Cabal Online

Dear Korea. Please. It's nothing personal. I know you're big gamers, and that you've no real relation to that shortarsed fruit loop to your North. And I'm glad that your programmers and designers refuse to let the US and Europe control the games market, and that your players have made your MMOs such a success.

By Lord British's ghost, if you can get four million subscribers at a time when EverQuest only had a piffling 500k, it would be arrogant beyond belief for me to tell you that your MMOs are in any way less than godly perfection, even if most of them are as much fun as a pipe-cleaner up the urethra.

It's not that Cabal Online is a bad game... It's just that... well, if you want us to fall in love, and ultimately have many sequels together, there are just a few minor things you might want to keep in mind. Like grinding. It's just not polite to bring up your S&M fantasies on the first date. Can't you woo us, just once? Romance us with your world, inspire us with your system... yes, yes, we'll gather your five rabbits and your fourteen skull fragments, but first let us see that there's more to you than Desert World, Ice World and Jungle World. Oh. We've got to wait for that? Um. OK.

In that case, how about some background music instead of just the whistle of the ambient winds? Maps bursting with mystery and wonder instead of empty plains and instakill monsters?
Sigh. Never mind.

If it helps, we do find that new combat you're wearing somewhat fetching. Big explosive magic attacks, ninjas carving up monsters with dual blades, anime warriors... OK, ultimately it's the same old 'press a key to attack' stuff as ever at the start, but it's more impressive than usual, and scales up with some extra combos and powers as you advance from the outright newbie zones.

But the 'Revolution of Action', as claimed? Not really. The extra powers you get are all very well, but there's so much competition in the market right now - and so many small monsters to have to sacrifice to the gods of levelling - that even slogging to get that far is tiresome.

I want to connect and get into your new game, truly I do, but with Warcraft and EverQuest, and even City of Heroes playfully toying with its bra strap, the little hussy, it's hard to forget just how mindblowingly generic you truly are.

It's not you, it's - wait, on second thoughts, it is you.

I'm sorry. Please don't be mad. It's not even that you did anything particularly horrible, other than being so uninteresting that I had to dig up this whole tortured metaphor to get anyone to read this far into a discussion of your latest game. It's simply that the competition is better to the point where you don't need to exist.

Don't be disheartened. As they say: plenty more fish in the sea. But to my eyes, that still makes games like Cabal mere guppies to World of Warcraft's Jaws. I hope we can still be friends.