Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
What I love about MMOs
Gabby-air
Member UncommonPosts: 3,440
Many of you already know this but I haven't played a MMO in awhile, have had too many been there done that moments. So today as I was bored, I went and logged on to my very first MMO...Runescape. A great and extremely under- rated game by the way and in my opinion still the best but that's not the point, you know what i felt? the attachment.
MMOs are suppose to be played over years and you should build your character over the course of months and have a sense of accomplishment for every little piece of equipment you have. To this day I remember getting my first piece of dragon armour and the hours I poured into getting enough money for it.
You just don't find this sort of attachment and progression in single player games. There are certainly exceptions such as Bioware games but these are far and few in between. I used to love coming home and logging into my account right away, trying to multi task with homework and trying to beat my friends to a level. Strategizing with friends and guilds on how to earn money or go plan an event, having a noob guild and everyone together leveling up and eventually being able to take down the highest level monsters.
As I write this, it pains me to see that many of things I love about MMOs now are ruined. The community is gone, the progression is gone, the attachment to gear is gone and most importantly the sense of accomplishment.
As a genre we've grown tremendously in the past few years but I think somewhere we forgot what truly made these games fun.
Comments
I agree, but I think the pendulum will one day swing back, or at least come to the middle once again.
The past five years it feels like hardware has been advancing faster than the tools have been to use it. Developers are being forced to put more time into visuals to be competitive. Maybe that isn't true but it feels that way.
Sent me an email if you want me to mail you some pizza rolls.
The MMO genre isn't ruined. It's just stale.
Poeple are changing, while the MMO aren't changing too much.
Because compagny are afraid to take risk, since it doesn't pay that much in gaming.
Before, Free to play was most likely only the "private server" people were hosting. And most of them were pretty bad compared to the real game. (In term of player).
You had choice of alot of game.
Right now, you have choice of so many game... but the majority are pretty low population, Freemium, Pay to Win or it's a game you've just played too much and you're tired of it.
But some of the "old game" are still here... just... less popular. Then the people will say that "It was the good time". But they just can play their "good time" again.
I really think that nothing is ruined... but we just don't have the same standard that we have before. We always want more, better. And we just don't have that right now.
I'm glad you found Runescape fun and your niche. For me? I can't get into that game to save my life. But...I need better graphics, music and sound quality in my games. It's just the way I'm built. Graphics can be stylized but music and sound need to suck me in like I'm there. Games like Lotro, WoW and AoC do that to me. Plus...I have a really hard time with these top down/isometric MMOs. They just completely detach me from the game. /sigh It sucks because I know I'm missing, from what others say, some great gameplay elements especially in games like Runescape and Ultima Online. My wish is that they take those IPs and gameplay elements and make them the way I like em. Loud, flashy, fun and immersive.
A good example is this latest browser based game, Glitch. It has all the underworkings of what I like in MMOs, a lot fo depth, but I can't stand the delivery. Although...the sound is a little over the top in it lol. Of course, the counter argument is a lot of games built with great graphics and sound/music(very rare) with little to nothing in depth/game elements. Kind of like the upcoming TOR.
If I were to find runescape today I don't think I would last more than a couple of hours, it was my first MMO and at that time I just didn't care much about graphics or anything...the game was just fun. The game looks 100 times better now, back then we still had 2D sprites before runescape 2 eventually came and then now more recently the much improved HD version.
Yeh I know what you mean with Glitch too, I checked it out the other day and it seems to have promise but the presentation is sort of underwhelming. I'll probably still give it another go although I hear it currently lacks a lot of content.
I imagine that all MMO games lack the rigor to deal with challenges that has to do with: pacing, sophistication, immersion and perhpas an awkward possibility in allowing player created content. Even Eve Online is not good enough for me these days, an otherwise great MMO game imo.
It's true. It takes something like 6 times longer to develop assets for the Unreal 3 engine than the Unreal 2 engine. At least twice as long for people who actually know what they are doing.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.