hours before the results are out (this is due to the journey from one base to another). And this is why I don’t have to monitor the games all the time, it needs time to build bases, it needs time to train armies and it needs time to do combat, while waiting I can just do my work or spend time with my family.