To the OP: if you think WoW endgame is repetitive, how about most of the games, including physical games, are repetitve. In tennis, you keep trying to bat the ball back to the other side of the court. In bars, you keep trying to woo the next girl to bed (pun intended). Come on, its the process you enjoy. If you like drinking, you will realise each glass of wine is not the same. If you are serious, eating is repetitive. So is breathing. Being repetitive is not a big pain, if that is not all there is to life. WoW or quite a few of the good games, can be fun, if spiced with everything else that is there is life. Log on WoW only if you want to do something in the game for a short while, and log out when your level of attention wanes or something better comes to mind. Quit WoW when you feel you lose the incentive to log on, and resub when that mood suddenly comes back. That is all there is, no biggie.
The different is what changes during the repetition.
In WoW, once you've done <insert any instance here> 10 times, there's really not that much else to it. The people might change, but the focus is on beating the instance, and the method to beat it really doesn't change all that much. Tank takes damage, dps deals damage, healer heals. Boss is going to do A, B, C, and you need to do E, F, and G to beat him. WoW really shines the first few repetitions of any part of the game, but can really get dull when you've done it too much and there's nothing else to really do.
This isn't just an issue with WoW - it's an issue with any limited content PvE game, which is just about every PvE based game out there.
The only solution right now is PvP. In PvP, you may be capturing that flag over and over and over, but the situation is constantly changing and evolving into something you haven't played before. Even then, it can get dull and boring after enough repitition.
I think the solution to this issue is expanding gameplay overtime rather than just adding content. In WoW, you can kill mobs, go into an instance and kill mobs with a group, or kill other players. Crafting is very streamlined and not all that interesting. Each expansion just adds more mobs to kill, extra tools to kill stuff with, and new stuff to get when you kill something.
WoW's great from a business standpoint because it's got enough content for millions of casual players to never burn through. For more hardcore and serious gamers, the only thing there for a long period of time is the loot system, and a lot of us have realized that it's a big waste of time. I personally love WoW and plan on returning at some point, but I have no motivation to get on my 80 paladin and grind out some gear in instances I've already played through a bunch. Introduce some new interesting and fun gameplay mechanisms and I'll resub immediately.
The world needs to be more dynamic. We need some GM run invasions. Super mobs should spawn randomly in the world, word gets around, a guild gets everyone together and attacks it while another guild tries to stop them. There's really a lot that can be done with some creativity.
In short, WoW needs to mix it up a bit.
Now that is a much better criticism, and surely you got me half in agreement.
WoW is a game catered to a lot of people, it cannot change daily, as different ppl are in different stage of progression. I agree that if you do the same instance with the same setup 20 times you begin to get used to it. The only purpose left is to improve, to beat your own time records. BUT, wait we can add imagination and try.
How about doing old instances with odd group combinations to test out. How about forming 2 teams of different ppl and race to finish it, starting at the same time, over vent and chat, yell as we rush, wipe. How about chaning alts (blizz will ban you if you let them officially know). I did this, by having each member of my family took on other's alt. How about imposing the rule of no tank group, so ppl have to ping pong aggro. We tried a lot of options, including 5 tank, 5 healer runs. Of course we wipe, but taxing our brains discussion on how we can try it, log on wipe and go back to discussion in the living room, is quite a family union thing.
Last but not least let the baby play in orgrimmar, he would learn the keyboard movement fast, very fast.
After getting my level 80 elemental shaman in a raid guild, after doing the same 3-4 heroic instances to get the gear i needed to raid, I joined a raid guild, constantly we did the same raid naxxramas, eye of eternity and malygos those three same raids, the same thing over and over and over again. Just hoping for loot. When I was leveling my alt to 80, something just came accross my mind that this is what I will be doing with this character, the same few instances, to the same few raids just to to keep grinding for loot and waiting months after months for a different raid. There was no different exploration, there was no different content, it was rushing to 80 to do the same grind that i did on my shaman.
Is it worth it? The 15 dollars a month to constantly do this same repetition? Then I quit WoW. but is this problem just in WOW? Are there any mmorpgs with a different end game where there are different goals? If there is can any one recommend me one? I am extremely bored and its not that I am burned out there is a big difference between being burned out and just plain bored.
So can any one recommend me a mmorpg or am I going to go back to single player rpgs and wait for the next best thing?
I've been playing WoW and other MMOs for a few years now - I actually hit the same wall with WoW ages back, back in the Burning Crusade, and actually left it... only went back after 7 months due to ex-guildies bugging me via MSN to come back... pissed me off since when I did go back they were too busy raiding to play with me... I actually stayed and find some friends to play with, but the same walls are still there, and it's getting worse. Not gonna go into a big spew about why and what I dislike about WoW, but I just wanna say I feel ya bud.
Unfortunately most games will follow the WoW formula since, lets face it, it's addictive and it makes mega bucks for Blizz. There are many other MMOs out there, many with better gameplay and mechanics, but most of which suffers from this one single problem - not enough players. WoW's greatest strength (and weakness) comes from its large player base. I have friends on there, which is why I am still playing atm.
Like I said I play other MMOs too - I can't gurantee you'll like them, but I can give you my thoughts...
Someone have mentioned "Guild Wars" - I have played this game extensively a while back from since its beta days, have completed two of the "chapters" and most of the 3rd chapter and the expansion storylines... I must say one of the best games I have ever played. The game caters for players of every style, and there is just so much to do - amazing fun fast PvP and an extensive and immersive PvE portion which IMO rivals many single player games out there. Exploration, rep grinding, title collecting... you name it its there. With an amazing soundtrack, beautiful graphics, and one of the best character class systems out there... and best of all - it's free to play (well no monthly fees anyways), and it's not about levels or gear, but skills. There are hundreds of skills in this game, each of which can be collected or earned in different ways, and then combined to suit your own playstyle. Suited for group or solo players... this game... blah I can't say enough good things about it. I have to say though it's NOT your average MMO, and if you are coming from WoW you might find some things very limited - you can't jump for example, no mounts, plus everything is instance... But trust me it's a very very decent game with regular content upgrade.
Another game I like is "Vanguard: Saga of Heroes". Amazingly vast and beautiful world with amazing lore, and one of the deepest crafting experience you can find in any MMO. The game is split up into three core areas - adventure, crafting, and something called diplomancy (which is a fun card mini-game which gives you access to amazing lore and stories)... they all intertwine but are like three seperate games... I haven't experienced end game in this game yet, but the community, while small, are friendly and active, and there are some strong raiding going on here if you are so inclined. The world design is open and expansive, and everything, from cities to mobs to dungeons, are very well designed. The dungeons in particular are very well done. Suffers a bit from not having enough players, and also IMO it might be a bit to vast and deep for most players. I actually left this game a couple of times due to there being too much to do lol... The music is among some of the best out there, and the graphics - although plain and generic looking on lower level settings, can be quite beautiful at higher levels. Had one of the worse lauches with bugs galore, but it's improved in leaps and bounds since then, with new contents and features being added from time to time. There are no PvP (more or less) in this game btw.
Lastly a couple of honorable mentions would be "Warhammer Online" and "Age of Conan".
WAR is the game I would recommand for WoW players who no longer like WoW. It is similar in a lot of ways to WoW, but enchances or fixes up many of its problems. Unforuntately as soon as WAR adds or annonces a few feature, WoW copies it... WAR does have some unique and exciting ideas like its Public Quests (imagine group quests or raids that are set on a map area, which anyone could walk into and join - and then at the end loot is awarded according to contribution), open world PvP which affects the entire gameworld, world achivement and title unlocks which records and rewards you for everything you do, and PvP scenerios (think WoW battlegrounds, but more exciting) which you can join from anywhere. It's an amazing game, but suffers in some areas from not having enough players.
And AoC? Well, hard one to say. Interesting game with some interesting gameplay mechanics and ideas, but was lauched too early. Most of the bugs were fixed though, and a lot of new contents have been added. I haven't been playing this for long, so I can't comment too much, but from what I've read the new director's got some interesting plans for it... and it's still a young game so it might have a good future ahead for it...
Here are my two cents anyways... just wanna say again you are not alone in your thoughts bud...
If you played out every quest, every piece of the story line, and worked on the other fun aspects of the game that didn't lead to the fast track to the end game, people would enjoy these games a lot longer.
That's because, in many MMORPGs, most of the quests are dull and generally suck monkey balls. I don't care why you need those ghoul tongues! How many do you need for only one potion?! Why don't you go and pick those flowers yourself?! Can't you just send one of your own privates to send the message or use a goddamn pidgeon or something?! Why send us when you got a whole army?
-I feel like a hero already. Not.
Good motivation for bad quests don't make them good BUT good quests with bad motivation are still good quests. Why bother reading a wall of text? 90% of the time it's some lame excuse like "We need a small group to inflitrate" or "my back is hurting" or "there's monsters everywhere." Quest lines might be more interesting than "quest bubbles".
There's also the curse MMOs: static world. Nothing changes. I have no impact on the world whatsoever. I save the child - he'll need another savior in few minutes. How can I feel a sense of accomplishment if everything I do doesn't last? Atleast there's a ding every once in a while.
If I want questing and lore, I stick to SP RPGs for now.
Excellent counter points! While I agree the , "I need 10 bear hides" type quest are extremely pathetic, and just puts a quest to a grindfest, they are nothing more then fillers, and could easily be made more creative, and even more optional.
Such as, "Hmm, I could make you this awesome bear skin cloak if you bring me 10 bear hides and some threads." First you have to figure, WoW does this in some quest line...but! The "awesome bearskin cloak" is by far inferior to half the mob drops, and most of the stuff you can buy on the auction house for less then a gold.
So what is the developers options? He could make the quest a bit harder, and the rewards better, but no matter what it's still a grind quest. I have hundeeds of ideas on how to counter this, but until I get paid for my ideas, I won't release them
Another great point you made, you have no real effect on this persistant world. Some games have made the attempt to change this. Wow had a couple of quest where only one group could actually finish the quest per server. Did this have any kind of an impact on them? Well, I think they were proud of thier very rare mount they got, other then that nothing.
I can see this as been extremely hard to accomadte from a developers point of view, I mean how do you make it where thousands of people can have an impact on the community? Well you really can't. That would be like trying to take everyone in Los Angeles, and have them make some great contribution to the world, or some tremedous impact on the world.
I will post one of my ideas for a fix for this, and any developer is free to use it, but to get any of my other ideas, or learn from my 15+ years of MMO experiences, you will have to start writing some checks. I am available for freelance consulting work, but I will not relocate.
I think our online worlds need to have a reduced population. Look at one of the earliest MMO's Meridian59. I think at peak a server had 300 people, and that was a busy server. The perks of this? Well when you have played awhile, you know everyone on your server, atleast by name, if not by playing, or talking with them.
With only a few hundred players per server, you can also attempt to organize events easier, and do other things to include the players in parts of the game that a large population just can't do.
Again I can, and will easily give a developer a lot of ideas, yes, a lot of my ideas came from a few other games, but they were great ideas, and could easily be expanded on to make them personalized for any game. Some of my ideas would require the game to be PvE, with a PvP element. but also includes many ideas to prevent rampant PvP problems that rampage other games.
even in four years. with skills maxed. you can run corps. banks. and fleets. go kill everyone once just for fun. no end game in eve. i have 4 accounts learning every day for me. i plan to play in a month 4 boxing is easy too and even play on my wifes laptop. eve is everything i wanted in a game. but just not a fantasy game. i wish eve online makers would comeout with an mmorpg fantasy type game, i'd bet it would be good
If you played out every quest, every piece of the story line, and worked on the other fun aspects of the game that didn't lead to the fast track to the end game, people would enjoy these games a lot longer.
That's because, in many MMORPGs, most of the quests are dull and generally suck monkey balls. I don't care why you need those ghoul tongues! How many do you need for only one potion?! Why don't you go and pick those flowers yourself?! Can't you just send one of your own privates to send the message or use a goddamn pidgeon or something?! Why send us when you got a whole army?
-I feel like a hero already. Not.
Good motivation for bad quests don't make them good BUT good quests with bad motivation are still good quests. Why bother reading a wall of text? 90% of the time it's some lame excuse like "We need a small group to inflitrate" or "my back is hurting" or "there's monsters everywhere." Quest lines might be more interesting than "quest bubbles".
There's also the curse MMOs: static world. Nothing changes. I have no impact on the world whatsoever. I save the child - he'll need another savior in few minutes. How can I feel a sense of accomplishment if everything I do doesn't last? Atleast there's a ding every once in a while.
If I want questing and lore, I stick to SP RPGs for now.
If you are into lore, WoW is not bad. There are a lot of mundane genetic quests, every game has those. There are good story arcs and some really epic questline. The chain of events leading to the battle of Undercity, in which you have to go back and recover UC with the queen of the undead, is one such questline. The story arc leading to the opening of shadowvault, the story line to get access to sons of holdir. God, even the first CoS run is epic, you fight alongside arthalas and sees the whole damn story of Warcraft RTS in RPG perspective.
Apart from LOTRo, I have yet to see another game with these epic lore. Name another game in which you have such lore, and constantly pumping up new lore, new instances new everything.
You need to change the world to feel better? Go play games with that design in mind. Eve is one. There is no reason to grumble here.
If you played out every quest, every piece of the story line, and worked on the other fun aspects of the game that didn't lead to the fast track to the end game, people would enjoy these games a lot longer.
That's because, in many MMORPGs, most of the quests are dull and generally suck monkey balls. I don't care why you need those ghoul tongues! How many do you need for only one potion?! Why don't you go and pick those flowers yourself?! Can't you just send one of your own privates to send the message or use a goddamn pidgeon or something?! Why send us when you got a whole army?
-I feel like a hero already. Not.
Good motivation for bad quests don't make them good BUT good quests with bad motivation are still good quests. Why bother reading a wall of text? 90% of the time it's some lame excuse like "We need a small group to inflitrate" or "my back is hurting" or "there's monsters everywhere." Quest lines might be more interesting than "quest bubbles".
There's also the curse MMOs: static world. Nothing changes. I have no impact on the world whatsoever. I save the child - he'll need another savior in few minutes. How can I feel a sense of accomplishment if everything I do doesn't last? Atleast there's a ding every once in a while.
If I want questing and lore, I stick to SP RPGs for now.
If you are into lore, WoW is not bad. There are a lot of mundane genetic quests, every game has those. There are good story arcs and some really epic questline. The chain of events leading to the battle of Undercity, in which you have to go back and recover UC with the queen of the undead, is one such questline. The story arc leading to the opening of shadowvault, the story line to get access to sons of holdir. God, even the first CoS run is epic, you fight alongside arthalas and sees the whole damn story of Warcraft RTS in RPG perspective.
Apart from LOTRo, I have yet to see another game with these epic lore. Name another game in which you have such lore, and constantly pumping up new lore, new instances new everything.
You need to change the world to feel better? Go play games with that design in mind. Eve is one. There is no reason to grumble here.
That would be Arthas and it is still the same story. It's a pretty simple story thats being repeated over and over, it's even the exact same voice over used in Warcraft 3 in fact if you dig around the mpq files there's most of WC3 media files in there.
Guy caled Arthas gets a sword and goes bonkers, Blizzard have stated that WoW game is their official lore. It's just seems like a pick and mix of anything fantasy. Ask any of your friends who play WoW what the lore is all about, all of them will mention arthas and lich king, but they rest of it will be "Umm.." There are holes in Blizzards story and they are NOT consistent.
Had to remove signature because of lame code of conduct...
To the OP: if you think WoW endgame is repetitive, how about most of the games, including physical games, are repetitve.
In tennis, you keep trying to bat the ball back to the other side of the court. In bars, you keep trying to woo the next girl to bed (pun intended). Come on, its the process you enjoy. If you like drinking, you will realise each glass of wine is not the same. If you are serious, eating is repetitive. So is breathing.
Being repetitive is not a big pain, if that is not all there is to life. WoW or quite a few of the good games, can be fun, if spiced with everything else that is there is life. Log on WoW only if you want to do something in the game for a short while, and log out when your level of attention wanes or something better comes to mind. Quit WoW when you feel you lose the incentive to log on, and resub when that mood suddenly comes back.
That is all there is, no biggie.
That's a terrible analogy. Playing wow is like playing tennis? Playing wow is like digging holes in the ground. I'm sure you can find THAT fun. How about chopping wood? Sure those things have the capability of being fun, for a few minutes. But after a while it's nothing but work.
Its amazing how many people love digging holes=) Going on a raid a few times a week IS fun. It only gets repetitive if you're doing it multiple times a night day after day after day in the same dungeon. Considering how many different dungeons there are, anyone with a normal play schedual would be hard pressed to find it overly repetitive since you can do so many. 10 times is a lot for one dungeon. But even then, if you're actually figuring it out, thats part of the fun. The first 5 or 6 times, you haven't mastered the thing, unless you're using a walk through and if thats the case, I feel zero sympathy for anyone's BORDOM. Thats YOUR freakin fault for cheating. Once its on farm status and you're sleep walking your way through, its time to move on though. Doing a dungeon by following a step by step guide NEVER makes it more fun. Sorry.
If you don't like PvE, then your opinion means nothing anyway;) Considernig WOW has some the best PvE of any MMO, if WOW is boring they all are, which also means your opinion makes no difference. Eventually content in a MMO gets repetitve. PvE, PvP...ALL of it. It'll ALWAYS get repetitve. The type of game doesnt' matter. You play one long enough, you're doing the same thing day after day at some point. Its the nature of the beast and its NEVER going to change until we're all living in the Matrix.
Raiding and dungeons never got repetitive, but I never got to do any of that because of how many hours you had to spend in LFG to get a group for anything. So what's there left to do when you're prot spec and can't find a group for anything? Can't pvp, you're prot spec. So, what can you do? Farm.
Farming is the most reptitive and annoying chore ever. It is the worst part of MMOs and one of the biggest reasons I quit wow. But farming was the only way to really make money for me. My profession took more money than it made because I had to level it up so much first before I could make anything at a profit. My spec was terrible for questing, so dailies took a long time to do. I didn't have any time to raid because of my RL schedule and dungeons took on average about 2 hours to get groups for.
Raiding and dungeons may not be that repetitive. But questing? Farming? The stuff you do when you can't find a group? That stuff is so boring it could make you cry.
My cousin did the same thing man. He has been playing WOW for the past 3-4 years and had all these level 80's and one day was like, "wow i've wasted soo much time in this game." Then he just quit. But,i think i have a game that you'd like its not on this website SURPRISINGLY enough, it's called civory. you take control of your own city and control it and make descisions for it and upgrade your building etc. I thought it would be just another one of the "Oh control your own city blah,blah,blah!" games but its not. its actually a really cool game i just started playing it like a few hours ago and i'm hooked! you should check it out.
Couple weeks ago I restarted on my 4th wow server. It doesn't bother me to level again as I actually read the quests and don't rush to the end. Main reason behind this there is nothing I HATE more than the raiding community in WoW. Don't get me wrong there are some decent people but it seems once people get into that mindset they change and not in a good way. Blizzard really needs to give something to non raiders other than pvp or heroics. The gear doesn't have to be equal to raid gear I could careless as I'm not trying to flex my epeen. Just give me some long involved storyline quests that will get me gear that is good and looks different so nonraiders/nonpvpers have something for them in the end.
I quit wow simply because I was tired of it. It did not feel like a real open world a full world that lives and breaths.
FFXI feels like that kinda world with a amazing amount of things to do on there. Thats why I play it. I never have to follow a pattern or stick to a rut there are so many ways to get solid gear and have fun at the same time.
After getting my level 80 elemental shaman in a raid guild, after doing the same 3-4 heroic instances to get the gear i needed to raid, I joined a raid guild, constantly we did the same raid naxxramas, eye of eternity and malygos those three same raids, the same thing over and over and over again. Just hoping for loot. When I was leveling my alt to 80, something just came accross my mind that this is what I will be doing with this character, the same few instances, to the same few raids just to to keep grinding for loot and waiting months after months for a different raid. There was no different exploration, there was no different content, it was rushing to 80 to do the same grind that i did on my shaman.
Is it worth it? The 15 dollars a month to constantly do this same repetition? Then I quit WoW. but is this problem just in WOW? Are there any mmorpgs with a different end game where there are different goals? If there is can any one recommend me one? I am extremely bored and its not that I am burned out there is a big difference between being burned out and just plain bored.
So can any one recommend me a mmorpg or am I going to go back to single player rpgs and wait for the next best thing?
Well, it boils down to that those raid dungeons are extremely expensive to make and thus, you are encouraged to play them more than once. This is the same everywhere.
Comments
The different is what changes during the repetition.
In WoW, once you've done <insert any instance here> 10 times, there's really not that much else to it. The people might change, but the focus is on beating the instance, and the method to beat it really doesn't change all that much. Tank takes damage, dps deals damage, healer heals. Boss is going to do A, B, C, and you need to do E, F, and G to beat him. WoW really shines the first few repetitions of any part of the game, but can really get dull when you've done it too much and there's nothing else to really do.
This isn't just an issue with WoW - it's an issue with any limited content PvE game, which is just about every PvE based game out there.
The only solution right now is PvP. In PvP, you may be capturing that flag over and over and over, but the situation is constantly changing and evolving into something you haven't played before. Even then, it can get dull and boring after enough repitition.
I think the solution to this issue is expanding gameplay overtime rather than just adding content. In WoW, you can kill mobs, go into an instance and kill mobs with a group, or kill other players. Crafting is very streamlined and not all that interesting. Each expansion just adds more mobs to kill, extra tools to kill stuff with, and new stuff to get when you kill something.
WoW's great from a business standpoint because it's got enough content for millions of casual players to never burn through. For more hardcore and serious gamers, the only thing there for a long period of time is the loot system, and a lot of us have realized that it's a big waste of time. I personally love WoW and plan on returning at some point, but I have no motivation to get on my 80 paladin and grind out some gear in instances I've already played through a bunch. Introduce some new interesting and fun gameplay mechanisms and I'll resub immediately.
The world needs to be more dynamic. We need some GM run invasions. Super mobs should spawn randomly in the world, word gets around, a guild gets everyone together and attacks it while another guild tries to stop them. There's really a lot that can be done with some creativity.
In short, WoW needs to mix it up a bit.
Now that is a much better criticism, and surely you got me half in agreement.
WoW is a game catered to a lot of people, it cannot change daily, as different ppl are in different stage of progression. I agree that if you do the same instance with the same setup 20 times you begin to get used to it. The only purpose left is to improve, to beat your own time records. BUT, wait we can add imagination and try.
How about doing old instances with odd group combinations to test out. How about forming 2 teams of different ppl and race to finish it, starting at the same time, over vent and chat, yell as we rush, wipe. How about chaning alts (blizz will ban you if you let them officially know). I did this, by having each member of my family took on other's alt. How about imposing the rule of no tank group, so ppl have to ping pong aggro. We tried a lot of options, including 5 tank, 5 healer runs. Of course we wipe, but taxing our brains discussion on how we can try it, log on wipe and go back to discussion in the living room, is quite a family union thing.
Last but not least let the baby play in orgrimmar, he would learn the keyboard movement fast, very fast.
I've been playing WoW and other MMOs for a few years now - I actually hit the same wall with WoW ages back, back in the Burning Crusade, and actually left it... only went back after 7 months due to ex-guildies bugging me via MSN to come back... pissed me off since when I did go back they were too busy raiding to play with me... I actually stayed and find some friends to play with, but the same walls are still there, and it's getting worse. Not gonna go into a big spew about why and what I dislike about WoW, but I just wanna say I feel ya bud.
Unfortunately most games will follow the WoW formula since, lets face it, it's addictive and it makes mega bucks for Blizz. There are many other MMOs out there, many with better gameplay and mechanics, but most of which suffers from this one single problem - not enough players. WoW's greatest strength (and weakness) comes from its large player base. I have friends on there, which is why I am still playing atm.
Like I said I play other MMOs too - I can't gurantee you'll like them, but I can give you my thoughts...
Someone have mentioned "Guild Wars" - I have played this game extensively a while back from since its beta days, have completed two of the "chapters" and most of the 3rd chapter and the expansion storylines... I must say one of the best games I have ever played. The game caters for players of every style, and there is just so much to do - amazing fun fast PvP and an extensive and immersive PvE portion which IMO rivals many single player games out there. Exploration, rep grinding, title collecting... you name it its there. With an amazing soundtrack, beautiful graphics, and one of the best character class systems out there... and best of all - it's free to play (well no monthly fees anyways), and it's not about levels or gear, but skills. There are hundreds of skills in this game, each of which can be collected or earned in different ways, and then combined to suit your own playstyle. Suited for group or solo players... this game... blah I can't say enough good things about it. I have to say though it's NOT your average MMO, and if you are coming from WoW you might find some things very limited - you can't jump for example, no mounts, plus everything is instance... But trust me it's a very very decent game with regular content upgrade.
Another game I like is "Vanguard: Saga of Heroes". Amazingly vast and beautiful world with amazing lore, and one of the deepest crafting experience you can find in any MMO. The game is split up into three core areas - adventure, crafting, and something called diplomancy (which is a fun card mini-game which gives you access to amazing lore and stories)... they all intertwine but are like three seperate games... I haven't experienced end game in this game yet, but the community, while small, are friendly and active, and there are some strong raiding going on here if you are so inclined. The world design is open and expansive, and everything, from cities to mobs to dungeons, are very well designed. The dungeons in particular are very well done. Suffers a bit from not having enough players, and also IMO it might be a bit to vast and deep for most players. I actually left this game a couple of times due to there being too much to do lol... The music is among some of the best out there, and the graphics - although plain and generic looking on lower level settings, can be quite beautiful at higher levels. Had one of the worse lauches with bugs galore, but it's improved in leaps and bounds since then, with new contents and features being added from time to time. There are no PvP (more or less) in this game btw.
Lastly a couple of honorable mentions would be "Warhammer Online" and "Age of Conan".
WAR is the game I would recommand for WoW players who no longer like WoW. It is similar in a lot of ways to WoW, but enchances or fixes up many of its problems. Unforuntately as soon as WAR adds or annonces a few feature, WoW copies it...
WAR does have some unique and exciting ideas like its Public Quests (imagine group quests or raids that are set on a map area, which anyone could walk into and join - and then at the end loot is awarded according to contribution), open world PvP which affects the entire gameworld, world achivement and title unlocks which records and rewards you for everything you do, and PvP scenerios (think WoW battlegrounds, but more exciting) which you can join from anywhere. It's an amazing game, but suffers in some areas from not having enough players.
And AoC? Well, hard one to say. Interesting game with some interesting gameplay mechanics and ideas, but was lauched too early. Most of the bugs were fixed though, and a lot of new contents have been added. I haven't been playing this for long, so I can't comment too much, but from what I've read the new director's got some interesting plans for it... and it's still a young game so it might have a good future ahead for it...
Here are my two cents anyways... just wanna say again you are not alone in your thoughts bud...
That's because, in many MMORPGs, most of the quests are dull and generally suck monkey balls. I don't care why you need those ghoul tongues! How many do you need for only one potion?! Why don't you go and pick those flowers yourself?! Can't you just send one of your own privates to send the message or use a goddamn pidgeon or something?! Why send us when you got a whole army?
-I feel like a hero already. Not.
Good motivation for bad quests don't make them good BUT good quests with bad motivation are still good quests. Why bother reading a wall of text? 90% of the time it's some lame excuse like "We need a small group to inflitrate" or "my back is hurting" or "there's monsters everywhere." Quest lines might be more interesting than "quest bubbles".
There's also the curse MMOs: static world. Nothing changes. I have no impact on the world whatsoever. I save the child - he'll need another savior in few minutes. How can I feel a sense of accomplishment if everything I do doesn't last? Atleast there's a ding every once in a while.
If I want questing and lore, I stick to SP RPGs for now.
Excellent counter points! While I agree the , "I need 10 bear hides" type quest are extremely pathetic, and just puts a quest to a grindfest, they are nothing more then fillers, and could easily be made more creative, and even more optional.
Such as, "Hmm, I could make you this awesome bear skin cloak if you bring me 10 bear hides and some threads." First you have to figure, WoW does this in some quest line...but! The "awesome bearskin cloak" is by far inferior to half the mob drops, and most of the stuff you can buy on the auction house for less then a gold.
So what is the developers options? He could make the quest a bit harder, and the rewards better, but no matter what it's still a grind quest. I have hundeeds of ideas on how to counter this, but until I get paid for my ideas, I won't release them
Another great point you made, you have no real effect on this persistant world. Some games have made the attempt to change this. Wow had a couple of quest where only one group could actually finish the quest per server. Did this have any kind of an impact on them? Well, I think they were proud of thier very rare mount they got, other then that nothing.
I can see this as been extremely hard to accomadte from a developers point of view, I mean how do you make it where thousands of people can have an impact on the community? Well you really can't. That would be like trying to take everyone in Los Angeles, and have them make some great contribution to the world, or some tremedous impact on the world.
I will post one of my ideas for a fix for this, and any developer is free to use it, but to get any of my other ideas, or learn from my 15+ years of MMO experiences, you will have to start writing some checks. I am available for freelance consulting work, but I will not relocate.
I think our online worlds need to have a reduced population. Look at one of the earliest MMO's Meridian59. I think at peak a server had 300 people, and that was a busy server. The perks of this? Well when you have played awhile, you know everyone on your server, atleast by name, if not by playing, or talking with them.
With only a few hundred players per server, you can also attempt to organize events easier, and do other things to include the players in parts of the game that a large population just can't do.
Again I can, and will easily give a developer a lot of ideas, yes, a lot of my ideas came from a few other games, but they were great ideas, and could easily be expanded on to make them personalized for any game. Some of my ideas would require the game to be PvE, with a PvP element. but also includes many ideas to prevent rampant PvP problems that rampage other games.
Not so nice guy!
even in four years. with skills maxed. you can run corps. banks. and fleets. go kill everyone once just for fun. no end game in eve. i have 4 accounts learning every day for me. i plan to play in a month 4 boxing is easy too and even play on my wifes laptop. eve is everything i wanted in a game. but just not a fantasy game. i wish eve online makers would comeout with an mmorpg fantasy type game, i'd bet it would be good
That's because, in many MMORPGs, most of the quests are dull and generally suck monkey balls. I don't care why you need those ghoul tongues! How many do you need for only one potion?! Why don't you go and pick those flowers yourself?! Can't you just send one of your own privates to send the message or use a goddamn pidgeon or something?! Why send us when you got a whole army?
-I feel like a hero already. Not.
Good motivation for bad quests don't make them good BUT good quests with bad motivation are still good quests. Why bother reading a wall of text? 90% of the time it's some lame excuse like "We need a small group to inflitrate" or "my back is hurting" or "there's monsters everywhere." Quest lines might be more interesting than "quest bubbles".
There's also the curse MMOs: static world. Nothing changes. I have no impact on the world whatsoever. I save the child - he'll need another savior in few minutes. How can I feel a sense of accomplishment if everything I do doesn't last? Atleast there's a ding every once in a while.
If I want questing and lore, I stick to SP RPGs for now.
If you are into lore, WoW is not bad. There are a lot of mundane genetic quests, every game has those. There are good story arcs and some really epic questline. The chain of events leading to the battle of Undercity, in which you have to go back and recover UC with the queen of the undead, is one such questline. The story arc leading to the opening of shadowvault, the story line to get access to sons of holdir. God, even the first CoS run is epic, you fight alongside arthalas and sees the whole damn story of Warcraft RTS in RPG perspective.
Apart from LOTRo, I have yet to see another game with these epic lore. Name another game in which you have such lore, and constantly pumping up new lore, new instances new everything.
You need to change the world to feel better? Go play games with that design in mind. Eve is one. There is no reason to grumble here.
That's because, in many MMORPGs, most of the quests are dull and generally suck monkey balls. I don't care why you need those ghoul tongues! How many do you need for only one potion?! Why don't you go and pick those flowers yourself?! Can't you just send one of your own privates to send the message or use a goddamn pidgeon or something?! Why send us when you got a whole army?
-I feel like a hero already. Not.
Good motivation for bad quests don't make them good BUT good quests with bad motivation are still good quests. Why bother reading a wall of text? 90% of the time it's some lame excuse like "We need a small group to inflitrate" or "my back is hurting" or "there's monsters everywhere." Quest lines might be more interesting than "quest bubbles".
There's also the curse MMOs: static world. Nothing changes. I have no impact on the world whatsoever. I save the child - he'll need another savior in few minutes. How can I feel a sense of accomplishment if everything I do doesn't last? Atleast there's a ding every once in a while.
If I want questing and lore, I stick to SP RPGs for now.
If you are into lore, WoW is not bad. There are a lot of mundane genetic quests, every game has those. There are good story arcs and some really epic questline. The chain of events leading to the battle of Undercity, in which you have to go back and recover UC with the queen of the undead, is one such questline. The story arc leading to the opening of shadowvault, the story line to get access to sons of holdir. God, even the first CoS run is epic, you fight alongside arthalas and sees the whole damn story of Warcraft RTS in RPG perspective.
Apart from LOTRo, I have yet to see another game with these epic lore. Name another game in which you have such lore, and constantly pumping up new lore, new instances new everything.
You need to change the world to feel better? Go play games with that design in mind. Eve is one. There is no reason to grumble here.
That would be Arthas and it is still the same story. It's a pretty simple story thats being repeated over and over, it's even the exact same voice over used in Warcraft 3 in fact if you dig around the mpq files there's most of WC3 media files in there.
Guy caled Arthas gets a sword and goes bonkers, Blizzard have stated that WoW game is their official lore. It's just seems like a pick and mix of anything fantasy. Ask any of your friends who play WoW what the lore is all about, all of them will mention arthas and lich king, but they rest of it will be "Umm.." There are holes in Blizzards story and they are NOT consistent.
Had to remove signature because of lame code of conduct...
Its amazing how many people love digging holes=) Going on a raid a few times a week IS fun. It only gets repetitive if you're doing it multiple times a night day after day after day in the same dungeon. Considering how many different dungeons there are, anyone with a normal play schedual would be hard pressed to find it overly repetitive since you can do so many. 10 times is a lot for one dungeon. But even then, if you're actually figuring it out, thats part of the fun. The first 5 or 6 times, you haven't mastered the thing, unless you're using a walk through and if thats the case, I feel zero sympathy for anyone's BORDOM. Thats YOUR freakin fault for cheating. Once its on farm status and you're sleep walking your way through, its time to move on though. Doing a dungeon by following a step by step guide NEVER makes it more fun. Sorry.
If you don't like PvE, then your opinion means nothing anyway;) Considernig WOW has some the best PvE of any MMO, if WOW is boring they all are, which also means your opinion makes no difference. Eventually content in a MMO gets repetitve. PvE, PvP...ALL of it. It'll ALWAYS get repetitve. The type of game doesnt' matter. You play one long enough, you're doing the same thing day after day at some point. Its the nature of the beast and its NEVER going to change until we're all living in the Matrix.
Raiding and dungeons never got repetitive, but I never got to do any of that because of how many hours you had to spend in LFG to get a group for anything. So what's there left to do when you're prot spec and can't find a group for anything? Can't pvp, you're prot spec. So, what can you do? Farm.
Farming is the most reptitive and annoying chore ever. It is the worst part of MMOs and one of the biggest reasons I quit wow. But farming was the only way to really make money for me. My profession took more money than it made because I had to level it up so much first before I could make anything at a profit. My spec was terrible for questing, so dailies took a long time to do. I didn't have any time to raid because of my RL schedule and dungeons took on average about 2 hours to get groups for.
Raiding and dungeons may not be that repetitive. But questing? Farming? The stuff you do when you can't find a group? That stuff is so boring it could make you cry.
My cousin did the same thing man. He has been playing WOW for the past 3-4 years and had all these level 80's and one day was like, "wow i've wasted soo much time in this game." Then he just quit. But,i think i have a game that you'd like its not on this website SURPRISINGLY enough, it's called civory. you take control of your own city and control it and make descisions for it and upgrade your building etc. I thought it would be just another one of the "Oh control your own city blah,blah,blah!" games but its not. its actually a really cool game i just started playing it like a few hours ago and i'm hooked! you should check it out.
just got to civory.com
NOTHINGNESS means everything....
All should sign up to EQ2
Better community and good content.
Shame theres not enough people to experience 100% of the content finding groups is hard and with your help this could be achieved
SORRY! the game isnt called CIVORY its CIVONY
civony.com
NOTHINGNESS means everything....
wow is garbage.
who wants to join my runescape clan?
If you do not like repetetive gameplay and loot-mania...don't play MMORPGs. Loot and repetetive raids aren't problems, they're features.
(But yes, I also think WoW has gone worst with WOTLK because of the lacking endgame content, try EQ 1 / EQ 2)
Couple weeks ago I restarted on my 4th wow server. It doesn't bother me to level again as I actually read the quests and don't rush to the end. Main reason behind this there is nothing I HATE more than the raiding community in WoW. Don't get me wrong there are some decent people but it seems once people get into that mindset they change and not in a good way. Blizzard really needs to give something to non raiders other than pvp or heroics. The gear doesn't have to be equal to raid gear I could careless as I'm not trying to flex my epeen. Just give me some long involved storyline quests that will get me gear that is good and looks different so nonraiders/nonpvpers have something for them in the end.
I quit wow simply because I was tired of it. It did not feel like a real open world a full world that lives and breaths.
FFXI feels like that kinda world with a amazing amount of things to do on there. Thats why I play it. I never have to follow a pattern or stick to a rut there are so many ways to get solid gear and have fun at the same time.
Well, it boils down to that those raid dungeons are extremely expensive to make and thus, you are encouraged to play them more than once. This is the same everywhere.
Unless, of course you go for PvP.