I've been waiting for a good excuse to get into massive multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs), but have been cautious considering the amount of investment they usually involve. Most require a monthly fee, and any MMORPG worth its bandwidth would be so addicting as to ruin my life. Ultimately, I'm just waiting for World of WarCraft, highly anticipated due to the exalted reputations of both the WarCraft series and its production company. In the meantime, there's always the other well-backed brand name that I'm familiar with, Ultima Online. If I could get over the mixed reviews (complaints about the graphics and the overall engine make me cringe pretty fast), I could try the otherwise quite popular EverQuest-- visiting their site, however, spawns a full-screen browser with a markedly unimpressive Flash animation, a broken link, and JavaScript so buggy you have to open Windows Task Manager to get rid of it. No thanks.

I picked up a free disc for Lineage today, a medieval MMORPG based on a Korean comic book series. (Unlike EverQuest and Ultima Online, there's no need to purchase software; you can even download it from their web site.) Apparently extremely popular in Asia, with a reported 2+ million accounts and 200,000 players online simulatenously, the game had its U.S. beta release last March. The Mac version due out in February earned MacWorld's Best of Show award. Last year's reviews from their U.S. beta release: Gamers Pulse likes it, Computer Games Online says the graphics are a bit dated, and GameZNet comes right out and says lousy graphics and sound are off-putting, but they "later revisited the title and was surprised to see that there is quite a lot of depth to the game. You just need to have the will to endure your initial rejection." Unfortunately, despite my strong interest, I have so little patience for computer games that poor sound and graphics might be a deal-breaker for me.

Thanks to their 30-day trial, I tried it, and, well, even with low expectations, I couldn't get into it. Clunky movement made for irritating battles just in the practice area, and, well, I'm not going to care about making friends if the game is no fun. I'll just have to wait for World of WarCraft after all. It seems Blizzard can do no wrong; they have a knack for giving a feeling of robustness in their game engines in ways I haven't really been able to pinpoint, a combination of sound and graphics design that similar games from other companies lack. I recently played a Star Wars universe knock-off of StarCraft that, despite virtually identical game play and comparable mission design, didn't even come close to engrossing me as Blizzard's game did.

Which leaves me with very high expectations for WarCraft...