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Last day in Manila: Playing like there’s no tomorrow

by Joel on June 14th, 2008

I spent my last night in Manila (that is, before shuttling back to Leyte) playing MMORPGs like there was no tomorrow. At first, my MMORPG of choice, Perfect World, wouldn’t run. I thought there was something wrong with the PC so I asked the attendant at Phoenix, a 24-hour Internet and gaming cafe in Makati, the financial district of Metropolitan Manila, to transfer me to another station. Lo and behold, the game still didn’t work. Turned out that the café’s connection to Level Up! Games, local publisher of Perfect World, was shocked. Duh!

So I played the “next best thing,” which was Cabal Online. Heck, almost everybody at the café was playing the darn game (aside from Warcraft III: Defense of the Ancients, that is), so I figured I’d play it, too. Unfortunately, I get bored easily with grinding games, more so with games that are, hmmm, limiting. The current incarnation of Cabal Online here in the Philippines has, what, three maps, excluding the special dungeons and other “invisible” or “off limits” maps. Put this side-by-side with its pros, which are the combo system and the hover bikes, you’ll soon realize that doing combos isn’t all that great because it’s so damn hard to continue the combo from monster to monster and that hover bikes or any type of mounts in very small maps feels rather awkward, if not dumb.

I ended up surfing the ‘net instead. No hassles. My only complaint is that a lot of Internet cafés in this country still rely heavily on Internet Explorer for their clients’ surfing needs. Ewwwww. Sorry, Bill, that particular product really needs a drastic overhaul.

Six hours later, I find myself PhP 120 (roughly USD 3) poorer as I left Phoenix for the trip home. Ahhh, nothing beats playing MMORPGs at home.

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POSTED IN: Asian MMO, Asian MMO Players, Cabal Online, Level Up! Games, MMORPG, Perfect World, Random Rants