YOU and MMORPG's (OMG!)

[ZeroAX]

I started with Guild Wars back in February 2006 (on the first week I got a broadband connection). I really liked it as a first experience, but once I finished the main story campaign I quit since I couldn't PvP well and none of my friends kept playing it.

Then I started WoW in the summer, and unfortunately my life went really downhill for 3 years because of it. I was really addicted.

Anyway, now I hate the genre. I see it as repetitive and badly designed. Few MMOs try to offer quality content and most focus on grinding. To be fair I understand why. Designing quality content costs a lot of money, and you must make sure the players keep playing your game for many hours so the easiest (and cheapest) option is to make stuff like gear based combat, leveling up, grinding for reputation, daily quests ect.

The only games that peaked my interest enough to try them out were Darkfall (omg it's buggy and omg it's hardcore), and The Secret World (omg it's buggy, and omg I loved it).

I fell in love with The Secret World, but I gave up on it simply cause I noticed I was really getting addicted again. It's a shame it didn't do so well cause it tried so many different things, and for me they all really worked well. The only problem being they needed to target it very far away from the WoW demographic if you ask me. Men 30+ and women of all ages would have really been into it imo.

[ZenErik]

The addictive nature of MMOs is saving me a lot of money that I'd be spending on new games. And so long as it isn't affecting my relationships with friends, job, etc. I don't really see it as a terrible thing. Since I only get to see my real life friends on weekends it has actually been nice having people to talk with, play games with, during the week.

If I started ignoring my friends because I'm too busy w/ the game at all times or was calling out of work or anything like that then I would probably need to step back and re-evaluate what I am doing.

[isiolia]

But what about the apparent emerging trend of games going free to play and have more active combat mechanics? Is WoW really still the trend setter anymore? Tera and Guild Wars 2 have more active combat, and games like Old Republic and Rift have Free to Play models as options. In fact, so does Everquest now.

Subscription model and game model are different things I think.

Overall game pace and structure is still often similar to WoW. Or, at least, more similar to that than the games that preceded it. Post-WoW games seem to be largely vertical in progression, at least that I have seen. The hotbar/rotation type setup as well.

[Ack]

Hmm...well, let me think.

I first started playing MMORPGs at the tail end of 1999 with the release of Asheron's Call, which I played off and on until around mid-2001. It heavily influenced my opinions on what an MMO should be, as it featured all players in the server in one large, continuous continent(with zoning only occuring when you entered dungeons) and had an ongoing story that changed on a monthly basis based on actions by the players to drive it. A character of decent strength could wander off in any random direction and still manage to find hidden dungeons, castles, towers, caves, and even shops and NPCs that few knew about and even fewer had visited. This open-world style gameplay was much more interesting to me than the segmented and sectioned-off world which featured in EverQuest, though I did play that one briefly, as well as Ultima Online between 2001 and 2003.

Later in college, I played Guild Wars heavily with friends in 2005, spent about five months in World of Warcraft in 2006, and played a bit of EVE in 2007. I found these all interesting in different respects. I enjoyed building upon the storyline in Guild Wars, even if it was only artificially done with little more than going from point A to point B on my part(and had already been done by countless others). In WoW I absolutely lived for world PVP, so a friend and I would often get bored and go run gank squads to engage in hit-and-run tactics on Alliance players(I was a troll warrior. There were like 5 of us). But raiding I found bland and annoying. EVE I consider to be one of the greatest games that you don't play. There is a lot of its player-driven universe that I think is spectacular, but it has a horrendous learning curve, forces the player to often sit and wait for everyone to come together(more than once I waited three hours for a corp op that was then aborted), and it's not a very entertaining game from a gameplay point of view. It's mostly monitoring spreadsheets and chat windows.

Since then, I've largely avoided the genre. The recurring costs keep me out, as do the way the worlds have been built into these sectioned monstrosities with racially-based teams as opposed to player-controlled ones. Ideally, I'd prefer a game with all the player interaction of EVE, the freedom to wander and medieval setting of Asheron's Call, and the player base of WoW. But I likely won't be getting that any time soon.

[ZeroAX]

Ideally, I'd prefer a game with all the player interaction of EVE, the freedom to wander and medieval setting of Asheron's Call, and the player base of WoW

If it wasn't for that last one you'd be lucky, since there are already a couple of games like that and more are coming out in the future, but they are all niche focused MMOs (which imo is a healthier target for the industry and it also builds a better community around the game)

[Ack]

Yeah, I know. I just want a large population to hunt down like dogs. Oh well. I've considered getting back into EVE, especially in the wake of the huge battles in recent years, but every time I start to consider it, I remember the long waits, the long periods of inactivity, and that I don't believe I have any friends who currently play, and it just doesn't seem worth it.

[fastbilly1]

First MMO - Ultima Online, 1998. My beast master walked around with rats and chickens.

MMO I wish was still around - Earth and Beyond. Westwood, better known for the Command and Conquer series created a scifi MMO that had third person shooting and space dogfighting. Sure the third person parts were really buggy, but the dogfighting and ship building was nigh perfection. The game could be played like a traditional MMORPG or you could kit out your ships to specifically play it like it was Xwing Vs Tiefighter. I opted to play it like a dogfighting sim and my squad ruled a useless area like Goonsquad runs parts of EVE. Eventually I had a smuggler ship that could outrun enemy attacks and my standard dogfighting ship was pretty much a capital starship... A couple years ago fans created a new server for it, but it is pretty much locked in the traditional MMORPG style. Well that and Id rather not go back to the game and just keep my memories of it as is - Awesome.

MMO I am currently playing - PSO:BB, well I was playing it, and then got very ill, then they had a DDOS attack, then TR moved on to Metal Gear.

Next MMO I will play - Probably be Guild Wars 2. I have alot of friends who play PVE and that is my favorite way to play fantasy games. But that wont happen until I get a laptop that can handle it, so probably the end of this year. I prefer to play MMOs on a laptop because I can just fire it up randomly and explore while watching tv or traveling.

[Stark]

First one I actually played was Meridian 59. The first one I spent any real time with was Everquest. Still I hardly stick with any of them for very long.

[ded srs]

First one I actually played was Meridian 59.

I've played Meridian 59. It's still around. I didn't play for long, as much as I love the old 2.5D or whatever you call 'em first person games, Meridian's gameplay didn't really engage me. It was confusing, which was exactly what I expected. Surprisingly there were people online and this was about a year ago.

[Stark]

First one I actually played was Meridian 59.

I've played Meridian 59. It's still around. I didn't play for long, as much as I love the old 2.5D or whatever you call 'em first person games, Meridian's gameplay didn't really engage me. It was confusing, which was exactly what I expected. Surprisingly there were people online and this was about a year ago.

It's still around? I played it in 97 or something like that, jeesh.