BioWare: MMORPGs Have "No Point"

[kotorfan04]

As an MMO player I kind of agree to them, yeah the places are fun to visit and I love kicking this shit out of monsters, but the story has usually been an excuse although I will say WoW has gotten better by creating actual story threads like the lovely Wrath Gate event, still as stories go it always kind of fails to compare with a well crafted single player experience. After all, all MMOs have to face the fact that at best their player will just be an elite mook, and in all honesty they will have to play secondary to the big main characters.

 

[Atomic Skull]

He's wrong though. MMORPGs have a point, and that point is being better than other people.

I've seen the exact same thing in Ultima Online, the original EQ, and FFXI(which is more about loot than any other MMO I have ever seen). The "game" and quests are secondary to lording it over people with less loot than yourself/in a lower ranked guild than yourself.

*THAT* is what keeps people playing MMORPGs. MMORPG's are not games, they are theme park social activities.

 

[faefrost]

And there is a reason why the story always fails to compare. It's inherrant in the concept. In a single player RPG, YOU are the hero. The one true prince apon whom the fate of the world hangs. In an MMO... you're a peon. You are part of the faceless hordes or guards, soldiers, and widows and orphans that that selfsame true prince wades his way through with his sword. Cause in a world where everybody is the one true prince, harbinger of doom, savior of the world, etc etc, then nobody is.

I really don't want to be a pessimist about Biowares offerings, but I swear we have heard this exact same rant about story driven MMO's given by virtually every MMO producer before their big release, for at least the past decade. I think UO and Everquest emphasized freedom and do what you want. Every other game promised to be much much more "story driven". Pretty much none of them succeeded at it. (Turbine and Blizzard have probably come closest). While I think Bioware has great intentions, and does a good story. It remains to be seen if this will work in a large scale MMO environment.

Personally I think that a story driven MMO is as much a pipe dream in a persistent world game as is the frequently chased after development snipe of "PvP with real consequences".

 

[Atomic Skull]

There actually is an MMO out there that had quests that were more than just "Kill X of Y and report back".

FFXI had quests that involved cutscenes, NPC escorts, and a plethora of other things.

And it was fucking horrible because you'd end up running all over the world for hours or days to various NPCs and locations to do various tasks (many of which couldn't be done solo) and sit through long cut scenes.

 

[x -- A L P H A prime]

Quite honestly, Bioware might just be pushing it by trying to create basically a "KOTOR MMO". I mean lets face it, they do make a good rpg, ME2 aside, but they're good at making a single player rpg. Not saying they're destined to fail, but they shouldn't give people such high hopes for changing how a MMO works. Just like EVERY MMO out there its going to boil down to:
A) you are hero/villan #78618
B) grind to aquire weapon A or armor B
C) try not to let the lifeless ass on the other end kill you
D) rinse lather repeat

Saying they're adding story to an MMO won't change anything in reality, because all Bioware games, ALL of them end with closure and no going back to play afterward.
So in reality its just going to be WoW with lightsabers and voice-overs, no matter how much "story" is thrown into the mix.
MMOs just cannot have a defined storyline because most players are just going to skip the dialog or text to kill 20 wolves to aquire some piece of shit that will be outdated in the newer patches and expansions. Not to mention the fact that there's going to be other players around ruining your story and NOTHING you do will stay permanent in the game. I've watched my friend play WoW for years now and every time I bore myself to death watching it boils down to the same thing each time. Grind, grind, grind. I hope Bioware succeeds but in my opinion they should stick to what they're good at... minus Mass Effect 2

 

[Aesir23]

This is why I love BioWare. And I can only hope they succeed because the whole grinding aspect for no reason in particular is the entire reason that I don't play MMORPGs.

 

[Atomic Skull]

I laugh when I see people complain about WoW's "grind".

Compared to FFXI WoW hands out gear like a vending machine. A friend of mine took 4 years playing 6-8 hours a day (longer on weekends) to upgrade Mandau. (essentially the best dagger in the entire game, there are less than 300 of them spread across all game servers)

He's been doing an instance with his guild for a year now (which takes around 30 people to complete) for some polearm and in a year of doing it twice a week it has only dropped once. And it went to someone else who had more points. The most disturbing thing about this is that he's totally ok with it.

All the horror stories you have heard about this game are absolutely true. that 18 hour boss battle where people started puking and passing out? That really happened. That unkillable boss that Square keeps patching whenever someone figures out a way to kill it? Also true.

World spawns that pop every 3 IRL days? yep

1% drop rates on once an IRL day world spawns where every high level guild on the server is there competing for it? yep.

The only conclusion I can draw is that FFXI's dev team really, REALLY hates their players. How this game still has 300k-400k players is beyond me.

Nothing in WoW even comes close to FFXI's grind.

 

[bushwhacker2k]

I've enjoyed just about every one of Bioware's games that I've played and if they can really pull off a revolutionary (sadly, it IS revolutionary) idea like this then... then I'd get to play a kickass MMORPG

 

[Tony2077]

i really hope this doesn't come back and bite them

 

[Dr. Crawver]

I would agree with them, but honestly, I think bioware would have been smarter to not say something like that

 

[Lemon Of Life]

Looks really, really good, though I don't want to get excited, it's a long way off.

 

[Daipire]

What was that other game that is supposed to be against grinding and other boringness assosiated with MMORPGS?

 

[annoyinglizardvoice]

I agree with their comments and will be curious to see what they do about it, but I understand that as I'm not an MMO fan my opinion won't be completely valid

 

[TarkXT]

Oddly enough I agree with Biowares RPG philosophy but I think they're wrong when they say that MMO's have no point and forget the story. With Wrath of the Lich King Blizzard took a fairly bold step in that direction. With in-game cinematics, and player participation in some rather large battles they did quite a bit to give the whole expansion an overarching story feel. If they had made this pronouncement before WoTLK I would tend to agree with them. But as it stands, Blizzard has not only proven them wrong, but are way ahead of the game on this point.

 

[CriticalGriffin]

... Am I the only one who thinks that BioWare is getting a little egoistical lately?

Sure they make good games, but they sure make a lot of remarks.

 

[Leviathan_]

I kind of agree that the story in alot of MMORPG's are just crap.

I think that Guild Wars is one of the few that actually had a good and clear story going on.