Gold buying is the fault of the game developers and the fans of the genre that support massive time sinks in games .... The biggest problem with gold selling / leveling is that it isn't provided by the company. MMORPGs should either be designed without these time sinks or the developer should provide people that want it the ability to by pass certain aspects of the game by paying a premium for it.
Excellent points all around. I'm sick of playing MMOs because each and everyone feels like the same ugly tutorial. "Here's a wooden stick. Go beat those bunny rabbits over there for a bit and then come back to me. And then I'll hand you a pointy stick."
If I were rich like William Shatner, I'd just buy a pre-built shaman off of a site and get to the _real_ game, do some battlegrounds, fight a couple of raids (but not grinding them, that's boring), and generally see what the game is supposed to be, not the stupid tutorial.
The best analogy I can think of is RTS games. In most RTS games, I skip the campaign/storymode because it follows the same annoying, "Okay, you have a barracks and a base. That's all you get." formula. In skirmish mode everything is there and I can build up my tech as high as I want and explore all of the strategies availalble and not follow the lame pace set by the game. I mean, I paid $50 so I'll just skip to the meat of the gameplay and have at it. With MMOs, I pay $50 and I get a wooden stick. And some bunny rabbits. It's the same starting point for every MMO across the board. Sometimes the sticks are just dull swords and sometimes the bunny rabbits are wolves, but it's always the same thing.
However, there's a ton of gameplay I won't ever get to enjoy unless I either: Invest 20 hours (more often 200 or even 2000) into the game, or, pay for a pre-leveled character that is, cost wise, allows me to pay something like $2 for every hour I save and I can potentially resell when I'm done. Sorry, but 20 hours before the game starts to get fun? Give me a single player game. Or, pay the "True" cost to play the game, in cash instead of hours spent doing boring things.
Comments
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/157484
Ummm why did this thread get booted?
Excellent points all around. I'm sick of playing MMOs because each and everyone feels like the same ugly tutorial. "Here's a wooden stick. Go beat those bunny rabbits over there for a bit and then come back to me. And then I'll hand you a pointy stick."
If I were rich like William Shatner, I'd just buy a pre-built shaman off of a site and get to the _real_ game, do some battlegrounds, fight a couple of raids (but not grinding them, that's boring), and generally see what the game is supposed to be, not the stupid tutorial.
The best analogy I can think of is RTS games. In most RTS games, I skip the campaign/storymode because it follows the same annoying, "Okay, you have a barracks and a base. That's all you get." formula. In skirmish mode everything is there and I can build up my tech as high as I want and explore all of the strategies availalble and not follow the lame pace set by the game. I mean, I paid $50 so I'll just skip to the meat of the gameplay and have at it. With MMOs, I pay $50 and I get a wooden stick. And some bunny rabbits. It's the same starting point for every MMO across the board. Sometimes the sticks are just dull swords and sometimes the bunny rabbits are wolves, but it's always the same thing.
However, there's a ton of gameplay I won't ever get to enjoy unless I either: Invest 20 hours (more often 200 or even 2000) into the game, or, pay for a pre-leveled character that is, cost wise, allows me to pay something like $2 for every hour I save and I can potentially resell when I'm done. Sorry, but 20 hours before the game starts to get fun? Give me a single player game. Or, pay the "True" cost to play the game, in cash instead of hours spent doing boring things.