Lego Universe: "Free To Play"
Posted: Tuesday August 16th, 2011
by
Before it's release Lego Universe was one of those games I was waiting on the edge of my seat for. It released not so much to a negative response but an apathetic "where the heck is all the content" one. Time went on and it didn't seem to get much better. Eventually it just kind of fell off my radar entirely.
Well yesterday I read that the game had gone Free To Play. This is a practice among MMO's that seems to be growing more common by the quarter. Hell even WoW's first 20 level are free to play now. My initial response to the news was "Ooooo!" But after almost an hour of fighting with the naming procedure, being bumped back to character create, and then being made to restart the entire process from scratch twice, I gave a disgusted harumph and closed the game.
See as part of the paid membership you're given access to customize your name. Otherwise you pick from a list of three descriptors. You can scroll up or down the list once then you're pushed back to the character create screen. Move back over, move one more descriptor's position, get bumped back, etc. etc. After doing this a handful of times it bumps you back to the screen before character select, your choices are wiped clean, and you're forced to start from scratch. Like I said, I did that twice before giving up.
Now, on some level, I can understand making customized names a paid member only feature. But to deny people the ability to actually pick three items to accurately describe themselves? Really?
They're going to have to change that before I'm willing to give the game another go.
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