The weapon/ammo system was FAR less engaging than in the previous Bioshock. I was bored to death with Infinite’s extremely limited combat mechanics.

Sadly, there was none of the cool gadget-type stuff that helped make the previous game so much fun: no hacking, no trap ammo, etc. I wanted to be using all kinds of different ammo, setting traps with my weapons (trap rivets, spear traps, etc.), hacking lots of machines to fly around and help me out…. but none of that was in this game. I couldn’t believe it.

The powers/perks system was surprisingly lackluster this time around too. No ice power so you could freeze enemies? WTF?

The enemies themselves were also boring as hell. There was nowhere near the variety of interesting splicers and whatnot from the previous game. Most of the time it seemed like you just fought regular-type dudes, and every once in a while you’d fight a robot patriot guy. YAAAAAAWN. The enemy selection for Infinite was downright awful.

No Big Daddies/Little Sisters? That is a Bioshock trademark, and yet they took that out and replaced it with really lackluster enemies. Unbelievable.

Lastly, Elizabeth was there to do the rogue-ish stuff (i.e. pick locks), but a huge flaw was that she didn’t really contribute much to the actual fighting. She should have been able to use her powers to damage/confuse enemies, but instead she just threw you ammo every once in a while and allowed you to open “tears” which weren’t very interesting.

Overall, the story/characters/graphics in Bioshock Infinite were good, but the gameplay was downright TERRIBLE, especially compared to the previous game. Bioshock Infinite just wasn’t fun at all.

Bioshock 2, on the other hand, was absolutely awesome… both in story AND in gameplay. The best in the series, hands down.

Then why can I still log into Everquest 1?
They aren’t making a profit really. Or if they are it’s minimal. There were more people playing CoH then everquest. It’s called looking out for your most loyal customers, instead of kicking them in the gut because they’re slightly not numerous enough.

They could have oh, I don’t know… scaled back Paragon Studios. If Paragon was working on another title as well as CoH, they could simply cut that title, and the staff associated with that. Heck, they could even scale CoH back to a ‘non-growing’ game, where no new content is created, but they keep the lights on… it would cost them just running electricity to their antique servers, and a skeleton crew to maintain them. They could literally drop the operating costs of keeping CoH “playable” to perhaps a $100,000/year.

But no, this is NCsoft we’re talking about. This isn’t new behavior for them. Profits drop to ‘meh’, they shut down the game and erase everything the customers have emotionally invested in. Look at Tabula Rasa.

And the CoH shutdown coincides with GW2 launching (which ncsoft hopes will be a big hit). NCsoft’s weak profits were primarily caused by the GW2 development & marketing cycle. And I’m *certain* that NCsoft hoped that they could just splice their CoH customers over to GW2 by timing the release & shutdown together.

Sorry NCsoft. I didn’t bite. GW2 looks like a decent title, and there are some other titles from NCsoft that look interesting… but I’m done investing so many hours into a fictionverse which will be discarded for having weak profits. Or where the CEO’s believe they can herd me like cattle into a more profitable title instead. Where closing down the game (instead of continuing to minimally operate it) is seen as the business decision to make. NCsoft, you don’t know how to treat the consumers who *are* your market. Shutting down CoH lost you a customer for life. And I know firsthand that many other CoH players feel similarly. I did the math, you made over $1,000 from just myself with CoH over 6 years of subscription and various fluff purchases, and over $150 on Aion as well. But because you don’t know how to retire an MMO while still leaving it playable for your very most loyal customers, you’re not going to make anything from me again.

To me, the biggest disappointment was how the potential opportunity to make a profound statement about racism and society was completely abandoned the moment Daisy Fitzroy went nuts. There was so much hype about the world/society Bioshock infinity created, and how it was such an important commentary on American history… but we only began to scratch the surface when it all got thrown out the window.

Instead of giving us this creative and inspired plot that presents issues in history in new and exciting ways, we wind up with this inter-dimensional sci-fi stuff that’s been used time and again in popular fiction. It’s such a shame that the opportunity to make a profound impact about real issues was utterly missed here.