The Psychology of Playing MMOs
- Thread starter Greg Tito
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Just cancel you're subscription, I promise you won't be playing it after that, and that will also help the "I'm paying for this...so I want to get my money's worth" feeling. I logged over 600 hours into wow over the summer, got to level 85 on my night elf, disc priest. Got full raid gear, realized how much I'd have to farm firelands trash runs to continue fourth. After that point, many alts that got to lvl 80+, my 3 months of subscription ran out. I just didn't renew it, because I didn't want to feel obligated to playing it for a bit.
I plan on doing the same when my SW:TOR free month wears out. Go and play some shooters that I bought during the steam sales, play games that won't drain my funds. But when I get the desire to play an MMO for a bit, I'll drop a month for rift or SW:TOR and play it till I'm tired of it again.
Seems to work pretty efficiently for me.
I plan on doing the same when my SW:TOR free month wears out. Go and play some shooters that I bought during the steam sales, play games that won't drain my funds. But when I get the desire to play an MMO for a bit, I'll drop a month for rift or SW:TOR and play it till I'm tired of it again.
Seems to work pretty efficiently for me.
That was about on point, I'd say. Personally, I never ran into that problem with any of those games. I stopped playing them the moment they stopped being fun. Although I blew about 800 dollars in total on a subscription to City of Heroes over the years, I never grinded and I never felt like the game was work.
I played it because it was fun, and I enjoyed it. Although I do feel that you ignore other games when you are paying a subscription because you feel like if you aren't using it, you are losing it. In the end though, its really not that much money. More people piss away money on gym memberships they don't use.
I played it because it was fun, and I enjoyed it. Although I do feel that you ignore other games when you are paying a subscription because you feel like if you aren't using it, you are losing it. In the end though, its really not that much money. More people piss away money on gym memberships they don't use.
I can only comment as an observer. Never got into MMO's (despite my brothers egging me on at times) because I didn't really like the feel of the game as a whole. Raiding, for example, didn't appeal to me at all for the same reason I hate team games in class; if I fuck up, I should deal with the consequences. For this reason, I always stuck mainly to playing FPS' online, Halo, Call of Duty, Bad Company 2: Even if you were on a team, you weren't expected to coordinate too much, and unless you were doing absolutely awful, you were overall a positive force for the team, and besides, I always gravitated to sniping, so I was a loner anyway.
So, again, I comment as an observer. My brothers play WoW (and not TOR); my brothers' roommates play WoW. Just twenty feet above me, 5 guys are probably playing an MMO (some WoW, some TOR, some others I don't know). I don't know the two roommates that well, but that still leaves me with three samples, my brothers, and I find a nice gradient there.
I have one brother who is really laid back about MMOs. I remember asking if he wanted to play Trine or watch a movie or something (my computer can't run Trine, whereas his can on max settings and by God that game is gorgeous but I digress), and he said, "I've got a raid in just a bit... Oh well, fuck it." The guild he's in, with my other brothers and their roommates, are pretty chill about it, so whatevs, they're cool about it.
Another brother, who I guess is pretty laid back as well, but I'd call him the intermediate because the only games he plays are primarily MMO's, or at least moreso than the brother above. As I said, he's not uptight about WoW (I'll occasionally say WoW instead of MMO's because I find it more comfortable to type), just moreso than the other.
And the final brother. Fucking Christ I actually worry about him. He's just a year older than I. My freshman year of High School, he got sick and stayed downstairs playing WoW with my brothers instead of going to school. He claims to have been sick the whole time (the whole time being January to nearly the end of the school year), and during that time I think he got addicted to the fucking thing. He had played it earlier, but not to such and extent, and not so fervently. He dropped out of school and basically browses the internet and plays WoW all day. He gets frustrated when people can't find the time to raid because of some altruistic bullshit (who cares if they don't want to or can't to it, we need a healer). He gets pissy at family gatherings because he's "got a raid at six," neverminding that he knew we'd be going to the gathering ahead of time and should have planned the raid around that, not vice versa.
So, again, I comment as an observer. My brothers play WoW (and not TOR); my brothers' roommates play WoW. Just twenty feet above me, 5 guys are probably playing an MMO (some WoW, some TOR, some others I don't know). I don't know the two roommates that well, but that still leaves me with three samples, my brothers, and I find a nice gradient there.
I have one brother who is really laid back about MMOs. I remember asking if he wanted to play Trine or watch a movie or something (my computer can't run Trine, whereas his can on max settings and by God that game is gorgeous but I digress), and he said, "I've got a raid in just a bit... Oh well, fuck it." The guild he's in, with my other brothers and their roommates, are pretty chill about it, so whatevs, they're cool about it.
Another brother, who I guess is pretty laid back as well, but I'd call him the intermediate because the only games he plays are primarily MMO's, or at least moreso than the brother above. As I said, he's not uptight about WoW (I'll occasionally say WoW instead of MMO's because I find it more comfortable to type), just moreso than the other.
And the final brother. Fucking Christ I actually worry about him. He's just a year older than I. My freshman year of High School, he got sick and stayed downstairs playing WoW with my brothers instead of going to school. He claims to have been sick the whole time (the whole time being January to nearly the end of the school year), and during that time I think he got addicted to the fucking thing. He had played it earlier, but not to such and extent, and not so fervently. He dropped out of school and basically browses the internet and plays WoW all day. He gets frustrated when people can't find the time to raid because of some altruistic bullshit (who cares if they don't want to or can't to it, we need a healer). He gets pissy at family gatherings because he's "got a raid at six," neverminding that he knew we'd be going to the gathering ahead of time and should have planned the raid around that, not vice versa.
TOR is just a rebound MMO relationship. Fight the urge and give yourself time to find a nice good game to settle down with and have a few multiplayer LAN parties with.Greg Tito said:
Greg, that's the advantage of F2P. City of Heroes, Champions Online, DC Universe Online, other F2P MMOs, including in two weeks, Star Trek Online, you can play them without feeling guilty about NOT playing them all the time.
This is not a reply simply to troll or go against the norm. I happen to enjoy MMOS, but they do take up alot of time and energy to get full enjoyment out of them, not to mention drama in guilds and whatnot. So they aren't for everyone, to each their own.
May the stars watch over you.
May the stars watch over you.
Yes, so now I have one story of an MMO being a good thing for one player in a very, very extraordinary situation.Nasrin said:
Surely you realize that this doesn't mean anything to the overall argument that MMOs play a destructive, counterproductive role in the lives of the *vast majority* of the players that play them.
Your unique experience is great and all, and I'm glad WoW was there for you at that time of your life, but my point was really not to find a single uplifting story so that I could declare that MMOs are in fact wonderful life influences. The evidence I have, both anecdotally and personally, is overwhelmingly in the other direction.
This reads as a veiled critique of subscription MMO's to me.
I too started to feel like I was ejoying WoW and started to do other things at the same time, but, I realised this and...stopped playing. It's as simple as that.
The fact that it was a subscription based MMO wasn't a contributing factor. In fact, I much prefer subscription based MMO's.
I would like to bring up the $80 every six months that you mentioned. You go on to say that there were 4 other games that you wanted to play during that period. Now, I don't know th pricing structure of PC games in the U.S. but in the UK they average out around £29.99 which would mean each of the games you mentioned would be getting on for $40-$50. Taking the low price point, this would mean you would be paying around $160 in the same six month time frame if you were to play all four of the games you mentioned. Plus, I don't think they would have lasted you the same amount of hours WoW did (I completed Witcher 2 in 3 days and I expected that to be a nice "long haul" RPG).
The bottom line is this: This is all down to you and, rather paradoxically, all up to you. You are the arsehole in charge of your own destiny and if you can't change what you're doing based on simple "I Like this/I don't like this" criteria then I think you need to have a word with yourself and not try to blame anything like subscription fees.
I too started to feel like I was ejoying WoW and started to do other things at the same time, but, I realised this and...stopped playing. It's as simple as that.
The fact that it was a subscription based MMO wasn't a contributing factor. In fact, I much prefer subscription based MMO's.
I would like to bring up the $80 every six months that you mentioned. You go on to say that there were 4 other games that you wanted to play during that period. Now, I don't know th pricing structure of PC games in the U.S. but in the UK they average out around £29.99 which would mean each of the games you mentioned would be getting on for $40-$50. Taking the low price point, this would mean you would be paying around $160 in the same six month time frame if you were to play all four of the games you mentioned. Plus, I don't think they would have lasted you the same amount of hours WoW did (I completed Witcher 2 in 3 days and I expected that to be a nice "long haul" RPG).
The bottom line is this: This is all down to you and, rather paradoxically, all up to you. You are the arsehole in charge of your own destiny and if you can't change what you're doing based on simple "I Like this/I don't like this" criteria then I think you need to have a word with yourself and not try to blame anything like subscription fees.
Just sit down and think about it for a moment. Six years. Gone. In some cases, that's just shy of 10% of your entire life spent in a single video game. Sometimes doing repetitive shit over and over again.
Of course people still playing get their ass in a sling when somebody says "Hey WoW sucks and I escaped". Fuck those people. If they really felt good about playing, they wouldn't feel the need to defend what is ostensibly someone else's opinion that has no bearing on them anyway.
Good for you Greg. Oh, I'm not sure if you going over to the dark side in SWTORMMORPG was innuendo or just your subconscious trying to tell you something (it was), but I liked it.
Of course people still playing get their ass in a sling when somebody says "Hey WoW sucks and I escaped". Fuck those people. If they really felt good about playing, they wouldn't feel the need to defend what is ostensibly someone else's opinion that has no bearing on them anyway.
Good for you Greg. Oh, I'm not sure if you going over to the dark side in SWTORMMORPG was innuendo or just your subconscious trying to tell you something (it was), but I liked it.
I have to agree with you, mainly because I don't exactly understand the logic of wanting to pay a subscription fee for a 'single' game.
Unless you have a high-end job and you can literally swim in money, I've never understood the mentality of people who are perfectly comfortable with buying a SINGLE game that requires you to pay monthly. XBL I understand: It's a service that is expanded to every multiplayer-based experience on the 360 that's supposed by it, and if I don't like one game on the Xbox, then I'm pretty sure there's probably something else I like, and if I want to play a game like Skyrim or Arkham City, then I can chat with my friends over Party Chat.
World of Warcraft requires you to pay a service FOR THAT GAME ONLY, so you can play THAT GAME ONLY. What if you get bored of it? Sorry, but unless you want to have money siphoned from your wallet, you have to keep playing. Perpetually. So you can justify yourself having spent money on it.
And thus I don't really like MMOs. They all blend into the same formula, and eventually they'll get boring, but because you've already invested money in it, you can't, in good conscience, simply abandon that game, because you'll be throwing away money at that point.
TOR sounds amazing, but eventually EVERYTHING grows stale. I doubt that even BioWare can keep pumping out content that'll convince me that I can keep playing TOR until the year 3011.
Unless you have a high-end job and you can literally swim in money, I've never understood the mentality of people who are perfectly comfortable with buying a SINGLE game that requires you to pay monthly. XBL I understand: It's a service that is expanded to every multiplayer-based experience on the 360 that's supposed by it, and if I don't like one game on the Xbox, then I'm pretty sure there's probably something else I like, and if I want to play a game like Skyrim or Arkham City, then I can chat with my friends over Party Chat.
World of Warcraft requires you to pay a service FOR THAT GAME ONLY, so you can play THAT GAME ONLY. What if you get bored of it? Sorry, but unless you want to have money siphoned from your wallet, you have to keep playing. Perpetually. So you can justify yourself having spent money on it.
And thus I don't really like MMOs. They all blend into the same formula, and eventually they'll get boring, but because you've already invested money in it, you can't, in good conscience, simply abandon that game, because you'll be throwing away money at that point.
TOR sounds amazing, but eventually EVERYTHING grows stale. I doubt that even BioWare can keep pumping out content that'll convince me that I can keep playing TOR until the year 3011.
Bloody Hell Greg....
My story is not too far away from yours. The thing that saved me though was that when i resubscribed to wow (after a 3 month hiatus), my guild buddies were so far ahead of the game on me that i realised that i couldn't catch up without investing some serious time into it.... and i just couldn't face that grind, and even the activities i used to enjoy became tedious and boring. The game just instantly lost its appeal.
I gave away everything i had in terms of Matts and Gold to my guild and hit the big uninstall button. I haven't looked back since.
My story is not too far away from yours. The thing that saved me though was that when i resubscribed to wow (after a 3 month hiatus), my guild buddies were so far ahead of the game on me that i realised that i couldn't catch up without investing some serious time into it.... and i just couldn't face that grind, and even the activities i used to enjoy became tedious and boring. The game just instantly lost its appeal.
I gave away everything i had in terms of Matts and Gold to my guild and hit the big uninstall button. I haven't looked back since.
I suppose I should feel lucky that I've never had an experience like that before. I played WoW for a total of maybe 4-5 months about four years ago, decided I didn't like it, and then stopped playing. About a year later, I started playing City of Heroes, discovered I liked that game a LOT more (mostly due to an awesome community of people I met), and have played on and off for a while now, even since it went free-to-play. None of those friends minded if I didn't play for a few months or even a year at a time, which I think helped. I think that the lasting entertainment value of an MMO depends entirely on the people you're playing with, since the content itself can only go so far.
If it's fun it's fun.
I find MMORPG's fun. Specifically EverQuest 1 and World of Warcraft. I don't play for others, if something isn't fun I don't do it.
I don't raid, because it's not fun.
I do come back later and whomp the content when I can solo it.
I would have to say that I enjoy EQ1 far more than WoW, but WoW has a lot more instanty-fun.
I started all of my sentences with 'I' in this post. That's gotta be some kind of achievement.
I find MMORPG's fun. Specifically EverQuest 1 and World of Warcraft. I don't play for others, if something isn't fun I don't do it.
I don't raid, because it's not fun.
I do come back later and whomp the content when I can solo it.
I would have to say that I enjoy EQ1 far more than WoW, but WoW has a lot more instanty-fun.
I started all of my sentences with 'I' in this post.
That's gotta be some kind of achievement.