The makers of City of Steam sent me a closed beta key, and I barely used it. My apologies! It isn't as if City of Steam was a bad game. In fact having a steam punk setting is a nice chance, and the game looks better than you'd expect a Free2Play browser game to look. There are also some interesting variations on the class/spec/talent system, with each class choosing one of three sub-classes right from the start, abilities in an ability tree, and passive talents being free choice. The reason I couldn't play City of Steam for more than a few hours was that apart from such variations, it is very much a classic MMORPG: You have your quests to descend into the sewer and kill ten rats, you have your hotkey bar combat, you have your healer, tank, and damage dealer classes/specs, everything you would expect.

I just don't want to play games like that any more for the moment. I want either MMOs that work very differently from this Progressquest type, or games that aren't MMORPGs. I can't help it, but right now an NPC that asks me to kill ten rats just makes me want to puke. I want games where what I do is fun *now*, and not a prerequisite for maybe fun later. And if MMORPGs can't offer that, I'm burned out of MMORPGs.