MMOs and you

[Sleepy Sol]

So, I know we already have an MMO thread about how crappy just about every MMO launch. But, I was curious to see how many people play MMOs on the Escapist. And ask a bunch of stupid questions about them to boot.

Do you enjoy MMOs? Why or why not? How long have you been playing them, and can you see yourself continuing to play them for the foreseeable future?

As for me, I've been playing some form of MMO since 2008 (unless you count Runescape) and they've always since been a close to daily part of my life. Sad, I know. But I've managed to make some great groups of friends across multiple games that I've kept for years. Friends are probably one of the biggest reasons I enjoy MMOs, and are usually the force that keeps me playing.

I can't see myself quitting MMOs very soon. I've been playing FFXIV:ARR for 9 months now, and the upcoming expansion only has me more excited. Previously, I played Phantasy Star Online 2 on the Japanese servers for a year and a half-ish, Mabinogi, TERA, and a couple others that I really don't feel like remembering.

This thread was also an excuse for me to see who plays FFXIV and on what server because reasons (i.e. seeing if I could make any new dungeon or raid buddies; I'm on Balmung). Apologies.

 

[Duster]

I guess mmo is actually a genre like fps and rts that's not too easy to enjoy on the entry level, and that you can actually be good at mmos. I've played quite a few of them but I rarely make it to max level.

There are a few core reasons that I avoid getting really into mmos:
-The ultimate goal of the company is to make money, so no open source controls, no transparency, fotm balance and when the game dies, it's left to die.
-clicking simulator
-very few mmo's actually have interesting rpg mechanics. Runescape and dungeons and dragons online are the only two rpg systems i've actually somewhat enjoyed and i'm never going to touch those games again. Most of them are waaaaay too cookie cutter with their class systems and stuff. Stuff like rift and wow try to make it interesting but all the builds will be cookie cutter.

although I admire what a lot of mmos can do in terms of scale and content.

Sometimes I love just exploring an mmo world at the lowest level and dodging the trash mobs everywhere, it's actually fairly exciting a lot of the time. I did this first in silkroad by running across the entire game world as a level 4 I beleive, and I think in rift you can swim across an ocean and explore this cool ass island with a bunch of level 50 mobs. that was a blast.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Not a big fan, I've tried a couple and it gets boring and repetitive pretty quickly. Besides I can never be as good as the guy that has been playing for the past 10 years, so why bother.

 

[MysticSlayer]

I sort of enjoy MMOs if I have a lot of friends that play them, but I wouldn't really say that they are a favorite genre of mine. A particular problem is that I simply don't have the time to invest into them, never mind the money to actually pay for a subscription on World of Warcraft. Chances are, my situation won't change at all in the near future, so I doubt that MMOs are going to be something I follow closely in the near future.

 

[StriderShinryu]

I love them, sometimes. If they grab me then they're the perfect mix of seeing a character grow (both in stats and actual character), rewarding gameplay, community and, of course, role playing. If they don't, and most of the time they don't, I enjoy them for a few weeks or a month and then drop them probably to never think of them again. The saddest part of that ti me is when you have an MMO like The Secret World. I greatly enjoyed the moment to moment gameplay, and thought the story was not only well crafted but also well presented. The community, however, is small to non-existent and that's a huge part of what really hooks me on an MMO as it provides both the community aspect but also the roleplaying aspect.

 

[Mezahmay]

I love them, sometimes. If they grab me then they're the perfect mix of seeing a character grow (both in stats and actual character), rewarding gameplay, community and, of course, role playing. If they don't, and most of the time they don't, I enjoy them for a few weeks or a month and then drop them probably to never think of them again. The saddest part of that ti me is when you have an MMO like The Secret World. I greatly enjoyed the moment to moment gameplay, and thought the story was not only well crafted but also well presented. The community, however, is small to non-existent and that's a huge part of what really hooks me on an MMO as it provides both the community aspect but also the roleplaying aspect.

I personally found the combat in The Secret World lackluster. The quest system and player customization is what really made that game stand out to me. That's just me though. Admittedly I didn't get very far because the realms I went to were just so freaking empty.

OT: I do love MMOs. A lot. So you can imagine it's been pretty hard having to focus on games you can pick up and play and drop at any time so I can still study enough to keep passing college. I played WoW for around five years between high school and the first year and a half or so of college. I was only kind of into it in my first casual guild hanging out with friends. I hit my stride when I started healing in raids and working with raid leaders on strategy after I found a good guild. Oh man...so many good memories. It gave me an outlet to theorycraft, actually use the math I was learning before I had real uses for it, be a part of a group of other weirdos who liked WoW as much as I did, etc. I've also played RuneScape for YEARS in the past, but my account hasn't been used in years. I pretty much had to choose between WoW and RS. You can guess which one won out in the end. Lot of good RS memories too, but WoW was my jam.

 

[sanquin]

I guess mmo is actually a genre like fps and rts that's not too easy to enjoy on the entry level, and that you can actually be good at mmos. I've played quite a few of them but I rarely make it to max level.

There are a few core reasons that I avoid getting really into mmos:
-The ultimate goal of the company is to make money, so no open source controls, no transparency, fotm balance and when the game dies, it's left to die.
-clicking simulator
-very few mmo's actually have interesting rpg mechanics. Runescape and dungeons and dragons online are the only two rpg systems i've actually somewhat enjoyed and i'm never going to touch those games again. Most of them are waaaaay too cookie cutter with their class systems and stuff. Stuff like rift and wow try to make it interesting but all the builds will be cookie cutter.

although I admire what a lot of mmos can do in terms of scale and content.

Sometimes I love just exploring an mmo world at the lowest level and dodging the trash mobs everywhere, it's actually fairly exciting a lot of the time. I did this first in silkroad by running across the entire game world as a level 4 I beleive, and I think in rift you can swim across an ocean and explore this cool ass island with a bunch of level 50 mobs. that was a blast.

You should try ArcheAge maybe. It's "free to play", but you can try out enough in the free version. 1: It's not a clicking simulator. It works with action combat basically. Even dungeon bosses are often partially or mostly based on avoiding attacks, rather than tanking them. 2: Rpg mechanics, well I really like them. The crafting system is standard enough, though a lot of actions including crafting cost certain points, which regenerate over time. So you have to resource manage it to be able to craft properly. Classes aren't fixed. You instead have 10 talent trees from which to pick 3, to make your own combination. Combat is highly based on combo's. As in, using one skill to inflict a condition, and follow it up with a different skill to get extra effects such as bonus damage or a slow turning into a trip. Anyway, just a random tip.

As for the topic:
I do enjoy mmo's. Mostly because they usually don't take up a lot of my attention. So I can watch a movie or some such on my second screen. I've been playing them since 2001 I think, not counting runescape. (was already playing that for 2~3 years before that.) It started with Ragnarok Online for me. I've tried most high-profile mmo's that came out since then. Most of them didn't stick though. They either got too repetitive, lacked any creativity whatsoever, or were wow clones that weren't as good as wow.

Right now I'm still playing WoW and Archeage, though my tendencies have started to shift to single player a little more. Lately I've been playing a lot of Space Engineers. And I picked up Skyrim and Mass Effect 1 again for another playthrough.

 

[EmperorZinyak]

I've been playing WoW since 2009 and have had no regrets. I've enjoyed every expansion thoroughly and the new one especially. The monthly cost didn't scare me as much once I realized how much I pay for other things. A movie costs about 15 dollars including snacks. That's 15 dollars for about 2 hours of entertainment, compared to 12 dollars per month to play as much WoW as I want. I play about 12 hours a week, so that's 12 dollars for 48 hours of entertainment: a very good price, considering how many 60 dollar AAA games don't have 50 hours worth of playtime. It may not seem like it, but MMO's are actually some of the cheapest games if you consider how much playtime you get out them.

 

[psijac]

I am very curious about the goat simulator MMO

 

[Dalisclock]

I've tried a couple but always gave up on them after a month or so. I usually just lose interest in them.

That and there's the fact that I have such a huge game backlog between GOG.com and steam that, even if I could play the same game for months at a time(It's rare for me to play a game for more then 40 or so hours before I'm done and ready to move onto something else), I'd feel like "Well, I'm playing this game, and my backlog is sitting there(and likely getting bigger)".

Hell, I love the idea of The Secret World. I just want to play it single player and I really wish it had been designed that way.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

I enjoy the hell out of WoW. Its hard to pinpoint the exact reason, but it boils down to my love for Warcraft in general and being able to play in that world, as a character and have my own little adventures (and sometimes beat up really big baddies). I don't see it as a skinner box because its worth the money and time I put into it.
I don't play it as much as I used to, but I still love it anyway. I've also worked so hard on my account that it would be a shame not to continue it until the death of the game itself. I want to say I was there on day 1 and I'll be there on the last day (barring apocalypse or my own untimely fate).

 

[the doom cannon]

MMOs are my favorite genre, but I tend to not look into them much. My first mmo was guild wars 1, which i sank 4000 hours into. I played wow for the 60 day full trial i got by buying sc2, and decided it wasn't worth the subscription cost. Then guild wars 2 came out and I played that for a bit, and quickly got tired of it after finishing the story and running around doing random crap. Then I discovered Eve Online, which I have played consistently for almost 2 years. I really love that game, but just recently stopped playing because the corporation I was in half-died and the one I joined afterward hasn't been the best in terms of activity. I will probably start back in EVE in a couple weeks. Since I stopped playing EVE, I got back into GW2, and I am having way more fun with it now. The game is infinitely better than it was on release, and even 6 months out. It's just a completely different game. I've probably sunk 250 extra dollars into GW2, and I regret none of it.

 

[Gennadios]

The only MMO that I've put a great deal of time into was the original Guild Wars, at (Over 9000!) hours.

Basically, I'm turned off by the same mechanics that hook people on traditional MMOs. While most people are hooked on the steady increase of the level bar, I just look at where I'm at, and how far I need to get and just shut down at the prospect of how much of my time I'd have to invest to reach that goal.

I also grew up on D&D and I find the idea of multiple level tiers and ever increasing damage numbers unbalanced an offensive. Probably why I stuck it out with GW, it had a level cap of 20 and stayed that way through all the expansions.

The social aspect was also a pretty big draw, but that was towards the end. The player population dwindled, but eventually we cobbled together a group of about 10 people that were just barely skilled enough to handle all the top tier content. Not everyone was "good" per se, but at least you could work with them. Lots of interpersonal drama and general douche baggery to go with it, but I guess that's what kept us together for so long.

Eventually the best people became less active due to life demands, the not quite good people became too much trouble to be worth staying around, and the hype over GW2 bled motivation from the original...

I got to the level cap in GW2 before all the expansions came, but it felt more like work and duty than anything else. Hadn't played any other MMOs that kept my interest long enough to advance past level 15 or so.

 

[default]

I only enjoy softcore MMOs like 'Guild Wars 2' and 'Realm of the Mad God'. Something I can just jump into with friends, run around, explore and have a good time. The hardcore stuff where you're expected to grind a dungeon 100+ times for an ultra rare crafting material which is essential to your build or take over 6 months to max out and build a character just doesn't appeal to me. These sorts of design choices also seem to come with massive game imbalance generally and they're difficult to learn and get into.

I also need to actively enjoy playing the game on a second to second basis. Being forced to stand still and trade numbers with random mobs doesn't cut it for me. I need a more active combat experience. GW2 fills that gap quite nicely for now.

I like the more unique MMO experiences that aren't afraid to break out of (the often misguided) WoW design traditions and do something really interesting and involving. GW2 is a step in the right direction.

 

[Ryan Hughes]

Do you enjoy MMOs? Why or why not? How long have you been playing them, and can you see yourself continuing to play them for the foreseeable future?

No, I don't really play them anymore. I am a huge RPG fan, and this attracted me to MMOs back when I first got a computer and an internet connection around 2007. I played my fair share, but the genre has severe problems that no one has successfully solved: The emphasis on grinding and item collection over story. This is -to an extent- necessary, as it is much easier to program these mechanics than to write a proper story for your game, but the lack of inspiration is felt when the mechanics are laid bare for the player, without any real motivation to do them.

This leads into another serious problem: content creation. Core players in any given community will always blow through your content much faster than you can create it. Everquest Next and others are attempting to implement a type of community-created content, but who knows how that will turn out. Really, the need for content again reenforces the first problem with bare mechanics over story and characterization. This in turn refocuses development towards PvP content, which to a certain extent generates itself, and so on and so forth.

Any MMO is really only as good as its community, or rather, the group of people you most often find yourself playing with. This can lead to some real friendships, as I still keep in touch with some people I have met, but also has an obvious negative side. Many people use MMOs to compensate for their own shortcomings in real life -perceived or real- and this can lead to communities becoming toxic as a whole. As we all know, the idiots in any given group will always shout the loudest -this is one of their qualities- and this is sadly effective at obscuring people that would be genuinely pleasant to play with.

I could go on. But suffice it to say I have lost all love for the MMO.

 

[Sleepy Sol]

MMOs are my favorite genre, but I tend to not look into them much. My first mmo was guild wars 1, which i sank 4000 hours into. I played wow for the 60 day full trial i got by buying sc2, and decided it wasn't worth the subscription cost. Then guild wars 2 came out and I played that for a bit, and quickly got tired of it after finishing the story and running around doing random crap. Then I discovered Eve Online, which I have played consistently for almost 2 years. I really love that game, but just recently stopped playing because the corporation I was in half-died and the one I joined afterward hasn't been the best in terms of activity. I will probably start back in EVE in a couple weeks. Since I stopped playing EVE, I got back into GW2, and I am having way more fun with it now. The game is infinitely better than it was on release, and even 6 months out. It's just a completely different game. I've probably sunk 250 extra dollars into GW2, and I regret none of it.

I forgot to mention it in the OP, but I did play Guild Wars 2 on launch and had plenty of fun with it. Unfortunately, once I hit the max level fairly soon after launch I just sort of fell out of the game. But it sounds like it got a lot better. I might have to look into it again someday.

I must say that it had my favorite purchasing model out of any MMO I've played in the B2P philosophy.

 

[Nazulu]

There used to be MMOs I was interested in, but they don't exist anymore. I spent hours looking through many to find another and I just couldn't.

My 3 favourites were Mu Online (my first), Lineage 2 & WoW.

Mu Online had interesting designs, simple game play and tough rules for losers, and I really liked it for that. It was all about getting a group of people to bring down wandering monsters quickly and then go shopping at peoples shops, looking out for the special special.

Now it's turned into something else with this pay-to-fucking-win model in place. Lots of annoying glowing keys drop and the only way you can use them is to continuously put money in the game. I would have had no problem with just paying monthly, but no, they had to go with this annoying setup.

Lineage 2 has always been my favourite out of all the MMOs I've played, even though it can be really slow, and the rules could be really punishing. But the game play really suited me. In most MMOs now you will be using the same chain of moves over and over and over, but in Lineage 2 you didn't need to, what you needed is a plan to save as much health and mana as possible. And every new move you earned was a big deal, increasing your options and survivability. And I really enjoyed the rules of the game, especially where you could go red from killing anyone who didn't agree to have a proper PvP match. It really made the world feel more chaotic and lively, and was a curse to bots and farmers.

The new Lineage 2 has become WoW, and they've scrapped all the rules, and for some fucking reason they decided to put extremely high level enemy's in low level territory's, which is just plain fucking stupid.

I wish there was a single player version of this game. Set out like an Elder Scrolls game of something, because the design and atmosphere in this game is really special, and everyone should be able to see it, instead of it's retarded form now.

World Of Warcraft was at it's best at the beginning, because then it was actually challenging and everything you saved for actually felt like a big deal. Now it's all over the place and they have micro-transactions for everything. And the fact you can buy high level characters is fucking disgusting.

Blizzard is just a pile of shit now. Run by shits, paid by shit (Activision) to make more shit. And yet people will blow their money on the leveled up toons with the poorest reasoning I've ever heard in my entire life. Guess what? Lineage 2 fixed your leveling up tedium problem by making it so your highest level character could switch to other classes. I swear, their was so much clever innovation for Lineage 2 that WoW should be taking away from it, instead of the other way around.

Yes, it pisses me off

 

[RedDeadFred]

I've discovered that I find them incredibly boring and tedious. I am currently trying to play GW2 for the third time (I payed 60 bucks a while back so I do want to make an effort to enjoy it) and it's so incredibly boring. From what I've heard, things get more exciting later on so I'm trying very hard to get to that stuff. I'm level 12 and have just been told that I need to go find a bunch of pieces of this... thing which the Inquest apparently want. The quests feel so incredibly generic, instead of having an exact counter of "you must kill this many of x" they have a constantly filling bar which gets filled by..... killing x. You can also fill the bar by activating y which will allow you to kill another x. Mind numbingly boring.

The combat is supposed to be better than other MMOs (at least, that's what I've heard). From what I've experienced, you just walk up to the enemy, let the auto-attacking do it's work, throw in you other abilities in an order that makes sense, and occasionally dodge. Maybe there's more to it later but right now, it feels like there's almost no skill involved.

The story is also pretty mediocre. It's just not interesting at all. Maybe it gets better but I'm really dreading hunting down a bunch of pieces of this thing.... I had to stop after that because it sounded so boring. I realize I'm still in the early stages of the game so I'm hoping that it gets a lot better. Believe or not, this is actually the furthest I've made it into the game, I tried the human origin first and was bored out of my mind, then I tried the char origin a couple months later and was even more bored.

The only thing that redeems the game at all for me so far are the events. It's fun to team up on a bigger creature or do a more involved task with a bunch of random people who just showed up like you. They aren't any tougher, but they're usually a lot more interesting.

Anyway, the closest thing to an MMO that I like would be the Borderlands games. The only thing that's really all that similar that I can tell is the loot system (which is in tons of games now) and the concept of raid bosses (even if some of them are duds). What makes it nearly infinitely better to me is that the story was actually interesting while being quite funny (at least, it was to me anyway). Also, the moment to moment gameplay is way more engaging.

If anyone has played and enjoyed GW2, what would you consider to be the most fun class? So far, I've tried thief, elementalist, and am currently playing as a warrior. None of these have been particularly interesting though the elementalist was more flashy. Is there anyone who moves around the world more quickly? I find that a lot of my boredom stems from the fact that the world is much bigger than it needs to be. It seems like there's a ton of filler stuff that I'd love to be able to run by.

One final gripe: this could just be me not being used to the physics of the game yet, but the platforming sections feel terrible. It feels like the game did not have those sections planned at the beginning and were just thrown in last second because the jumping just feels wrong.

One positive thing I can definitely say about the game is that the art style is fantastic. The world is truly unique and gorgeous. Both the char and asura have had brilliantly creative starting areas.

Anyway, the main gist of all this is that MMOs may not be for me.

 

[barbzilla]

While I like the idea of MMOs, and I typically enjoy endgame content, unfortunately the ADHD is strong with me and I lose interest quickly. I generally only play MMOs for about a week and a half before I am so tired of the leveling system that I quit forever. There are a few notable exceptions to this though. The first exception is Anarchy Online; I really can't say why I enjoy this game so much more than other MMOs, but I suppose it is because I can wonder around solo and still manage to get the best gear in the game (up until Alien Invasion anyway). The second game on my list is Secret World; While I can't stick with the game for longer than a week or two, I keep coming back to it, as I like the atmosphere and how they tell a story (not to mention, some of the puzzles were very fun). The final game on my exceptions list is Star Wars Galaxies; This was my favorite MMO by far. I loved the emergent gameplay, the leveless system (at least pre-CU), the player driven economy, the housing settlements that allowed you to work on becoming a politician, I loved the way the game made me feel as though I was part of a living universe, and my absolute favorite aspect of the game was the levelless, classless system that allowed you to set your character up just about any way you want him/her to be (and an amazing cosmetic customization tool as well). Then they released the Combat Update (CU) 1 and sold the game to Sony Online Entertainment (SOE), and shortly after that Sony killed the game with CU2 as it turned the game into a WoW clone set in space.

 

[chozo_hybrid]

I find they lack the refinement and polish that you get in single player rpgs. Nothing you do in the games seem to have any impact what so ever. I guess they're just not for me.