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Do Wiki websites ruin MMOs?
Jquik
Member Posts: 130
After quitting EverQuest, I have never played an MMORPG without feeling forced to use a website to get through quests or to obtain reagents for item creation. If you do not use this easily accessible knowledge you will almost always fall behind in level and in equipment compared to the average gamer. At times I am constantly alt-tabbing to mmodb, allakhazam, wiki.game and so forth. It ruins the game experience in my opinion. The one thing that many people along with myself miss about EQ were the unexplored zones, hidden quests, rare weapons and armor. This doesnt exist anymore when everything is just a few clicks and keys away. How many people actually read quests anymore? Most people I see in game running around turning in quests only stand at the NPC for 1-3 seconds, making it obvious they already know what to do or are googling the sequence of events.
How do you all feel about this?
Comments
Nobody forces you to use them.
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But do you feel any sense of accomplishment getting a new weapon that took you forever to find when you know everyone else already has it since its obviously shown online.
Yup. A person chooses whether to use or not use those sites. It's your attitude if you feel you are ruining the experience for yourself.
I feel a greater sense of accomplishment by doing it myself than I do when I use a guide.
Im prolly one of the few but i dont search for sites to guide me ingame i find out myself, but i also play alot of sologames and also find out all by myself.
I think it ruin games yes becouse some sites just help many almost 100% through game without much effort, and this influence also gameworld and sometimes me also.
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009.....
In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
well i havent used the wikies for most of the games i have played and the one wiki i have used was only a fraction of the game because the game world was so huge noone has gotten to even a fraction of the stars and the devs refuse to relese the information
I wouldn't go so far as to say websites are ruining the games but they do take something away. Sure nobody is forcing you to use them but a lot of people take the path of least resistance. Finding a hidden cave and getting a rare item loses its sense of accomplishment when you're the last one in the game world to do it because you actually did it legitimately.
My followup question would be does anyone think that such a high availablity of information affects a game designers decision to add certian types of content?
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
I'm sure they aren't inclined to hide content because of it. Or concealing entrances/npcs liek a cave as you said.
Well, if you are so so concern about other people are getting the epic item before you do, you probably deserve to be in the dilemma of whether to use websites or not. In fact, the solution is that you can take all your epic items and flaunt them in starting areas to noobs.
Personally, I think websites are great. It helps those who have no interests in stories, and just want to hack-n-slash and get good items a way to bypass all the tedious searching. Personally I use them all the time. If i want to read, I read novels, not quest text.
Then why not just open Excel and play on that? Why play RPGs?
Anyways, on topic, I believe that the websites have their uses. On huge content games such as EvE, it can get frustrating for players to figure everything out on their own, at which point the game doesnt stay a game anymore. There the websites help.
And you play games for your own satisfaction, atleast I do, so I dont care how long it takes for me to do a mission or how many people have done it before me. If I do it the proper way, it was my journey, my satisfaction, my enjoyment.
Then why not just open Excel and play on that? Why play RPGs?
Anyways, on topic, I believe that the websites have their uses. On huge content games such as EvE, it can get frustrating for players to figure everything out on their own, at which point the game doesnt stay a game anymore. There the websites help.
And you play games for your own satisfaction, atleast I do, so I dont care how long it takes for me to do a mission or how many people have done it before me. If I do it the proper way, it was my journey, my satisfaction, my enjoyment.
What kind of silly argument is that? There is much more to an MMORPG than just reading quest text you know.
Imo,the reason why many people don't read quest text anymore is because there is simply too much text to read and it's not exactly shakespeare material. Todays MMORPG's are almost entirely quest driven, it's completely normal for you to do somewhere between 10 ~ 20 quests every hour, and each of them have a full page of text. Pardon my short attention span, but I do not feel like reading entire pages on why some farmer wants me to protect his farm from wolves or how the evil dark elves are destroying the forest.
More often than not the quest text is nothing more than an NPC trying to find an excuse to get you to kill some creature who is probably doing nothing but minding his own damn business.
Another reason I don't care about the quest text is because it's entire intention is wasted on me. It's intention is to get me more immersed in the characters and the storyline, but all it does is remind me i'm playing a video game.
Here is a typical situation, You walk up to an NPC who is just standing around all day. he offers you a quest to find some flowers, stones, whatever. He explains to you why he needs them, and off you go.
I dare anybody to say with a straigth face the following thought has never occured to them:" Why don't you do it?"
Why do I have to go around picking flowers or collecting for people when he is just standing around all day and could easily do it themselves? It's immersion breaker number 1!
It's also the reason I look up things on wiki such as quest directions or loot. Walking around aimlessly makes me annoyed. I have no problem climbing a mountain but at least tell me where the darn mountain is.
Gameloading: LOL that was funny....and true. I think that is a big reason why I don't pay as much attention to the text as I used to.
As for the original question, no Wiki's are not ruining MMO's. You can use them or not. Some of the arguments about taking forever to get what everyone else already has should not be an issue. If you aren't frequenting the sites to begin with you will most likely not know that everyone else already has it. you won't miss what you don't know about. Ignorance is bliss, I guess. In the past you would get this information by word of mouth. Wiki's are just word of mouth 2.0. They are nice to have around when you want them.
Actually you brought up another thing Wiki's are taking away from the game, people talking about the game in the chat channels. Nowadays all I see in the chat box is kids insulting each other's mother, bragging about "1337 skillz" and WoW bashing. Except of course in WAR, where the silence was deafening.
I understand the people who say the quest text is boring. To me it all does begin to sound the same and the stories are pretty lame. Most games do give you a synopsis at the end which is usually more than enough information.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
It can depend some on the game. The structure of A Tale in the Desert pretty much demands that players have somewhere to lay out how the game mechanics work, or no one would be able to do very much at all. This is often a problem for new players before they find out about the wiki.
Actually, Wiki's have nothing to do with the chat problem. That has been getting worse and worse for years. Some people feel the need to broadcast every thought that comes into their head to the whole server. General chat is almost useless in most games, but many games now have separate Help channels to discuss gameplay related topics.
If you want a game with a good community, the key is to pick a game that will bore the "bad" players so that they'll quit and leave. A Tale in the Desert does that pretty well.
Of course, that doesn't work if you're one of the "bad" players yourself.
Wikis and game databases may ruin the game for the Explorer type players (Bartle test). Going by the pie chart there, even if just a quarter of the Explorers are bothered by "everything being explored" that's about 10% of the players.
Not much that can be done about it, and I'm not sure anything should, but an interesting thought.
Yes they are..I play most MMO's in a very competitive way, so I'm not going to handicap myself in anyway, because in the long run that would make me have less fun overall. I don't approve of how everyone is too lazy to learn the game and just wiki's everything, I don't enjoy how in some games people just cash shop or ebay their way to get money, or use bots to level up faster. I don't know about you but the parts I enjoy of MMO's aren't farming for levels or money, or learning where to go to kill wolves for their pelts...so I'll take what advantage I can get, even if I'd prefer them not to be a part of the game.
What ruins an MMO is not having a wiki site, not having an official forum and more than anything not having a reason a group and hand in hand with that... an easy way to group.
In my opinion thats why some games that should tank do well and others that should be great aren't.
But yes I absolutely love wiki sites so I can really sink my teeth into the game even out of game. But if I'm playing MMO X and get frustrated or stuck and there is no community wiki/forum site... its cancel time.
Wikis are damn awesome to capture things like this.
Why exactly is that bad?
You selected 1 feature from a million in a wiki...R U SRS?
Some people like to figure stuff out, some people just like to do the stuff.
For example, lets say a quest tells you that for the next step you have to go see Sgt. Jenkins. But the quest giver doesn't tell you where Sgt. Jenkins is.
Some people love to wander all over the game looking for Sgt. Jenkins, and get a real sense of accomplishment when they finallyh find him.
Not me. I find that to be utterly boring. I don't want to wander all over the game for Sgt. Jenkins. Just tell me where he is so I can complete the quest. That is a million time more fun for me, to just look up where Sgt. Jenkins is on a wiki or website, then wander the game for hours looking for some stupid NPC.
Of course in that example, you can just holler in global chat, and someone will probably tell you, but you know what I mean.
Do wiki websites ruin MMOs?
No. Cheap, static quests/instances ruin MMOs. Seriously, you can make a much better case against the mindless, pointless, connect-the-dots quest (or should I say fed-x) train that MMOs have become.
Well in defence of websites all that info existed on EQ as well. But I hear ya, when I started UO in 97 the fan sites were not as fluent. But as posted you dont have to look, but its kinda hard isnt it
..........I find myself lookin more about stats and item locations more than how to beat the monster or quest walkthrough however.
You do have a point though