After my dismal experience with Ultima On-line years ago, I never thought I would ever play another MMRPG, let alone get addicted to one. Especially one in alpha.

But that's exactly what has happened since I got involved with World of Warcraft. It's very addictive. But at the same time, the game does make the parody of MMRPG's, known as Progress Quest all that much truer.

So what makes it so fun and addictive for me? The environment, the monsters, the graphics, and yes, the progress quest aspects of it of building your character up so that you can get to that next level to get that new spell or weapon or whatever.

The graphics are fantastic. And it runs surprisingly well. I ran the alpha on my laptop which ran the game off a USB drive that I could, if I had to, put onto any other computer in the house to play on. That was a nice touch I thought.

When I played on the Horde side, I played as a wizard. The wizard was not very good during the alpha push I played one and I don't like playing orcs or trolls or whatever.  But on the Alliance side, I played as a Paladin and that was when I really got addicted.

The world itself is just breathtaking with the latest graphics, sound, and immersion techniques built in. It also helps that the latest advances in MMRPG are in there to make it relatively easy to trade items, have guilds, have party chats, manage quests, etc.

Now, let me take my fan boy hat off and talk about the things I haven't liked so far in the ALPHA:

1) The quests. There's really only three quests in the game. a) Deliver something. Execute X number of things/bring X number of body parts back c) Escort someone.

It's very cut and dry and it does get pretty old when you realize that you're on the same quest over and over again. Sure, the creatures change but the Diablo as a 3D engine does get a bit old after awhile. This is something, I suspect, they will enhance because I did play a few quests that seemed to be more complex and compelling.

2) The character building. The characters are fairly simplistic. Don't expect Baldur's Gate style sophistication. Which I found very surprising. Sure, they want this for mainstream gamers, but you would think that after you reached, say level 12, that they'd start to let you really focus on the nitty gritty of your character.

3) The armor/weapon system in the game is very simplistic and yet overly complicated (presently in the beta that is).  Plate mail reduces damage. But only as a percent. Which is a bit odd. But it doesn't affect your agility. That is, your odds of being hit wearing full plate mail are the same as if you were wearing leather. That doesn't make sense. It shoudl work that plate mail makes you easier to hit but you take less damage.

I posted during the alpha a suggestion that every 10 points of armor simply remove 1 point of damage. Therefore, later on, low level creatures simply woudln't be able to hit through your armor.  If I'm a walking tank, how exactly is a rat going to bite through it? The plate mail armor shouldn't just remove 50% of the rat's attack, it should prevent any damage at all.  Instead, the alpha's system actually looks at what level you are as if this is relevant. Why would 400 armor protect you more at level 12 than at level 30? That's not intuitive. Why would 400 armor in cloth be different than 400 armor in plate? Why not simply have cloth be a lower number?

Keep in mind, this is all alpha/beta stuff that may be totally changed by release or in some subsequent update.

4) Camping of creatures. This is common in other games I'm told but it's maddening to literally wait in line with other parties to kill some quest named boss. I.e. 2 parties in front of us killed Tharax, they leave, party in front of us moves up to the spawn point and waits and so on. That kind of kills the whole RPG thing and makes me painfully aware that I should be doing other things.

But don't let these things make it sound like the game isn't great. It's incredibly addictive. I think Everquest is doomed to be perfectly honest. I know everyone who played Star Wars Galaxy that I knew who was in the alpha said this blew it away. Which is susprising since my friends in SWG who switched to WoW were totally into SWG with control of huge chunks of worlds and millions of credits and such in teh bank and now they're not going back to SWG.

 As for me...

During the alpha/beta I'm in the Guild Digital Marines. But most of the Digital Marines will be going on to be on the Horde's side when the beta is over while I will continue to play on the Alliance side and create a new guild with friends I meet on the Alliance side.