What's with the MMO hate, you hateful haters?

[Something Amyss]

I really haven't noticed a lot of loathing. That said, I dislike them. They're not for me.

But the same is true of FPS and dance games.

The fee thing is ridiculous, since you can find tons of online F2P games, and people still dislike them.

 

[Erana]

I have a soft spot for the MMO genre, but what just kills me is an MMO with no soul. I mean, soul can come from a lot of places- WoW had a built-in loving fanbase and lore from the getgo, Urban Dead is the most base of games, but has managed to generate a legit, albeit very, very simple zombie language, and I'll be damned if bronies don't manage to inject some kind of love into that online game they're working on.

But you just know when a game has no soul- few players, the few who do talk speak in broken 1337-infected English, with gameplay more simplistic and clunky than NES JRPGs without almost any lore to speak of to make the time worthwhile.

And then the "mium" part of "Freemium" hits you with full force, complete with unpleasant GMs and customer support backing it up all the way.


These instances are absolute tragedy to the genre, and an insult to the concept of gaming, as both a medium of pleasure and as a form of simulacra.

 

[boag]

It's true, but we've come to have bizarre expectations for these games. We'll play them for 5,000 hours, then complain loudly that we're doing the same thing over and over, as if ANYTHING could stay fresh for that long. 5 1/2 years of anything is a remarkable achievement for an entertainment product.

Well its not really an achievement on the games part, its more an achievement of social thriving. If you become familiar with a group of people, itll be harder for you to stop that daily activity. Something that most MMOs have abused.

 

[Malyc]

I don't have problems with MMO games, however i DO have a problem haveing to pay $14 a month for them.

 

[yman15]

MMO's look like mostly grinding to get a weapon and then grinding again to get an even better one and I usually don't like that sort of thing. And you hear all these stories about these people completely obsessed with wow and just scares the crap out of me. So basically I don't play them cause I'm not into those types of games and the typical stereotype of a wow player just makes me flat out not want anything to do with them. I don't hate the games I just have very little interest playing in them

 

[The Last Nomad]

I just don't like them. Much like my attitude to cats, I don't like them, but I have nothing against their existence... I don't want one but I don't mind if people want to have one themselves.

 

[TheGauntman]

For me, it's very simple.

Here's some gameplay from God Of War III:

Spoiler

Here's some from Dark Souls:

Spoiler

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Here's some from Skyrim:

Spoiler

Now, here's some gameplay from WoW:

Spoiler

For me, the gameplay in every MMO I've ever played has been relentlessly dull. As soon as they make an MMO where presentation and gameplay are as fun and exciting as a single player game, I'll sign up. Until then, I'll stick to my single-player games.

So you chose what you consider to be the most exciting vids of the first three games and put them up against what I consider the worst gameply clip of WoW I've ever seen, and your point is...what? That WoW has bad gameplay. Way to cherry-pick data to support your argument.

There is absolutely no point in playing a Warlock that way. Unless the game has changed drastically since my last WoW sub, if your pet kills a mob without your help you get no XP or loot - you can't even skin them to grind leather. I could post a vid claiming that Battlefield 3 has bad gameplay, where all I did was go prone then stand up again in my spawn. Can the game be played like that? Yes. Is it in any way optimal or fun? Hell no.

And frankly, those other gameplay vids looked pretty crap. The person playing God of War seemed to be mashing one or two buttons repeatedly; the second vid didn't load for me; and the Skyrim one was just dull. Do you seriously have to pause the game and scroll through the inventory mid-fight to switch weapons? Yeah, tons of fun there...

 

[Gennadios]

I don't hate MMOs in that i really wish I could find one that I (personally, myself) find worth playing.

TOR came kind of close to be that game, but spend enough time fighting an elite mob trying to get at a resource or quest node while having some tard run up from out of nowhere and steal it from under you, and you just cease to care.

Maybe Guild Wars 2 will be that MMO, maybe it'll just be Team Fortress 2 on a very large map. Who knows.

 

[RobfromtheGulag]

Is it the fact you're forced to endure the company of other people? I can sort of understand that, because MMO communities are full of loathsome twats, but here we all are on an internet forum. You see what I'm getting at here, surely. You don't need me to spell it out for you.

Yea, but most of us here aren't engaged in an epic struggle to display our digital greatness via gear, achievements, honorable kills, etc. We're here to chat. And that's not even getting started on the numerous trolls. At least in Skyrim the trolls are quiet.

 

[trophykiller]

For me, the only MMO I ever played was WoW. I got to level 18, then realized I had a problem when my recreation was driving me to sleep. I then proceeded to delete my account and go back to halo.

Moreover, it's the awful combat. As a kid, I loathed Pokemon for its awful, slow paced fighting, and now I hate WoW for the exact same reason. I'm not asking for something as fast as real life, where two guys will almost always beat a single guy to a pulp(assuming weapons aren't a factor), but I'd rather not wait more my character to "get enough rage" to fight something in front of his face.

Point is, I prefer to have FUN playing games. Skyrim is working quite well, thank you.

 

[Enigma Syndrome]

The ever-changing play style. If anyone who was a retribution paladin from the start of Burning Crusade and on (I have since quit) you'll know exactly what I mean when I say THERE WERE TOO MANY CHANGES TOO FAST.

I had to learn a new play style every 3 months it seemed, and that's definitely not optimal for hardcore raiders, like I was.

 

[default]

It's the fact that most of them are just boring as fuck. Click the enemy you want to attack, mash your face on the keyboard for spells, rinse and repeat. Slightly longer for bosses. IT's just BORING and grindy.

I love the idea of MMO's, but the gameplay ALWAYS sucks. Look at Runescape, that thing is a boredom simulator.

 

[theevilgenius60]

I don't like them for several reasons. First there's the whole grind thing, I hate looking back on a day thinking,"What did I do today?". Oh yeah, I mined and fought spiders. All day. I work enough at work, my avatar doesn't need to, he generally just needs to kill things and try on armor(in most games that is).Then there's the whole pay up front, pay monthly fees, game never has a conclusion thing. Then there's the personal grief, yeah the whole TOR/not KoTOR 3 debacle. /rage Finally, and this is just a multiplayer game thing in general, I just don't like jackasses fucking up my good times. Just like the work thing, deal with PLENTY of them every day. Other than that, I'm cool with mmo's

 

[Sixcess]

There's a few common fallacies about MMO that need to die a quick death.

1. There's no story.
There's plenty of story, if you bother to read your quest text, and pay attention to the world around you. So they're not generally told via voiced cutscenes - big deal. Neither was any Final Fantasy prior to 10, neither was Planescape: Torment.

2. Hotkey combat is dull. Press Auto Attack to Win.
Leaving aside that an increasing number of MMOs don't use hotkey systems, it's a good way to handle what becomes extremely complicated combat once you've got a few levels. My mid-level WoW warrior has around 30 hotkey icons, all of which can be used in the middle of combat. Imagine how ridiculously complex the key comboinations would have to be to be able to use all of them, instantly, in the middle of a fight. These aren't Bethesda games were you can hit pause and scroll through your abilities and inventory at your leisure.

As for auto attack - try killing a enemy of your own level in WoW just with auto attack. You'll either die or it'll take forever, and if you were in a group and used only your auto attack you'd be kicked, instantly, because you'd be playing like an idiot.

3. It's all endgame raiding.
City of Heroes took 7 years to introduce endgame raids, and kept up to 100K+ subscribers without it. Even WoW has 85 levels of content before you reach the endgame. Approaching an MMO as 'all about the raiding' is like inputting a cheat code to jump straight to the suicide mission in Mass Effect 2 then complaining that it's too short and there's not enough character development.

When it all comes down to it, the Escapist isn't an MMO friendly site, which I find a little strange given that I played Oblivion and the huge open world that people rave about just struck me as like WoW... a small, cheap, underdeveloped WoW.

 

[NoeL]

I don't loathe them on a personal level, but I don't play them because they're boring as fuck. I also hate the fact that whenever I'm out with gamer friends the conversation inevitably turns to WoW and what their guild has been up to.

But yeah... long story short, grinding isn't fun, and neither are the vast majority of quests. "Go here and kill 50 of these monsters for me!". Hooray! I REALLY REALLY WANTED to stay in the same area for an hour, using the same three-spell combo over and over again! Ugh, so tedious...

Other MMOs can be fun, just not MMORPGs. I enjoyed Project Torque, an MMO racing sim, for a while, but playing a racing sim with a keyboard (I don't have a joypad) sucked pretty hard, and it soon became apparent to me that if I was going to get anywhere in that game I was going to have to pay cash for it. Fuck that.

 

[Jet_02]

Guild wars 2. Gonna change peoples mind's about MMO's

 

[NoeL]

I've noticed one common complaint with MMORPGs, and I agree with it wholeheartedly - the combat gameplay is practically always ABYSMAL! It's always boooooooring clicking and pressing single buttons. Snore. I played one free MMORPG where the combat was similar to Dynasty Warriors, and that was a very welcome breath of fresh air, but the game was still unfulfilling as a whole.

If they'd bother to put some effort into it and create a combat system even as simple as Bethesda RPGs I'd be a lot more interested. If they did something like Zelda where you can keep the camera focused on your opponent and dodge, roll, block, and attack in varying ways... it'd be damn awesome.

 

[Jdb]

I wish Huxley didn't crash and burn. In early previews it sounded like an MMO version of Unreal Tournament 2004. Damn shame.