el grandos tabetos said:
Every quest in this game involves go to X to activate Y consoles while button mashing mobs, or steal X items from enemies by button mashing mobs, or just button mash XX amount of mobs. The voiced conversations with NPCs feel like pointless filler since every quest is doing the same thing.
Are all MMORPGs like this? I heard this game is a clone of WoW, in that case what's so appealing about WoW?
That's pretty much MMOs in a nutshell, there are only so many things you can do within a game. When you get down to it, most single player games come down to the same basic tasks again and again, dressed up a bit differently. With MMOs though there is the desire to have a community of people interacting and at least somewhat sharing the same world and mythology, despite how conceptually problematic that becomes when each character is following a narrative casting them as some kind of epic hero.
ToR tried to be a bit less dramatic by making itself more or less a single player game with other people running around and interaction only being necessary for specific kinds of content (Raids, Dungeons, Heroics, etc...), so you pretty much had a community to talk and trade with while your playing. After months and months of fixes it more or less succeeded at what it set out to do (I still play it on and off), which is not going to be to everyone's tastes.
The thing is in the current climate created by the gaming industry if you want a decent, AAA level, RPG you pretty much have to play an MMO. Largely because the industry seems to have decided that for the time and effort needed to make an RPG they might as well put it online, and then farm it for money in subscription fees and/or micro transactions. In ToR for example you have pretty much everything you'd want from a single player game, decent writing, reasonable production values, and a lengthy campaign full of side quests, with some changes in the central narrative (although not the side quests) based on what character you play. On a lot of levels it didn't benefit from the necessity of designing the game so you could have dozens of people running around whacking the same mobs in their own little worlds... except perhaps from a financial perspective.
As far as more open-ended MMOs that were less about an ongoing narrative in an *ahem* theme park, where everyone pretty much walks around and does the same thing (and in the open world you might literally wait in line to kill a quest mob), it HAS been done but runs into all kinds of problems. Both Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies were pretty much sandboxes where you and the other players designed most of the world, you could pretty much place your own houses, coordinate to make towns, and run your own businesses where almost everything worth having was player crafted. Such games of course ran into problems as the inability to create infinite space meant that houses soon clogged every piece of land, and every bit of resources was farmed as soon as it appeared, beyond a certain point all there was to do was grief other players. The only way SWG could conceive of to handle a lot of it's fundamental problems was the so called "New Game Engine" which a lot of people hated (as someone who played heavily towards the end, post NGE, I think it actually achieved a good compromise, and hold a grudge against SOE to this day for shutting it down). Ultima Online also re-did itself in waves almost from the ground up, starting with things like limiting the amount of property a single player could claim. That said it's creator "Richard Garriot" is pretty much embarking on a virtual real estate scheme where he's currently starting a pseudo-MMO where he plans to charge people real money for both in game houses AND access to a limited number of in game plots to place them on.... which as I understand things strikes me as so wrong I don't have words for it. Sadly I think some people will do it though (pay Richard real money as a virtual land lord, and then on top of this grind in game currency to pay an in-game rent/tax on the property as well).
In short MMOs probably aren't for everyone, they are about as good as they are going to get right now, and for RPG junkies it's pretty much what they have to fall back on given the tiny trickle of releases. I honestly do not things will fundamentally change until we see a substantial increase in technology, which I doubt will happen within my lifetime. In general while things like neural-interfaced virtual reality might be hypothetically possible, your average moron is not going to be able to take care of a neural jack. Even if the surgery was made affordable, just imagine your average slob who had trouble programming a VCR with what amounts to a hole going through his skull into their brain for a plug.... until humanity progresses to the point where we don't have to worry about that kind of thing (if ever) it will never be consumer safe. I can almost imagine some redneck pouring beer into his datajack for lulz or whatever.
On a final not to this lengthy rant/response, I'll also say that this is a legendarily bad time to be getting into MMOs. When they were newer, it wasn't so bad, but they have become established to the point where you increasingly see groups of people who play together in game after game and don't want anything to do with anyone else, ever. Largely because of all the jerks out there. I've been there myself to be honest. What this tends to mean is that once you start playing seriously you wind up with an environment where the "community" largely consists of newbie scrubs, trolls, and pre-established groups who pretty much ignore anyone else who isn't part of their clique... and become sort of ships passing in the night. Occasionally you'll get in with a decent group of people, but a lot of the time you wind up thrashing around dealing with people simply unable to progress beyond a certain point which is why nobody picked them up sooner, the typical much maligned "PUG problem" so to speak. Once upon a time things were not quite so regimented (and don't think this is formal, it's just how it breaks down) and the communities were more like actual communities. It can be harder than ever for an outsider to break in, and make the right kinds of long term friends/connections... although some people are better at it than others. In "The Secret World" for example, even after beating "The Gatekeeper" good luck finding a decent Nightmare group, you need stats higher than you can achieve without being a NM grinder before they even want to talk to you, deal with anyone else whose friendlier and chances are they aren't going to have any luck going into those meat grinders with you. An unsolvable problem? Of course not, but a pain in the arse it is, and almost all MMOs have some version of this nowadays, in some cases with all of the people at endgame being guys who played together in other games and won't even want to talk to you unless you personally know someone already in their clique. Then of course when you get into a serious guild a lot of the time it will turn out to be a temporary alliance of people all on the outs from other cliques being totally mercenary to each other.... I can deal with it, but it's a headache, and honestly I miss the all days, it was always present, but nothing like it is today.
