# MMORPGs - Your take.



## Tecdavid (Nov 23, 2011)

MMORPGs are probably among the most controversial genres of video game, immense, tense, and - one might say - life-consuming as they are. The most successful of them are fantasy/sci-fi based, as I'm sure you're well aware, so they have a natural appeal to those such as ourselves, but what do _you_ think of the genre?
Some argue that they're a brilliant way to cure boredom, as constant updates and sprawling communities stop them from getting dull too quickly, while others argue that all they do is make you pay monthly to feed unhealthy obsessions.

Personally, I've always imagined that _creating_ an MMO would be great fun for any self-respecting fantasy fan. Though I am - and always will be - far from capable, the idea of inventing a boundless world for hundreds to enjoy is pretty exciting. Inventing a far more dynamic, enthralling mode of gameplay would be a priority of mine too - I can't be the only one who's noticed that RPGs, MMOs especially, have a dire problem with "grinding" and repetition once you really get you're teeth into them.

How about you?


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## Dozmonic (Nov 23, 2011)

There's different types of MMORPGs as well, which can offer vastly different experiences. I grew up with Meridian 59 and Ultima Online, which were used "skill" based systems. Your skills improved by using them. You did not have a level, because mobs didn't give experience in the way that most people know MMORPGs. It was a system that didn't really see any use again until Darkfall and Mortal Online, though there are variants that use both skills and levels. For me, having a skill based system gave a far better experience. I wasn't collecting murloc toenails to get a generic level and the game was about your character more than your items. When you died in those games, everything you had on you was there for the taking (with the exeception of Ultima Online, when they introduced a non-PvP mirror world and killed the PvP aspect).

While WoW had its appeal, the upcoming star wars doesn't suit me at all. Their whole focus is on a story driven game, which I hate in an MMORPG. I like story, sure, but not interactive cut scenes of dialogue that I'll see on X characters I build. I think the open ended games where the players set the politics and world events, like EVE online (the graphical spreadsheet  and Darkfall did, work much better.

I've spent time designing MMORPGs that'll never be made, because they're a massive piece of work at the end of the day. If I won the euromillions, I might set up a company and see it through


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## Tecdavid (Nov 23, 2011)

You're right, there - There's plenty of sub-genres, and even they are divided by differing mechanics. For the longest time, when I was younger, the only MMO I knew about was Runescape. What irritated me about it and the likes of WoW was that combat was often a matter of 'Click on enemy and wait'. Others skills worked much the same (at least in Runescape's case), and tediousness came about once you levelled up, and more and more of it was demanded of you.

I know what you mean; it's fun to come up with ideas, even if you dont expect to see them in any actual game. Of course, I hope yours get the chance someday.


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## LadyLara (Nov 23, 2011)

I've never really played one. The two big problems I see with them are...

A) Real humans spoiling immersion. Which sounds stupid, but with AI characters, no matter how limited they are, at least you know they're going to be acting like they really belong in the world. Rather than them being obviously kirk from Tenessee who would rather talk about his skateboarding.

B) Games usually work by making you the hero, as the most special person in the world who may start off as a lowly nobody, but you get to build up until you're the best warrior in the land and have saved the world. But you can't make EVERYONE the most important person in the world, so either you're going to have to put up with the frustration of only being the 10,975th best player and you'll never rise to the top, or some weird fake situation is going to have to be made where everyone gets to feel important.


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## devilsgrin (Nov 24, 2011)

look towards Star Wars the Old Republic to shake up the staid format of the MMO. This is the first MMORPG where soloing for the story is likely to be mostly possible (since you can have two "companions" with you in place of other player characters)
It also seems to be making your character pivotal to the storyline (at least the one your playing). Each class has its own story progression as well. Seems they've learned a lot from Lord of the Rings Online, with the VERY strong over arching story, but scaled back on the grinding a bit. 
just on the dialogue, appears that all grouped dialogue will feature a random "roll" to see who speaks. I believe the group "leader" had a weighted roll, but not a guaranteed always speaking position, and each class with have a different line for the same situations.


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## Overread (Nov 24, 2011)

The problem with the majority of MMOs is that the actual game content is rather weak; missions are rather bland, the story is somewhat weak most of the time and the general part of the game you interact with most is the combat (mostly focused around level and item grinding). 

They make up for what is, if they were compared to a JPRG (Japan RPG type game - think Final Fantasy), a weaker formula; by having the strong connections with the other players. Guilds, teams, raiding parties etc... This is the real strength of most MMOs, the social and interaction factors. Of course it can also be its biggest downfall; meet the wrong people or fail to build up any good friends and the game will feel dull and weak as singleplayer - esp since many that solo games where you need to form teams for specific missions won't be inclined to chat (ergo the problem compounds itself). 


In the end I've tried MMOs for the most part, but find them not to my taste, but then I admit I never formed up into a guild or active group to engage socially with the game. 



The other trap of MMOs (and Eve online is a fantastic example of this) is in the player VS player world; where without strict management from the design of the game, its very easy to end up in a game where you are forced to play regularly and to a high level to ensure that you remain ahead. Now in regular games this isn't a problem, but in an MMO which never sleeps this quickly means that unless your guild is very active you can fall behind and fast find yourself being torn apart regularly by those with more time/been at the game longer. 


So MMOs, I think you can tell I'm not the biggest fan in the world of them, but most of my problems are on the content side rather than the concept side. I think they'd work best if they moved away from the idea of levels and into something else (shocking heresy to suggest an RPG type game without levels!) whilst also building on the world content from the NPC point of view -


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## TheTomG (Nov 24, 2011)

Mmm played tons of MMOs and I really like them, on several fronts. I have played WoW, Rift, EVE, Everquest, Lord of the Rings Online, Final Fantasy XI and XIV (if I remember the numbering right,) Warhammer Online, and numerous free to play ones too.

The mindless grinding I actually find rather hypnotic and relaxing, so it is a pleasant restful escape from long days where my brain is too fried to achieve anything more complex than said repetitive task.

The exploration I love, just as I do in any game, MMO or otherwise. Finding new areas, searching for hidden things, even if that hidden thing is just a cool view, really motivates me. Games like Rift even reward you for such things with titles, artifacts, and hidden loot stashes.

PVP can be fun too, LotRO was my favorite for that, I loved being a Warg 

The MMO offers the unique advantage of making up your own stories above and beyond what the game designers put in there, when you meet with others who are interested in the RP part and willing to bring their characters to life too. This is done with words, and is somewhat like a collaborative story, so you never know quite where it will go! I've had my best RP experiences in Lord of the Rings Online so far.

There are even MMOs that are still pure text based - their gaming systems are clunky and hard as a result, but their players tend to be good wordsmiths and very focused on creating entertaining stories, which can make them worthwhile.

Right now, Skyrim has my attention, and I spin my own stories there around the events I play through in the game, so I'm out of the MMO loop for a bit. Might try Star Wars given the importance of story, and I am hoping there will be plenty of players willing to indulge in some Role Playing.

Of course, time is a factor too, I don't have many hours of gaming as I don't have many hours of spare time, and the biggest drawback of MMOs is the time they take (or the time you end up wanting to spend on them as they can be 'addictive' in their way!)

Anyway, just like meeting on the Chrons and swapping words back and forth, meeting up with a part of like-minded players and creating stories together was very satisfying, so I still find myself in the "loves MMOs" camp!


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## Tecdavid (Nov 24, 2011)

I suppose that is a wise point to make about level grinding. It _did_ always have a relaxing flow to it. Still, I suppose that's something which will satisfy some, but leave others longing.
I've been hearing good things about LotR Online. But what of FF XIV? I hear that's received some rather abysmal reviews.


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## Dozmonic (Nov 24, 2011)

LOTRO levelling feels much like WoWs. You either grind generic mob a, or you complete quests in an area. True, nothing is as annoying as the WoW quest hubs in Wrath Of The Lich King.

"Aha, Doz, I need you to go to the beach and kill 10 murlocs"
*complete, return*
"Aha, Doz, you need to go back, kill 15 more and collect a murloc toenail"
*Couldn't I do this the first time round? Complete, return*
"Aha, Doz. Word has it that the murlocs have been eating fish! Go kill 20 more murlocs, get me five of this fish"
* ~!@# give me this all in one go *
"Aha, Doz. You think you had it bad before? Watch this. Go forth, to the area you've been thrice now. Kill 16 murlocs, collect 15 toenails, pick 14 flowers and find me 13 fish. There's a rock nearby with a mermaid costume underneath - find the receipt for it so you can take it back to Clothes'R'Us and get me a refund. Then return"

And so forth.

I disliked WOTLK quest hubs


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## TheTomG (Nov 25, 2011)

FF XIV was disastrous. I bought it for my wife, she hated it (though she had loved the previous online FF) and I played it for a bit, but only a few weeks, before I too gave up even though they extended the free subscription.

Of course they fired the development team and put a whole bunch of different people in charge as a result of the universal criticisms of the game, and it supposedly has been seriously overhauled, but, I am not going to be trying it again. What's that they say about first impressions last?


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## Tecdavid (Nov 25, 2011)

Sounds like they're running out of steam, Doz. That far into the franchise, I thought the quests would have become a little more flavoursome. 
That was something I _did_ like about Runescape, back in the day - each of its quests were revolved around a specific plot, and, accordingly, had numerous challenges apiece.

So what was it about FFXIV that was so awful, Tom?


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## Winters_Sorrow (Nov 28, 2011)

For me, the "grand idea" behind the original MMOs was to create a visual & interactive platform to be able to play tabletop role playing games online with your friends.

Have a world built up with things to do and enemies to fight, have an unseen GM behind the scenes rolling all the dice for you and determining the outcomes of your actions and then placing that on the screen for you and your friends to react too.

It's morphed from that to what I think most people's problems with MMOs have become. The unremittent grind for better gear or repeating the same experience over and over again. What starts out as a designed bottleneck to stop players from reaching the end too quickly becomes a never-ending goal to get that 0.01% drop from a certain boss.

There's not really any easy answer to get round this - either you wind up with hardcore players who have sped through the content in record pace having nothing to do and leave, or you end up frustrating those players who are time poor and see these long hours of play needed to progress.

I agree with LadyLara's post about how some people play online games just to grief others (ganking low levels on pvp servers a prime example) and the inherent spam which happens on general chat channels, from goldsellers to people just being idiots and trying to provoke fights.

Also I agree that it's hard to keep players motivated to continue once they've reach a level cap, though certain games do it better than others. I suppose it depends on whether or not you're bothered about raiding etc. Because it's when you reach end-game raiding that being 109,256th best on the server begins to matter and then usually only to the other human players who don't want to 'boost' you.

I'm more of a dabbler in MMOs. There's such a vast amount of content, I enjoy levelling alts and their professions and exploring as much of a given world as possible.


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## odangutan (Nov 28, 2011)

I don't really see the point of them. The entire reason why I play video games (and read books and do a lot of other things I like doing) is precisely so I don't have to interact with random people out in the world ROFLing all over themselves.


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## Emberlene (Dec 4, 2011)

I've tried a lot of MMORPGs and even though at first they can be exciting, they've each become less and less appealing. As Winters_Sorrows has mentioned, you do end up either repeating the same thing over and over again or spending vast amounts of time trying to get better gear. However when Guild Wars 2 comes out its 'dynamic events' system could start a new generation of MMORPGs that are more interactive and interesting.

For the time being though video games trump MMORPGs from my point of view.


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## ktabic (Dec 4, 2011)

Dozmonic said:


> "Aha, Doz, I need you to go to the beach and kill 10 murlocs"
> *complete, return*
> "Aha, Doz, you need to go back, kill 15 more and collect a murloc toenail"
> *Couldn't I do this the first time round? Complete, return*
> ...



Heh, that does sound kinda familiar. Blizzard does seem to have dealt with most of that in Cataclysm (and managed to make escort quests somewhat less annoying) but only in the places they reworked - Outland and Northrend are still the same

The downside to that is that you just rush straight through the low-level areas and don't get to see or explore much of the world.


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## Dozmonic (Dec 5, 2011)

They needed to accelerate the levelling, or at least allow it to be accelerated for 2nd characters and onwards because when you've done the 1-60 (up to 1-80 in WOTLK and now 85 in cataclysm?) a number of times, it does drag. I think having the option to start any new character at 55 when you've got a character to max level is a better way of going about it.

End of the day, I'm hoping that the new darkfall patch, which amounts to a new game in and of itself (it has taken them 2 years to make it) will be what's required to bring about a new level of interest in skill rather than level based progression. However, I don't think it'll manage. I think we need a whole new game focusing on creating local community. Localised banking, localised regular and rare materials etc. It'll be of much greater interest to me to see someone with blue iron armour and wondering just how far they travelled to get that, or how far a trader travelled to sell it; knowing full well that you can only withdraw and deposit from each bank on its own and that the rare blue iron ore is found only in mountains far, far in the north...

Of course, the problem inherent with open PvP skill based games is that they need to afford enough protection to allow people to play the game without too much PvP hassle, while at the same time allowing enough PvP access to keep those who want to fight happy. None of them have managed the balance yet, despite it being simple in my mind


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## ktabic (Dec 6, 2011)

Dozmonic said:


> They needed to accelerate the levelling, or at least allow it to be accelerated for 2nd characters and onwards because when you've done the 1-60 (up to 1-80 in WOTLK and now 85 in cataclysm?) a number of times, it does drag. I think having the option to start any new character at 55 when you've got a character to max level is a better way of going about it.



Obviously you haven't played Cataclysm  - 1-60 is now massively accelerated compared to how it used to be. 60-85 are faster, but no by as much. (I took a newly created toon in cataclysm from 1 to 85 in about the time it took me to take my first character from 1 to 30ish). Oh, and Death Knights (from WotLK) match your desire to start at 55. But only for that one class.



Dozmonic said:


> It'll be of much greater interest to me to see someone with blue iron armour and wondering just how far they travelled to get that, or how far a trader travelled to sell it; knowing full well that you can only withdraw and deposit from each bank on its own and that the rare blue iron ore is found only in mountains far, far in the north...



Doing stuff like that could be ok except: the game would very rapidly end up niche. The only way to do this really is to either bring in artificial limits on people moving from one gaming hub to another or to make the game playing area far vaster than any almost other game out there. 
Artificial limits would be inherently unfair on those people how want to move hub but can't because of the limit will leave the game. 
Huge gaming areas results in environments that either have players spread so thin they rarely meet other players (in which case, why would they play an MMORPG) or populated gaming hubs that just have vast amounts of pretty much empty space to cross to get to the next hub (ala EVE, which can leave you with multi-irl-hour journeys from one place to another). Which means you either have to provide an automated travel system (how EVE does it with autopilot - log in, set journey, go do something not involving that PC) or make them manually travel with stupidly long periods of time - which is boring and will make players leave. 



Dozmonic said:


> Of course, the problem inherent with open PvP skill based games is that they need to afford enough protection to allow people to play the game without too much PvP hassle, while at the same time allowing enough PvP access to keep those who want to fight happy. None of them have managed the balance yet, despite it being simple in my mind



PvP is always going to be highly variable - I've played (and probably will play again soon) EVE. Which is heavily PvP And PvP in that is really quite nasty and one sided sometimes (most of the time).

But I also (to the shock of my regularly guildies) started playing on one of the WoW PvP servers. And have yet to do any PvP (mid level 70 now). In fact, questing out in the world and I'm hardly seeing anyone, anywhere. The reputation of PvP servers being gankfests seems to have grown to the point where no one ever leaves the cities any more.


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