My Brief Time As A Player of CIty Of Heroes

Sometimes, I second guess myself. I start to think, "Dude, Kyle, a billion people LOVE Twilight, maybe its not attrocious." Or, "You know, Kyle, maybe this whole 'rap' thing isn't a scourge." Or even something foolish, like "Kyle, you would look really AWESOME if you went back to the Hawaiian shirt with a tie style!" I'm always wrong to do it. Those instincts are right the first time. Which brings me to today's point: Massively Multiplayer Online games.

"Psst. Kyle. It's your brain. Maybe MMO's are fun!" My brain woke me up with that today. I told it to go away, because I felt sick, and had a terrible headache. "NO, seriously," my brain insisted. "Linda said you could have a free trial of City of Heroes. TRYYYYY IIIIIIIIIIIIT." My brain is an insistent little prick, sometimes.

So, today, whilst sickly and migrainey, I decided I should try out City of Heroes. So, I used the Free Trial code my dear friend Linda gave me. I waited for several hours, patiently, for it to download and install. I booted it up, and within twenty minutes rediscovered why I hate MMOs so bad.

It's not that I don't think they can be fun. It's not the graphics, or lack of story. It's not even the soul-deficient/mind bogglingly stupid/scary people that sometimes tend to play them. It's the fact that no matter how new my computer is, no matter how old the game is, and no matter how good my internet connection is, they are ALWAYS CHOPPY.

No amount of fiddling with settings, updates, or patches seems able to prevent this, with ANY MMO, and I've played several. I can carefully adjust things for hours, find just the right settings, and the whole damned thing still shudders like Michael J. Fox in a damned earthquake. (Sorry, Kat.) It's like the entire game is DETERMINED to be slow motion, but doesn't quite know what slow motion is.

It took me a minute total to turn my character in the direction necessary to progress. He continued to turn for a full five seconds after I let go of the button. I then had to repeat in the other direction, and I let go early in the hopes that adjusting my timing would help. It didn't. Now he stopped right on time, thus STILL not pointing the correct direction.

Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe there's some fundamental thing I'm doing wrong that the whole rest of the universe understands. Maybe I'm just touchy because of the terrible headache the gods of ouch have bestowed upon me. I don't know. I intend to ask Linda about this issue later. I'll keep you guys posted if I turn out to be making some kind of grievous error, but somehow, I doubt I am.