TOGSolid said:
Sonic Doctor said:
Some people play the game for story, but they can't complete it because the game forces them to interact with other players.
Kinda defeats the entire point of the genre doesn't it? That's like playing first person shooters but not actually attacking anything because you're a pacifist.
They do make RPGs that involve 0 interaction with other players yanno.
The problem is is that when a game is super popular a lot of players will go and try something else and ***** when it's not similar to their favorite game. I.e. Cod 4 morons going to play Bad Company 2 and then whining about all the stuff that isn't like COD, or WoW players expecting Eve Online to lead them along a very set and narrow path just because they're incapable of thinking outside the box.
Some criticisms are valid, but often times they're not. It's important to be able to separate the few good points from the retarded ramblings of the masses.
First off, cool down with the attitude.
Having been born in 1985, I have been around for most of the development of the gaming world. I started gaming when I was four, at least that is as far back as I remember. As I saw from your profile you are a couple years older, so you wouldn't know much more about the evolution of gaming.
Your whole comparison comment on how my point defeats the purpose of the genre is wrong. MMORPG is not a genre it is a subset of RPG which is a genre. At heart, MMORPGs are RPGs first, if you removed the RPG you would be left with something that is not a game, basically a chatbox.
Of course I know that there are single player RPGs, but can't you think of any that have worlds that are as vast and open as MMORPGs. I would say that the ones that come closest are Oblivion and Fallout 3, but even their worlds are dwarfed in size compared to most MMORPGs.
My point was that MMORPGs have vast and bigger worlds, and usually have richer and longer story-lines compared to single player RPGs.
Players that want to experience that without dealing with people, shouldn't have to suffer through trying to find one good team member out of the majority of greedy, usually awful players. It usually takes me a week or more to find one person that will team up without any catch or strings attached, all the other people always want something or log off or drop out in the middle of a quest. Most ask for items I don't have or amounts of gold that would take months to acquire, which of course I don't have. When I help people I don't ask for anything. I have helped a couple people when playing LotRO, mainly because I saw they were lower level than me and wanted me to lead or run them through some place like a goblin camp to complete a quest. I helped them, they said thank you, and I said your welcome, then we parted ways and never saw or interacted with each other again.
My complaint is one grounded in what the gaming companies have to understand to make more money and survive. In the gaming world today games are and rightfully so, expected to have both single player and multiplayer, or some kind of co-op in the single player mode. It's not hard to see that a majority of the world's game players play or have played multiplayer games, but I would guarantee that a majority of the world's gamers are at heart, more partial to single player games.
Yes MMORPGs are mostly made to cater to people that want to interact with other people, but I would say that the MM of MMO can also stand not just for multiple people playing with each other but also that multiple people are playing the same game. Now some MMOs creators have finally gotten the correct mindset and have started to tool some main story team quests so that people can choose to play solo, but they haven't gone far enough. It would be very smart financially, for a company to add a solo choice for all main story quests. If they did that, the company would most likely double their player base and gain twice as much money as they have been making. If I was the head of a game company I would do that with my MMORPG because it is a commonsense kind of move, because game companies of course want more people to play and more money.
I seriously don't see why the core MMO players get up in arms about people that want a single player aspect added to those games. Making a choice for players to be able to play the main story quests solo, would damage absolutely nothing for the players that want to play in groups. It feels like those core MMO players act like they are in some kind of exclusive club where they only allow certain people to join with them; the mentality feels like they are saying this, "If you don't roll with us, then you don't get to experience the game and find out how the story ends." It is childish.
