I always wanted to see a viable, visual, indisputable display on how to NOT make an MMORPG. Luckily, RF Online just became free, and now I can finally see how this is done.

I thought RF Online might be something to try out, something to soothe my aching brain after that Portal robot bitch got me and Hellgate was still 2 weeks away. 2 weeks, tops, my brain said.

I couldn't get past 20 minutes.

1. Character Creation: Good Lord, even WoW has more options than this. 5 different combinations for the head, legs, arms, blah blah blah. It's no wonder everyone looks the same. At least give me the tentacles option or scales or something. It's no wonder the guys who made the City of Heroes character creation system laugh their nuts off every stinking night over this trash. The CoH creation system is a game upon itself. The RF system is a failure to God and his children.

2. Tutorial: Christ, I haven't seen such painful Engrish since the early days of Ragnarok. Apparently the folks developing RF eschewed the localization stage completely and simply let whatever hideous nonsensical language they assumed was English into the game. After the tutorial, I had no idea what was going on, who I was in the game, or why I was even doing what I was doing. At least in WoW you had SOME semblance that you were on side A or side B and that side B was bad or something. RF has the back story of a Michael Bay movie without the opening credit crawl or the exposition or the car chases. Just a hollow shell of nothingness.

3. Graphics: Decent, I guess. All I saw was this elaborate fly-through of the tutorial area, the central city, and a small portion outside the town, but the environmental guys have shown their chops. My robot man looked like all the other robot men I ran across, my gun looked the same, I shot the same guys, and everything looked blurry for some reason. Maybe I wasn't running it at the right resolution.

4. Gameplay: Character control in this game fails at literally epic levels. The system was all figured out with Quake or Duke Nukem 3D or Marathon over 15 years ago. WASD = movement, right-click = camera. RF assigns the W key to walking. WALKING. Who in the name of Kratos walks in an MMORPG?! But no, you're supposed to swivel the broke-ass camera in the direction you might like to go, and then click where you want to go. In Diablo, perfect, I want to click there to walk over there. Oh, wait, Diablo isn't a shitty 3D MMORPG. This is the kind of thing that should be taught in the most basic of game design classes, like the 180 rule in film class or the 1+1=2 in math class.

Oh, and can I invert the Y-axis on the camera control like anyone who's played a PC game since TIE Fighter? Apparently not. Another Fail.

You know, I kind of like pressing space to shoot things in the game, but you press it once and everything else is automatic. It's kind of like WoW but the Space key is bigger than the 1 key so it's more demanding and there's no need to worry about the 1-9 keys, which are inextricably tied to the FUNCTION KEYS. At this point I use the function keys to look at and maybe accidentally load a document. You guys can use the numeric keys, we are not ashamed.

5. Sound: I dunno, I wasn't paying attention. It sucks.

Overall, RF Online is stealing your bandwidth if you download it. I really, really hate to say it, but WoW has really gotten the MMORPG system down to a tee, and anyone who deviates from it better have a DAMN good reason for doing so, like blowing the players where they sit, or making money spit out of their DVD drives. RF fails, fails hard, and this should be obvious because now they're offering it for free.

I have two hopes for the MMO religion: Conan and Warhammer. I pray fervently that one of these two actually takes hold. Please MMO God, let it happen. Let me feel joy riding an ultra-dimensional shark into battle. It's my only hope.