Next: Black Desert In Tweets. Previously: Punishing PvP Activity In PvP Games.

Snap Judgment – The Division Open Beta

115 words.

The Division isn’t for me.

It’s a very beautiful-looking game. The graphics are fantastic, and the urban environments are very realistic and detailed.

Unfortunately I didn’t see anything new or innovative in the gameplay. The whole time I was playing, I kept thinking, “This plays just like Defiance, and Defiance is free.” The only thing The Division has is the cover mechanic. And the fantastic graphics, of course.

I also couldn’t help but notice that there were very few other people around in this alleged MMO game. Perhaps that’s why they keep talking up the Dark Zone-because that’s the only place that has any people in it?

Anyway, I recorded my impressions in a video.

Next: Black Desert In Tweets. Previously: Punishing PvP Activity In PvP Games.

This page is a static archival copy of what was originally a WordPress post. It was converted from HTML to Markdown format before being built by Hugo. There may be formatting problems that I haven't addressed yet. There may be problems with missing or mangled images that I haven't fixed yet. There may have been comments on the original post, which I have archived, but I haven't quite worked out how to show them on the new site.

Archived Comments

Scott 2016-02-21T03:35:17Z

there were very few other people around in this alleged MMO game.

Alleged by whom? That’s part of the problem. Massive Entertainment has never said the game was an MMO. It’s not. It’s a 4-player co-op game. The moment you leave your HQ (which is a solo instance, not even your team goes into your HQ) the world is instanced to your team. Kinda like Guild Wars 1 or Warframe. The only time you’ll see other players is in the Dark Zone.

Defiance was pretty great for the MMO-ish-ness. Those Arkfalls or Sieges and the instance would fill with 50 players blowing the crap out of the aliens. Awesome stuff, even if Trion never did quite get the actual shooting part down pat.

The Division is an RPG first, shooter second. ME also has been upfront about that part. I’d place the actual shooting bit about equivalent to Mass Effect 3. It’s pretty decent, but not quite up to a full AAA shooter. But close enough.

UltrViolet 2016-02-21T13:06:22Z Fair enough. I guess somewhere along the line there’s been a PR breakdown because I’ve seen The Division on the lists of upcoming MMOs for years, and it always gets press on the MMO news sites.

Scott 2016-02-21T15:27:36Z

Never trust PR sites, or… pretty much anything online anymore unless you’re willing to vet the source yourself. =) It’s all a race for clicks for their ad machines to pay out, hence all the clickbait headlines and copy/paste “journalism.”

But yeah, I remember Arena.net doing interview after interview when Guild Wars (1) was being hyped prior to launch and they would specifically say it was not an MMO then the magazines (I used to have the PC Gamer which pulled this stunt pretty badly) would take random bits and snip them together in one of those mid-page huge font not-quite-a-headline for the TL;DR crowd (before “TL;DR” existed) and make it sound like it was an MMO.

Sorry, new comments are disabled on older posts. This helps reduce spam. Active commenting almost always occurs within a day or two of new posts.