# MMO's, what's the point?



## Saeltari (Jun 3, 2009)

Yes, I know it's for playing with multiple people. However my experiences when I tried them have consistently been bad. 

I dive into the fantasy world spending time on characterization then step into the world and get hit with, "Hey dudes!", "F-this-n-that", to name a few things. It always seems like a majority of people with the immature highschooler, attitude.

Every single time it kills the immersion for me, and some of these idiots are saying stuff that they would never say in person. I wonder if they know that if they piss off the wrong person, chances are good they can still be tracked down?

Before I ramble on, let's just say that mmo's in general I just spit on anymore. Some of them do look like they would be fun, but it never seems to work out. 

They are greatly popular, so what am I missing? Do you love them? Why? How can you immerse yourself in it?


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## Urlik (Jun 3, 2009)

when MMos were first introduced I thought they would be fantastic but pretty soon realised that they are glorified chatrooms that charge a monthly fee and require you to grind away levelling up your character so that people will actually talk to you.

the problem is that unlike PnP RPGs, where you and your friends form a party, there isn't a GM/DM/keeper to give the game some structure.


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## Commonmind (Jun 3, 2009)

The tighter the niche, the more mature and refined the community, generally speaking. I would guess your experience came from playing WoW, which is a widely accessible MMO, and thus caters to a diverse audience, often to a fault. I make that assumption having shared a similar experience.

But I've also played EVE, Lineage II, DAoC, and other games which had smaller communities, with players who invested in the experience of playing the game and participating in the community. While Lineage II was one of the most volatile environments anyone would want to find themselves in, with constant PVP and political posturing, there was still a certain maturity to it, and players handled these situations with a different sensibility than if the game had been inhabited by a population similar to WoW's player-base -- which is to say most confrontations wouldv'e consisted of an onslaught of cliche web-borne insults that eventually descended into chaos.


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## ktabic (Jun 4, 2009)

Saeltari said:


> I dive into the fantasy world spending time on characterization then step into the world and get hit with, "Hey dudes!", "F-this-n-that", to name a few things. It always seems like a majority of people with the immature highschooler, attitude.


 
Have you tried an RP server? Most of the MMOs have RP servers, where the RP stands for Role-Play. You should be in character for most of the time (except the local equivalent of /ooc). The main bulk of the servers are normally not RP, simply because it is to hard to police all the time.



Saeltari said:


> They are greatly popular, so what am I missing? Do you love them? Why? How can you immerse yourself in it?



I enjoy them, mainly as a time sink. But I also tend to join the guild I regularly play with so it's as much a social thing as a game thing. Also, I tend to ignore most of the global chat stuff.


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## AE35Unit (Jun 4, 2009)

Ok whats an MMO?


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## Urlik (Jun 4, 2009)

*M*assive
*M*ultiplayer
*O*nline


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## Rodders (Jun 4, 2009)

I've never played one of these, but The Old republic (TOR) is coming out soon and i have to say that i'm really looking forward to it. i am a bit worried about how much it could grab me if they capture the fell of Star Wars in this game.


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## Rahl Windsong (Jun 7, 2009)

Urlik said:


> when MMos were first introduced I thought they would be fantastic but pretty soon realised that they are glorified chatrooms that charge a monthly fee and require you to grind away levelling up your character so that people will actually talk to you.
> 
> the problem is that unlike PnP RPGs, where you and your friends form a party, there isn't a GM/DM/keeper to give the game some structure.


 
The thing is though when MMO's were first introduced they were much more then glorified chatrooms and when Sony came onto the market with Ever Quest that all changed. 

The first MMO I played was Ultima Online and in that game they even had Dungeon Masters though they called them Seer's in that game. Anyone who played the game could become a Seer by applying to Origin Systems and taking the test/online interview. If you passed their test you were provided a free account to play your Seer from. This account had special abilities like being able to spawn monsters, errect permanent or semi-permanent gates of travel, make items and give them special names, and be able to teleport around the world at your discretion.

Seer's were required to come up with dynamic storylines, submitt them to the developer for approval and once approved they were implemented on the server where your Seer account was. 

I can remember some Seer questlines/storylines that took the server a year of real time to complete and the outcome changed according to how the players reacted to the storylines. I myself with my character changed the outcome of storylines by my own actions. In the hay-day of the Seer/volunteer program it was not a case of if I would log in each day, I simply HAD to log in because my character(s) were a part of a storyline and I had to find out what happened next. It was like reading a really good fantasy novel and being part of it at the same time. 

Then Origin made the mistake of making a server for AoL customers. The volunteer program there forgot that they had volunteered and took Origin Systems to court saying that because they were given free accounts that they were employees and needed to be paid. That ended the volunteer program and also set a presedence in the industry so that no MMO developer would take such a chance on a program like that again.

I can remember the day we held a wake for the Seer's on our server when the program ended, so many players showed up that we crashed the server several times that night. I had tears streaming down my face because I knew then and there that this would change the MMO forever, and it did.

Developers found that they could use a much simpler model like the Ever Quest glorified chatroom and avoid all the hard work and effort and just rake in the cash. Even Ultima Online dumbed down their game when they introduced a duplicate world called Tramell where players were no longer allowed to attack each other and everything was in place to make it a chatroom game.

So there you have it, that is why MMO's are like they are today I lived through it so I know exactly how it all happened.


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## Heinleinaddict (Jun 11, 2009)

Well what makes MMO's so great is the interaction and their social nature, you can get alot of people playing closed off single player games but there is no community there. In an MMo there are people to know and that person can be thousands of miles away.

Here's an example I work for a marketing company that is doing a campaign for Mountain Dew for their World of Warcraft Horde Red/ Alliance Blue promotion that they are doing in concert with Blizzard. Well as a player of World of Warcraft I have seen a lot of my fellow players speaking about the campaign and even toting in game pets that they recieved from the Microsite.

Something like this is not capable with a close ended game, there is limited ability to patch in content and spread word of mouth.


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## Heinleinaddict (Jun 11, 2009)

Also that link I posted has a 14 day free WoW trial.  Maybe trying a good MMO will help you understand the drive of MMO gamers?


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## Saeltari (Jun 11, 2009)

Oh, I like the concept and think the idea is good. I played Guild Wars for a while, actually played with my gf and it was fun, tried to ignore the idiots in the main area but after my gf told me what one of them said. I didn't figure the game was worth it anymore and neither did she. 

There are toooo many people on those games that don't want or desire to stay in character or in the age and it destroys the enjoyment for me as it constantly kicks me out of feel of the games. I bet those that were enclosed and run with only so many people might be fun, as long as those people were there to explore the world and play not to annoy and make themselves feel special. 

I have never played WoW and probably won't because as I understand it, it is open also and I just get tired of dealing with the idiots. When immersing myself in a game I want to stay immersed and enjoy the experience. Now if the idiots would at least be idiots in reference to the atmosphere of the game I could live with it, but they don't.

There are some MMOs that look really interesting to me, Lineage, Conan, Dungeons&Dragons, but from past experience I have found it just hasn't been worth the trouble so I haven't bothered with them.

What Rahl said sounds really good and it is a shame that idiots killed it for every body else.

After the final incident in Guild Wars I set up NWN as multiplayer on the home pcs and we played that together for awhile.

Commonmind and Ktabic I have not played with a niche or a RP server, does that make a big difference, then?

Long story, short. I just look for single player games, anymore. But I know a lot of people play MMOs and I was just curious if they were better at ignoring the idiots or if there were tricks I was missing to cut them out of the game experience.


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## Heinleinaddict (Jun 11, 2009)

In my experience if you stick with a guild all the minor rambling of less mature players just fades out.  A nice guild will have fun adventuring together(Raids) and be mature and engaging.  There in WoW are also RP servers for people that want more immersion.


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## ManTimeForgot (Jun 11, 2009)

Honestly HA, I fail to see how one can reasonably expect anything close to deep level immersion in WoW because the game itself lacks anything resembling a story.  There isn't a plot line to follow because the game lacks a goal.  If it had a goal, then that would mean one side or the other could win...  People would stop paying to play it once it was "won," so they "wisely" chose to _not_ possess any kind of plot in the first place.


All of the "quests" in WoW boil down to either kill, collect, or deliver something.  And the reason why this is is because the world's environment doesn't provide any context for understanding.  Diplomacy doesn't exist because you can't negotiate with a non-existent force or presence.  Neither side in WoW is organized enough to engage in some kind of formal approach (no single person or group is ever close enough to being respected and followed by enough people to warrant the attention of the opposing side), and the game's high powered NPCs are merely "uber bosses" to be attempted to be slain in high-powered raids.


So no matter how "cool" your guild is WoW will never be a game in which actual role playing occurs.  The reference to games like this being a "role playing" game is in point of fact a huge misnomer.  99.9% of people in WoW and games like it do not pretend like they are this person, and even those that do role play don't do it any where near all the time (it's impossible; immersion into such a one dimensional world where killing and loot is everything gets boring after a while even for the most die-hard dungeon crawler/trawlers).


Certainly having a good guild massively improves the gaming experience for a game like WoW (I would go so far as to say its necessary because without it you are stuck dealing with the massive number of people who are lucky to find their keyboards let alone not aggro more stuff than can possibly be defeated), but thats not to say that that will somehow improve the role playing experience.  Role playing is about personality and choices.  Adding personality to WoW is like adding a racing fin and supercharger to a Geo Metro.  And the choices in WoW are manifestly limited by its pure focus on gaining levels and loot.  There are no real choices in Wow; either you do that which gets you levels and loot or you do not.  Because the only thing either side can hope to "accomplish" is suppress/kill the other side.

Why do we do this?  Because they are the enemy; their skin is green/not green.  There isn't really any game-world justification for any of it.  Sure you have a bunch of plot tacked on outside in the form of books and maybe some internally in the form of cut scenes, but really the only way to know anything about the World of _Warcraft_ is to have played the previous games and to read the stories associated with it.


That's why WoW fails to be a _Role Playing_ Game even if it is called an MMO_RPG_.

MTF


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## Saeltari (Jun 12, 2009)

Brings up a good question. 

Are there any MMOs where people play as people, say you didn't want to adventure you just wanted to open a tavern and listen to others stories or you wanted to open a shop or be a traveling merchant or you wished to gain the kingdom, perhaps only to marry the prince/princess. Could you start a guild and manuever to take over other guilds? Could you enter a large city and then attempt to horn in and take over from the theives guild? Could another actual person already be playing as the leader of the theives guild? Could you start a kingdom and then fight with other actual people who have also started kingdoms?


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## ManTimeForgot (Jun 12, 2009)

There are places on telnet that are like that, but they don't often have the player base to be able to pull off things on the scale you are speaking of...  Telnet houses the "original MMORPG;" its just that most people have forgotten this on account of the fact that these are all text based.  Real role playing doesn't actually need graphics... in point of fact I think graphics has suppressed the amount of actual role playing done in most games.

MTF


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## Duchessprozac (Jun 12, 2009)

Saeltari said:


> Brings up a good question.
> 
> Are there any MMOs where people play as people, say you didn't want to adventure you just wanted to open a tavern and listen to others stories or you wanted to open a shop or be a traveling merchant or you wished to gain the kingdom, perhaps only to marry the prince/princess. Could you start a guild and manuever to take over other guilds? Could you enter a large city and then attempt to horn in and take over from the theives guild? Could another actual person already be playing as the leader of the theives guild? Could you start a kingdom and then fight with other actual people who have also started kingdoms?



I don't think there are any fantasy MMOs like this but from what I gather about EVE, it is pretty much like you described, only set in space.


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## Rahl Windsong (Jun 12, 2009)

Quite right MTF and the main reason a game like WoW fails is a very fundamental thing where they don't allow players to speak to their real enemy. They take away the ability for Horde and Alliance to speak to each other in an attempt to stop trash talking after a PvP kill, however they also completely kill any sort of meaningful RP in the process.

If Blizzard did one thing on their RP servers and allowed Horde and alliance to speak to each other then RP could take place from stories made up by the players. As soon as you can talk to the real enemy then the only thing that limitts RP is your own imagination.

There is also an MMO that I have heard of, never played it though, that allows the player to just live a virtual life there, in fact as I understand it there is no way to acutally have your player die in this game. The game is called Second Life and you can check it out here: http://secondlife.com/


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## Heinleinaddict (Jun 12, 2009)

There are actually pretty massive storylines in WoW.  And everytime a new patch comes out the story grows.  Right now the latest dungeon is Ulduar, the story for this instance is the attempted escape of an Old God(part of the mythology of the game you can look the story up on World of Warcraft universe guide - WoWWiki), and now Blizzard has instituted a video for every new patch they make. I can't even begin to go into the lore associated with just this one patch because I would need several pages to handle all of it's intricacies.  

From the corruption caused by the Old Gods, the corruption caused by Arthas(the oversweeping storyline) to the valiant efforts of small factions to fight both, you would be amazed how much lore can be in such a social game.  I daresay more than an average RPG since the story grows every 3 months.


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## ManTimeForgot (Jun 12, 2009)

I don't think you were quite getting my point.


Take any standard Lemon.  Self-evidently it is yellow, a fruit, and its outer skin has a bumpy and smooth texture to it.

Now I take this lemon and start telling people that it was grown in the groves at the base of Mt Olympus, blessed by all the Greek gods of old.  It was carried by Ares while he was on his quest to retrieve his spear from the underworld.  And this same lemon found its way into the room where Aphrodite begowned herself in the silks of China's greatest dress smith, the blind Wu-Zi, demi-goddess of sexy-drunkeness.  It then fell down a cave to the center of the earth where it bonked Hephaestus in the head, giving him a new idea for an awesome suit of armor that he called "Dragon Skin."  Hephaestus triumphantly through the lemon in exultation and the lemon ended up falling down the pit to Tartarus.  Whereupon the lemon was reincarnated as the lemon we see in the real world.


Now we look at our standard lemon.  Has anything really changed about the lemon now that we know its "true" story?  No.  And that's why MMO's can have all the content in the world _associated_ with it but still don't have any actual in game content.  If you aren't able to interact with the story, then where exactly is the role playing?

Sure potentially anything can be role played with.  I can pretend I am a bank robber and my brother is a bank security guard while we are fooling around with two bannanas.  Saying that the only limit to role playing is "imagination," while technically true, doesn't actually do anything to address how _conducive_ something is to role playing.  A choose your own adventure novel has more role playing power in its meager 100 pages than all 10,000 pages (or whatever it is) of add-on content WoW has ever generated for the simple reason that the choose your own adventure novel lets me pretend that my choices are meaningful and have consequences.


There are no in game interactions between sides other than death, and the sad part is that death isn't really anything more than a hindrance; there are no lasting consequences to either side for doing what they do.  Control of resources are not up for grabs; only "exp" and "loot" locations.  And the in game interactions within your side are similarly limited; does collecting all those pelts for the NPC trader actually help his business?  Is he able to offer you better prices or a wider selection because you helped him out when he needed it?  Nope.  Just loot and exp.  Can you convince the leaders of the alliance to hold off their attacks so that you can use the extra man power to build a great wall against attack?  How about broker a deal between elves and dwarves ceding dwarven territory in exchange for elven sentries at every guard post?  NPC interaction in WoW is practically Zilch.

The world interaction isn't much better either.  This is somewhat forgiveable as the game is large and its player base enormous, thus making lots of things interactable would require a lot of game state changes; making the whole game instanced would solve this, but WoW players would balk at this.  That said why is it that my mining skill is limited to finding loot?  Why I can't I use my knowledge of mining and engineering to build a tunnel from alliance into horde territory?  Why I can't I use my knowledge of engineering and herbalism to detonate local plant life and create an improvised sleep bomb?  Why can't warriors throw dirt in their enemy's eyes?  Why do I have to go through a door?  What rogue in their right mind goes through a door when an open window is better?  Why can't I open or break windows?  Why can't I fell a tree to provide a distraction or block a path?

And this doesn't even address the game's lack of a goal (singular or otherwise).  Without goals how can there be any meaningful interaction with the plot (whether it be the meager in game plot or the multitude of tacked-on out of game stuff)?  If you can't actually accomplish anything, then why does any of the story stuff matter?  The tacked-on plot from out of game is little more than window dressing; Wow... Did you know that over there is where the first knights Loderan did their squire work?  No?  Wow...


Now a lot of these issues can similarly be brought up in most JRPGs, and it is for that reason that I often find them guilty of being thinly disguised adventure games; what often saves them is they have actual character development and interaction.  Whereas the character development and interaction takes place when in a game like WoW?  That's right in your head, if that.  Do you honestly expect me to believe that when I see someone's paladin go "LoL Nub; u shud ask th3 guard 4 directions" that they are playing with the spirit of a holy knight?  Do I need to even mention Barren's Chat?  I mean we all know that chuck norris jokes are somehow conducive to a better portrayal of fantasy characters right?


MMOs are called rpgs but they are rpgs in name only.  There is nothing about them that is actually conducive to role playing.  They are massively multiplayer online adventure games.  Thing is ever since D&D "mainstreamed" pretty much anything with a leveling system has been called an RPG whether it deserved the title or not, and unfortunately the moniker has stuck.  Notice that almost nothing is called an adventure game anymore even though in the 90's and earlier there were plenty of "adventure" games... Now I wonder where all the adventure games went?  Did Indiana Jones just suddenly stop being popular?  Nope he got another movie.  Did it suddenly stop being cool to visit ancient, magical, or futuristic locations while running away from crazed demon cultists?  Nope.  So what happened?  Oh, that's right it all got lumped in with role playing games because everyone knows that only RPGs can have crazed demon cultists... Why didn't I think of that?

MTF


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## Vladd67 (Jun 14, 2009)

Here are a couple of examples from the *EVE* universe which show how seriously people can play this game. 
EVE - The Empyrean Age | Vladd’s Gaming World
Gibberings » Breaking: Goonfleet stomps Band of Brothers in biggest EVE takedown ever | ABORT, RETRY, FAIL?
Anyone want to try Eve can try it for 14 days for free, however if you want a 21 day free trial let me know.


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## Rodders (Jun 14, 2009)

I have read the book on EVE and really enjoyed it. 

As to MMORPG's, i am really looking forward to the new Star Wars "The Old Republic" game that is due for release some time soon. Supposed to be very story driven.


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## weblegend (Jun 25, 2009)

I like MMOs, but so many choices out there nowdays, dont really know what to play...


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## Heinleinaddict (Jun 26, 2009)

I personally recommend World of Warcraft. The site I linked before has a 14 day free trial if you want to try it out.

Here it is again: 14 day trial


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## Saeltari (Jul 1, 2009)

Eve looks good but I really want the fantasy world not the sci-fi world which is what Eve is I believe.

Still not sure about WoW, I know a lot of people really enjoy it but everything I have heard gives me the idea that I would not enjoy it so much.


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## Urlik (Jul 1, 2009)

Warhammer Online does look quite good and I like the way that the battles between Law and Chaos has an effect on how the cities in each realm prosper.

I might give the free trial a go


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## ktabic (Jul 2, 2009)

Saeltari said:


> Commonmind and Ktabic I have not played with a niche or a RP server, does that make a big difference, then?



In my experience, yes. You have to stay in character (except /ooc and private) but other players and GMs take abuses more seriously and are more likely to ban idiots. RP servers are generally quieter as well.



Saeltari said:


> Long story, short. I just look for single player games, anymore. But I know a lot of people play MMOs and I was just curious if they were better at ignoring the idiots or if there were tricks I was missing to cut them out of the game experience.



Leave most of the public channels, use the /ignore command, leave PvP off.



Urlik said:


> Warhammer Online does look quite good and I like the way that the battles between Law and Chaos has an effect on how the cities in each realm prosper.



Tried Warhammer Online. It's a more hardcore and very PvP (well, ok, RvR) orientated MMO. Didn't like it, mainly becuase the first RvR battle I took part in kind of trivialised toon death (Your side wins by getting 200 kills of the enemy. There are only 8 players a side. It got boring very quickly. OTOH the short timed repeatable quests where great fun)


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## Vladd67 (Jul 3, 2009)

Another example of Eve realism?
BBC NEWS | Technology | Billions stolen in online robbery


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## Rodders (Jul 3, 2009)

MMO's seem to be becoming quite the phenomenon. There was a program on Channel four in the UK about MMO's and about how they are affecting real life. It mostley featured second life, but others were involved. In addition to the usual stories of people dying in their obsession to play these games non-stop, there were also stories of people fighting others in real life over Control of resources. Whether we like or not, MMO's seem to be here to stay. 

Last week i joined Runescape a fantasy MMO (What can i say, it was free. ) It wasn't too bad. It's still early days yet, but i can see how people get so into it. Bring on Star Wars: The Old Republic.


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## Altrion (Jul 3, 2009)

I think a major reason why the attitudes have become so poor in MMO's lately is that, the majority of players now-a-days are kids who are still in high school, who convince their parents they need to play these games.  (That isn't to say that a lot of adults don't play the games, it is just that they have jobs, lives, etc.)

Back 14 years ago when I first started playing.  (I was 12, yes.)  The majority of players were either adults who had computers and could afford to play the games, programmers/designers/GMs, and the audience was much more mature.  Sure you had the occasional foul language, people being rude, etc.  But the overall feel was more... mature.  More respectable I think is what I mean.

Even with the PvP/PKs.  Most of them would jump you, kill you, and damn near take everything you had.  But none of them would be rude to you, insult you or make you feel miserable.  In fact, some times they would even give your stuff back and then you'd become friends with them.  (And kill other people of course, nothing is wrong with a little online bloodshed.)


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## Kei (Nov 13, 2009)

I played EverQuest classic in the late 90's as my first gaming experience in general (my parents didn't let me play video games). At that point in time it was still relatively new, and the player base consisted of 20-30 year olds with some cash to spend on computers and gaming. The community was fairly mature, and I had a great time.

My experience on other mmos have not been as appealing as that first experience, but I agree with some of the other posters here that the best thing one can do is find a guild which either consists of a specific age range, or at least had leadership which fostered a good environment (or even an RP guild, which exist in some games). 

The best MMO experience I had was actually playing with people to whom I could not speak except through the translation options- FFXI. I worked nights so I was online when everyone else was sleeping or at work, and so I only played with Japanese groups. These people take their gaming seriously, and I had a great deal of fun and respect for their skill and the efficiency with which we were able to handle the team work aspects of the content (which were many in FFXI).

If you're looking for a pure RP experience, that would be the hardest to find. If you just want to play with a more mature crowd, you might check out Dream of Mirror Online which is a free to play (micro-transaction business model) game published in English by Aeria. The fact that there are subclasses means it can take a while to master and reach top level. This coupled with somewhat "cute" graphics cuts out a lot of the hormonal teenage douche crowd, so the community of this game often has a higher number of mature and quality players.


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## thepaladin (Nov 13, 2009)

My only experince with MMORPGs is with Guild Wars. A group of us bought it and we'd meet up on line with audio hook ups etc. and play. When we all moved apart due to simply living life I stopped playing and so eventually did all the others. One guy tried meeting strangers and forming groups but it seldom worked out for him. I play single player RPGs and will probably contine that way. Well, that and actual table top paper and dice RPGs.


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## Rodders (Nov 14, 2009)

Has anyone found themselves to be overly engrossed on an MMO yet? You read about it all the time in the papers how people have suffered from exhaustion from playing these games for 24 hours straight etc, i wondered if any Chrons had any experience of this?


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## Rahl Windsong (Nov 15, 2009)

Urlik said:


> when MMos were first introduced I thought they would be fantastic but pretty soon realised that they are glorified chatrooms that charge a monthly fee and require you to grind away levelling up your character so that people will actually talk to you.
> 
> the problem is that unlike PnP RPGs, where you and your friends form a party, there isn't a GM/DM/keeper to give the game some structure.


 
Yes, however back in the early days of the MMO there was a game Ultima Online. That game started with all the things in place to be able to have DM's in game and their job was to develop dynamic storylines for the general population of their server. Any player of the game could take the online interview and attempt to become a Seer. Once you became a Seer the developer supplied you with a free account to implement your dynamic storylines from. I keep using the word "dynamic" the dynamic part means that the story has to be flexible enough that player actions determine the outcome and the flow of the plot. 

Anyway suffice to say that UO had all that in place and the reason it is not in mainstream MMO's of today is because of what some of the players did. 

Origin Systems, the developer of Ultima Online set up a special server for their AoL customers. On that server the players who had volunteered to do these Seer jobs and other pulic relation jobs, all decided that they must be employees and decided to take the developer to court. That ended the program but more importantly it set a precidence in the industry so that no such volunteer program is likely to ever take place again.


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## thepaladin (Nov 15, 2009)

Some one always messes it up for everybody else. Thus is life.


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## Lostie (Dec 31, 2009)

Rodders said:


> Has anyone found themselves to be overly engrossed on an MMO yet? You read about it all the time in the papers how people have suffered from exhaustion from playing these games for 24 hours straight etc, i wondered if any Chrons had any experience of this?



My longest World of Warcraft session was 30 hours.

I've played World of Warcraft for a long period of time before. It is usually when you are raiding new content.

When you are facing new bosses you basically break them down and work out tactics as you go along and it can take a long time.

Running through an entire dungeon at first can take you 8 to 10 hours as you go along learning how to conquer the bosses and what their weaknesses and strengths are but once you know the tactics and have better gear you can reduce that to as little as an hour or two.


Anyway I felt I should share my MMO related thoughts here to give some balance to the subject.

Straight off the bat its important to say MMO which stands for Massively Multiplayer Online is really a flawed description of the game.

MMO server sizes can vary wildly. The biggest World of Warcraft servers have 25 thousand players while the EVE server has well over 100 thousand.

You could make an MMO server with a handful of players in single digits if you wanted to its just about what you are going for.


Anyway MMO's are largely different and based around different design philosophies.

Everybody has heard of World of Warcraft but there are different designs to that MMO philosophy.

Basically the problem is when you develop a game the amount of profit the developer gets is very minute. Most developers won't be making more than 5 dollars per copy sold so even if you sell 4 million copies you are only pulling in 20 million dollars of profit.

It largely limtis the amount of money you can put into a game and in effect it reduces the size of the game world and the amount of content.

With an MMO the idea is they can put in significantly more content since the bulk of their profit margins sit in the subscriptions. MMO's are like a long term investment that cost tens of millions to make and break even and profit over time.

When Blizzard designed World of Warcraft their inspiration wasn't traditional MMO's the inspiration was online games like Modern Warfare and Halo 3.

Basically when you play FPS games online all your doing is running around shooting things and then respawning when you die.

Now traditionally you would look at that and think wouldn't that be boring all your doing is the same thing again and again but you have to understand online and offline gameplay can't really be compared.

When you are playing Halo 3 offline you have the rich story elements but the reason most people spend more time in the multiplayer mode is because you are not playing against AI you are playing against real opponents and there is no difficulty setting the only way to improve competitiveness is to get better.

With most offline games the limitations are you can work out how to fool or beat the AI or just turn the difficulty down. In online games you just have to play and improve and thats all there is to it. It's like playing chess against somebody and being able to lower the difficulty of your opponent to win. In online games you can't lower the difficulty you have to improve as a player to beat your opponents.

World of Warcraft is designed to make you interact with other people so you get better at the handful of skills you have.


It is worth noting World of Warcraft isn't the thumbrule for MMO's.

One game worth keeping in mind that does things very differently is The Old Republic.

Basically The Old Republic will be heavily instanced.

What that basically means is when you are in a city or capital you will see other plays walking around going about their business but when you leave a city you will enter an "instance". An instance is a zone that only you or your party can see and interact with.

In TOR everybody will have their own version of the zones and any actions you take will stay that way. So in other words if you were to kill somebody that person would stay dead regardless of how often you came back to that zone.

The Old Republic will be heavily steeped in story and the actions you take will have remaining consequences. If you destroy a planet the players that didn't destroy the planet will still see it but you won't.

Things like instancing and phasing allow MMO's to show players the consequences of their actions while showing other players what is relevant to their actions. It means no more respawning and it allows you to interact with the world as you please.

The TOR MMO will be a lot like an offline game just imagine when you go to cities you will see other players and when you leave your back in your own world which only you can see and effect.

By making The Old Republic an MMO they have a budget that allows them to create a storyline that is significantly longer, a universe that is much bigger and content patches that are huge.

If you look at that MMO it is completely story orientated but each individual class has 100 hours of content. With 8 classes that is 800 hours of content.

Instead of finishing the game and putting it away you keep your character and become better and more efficient at playing that class. The hours you put into the game don't magically disappear when it says "The End".

Every few months they release major content patches that contain ten hours or more of content.

When the Star Wars MMO hits prime time imagine having 8 classes to pick from that have a completely unique storyline. Each class has a hundred hours of content to pour through(and thats just the main storyline, if you are side questing you shouldn't be surprised to see a potential 200+ hours of content) and then very few months more content is dropped and it is all paid for in your subscription.

Imagine a huge universe with dozens of planets that are different. Imagine a new planet being added every now and then with unique monsters and a unique feeling. New story content being added to the game every few months and you get to log on at your own leisure and resume your journey with that same old character you've been playing for months and or even years.

It beats out being in a smaller universe where each class has about 4 hours of unique content before it goes into the same storyline with a few planets instead of a dozen and waiting 2 years for a sequel rather than having a continuous universe with more and more added to go through.

You have to break out of your traditional gaming philosophy to understand what MMO's are going for but you have to understand you can't really judge a movie based on how good the trailer was.

MMO's are truly designed to be massive and have very many aspects to them. If your experiences with an MMO revolve around killing things of various levels endlessly its like playing Halo 3 online against bots instead of real players.

Only thing worth noting is that once you "get it" MMO's can be extremely infectious so don't get caught in the MMO trap.


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## Rahl Windsong (Dec 31, 2009)

Heinleinaddict said:


> I personally recommend World of Warcraft. The site I linked before has a 14 day free trial if you want to try it out.
> 
> Here it is again: 14 day trial


 
At the time WoW was launched I had a guild that had migrated from several MMO's and most of us ended up playing WoW. For a while it seemed good but after a time people became borred because they were used to much more then WoW had to offer.

If you really take a close look at WoW it is nothing more then an elaborate chat room where you get to level your chat toons so you have something to talk about, or brag about, in the chat room. Just go to the bank area in any major city and what do you see? You see a bunch of players standing around showing off their most recently looted gear, talking about it, and bragging about it, and also in some cases bashing other players who have not aquired that loot yet.

Anything you do in WoW can only affect your own character. Sure you can kill another player but its just a minor thing because in a few minutes that player is back to the same place with full health and never lost any equipment at all.

In Ultima Online in its hay day if you got killed by another player they could loot your corpse, with you standing there as a ghost unable to do or say anything except ghostly sounds....oOOOooooOOo thats what the player would see on their screen unless they had invested points into the spirit speak skill. If you happened to have your house key on you when you died the player who killed you could use that key to gate to your house and loot it too.

Now a lot of people who have only played a game like WoW would find all of this quite horriffic to loose all your hard earned gear. Howeve in UO you very quickly learned that crafted items were better to use then that fancy Sword of Vanquishing that you looted off the Lich Lord, or bought from someone else who had looted it, and in that case it was a double whammy because you lost the weapon and the gold you used to buy it.

I can remember one day standing in town talking to someone on ICQ and a thief came up looted my pack and I lost two very expensive weapns. I was on my way to my vendor to put them up for sale, because I used crafted stuff and had no need for the Vanq weapons.

Why is this better then not being able to loose your stuff when you die? Well because when you died in UO it was a REAL consequence and something that would probably take you a few days to even weeks to get back. What that did was make PvP and really any death in the game even from a monster mean something, yes NPC monsters would loot some items from your corspe as well. If you went back and killed them later and no one else had killed them you might get it back.

No game since then has given me the rush that PvP did in UO because there is nothing to loose when you die in a game like WoW. In UO when you entered a PvP battle your heart would litterally be pounding which made it so when you won, the victory was well worth savoring.

When you lost it was not the end of the world and the ONLY time you ever carried your house key on you was when you were going to your house. You never went out exploring alone unless you were very good at PvP and no matter how good you were there was always someone somewhere that could take you down. You learned things like setting traps on your bags in your pack so that if a thief was snooping you would know about it. You learned to take only what you needed with you and it was ALWAYS crafted items because they were easy to replace.

Anything that was really valuable to you, you locked down in your house so that no one but you could remove it.

I can remember the very first time I logged into UO and right in town there was a battle taking place between two players who really knew what they were doing when it came to PvP. This fight went on for probably near an hour, until finally one of the combatants fell. I can remember watching as the winner was looting his corpse and he even appoligized to the ghost because he had just had one of the best fights he could ever imagine. But everyone knew the stakes and looting the corpse was the reward and it was glorious indeed. I was hooked then and there, I just had to be able to fight like that, and win or loose I knew it would be something worth my time.

In WoW there is not one thing that seems like its worth my time because if I loose there is no loss.


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## Lostie (Jan 1, 2010)

Rahl Windsong said:


> At the time WoW was launched I had a guild that had migrated from several MMO's and most of us ended up playing WoW. For a while it seemed good but after a time people became borred because they were used to much more then WoW had to offer.
> 
> If you really take a close look at WoW it is nothing more then an elaborate chat room where you get to level your chat toons so you have something to talk about, or brag about, in the chat room. Just go to the bank area in any major city and what do you see? You see a bunch of players standing around showing off their most recently looted gear, talking about it, and bragging about it, and also in some cases bashing other players who have not aquired that loot yet.
> 
> ...



You just summed up most of the reasons why nobody plays Ultima Online.

End of the day a game is a game and you don't want a tedious nightmare you want something you can kill a little time with.

Most people play games to kill some time before their favourite TV show comes on. Having a disorganised disjointed MMO where you can be ambushed by more skilled players and robbed is hardly anybodies idea of fun.

If you can only dedicate an hour or two to an MMO every other day you don't want to play a game with one hour PvP battles and you sure as hell don't want to lose items that cost you a month to accumulate.

If all you do is spend your life playing MMO's than you can regather those items and recraft pretty quickly but for most players that just isn't possible.

The previous generation of MMO's are dead or on their deathbed for a reason and the new generation of MMO's are doing things differently for a reason too.

Ultima Online was created by Mythic Entertainment who are responsible for Warhammer Online as well and you can see how they evolved from Ultima Online to Warhammer Online by dumping nearly everything that was in Ultima.

All in all Ultima Online was really designed for Ultima fans. For anybody else with less time on their hands it was just a nightmare.

PC Gamer said it best when they said:

Ultima fanatics might stick with it, but most players will give up in frustration.

Gamespot(the most popular gaming site on the web) gave it a 4.9 and in general it was a terrible game for most people.


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## Rahl Windsong (Jan 2, 2010)

Ok first off Ultima Online was not created by Mythic Entertainment, it was created by a company called Origin Systems, which was later sold to Electronic Arts. Then Electronic Arts aquired Mythic and seeing as that was their only developer that had any MMO experience they turned it over to Mythic.

Origin Systems was the pride and joy of Richard Garriott, the president and CEO at Origin, also he was the person who started the entire Ultima series which had I think 9 single player games before that series came to an end.

As soon as EA aquired Origin, UO went down hill very fast as EA tried to make it more and more like Ever Quest and failed at every single attempt to change the game to something it was never meant to be.

Also you could play UO as a casual player, playing a few hours here and there. Once you learned how to do things in the game PvP was more your choice then someone just ambushing you. Sure you could be ambushed but if you had the right skills you could get away from PK's without ever getting involved in a fight. For instance I started the game out as a Bowyer, who had stealth and pretty much zero PvP ability. However I had no problem avoiding PK's because my stealth was maxed and they could never find me.

Anyway its obvious I would never be able to convince most WoW type MMO'ers because they are way too used to being perfectly safe and secure and the threat of death and loss associated with that death is just way too much for them and yes they become frustrated and probably just quit.


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## devilsgrin (Jan 3, 2010)

WoW IS a previous generation MMO. Its graphics are hideous, its gameplay boring, and its become nothing more than a Raiding game. It may as well change its name to Raids'R'Us... i've nothing against endgame content, but raiding is what WoW is all about. I would never play WoW again. the 14 day trial was enough. I've played far superior MMOs to WoW... Everquest 2 and LotRO being just two of them. Both use similar gameplay styles to WoW's, yet both have more depth in other areas, and aren't badly plagiarised IPs... indeed one is a fully licensed usage of one of fictions favourite IPs... Further both are infinitely better in the graphics department. 

Some MMOs are great fun to play, and once you find a great guild (or start one) it makes it worthwhile to continue playing, since you can usually find a group to help out in the tougher parts. Biggest flaw to MMOs... most people want to play solo still, and group only if they absolutely have to.


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## AlexM (Jan 16, 2010)

To Rahl, 

You say people in WoW just sit around showing off the armor near the bank? That's really just a minority of people who sit around afk, and bragging? I'm sure we all brag about something, just let the people who wasted a a few hundred hours of there life on a game enjoy their loot, considering if thats what makes them feel good then they probably have problems. 

And in UO you lose your gear? That would just mean endless grinding trying to get it back and probably repeating that process, so people probably don't have the time to show it off..

Well if you can find flaws in my points i'd be welcome to know.

Cheers,

Alex


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## Rahl Windsong (Jan 18, 2010)

Well yes you would loose your gear in UO if someone killed you and possibly even if some monster killed you and they came upon your corpse before you got back to it. However that was part of the greatness of the game, I know it might seem hard to think the way I do about this, but if there is no loss in a death then death seems meaningless and the fight is meaningless as well. In UO when you engaged in a pvp battle your heart would be pounding, you would be on the edge of your seat, you would be scrambling to stay alive. In WoW I never cared if I died because all I had to do was run back and get all my stuff back, big deal.

In UO you only took with you what you really needed, and all of your gear was crafted gear that you or other players had made making replacing that gear really easy, in fact most players had several sets of gear ready to go in case they died. Also you could dye things like your boots, gloves, etc black and then they would blend in with your corpse box and be very hard to see for the person looting your corpse so usually if you had some black items you would find them still on your corpse when you got back there. Black dye was a bit rare in the game though so you had to keep a bit of it on hand in your bank or house for those days when someone did find your boots.

It may seem like the end of the world when you die and loose everything however once you got your head around the fact that this could happen you learned to play the game so that you could minimize your losses. Any veteran player in UO only died to another player if they were very careless or stupid and they did something that usually helped the opposing player to kill you. Also essential things like your spell book and rune book were not available for looting....


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## Winters_Sorrow (Jan 19, 2010)

The issue I would have with the OU model is the fallibility of the internet and PCs in general. When I first started played WoW it was frustrating enough when lag kicked in and suddenly you were frozen, waiting for keystrokes to be actioned, while being kicked to crap by monsters. 

And also that model seems to have a stupidly steep learning curve. PvP is so different from fighting AI creatures that certain abilities or attacks would be easily countered unless you knew what you were doing. I suppose it's a risk/reward system but it's balanced heavily in favour of the long time player vs the "noob" and that's not how you attract new members into your gaming fraternity.

I can't argue about the graphics, WoW certainly has issues there. They did attempt to address in-game phasing with the Lich King expansion but there's certainly more to do there. I wish someone would break away entirely from the WoW model though. Aion came out (and one of my friends was raving about it) but as far as I can see it's literally the same class breakdowns as WoW with a slightly different mythos and giving characters some wings. Graphically it's an improvement but not in terms of originality.

I hope the Old Republic game is as good as you say Lostie. Mind you the biggest problem I have with all MMOs is the ongoing price tag. £10 a month adds up, especially if you're not playing it that often. But until they somehow manage to charge you for how long you actually play that's a bugbear you have to live with.


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## thepaladin (Jan 19, 2010)

That's largely what kept me out...the cost (that and I don't have a "group" of friends interested , I haven't had a lot of luck with pick-up groups). I was interested in City of Heroes a while back but rejected it simply on the grounds of cost. I understand that money is the (whole) point for developers and so on, but they'd probably get more participation if the costs were more reasonable.


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## ktabic (Jan 20, 2010)

devilsgrin said:


> WoW IS a previous generation MMO. Its graphics are hideous


Which is obviously why it is such an unpopular game now. 
Oh, wait, sorry. WoW is still the most popular MMORPG around still, by a very, very large margin, five years after it's release. It's 'hideous' graphics are the reason for it's success. It meant WoW could run on a PC any serious gamer would turn their noses up at, and until WoW, only serious gamers would play.


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## Winters_Sorrow (Jan 20, 2010)

That's part of it ktabic. I first played WoW on a really old PC that did the original game ok but struggled with Burning Crusade expansion before I replaced it.

I think though, that WoW just do other things so well - marketing, promotions and making it accessible and easy to pick up for new players. 

Other more recent MMOs have copied the WoW model and still struggled to capture market share so there must be more to the game than the graphics eh?

Oh, and I love the avatar, ktabic. Order of the Stick is hilarious (though I did prefer the earlier strips over some of the more recent ones).


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