My experiences with MMORPGS ( warning, lots of text. )

merelymortal

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Today I would like to share with you my views on the various forms of MMORPGs ( Massively multiplayer online role playing games ) Which I've had the privilidge of playing. I find the easiest way to do this is to recap my gaming career, and then sum up my views.

I started my gaming days, as most young children do on the vast digital planes of Runescape. I spent 5 years of my life traversing the intricate 2d wasteland, freeing elves, killing kings, and striving to solve the eternal mystery of why exactly greater demons drop thread... I was a child, I had no real idea of what it was to farm, or to grind. I spent my days pretending I was a girl, and slaying hill giants. As the years progressed, my drive to become a better player kicked in. Some of my real life friends joined the game, and competing with them for glory became an all encompassing quest. My first 99 was the joke that is fletching, back in the days with no fletch x, where you could easily amass a million exp a day. Runescape was a gentle baptism into the world of MMO gaming. The quests were entertaining, and the player base was such that guides to every imaginable end were available. Fights were strategic, and grinding was made easier by chatting away with friends. I eventually decided I wanted to do some player killing, and as such spent 4 months getting 99 range, 99 defence, and 99 hp with a relatively low combat level. The introduction of crossbow changes meant I could 2 hit kill other players, much to their annoyance. I felt good, other players showed me respect. I joined a clan, and we were all of similar combat prowess. While killing other clans was of no challenge, we enjoyed doing it anyway. 4 of us could easily destroy a group of 20. With the release of the God war Dungeon the money was stupidly easy to accumulate. My stats meant I could solo one of the bosses, and I eventually found myself sitting on hundreds of millions of gold for which I had no use, and couldn't trade. I got bored of Runescape not long after. When the challange has been removed from a game, I no longer want to play it.

So I moved on, to a korean MMO called flyff. For those of you familiar with the modern flyff, forget everything you know =p. This was back in version 7. 120 was the level cap, and no one could hit it, glaphans were the highest level monster, and only one player had even hit 107 ( which he did by farming the glaphan boss spawn. ) I was ready for the grind this time, I was a bit older, and more prepared to take the game for what it was, a second job. I joined a server which had only recently opened, and as such started to push for levels. I played a jester, which was basically the all faceroll game breaking class. In a matter of months, I was at the highest ( practically ) attainable level for the time, level 105, and the very few of us who had reached that level banded together to make a guild to dominate the server, which we did. Our time was spent killing everyone and anyone on the pvp server, server 4, and generally being worshipped by the player base for it. Flyff was a cash shop game, which meant that unlike runescape, there was no monthly fee, but to help support the game you could buy specialist items from an item mall. This meant you would purchase a special currency for real life money. The issue with flyff, and with most cash shop games, is that the items in the cash shop were game breaking. a food which heals full health and has no cool down, items which mean you lose no exp when you die, Items which protect your weapon from breaking as you try to upgrade it. The last is especially important, because they were required to create good weapons, as such, us higher levels had to have them. At first it was fine, because we were the only people farming the Games end boss, clockworks, and selling the drops to the cash shop buyers for ridiculous prices, so we never paid a penny to the game. However, as the game progressed, and we hit version 9, everyone had attained level 105. This meant we had no real way of generating gold other than using the cash shop. It also seemed that whoever pumped the most money into the cash shop, could dominate pvp simply by using game breaking items, which was a pain in the bottom for those of us who prided ourself on being the best player killers. In the end we all left Flyff, cursing it for breaking what had once been a good game with it's greed. As I understand now, you can't survive in the world of Flyff without using the cash shop, it's pathetic.

I found myself floating without a game. There's nothing worse than approaching a new game and realising that in order to be as good as you were in a previous game, you'll have to put in months and months of grinding. So I started playing a little in browser 2d game called adventure quests. AQ was aimed at casual players, so I thought that being a non casual player, I could dominate. I was much mistaken. The gold, and exp in AQ have a cap every day, which mean that playing for more than 5 hours or so is effectively pointless. However, what kept me coming back to AQ was the humour. The quests, and npcs in the game had hilarious dialogue. For instance, a zard hunter, with the same characteristics of steve irwin. That quest was incredibly enjoyable, because it made you laugh. AQ also had weekly updates, which, without fail, were enjoyable to play. The combat system was simple point and click, and the fights were over quickly, which meant play didn't drag itself out. I set my character up as a wizard, and finished most fights in 2 spells. However, AQ wasn't technically an mmo. you never interacted with our players. The reason I mentioned it, is because it leads onto an mmo.

So, while I was playing AQ I also tried out others, such as maplestory, Rose online, Rising force online, Final fantasy online, and at the same time, I was spending a lot of my time completing the final fantasy series on the playstation, I mastered ff 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10-2 and 12. To me the final fantasy series optimised everything a good rpg should be. Immersive, in that, you could play for 10 hours at a time and still want to know what happens next before you go to bed, and you actually cared about, or hated the characters, I defy you not to care when Aerith dies. Intelligent, The stories were all fantastic, the combat systems were all fairly unique, and the game play stretched out over a hundred hours or more.

When I was done being a final fantasy geek, I moved back to the world of real MMOs. I was 19 by this point, I was in University, and I had an awful lot of free time. On the reference of.. well everyone in the free world, I decided to try the Goliath that is World of Warcraft. My first impressions of wow were bad. pretty graphics, but slow and boring combat. I picked a priest as my starting class, and got to level 19 in a couple of days or so. I decided to try my first dungeon, and I pulled agro on every single pack with healing. In hindsight, our tank failed big time, but I decided it was an inherent problem with my class, and re-rolled paladin. I knew even then that I wanted to be a primary healing character. So I went for the more robust, plate wearing paladin. At level 17 on my second character, I met a rogue, and we got talking. We were both playing 14 hours or so a day, and decided we should go for level 70 together. Long story short, 1 month later we both hit level 70. I dinged 10 minutes before him, and hold it over him to this day. We spent the next month or so of the burning crusade just faffing around, we made a guild, and recruited other little failures like ourselves, we knew nothing about our class, or the game at the time. I decided at this point that wow wasn't for me, but this is because I never gave it a try, I didn't raid, but we'll get to that later.

So I went off in search of another little cash shop game. One in it's youth, which hadn't been raped of it's player base yet. I got talking to an old flyff friend and he put me onto the game he was playing. Dream of Mirror Online. I went at it full pelt, and within 6 days had outleveled my friend, and his entire guild. I liked Domo because it had a very customisable class system, you could have your main class, as well as two skill sets from a diferent class ( a bit like final fantasy online. ) So I went with my primary class ( whatever that was at the time ) and Healer, and Musician skills. This meant I could basically let my overpowered ruby pet kill everything for me, keep it, and myself alive, and reap the exp. Everyone was Party based leveling, with aoe, but I was one of the very few full time solo levelers, and in the end, I was the one with the most level capped classes on my server. However, Domo started going the way of flyff. The cash shop was releasing books which would make your armour and weapons godlike, but would cost hundreds of dollars to do. I decided to call it quits early, and move onto Aeria's new game release of the time.

That brings us to Grand fantasia. GF was a lot like Domo ( unsurprising in that they were made by the same people ) But unlike Domo, it was very easy to make money on GF. All you needed do was farm dungeon bosses, which at a high enough level, could be done solo. Also, I preferred the leveling system, wherin you would join a party, and share all the exp, and quest kills. I eventually hit the level cap in this game as well, as an Assassin class. This meant pvp was a lot of fun, the problem was that you were lucky to get 1 pvp game a day. In the end people stopped signing up to fight when they saw that my guild were involved. So for lack of pvp, or other things to entertain us, we all left GF. I went back to Wow.

My second foray to wow was much more successful. I bought Wrath of the Lich king, and Hit level 80 on my Paladin. I started to farm heroic dungeons non stop, trying to complete all of them every day, eventually I had all the possible gear I could have without raiding. So one day, In a heroic Violet hold dungeon, I met 4 members of a guild, and these guys were amazing, I've never had a better heroic. They complemented my healing skills,a and said I should apply to join their guild. This I did on the advice of a more experienced friend, who told me they were a very good guild. So I applied, and was accepted. I was feeling proud of myself, and confident of my skills. However, let me give you a run down of my first Raid. Anyone familiar with Wow raiding will laugh, I cried. We enter Naxx ( it was t7 content at the time, naxx was the highest available raid ) Theres 25 people... I have no raid frames, I have no macros, I know no one... I'm trying to click around and see who's hurt like a complete moron. On the first boss I cast Blessing of Protection on the main tank, like a complete retard, and wipe the raid. I then have to own up to it over vent. At the end of the raid, I was approached by the healing leader who basically calls me useless.

I had never been so ashamed in all my life, and I vowed, that I would become the best Holy paladin on the server. So I started Theory crafting. For those not familiar with the term, theory crafting is the other half of wow, the half that the casual players don't do. This is the maths and logic side where you learn to break down every aspect of what makes your class tick, and as such learn how to get the optimum performance from said class. I did this solidly for hours and hours, and when the next raid rolled around, I had addons, I had macros, I had terminology, I had a best in slot item list drawn up, and at the end of that raid I was out healing players who had been healing since vanilla wow. I was complimented, and I felt better, but I wasn't done. I continued to raid, and theory craft solidly for the next 6 months or so, boring my vent mates to tears on the break downs of holy pala stats. However, following my example a lot of my guild mates became better players. By the time Ulduar rolled around, I was set up as a fully geared Int build holy light spamming paladin. I was the best holy pala on the server without question. I had become an unreplacable member of the raid, and for fights like freya +3, Iron council hardmode, Firefighter etc, it was my healing, and my theory which pulled us through ( as well of course, as the hardwork of my guildmates. ) At this point I also started geting involved in The Wow meter online site. This site collects data from raids of thousands of guilds, and shows top 20 boards for dps and healing. I was starting to creep into the top 20 healers! This drove me even harder to become a better healer, I wanted to be number1!

I got my goal too, I became the worlds number 1 healer on Razorscale, yogg Saron, Alagon and Freya in the same week. I was elated, and my guild were really happy for me too.

When Trial of the crusader came out, my guild cleared the entire thing without issue. First we did all the normal bosses every week as they were released, and then we did progress on hc, Twins gave us the most problems, and then of course we had to gear our warrior in block stuff for Anub. But really, it was a very, very easy set of content compared to what we'd had in the past.

The reason I loved wow, was the community. Playing with people who are more than friends, some feel like family. I know more about some of my wow friends, that I do about people I now concider real life friends. It's people who don't understand, that will never see the appeal of online gaming. The game stops being a game, it starts becoming a job, and the prestige and respect become everything. The feeling of control, of knowing that you're the best, and that no one can touch you. Of having the confidence to be able to answer any question on your class, or say exactly where someone else is playing incorrectly. I stopped playing Wow the night before Icecrown citadel was released, I was failing my university degree, and knew I had to pick one or the other, so I quit wow to focus on my studies. However, I still took on tasks involving wow. A lot of guilds asked me to design their healing groups etc, so I'd have to go in, and talk with the appointed healing leader, tell them each classes role, and basically tell them how to run a healing team. I wrote a 17 thousand word guild on how to play a holy paladin for my guild website too. I think it's safe to say, that I quit wow at the top of my game. All content cleared, and 2 items from full best in slot gear. I was certainly the most famous Holy paladin on my sevrer, and my name had even been thrown about on elitist jerks a few times too.

So I studied hard for my degree, and passed that year, and then basically decided that wow was bad for me. I want to go n to do my ph.d, and being addicted to an online world just won't allow for that. Mind you, my studies will be focused around the question of whether or not Computer games can be considered as literature.

Now, when I feel the need to lose myself in an mmo for a while, I play adventure quest worlds. I hit the level cap in 4 days, and as with Adventure Quest, the humour is still very, very evident in their game. I defy anyone to play aqw for a few hours and not come out of it feeling happier. The writers are really top notch.

So back to my original point. There are two main types of MMOs. Cash shop/item mall games ( such as maplestory, flyff, domo, gf, rfo, etc ) and there are subscription games, some of which require the pre purchase of the game to play.

Cash shop games are a pile of crap, please don't play them. The player base is very young, most of them spending all the money they have on the game to have better items, and more importantly, they're very open to hackers. I've never seen one cash shop game which hasn't had issues with script kiddies at one point or another.

Subscription games are the best. If you're a casual gamer go for one of the non pre-purchase ones, like adventure quest worlds, or runescape. But if you want t game a bit more hardcore, I'd suggest you go for the pre-purchase ones, like world of warcraft, age of conan, aion etc.

Thank you for taking the time to read my rambling
- Merelymortal
 

Count Igor

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Wa-ho.

That's a brilliantly written thread.

I can see you're pretty good at mmo's then...

Still, well done on..Being the best at pretty much every game, I can see.

Nice read as well, took me 7 minutes, which I was surprised at.

Dunno what else to say apart from You're awesome.
 

gonzo20

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well done man, my parents banned me from WoW when i was a 70 warrior and im glad they did it as my confidence built up again and i just recently passed my level one car mechanics :D
but my RL mate is playing it again and i really want to play with him, as we had such a good time
 

merelymortal

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Jun 14, 2010
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A friend of mine is back on wow, an irl one at that. He was in a world top 10 guild, and left for the same reasons as myself.

He seems to have given up on His degree though, he's left himself to wow.
 

chiefohara

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Thats the problem.... it absorbs your life.... i enjoy it, but it is an addiction. I caught myself lying to friends about going out so i could play it... decided to give it a break for a bit then
 

Mindmaker

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May 29, 2010
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Pretty much everything in this post made sense, until...

The reason I loved wow, was the community.
Really, I've never met a more obnoxious community in an MMO before.

I also hated how you were forced to use a healer interface, which covered up 80% of your screen.
While otheres had a clear view on what was going on, I was playing the healing version of whack-a-mole.
 

merelymortal

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Jun 14, 2010
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If you want to take a game very, very seriously, Wow has the capacity to allow for that. You get guilds which are hardcore about theory, almost militant. That's what I meant by enjoying the community.

And yeah, Healbot eats screen space, but as long as you can see the space around your character to make sure you're not standing in anything red or green, you're generally fine.

Moving through spaces you can't see whilst healing becomes second nature.
 

Fusionxl

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Your adventures in the kingdom of MMOs are pretty impressive, I consider myself to be pretty experienced, but your stories are worthy of memoirs :)

You seem to have the determination and maturity to play EVE Online, I recommend you give it a shot ( pro tip, join EVE University, do the Agony Unleashed PvP courses and join a good 0.0 corporation. You'll have the time of your life. )
 

merelymortal

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I had a lot of friends playing Eve, but I was busy with other projects at the time.

Unfortunately now I'm too busy to play games casually, instead I'm using my experiences to argue my views in my English lit degree, that role playing games should be counted as literature.
 

molesgallus

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Sep 24, 2008
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My experience-avoidance. I don't want to become hooked, like many people I've known. I have dabbled occasionally, but never got into any. Tedious, repetitive, and ultimately pointless in my brains opinion; it just won't release those juicy Dopamine molecules when I'm playing them. I'd rather write an essay, go cycling, or draw. Although, rationally, I understand they are all of purely subjective, and ultimately equal worth. SO, feel free to enjoy your mmorpgs...
 

Psychemaster

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Aug 18, 2008
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merelymortal said:
Unfortunately now I'm too busy to play games casually, instead I'm using my experiences to argue my views in my English lit degree, that role playing games should be counted as literature.
You should try making a thread about that once you're finished with it - could lead to some interesting discussion :)
 

merelymortal

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Jun 14, 2010
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I write essays about mmos :3 you can have it both ways you know.

There are a number of essays out there regarding the subject all ready, mainly in regards to what it is players want from a game. The aesthetic dimensions are of course there to qualify the game as a narrative, a focaliser ( the ui ), a determined path ( the story ), and a structure.

However, some argue that what players want from a game is simply realistic graphics, and the ability to kill and destroy free of social consequence. In this case, a game wouldn't really be a narrative, but simply an experience. this is why it can be difficult to describe first person action games as literature.

Role playing games, or horror games, like the final fantasy series, Soulrealver, silent hill, fallout, oblivion, dragon-age etc, all have a very good basis for literary narrative however. We've even seen how games with next to no graphic power, have amassed cult followings. See final fantasy 7.

It's a tough question, and one which has a lot of stigma attached to it, especially in regards to the socially accepted notion that gamers are introverted nerds, living an unhealthy lifestyle. No one would say the same of those who spend their time reading.
 

Earthbound

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I think that that was the single best post that I have ever read. I commend you, merelymortal, on your ability to write so fluidly and to keep my attention for the entire post.

I find it interesting in how you approach MMOs, which is far different than how I do: you approach them as something to beat. Most people don't consider "beating" an MMO, just succeeding in it. I suppose your philosophy is why you eventually dominated all before you and others...were less successful in doing so.

Anyway, fantastic read. Hope I see you posting here more often. It would improve the gently falling literacy on this site at the very least.
 

merelymortal

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Jun 14, 2010
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Thank you Earthbound ^^

Yes, MMOs, like all undertakings are a chance for the individual to prove their worth. However, I do admit that once I started to get more and more famous, The respect and admiration from other players is what drove me on. It's something which I couldn't achieve in in life at that point, being as I was so young, so I sought it from the gaming community.

edit:
If anyone is actually interested in the field of gaming studies, then here's a good essay about WoW.
http://www.digra.org:8080/Plone/hardcore/hc6/
 

merelymortal

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Jun 14, 2010
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I spoke to a friend earlier, turns out the still play Eve, and agree that the player base is of a high maturity level.
 

Arachon

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merelymortal said:
I spoke to a friend earlier, turns out the still play Eve, and agree that the player base is of a high maturity level.
Compared to other MMOs, it certainly is, if you avoid the forums, and whatever remains of Goonswarm.