The screen shot above was taken from a Korean Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing game (MMORPG for short) called "Rose Online". It is being offered free for a limited time. This free offer, I feel, is to try to stem the popularity of World of Warcraft, a hugely anticipated game in the genre that will soon launch officially in Korea. Already the beta tests for World of Warcraft is one of the top games played in Korea in a genre usually dominated by domestically made games like Lineage.

I had never playing a game in the MMORPG genre before out of principle. If I am to pay money to own the disc that installs it onto my machine, there is absolutely no way I would pay a monthly fee to play the game with other people online. The content and mutliplayer aspects are supposed to make up for this, but I dislike playing online games with strangers. I also think the genre is a gigantic time sink, a leveling treadmill that simply addicts you and wastes all your free time trying to lure you to pay for another month. I loathe the entire genre.

However, this game was a FREE MMORPG. While the game mechanics are the same, I couldn't complain about price any longer. I decided to install it to see if there was anything redeemable about the game and see if perhaps I had the wrong idea about MMORPGs in general.

When I installed the game I was told to make a character. Simple enough. Then I was transported to a "birth island" where I could get accustomed to the game play in a forgiving environment. The game play consisted of running up to one of three different kinds of enemies and hitting them with a wooden sword until one of us was dead. I could fight butterflies, anthropomorphic jellybeans or over sized caterpillars. You start so weak in this game it takes multiple hits from a sword to kill a butterfly.

After killing, or being killed by nonthreatening animals, I eventually picked up some accessories. I grabbed some mittens from a jellybean. I don't know why a jellybean had mittens, but I wasn't able to equip them immediately. I had to level up to wear a part of mittens.

Leveling up seemed to be the whole game. Eventually you level up to the point that you should leave the birth island and go to the actual island where quests and activities begin. I left the birth island and was placed in a city on another island full of people killing stronger butterflies, more feisty jellybeans, and larger caterpillars. Creativity is not this particular genre's strong point.

Since killing these animals repeatedly wore thin quickly, I decided to try a quest. I sought out an old man that would give experience if I did a favor for him. What did he as me to do? Kill jellybeans until they dropped the correct item to give to him. Not just any item would do.

After an hour total of game time I had already basically seen how the game would work for as long as I would want to play it. Higher level characters level up to killer higher level monsters to get higher level loot to aide them in killing higher level monsters to get higher level loot, and so on.

No matter the pretty face they put on it, there isn't actual fun to be had unless you are interacting with people you know, but if that's why you are playing the game, why not just open up a chat window and talk to someone instead? The entire genre as a whole has absolutely no appeal to me. At least I didn't spend any money to find out that my suspicions were justified.