I don't know if it's just the crowd at MMORPG.com or just older people in general who think that the "old days" of mmorpgs were the golden days. As someone who's played over the last 12 years I have not seen any noticeable difference in the quality of players.
Am I blind?
No, but I did take off the rose colored glasses. Back in EQ1 there were hardcore raiders, asshats, anti social jack wagons and so forth. Are there "more" today? Well sure and there are more players too. DAoC's pvp system was not perfect and had a nasty cheat that the "pro" guilds used, but never admitted to till much later and UO was terrible to new players. Were they bad games ... no, but they were not some bastion of awesome like some portray.
A lot of the rant posts I see are people who pretend to be "enlightened". You're not enlightened if you're still railing on ADD kids and having no open world pvp.... you just miss certain aspects of previous games and are trying to tie in changes in the genre to some overall hatred of some meaningless stereotype.
There's no great difference in people over the last 10-12 years. You're just noticing the bad ones more as you grow older.
/off my personal soapbox
I remember in EQ1 there was an issue about killstealing. Whoever did the most damage got the loot rights.
This was happening so much that SOE/Verant decided the best way to handle it was to nerf wizards. So they raised the resist rate on wizard nukes! Nice solution there guys.
Then there was the "Play Nice Policy" because of the rampant training of other players. It was happening so much that SOE made it to where you could report other players for training mobs.
Example #3: Early on in EQ you could drag another players corpse to a safe spot AND you looted their corpse in the process. Does anybody think the looting was changed because the noble and curteous players of EQ were resisting the temptation to rob another player of their hard-earned gear?
The popup permission box that comes up when another player is trying to rez you? That went in because players were helpfully rezzing other players with their worst exp rez spell.
So much of what you see in current MMOs is the product of evolution, developers learning from the glaring mistakes of EQ1 and making damn sure they weren't repeated.
YES! There is indeed with out a doubt that they just might have very well been. Have you played any of todays easy mode single player MMO crap games that todays devs seem to continue to try to shove down our throats since Blizzard sold thier souls to the devil?
The truth shall indeed set you free even though it might piss you off!
I don't think it's a bad analogy, as a community isn't a real community if it's one that's forced to play that way. Just as a wife isn't a loving wife if she actually wants to leave you. You can call it what you want, a wife, a community in the end it's an illusion if it's not how those taking part actually want things to be. Good games do not force you down a path bad games do.
Despite your bad anology (which it was), You have to have a forced community in a MMO, We have a forced community IRL. BUT the thing that makes it diffrent is the "moral" forcing that happens in real life arn't there in game.
For instance, IRL what makes a good community? nice people? a small town? good jobs? none of that can be force in a MMO...
so they had to create other things that "force" us.
I mean in a MMO if you kill the guild leader its not like your going to go to prision for 50 years. Also no one is "forcing" me to craft in a mmo...its not like I really need that food or clothing. and when it rains? just stand in the rain.
People miistake community and human interaftion. Interaction - competition, cooperation, grouping, command pvp etc - I'm all for. Community - finding friends and buildng a social circle together - I don't want. I'm not looking for friends in online games anymore. Nor for social network. I have one already in real life, don't need any more.
In game friends.. not real friends....
That's half the reason why I probably subconsiously don't like vent/TS and preffer typing. Bit too personal...lol.
PS, I thought people crying about "forced grouping" and "forced pvp" were really rather pathetic, but bemoaning "forced communties" in what are supposed to be multiplayer worlds... really? People will not be happy until other players are fully removed from mmos and replaced by half assed AI and a link to facebook.
I don't get it either. People want to play MMOs, but they want to do it little to none of the social interaction inherent to MMOs. They don't want to be dependent or interact with other players, and just want to be able to solo through everything on their own terms. Why the hell are they even playing an MMO then? They might as well just play an SPRPG.
Ironically, Diablo 3 will probably be the best "MMO" to date for the current generation of "MMOs", considering it's forced online play, RMAH, and complete solo-ability... it's really getting pathetic on the MMO scence with where things are going.
Is your wife your wife if she feels forced to be with you? No, just as a community is not a community if it's forced...
Communities cannot thrive in an environment that does not support them.
New MMOs lack incentive for players to interact positively with each other, and lack consequences for those who interact poorly with other players.
Just the same where in real life if there is little to no benefit to others working together, and little to no infrastructive of law and order to deter anti-social behavior (i.e. theft, murder, etc), then communities dissolve into social anarchy.
In other words, it's not forced community, it's encourage community and discouraged anti-social behavior. If you don't want to participate in an online community, don't play an MMO.
LOL, thank you, sir! I guess people forgot what the acronym MMORPG stood for. There's good SPRPGs out there on the various platforms.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
I 110% disagree with the OP I have been a avid mmo player for many years, Played UO from release till Stygian Abyss
Played EQ from release till Ldon
wow from releas till current and many other games inbetween from eve to darkfall daoc you name it i prob have played it.
At any rate i am going to say that the skill level of the players has declined by HUGE ammounts.
Players today are just not as skilled as they were back in the good days of mmos.
Here are a few reasons why
MMOS for the most part have become much more easy to play and adjust to as well as much much more easy to get max level, So easy that people hardly have to learn to play the class to hit max level. Anyone remember the exp lose of eq1 or the items that you would lose when you died in Linage 2 or UO? Punishing a player for being stupid is not always a bad thing it forced people to learn to play the game.
An other factor that i think plays a role is back in the UO / EQ days your PC would run you $2000++ easy if not in the $3000 range to be able to play these games. Why does this matter? Well most of the people who could drop that kind of money may have been a tad more smart then todays current gamers who can put a 300 dollar pc on lay away at walmart.
Bottom Line is players today are far less skilled then players of the past if the OP is really a 12 yea vet he would know this.
Im thinking more like wow fanboy who doesn''t play the game so well.
I really don't feel like writing the same post twice so just look at the post above yours.
I read it and found it contained little sense i'm afraid. Content that requires players to interact does not force people who do not like each other to interact. I'm no WoW advocate but you do realise that if you don't want to go on a raid with a load of arsehats no one is forcing you to raid with them.
If someone cannot get on with enough people to actively thrive in a social game then that says far more about the individual than some horse shit notion of the game "forcing" community upon them.
You say SWG was an example of non forced community. Um well there is content in there that requires a group and if you happen to be a complete antisocial rtard then by your logic SWG is just as guilty of "forced" community. So is RL and so is anything that requires social interaction.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
I don't know if it's just the crowd at MMORPG.com or just older people in general who think that the "old days" of mmorpgs were the golden days. As someone who's played over the last 12 years I have not seen any noticeable difference in the quality of players.
Am I blind?
No, but I did take off the rose colored glasses. Back in EQ1 there were hardcore raiders, asshats, anti social jack wagons and so forth. Are there "more" today? Well sure and there are more players too. DAoC's pvp system was not perfect and had a nasty cheat that the "pro" guilds used, but never admitted to till much later and UO was terrible to new players. Were they bad games ... no, but they were not some bastion of awesome like some portray.
A lot of the rant posts I see are people who pretend to be "enlightened". You're not enlightened if you're still railing on ADD kids and having no open world pvp.... you just miss certain aspects of previous games and are trying to tie in changes in the genre to some overall hatred of some meaningless stereotype.
There's no great difference in people over the last 10-12 years. You're just noticing the bad ones more as you grow older.
/off my personal soapbox
It's just the internet in general...and I think a sign of the times.
Better no, but they were more closely tied together.
The MMO community were smaller then and the games were more social then now. Soloing weren't as easy and if you act like an @sshat you would never get that group you needed.
Since the need and greed mechanics hit the MMOs together with more soloing and a lot more instances it went downward fast.
The games do shape the gamers even if the people playing them are the same or not.
Well I gave to agree with your premise per usual Loke.
I would say though that the solo ability WoW ushered in was a double edged sword though. If you played EQ latenight, you were aware of how some nights you could go without KEI. Or a healer....or tank etc.
WoW allowed folks to play as their schedule fit them. No longer were you tied for multiple hrs. Lets face it, if you had a rep as someone that routinely bails on groups, you had a bad name just like ninjas. Instead folks suffered the next day at work/etc cause they were forced to play much longer that they had desired.
EQ helped that somewhat when they allowed bods to be summoned to that one zone in PoK....but until they put in hirelings, you still were at the mercy of who was on.
I am done with MMOs AFAIK. Playing TOR for the story, and maybe a little MMO play...but not much. Solo style fits me well. I would like to see where MMOs make it that raids are basically our old groups(say 6 to 10 folks). Tune the content to be challenging, and not ever have the zerg mechanics in place again in a MMO. Make it last 1 to 2 hrs. Give about 8 to 10% better gear.
That way a person can have their solo/duo content with a friend, and if they went to get a larger group to run bigger content, they can as well.
IMO the days of 40 to 72 man raids should be a thing of the past.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
Better no, but they were more closely tied together.
The MMO community were smaller then and the games were more social then now. Soloing weren't as easy and if you act like an @sshat you would never get that group you needed.
Since the need and greed mechanics hit the MMOs together with more soloing and a lot more instances it went downward fast.
The games do shape the gamers even if the people playing them are the same or not.
Well I gave to agree with your premise per usual Loke.
I would say though that the solo ability WoW ushered in was a double edged sword though. If you played EQ latenight, you were aware of how some nights you could go without KEI. Or a healer....or tank etc.
WoW allowed folks to play as their schedule fit them. No longer were you tied for multiple hrs. Lets face it, if you had a rep as someone that routinely bails on groups, you had a bad name just like ninjas. Instead folks suffered the next day at work/etc cause they were forced to play much longer that they had desired.
EQ helped that somewhat when they allowed bods to be summoned to that one zone in PoK....but until they put in hirelings, you still were at the mercy of who was on.
I am done with MMOs AFAIK. Playing TOR for the story, and maybe a little MMO play...but not much. Solo style fits me well. I would like to see where MMOs make it that raids are basically our old groups(say 6 to 10 folks). Tune the content to be challenging, and not ever have the zerg mechanics in place again in a MMO. Make it last 1 to 2 hrs. Give about 8 to 10% better gear.
That way a person can have their solo/duo content with a friend, and if they went to get a larger group to run bigger content, they can as well.
IMO the days of 40 to 72 man raids should be a thing of the past.
The things you don't seam to understand is that the WOW ability to solo was a reaction to the EQ prohibition of solo gameplay. Because EQ really prohibit solo players back then if you don't remmember, seam like people have very short memories. The whole themepark was an anti solo fest, and Wow like in many themepark domain kick the genre right in the balls. Those games EQ/Wow are like at the opposite extreme, even thought they are both themeparks. But Wow was a reaction to EQ, because poeple were asking to this over and over in all mmo forums around the globe, in mmorpg.com as well. But people just don't have a clue and think everything happen just like that without any rational reason.
Better no, but they were more closely tied together.
The MMO community were smaller then and the games were more social then now. Soloing weren't as easy and if you act like an @sshat you would never get that group you needed.
Since the need and greed mechanics hit the MMOs together with more soloing and a lot more instances it went downward fast.
The games do shape the gamers even if the people playing them are the same or not.
Well I gave to agree with your premise per usual Loke.
I would say though that the solo ability WoW ushered in was a double edged sword though. If you played EQ latenight, you were aware of how some nights you could go without KEI. Or a healer....or tank etc.
WoW allowed folks to play as their schedule fit them. No longer were you tied for multiple hrs. Lets face it, if you had a rep as someone that routinely bails on groups, you had a bad name just like ninjas. Instead folks suffered the next day at work/etc cause they were forced to play much longer that they had desired.
EQ helped that somewhat when they allowed bods to be summoned to that one zone in PoK....but until they put in hirelings, you still were at the mercy of who was on.
I am done with MMOs AFAIK. Playing TOR for the story, and maybe a little MMO play...but not much. Solo style fits me well. I would like to see where MMOs make it that raids are basically our old groups(say 6 to 10 folks). Tune the content to be challenging, and not ever have the zerg mechanics in place again in a MMO. Make it last 1 to 2 hrs. Give about 8 to 10% better gear.
That way a person can have their solo/duo content with a friend, and if they went to get a larger group to run bigger content, they can as well.
IMO the days of 40 to 72 man raids should be a thing of the past.
The things you don't seam to understand is that the WOW ability to solo was a reaction to the EQ prohibition of solo gameplay. Because EQ really prohibit solo players back then if you don't remmember, seam like people have very short memories. The whole themepark was an anti solo fest, and Wow like in many themepark domain kick the genre right in the balls. Those games EQ/Wow are like at the opposite extreme, even thought they are both themeparks. But Wow was a reaction to EQ, because poeple were asking to this over and over in all mmo forums around the globe, in mmorpg.com as well. But people just don't have a clue and think everything happen just like that without any rational reason.
Did you read my post?
I played EQ from Feb 01 till mid 06....I know what it was about. If you had bothered to read, you would see I addressed needing others.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
Better no, but they were more closely tied together.
The MMO community were smaller then and the games were more social then now. Soloing weren't as easy and if you act like an @sshat you would never get that group you needed.
Since the need and greed mechanics hit the MMOs together with more soloing and a lot more instances it went downward fast.
The games do shape the gamers even if the people playing them are the same or not.
Well I gave to agree with your premise per usual Loke.
I would say though that the solo ability WoW ushered in was a double edged sword though. If you played EQ latenight, you were aware of how some nights you could go without KEI. Or a healer....or tank etc.
WoW allowed folks to play as their schedule fit them. No longer were you tied for multiple hrs. Lets face it, if you had a rep as someone that routinely bails on groups, you had a bad name just like ninjas. Instead folks suffered the next day at work/etc cause they were forced to play much longer that they had desired.
EQ helped that somewhat when they allowed bods to be summoned to that one zone in PoK....but until they put in hirelings, you still were at the mercy of who was on.
I am done with MMOs AFAIK. Playing TOR for the story, and maybe a little MMO play...but not much. Solo style fits me well. I would like to see where MMOs make it that raids are basically our old groups(say 6 to 10 folks). Tune the content to be challenging, and not ever have the zerg mechanics in place again in a MMO. Make it last 1 to 2 hrs. Give about 8 to 10% better gear.
That way a person can have their solo/duo content with a friend, and if they went to get a larger group to run bigger content, they can as well.
IMO the days of 40 to 72 man raids should be a thing of the past.
The things you don't seam to understand is that the WOW ability to solo was a reaction to the EQ prohibition of solo gameplay. Because EQ really prohibit solo players back then if you don't remmember, seam like people have very short memories. The whole themepark was an anti solo fest, and Wow like in many themepark domain kick the genre right in the balls. Those games EQ/Wow are like at the opposite extreme, even thought they are both themeparks. But Wow was a reaction to EQ, because poeple were asking to this over and over in all mmo forums around the globe, in mmorpg.com as well. But people just don't have a clue and think everything happen just like that without any rational reason.
Did you read my post?
I played EQ from Feb 01 till mid 06....I know what it was about. If you had bothered to read, you would see I addressed needing others.
Well i wasn't pointing at you particularly, shouldn't have quoted you i guess, even if your post made me react and write what i did. I was talking to the general consensus in this thread that solo gaming is bad, and we should go back to group play. My point was to put back fact where they belong, because its clear most people or forgot or are unaware of them.
DAoC's pvp system was not perfect and had a nasty cheat that the "pro" guilds used, but never admitted to till much later and UO was terrible to new players. Were they bad games ... no, but they were not some bastion of awesome like some portray.
I think DAOC is a fine example on how people back then WERE BETTER.
The thing that most people seem to be oblivious to, is that 3 facions are always a 2 faction-game in potence. More often than not the dynamics become "2 factions ally and bang on the third".
Whie this is great when the 2 small ones ally against the big fish in the pond, its a death knoll for the game when the 2 big ones bang on the smaller.
in DaoC there was a lot of the first, and not so much on the second, and even then, not for long.
People would willingly reroll from the zerg to the underdog at the tip of a hat. Big nations would sign truces with the other 2 to help them catch up in terms of active population, level and gear.
Compare it to nowaday's WAR.
Among many other things, small and big, WAR died simply because the game mechanics favoured a "rich grow richer poor grow poorer" environment, and NOWADAYS players simply jumped ship to whatever realm was the strongest.
It was demential, as soon as one side, be it order or destruction gained momentum, everybody and their dog would either reroll to them or quit the server and move to another where their realm of preference had the advantage.
In servers with heavy facion imbalance, you could witness over and over again a 2-step recipe for failure.
1) people in the underdog would either ragequit the game, reroll to the other faction, or move to other server where they could get their easymode zerging.
It never occurred to them that biting the bullet and working to improve, or hell, simply playing the game as it is, against unfavourable odds could be even MORE fun.
2) people in the zerg realm would NEVER reroll to the underdog, would NEVER help them thru truces or whatever.
They would curbstomp them wherever they found them, at every chance. Then spit on their corpses.
Then that people would find themselves in a dead server due to utter lack of opposition, cry to Mythic that their game "sucked" even tho it was THEIR FAULT for PURPOSEDLY going after the ezmode, and leave the game out of sheer boredom.
/golfclap retards
"back then" people would make things work
this generation of "I want it all, in a silver plate, and i want it now" morons kill games, then blame the developer and leave
I think there is a very vocal portion of players as a whole (not just in this agerange or that) who have gotten pretty lazy and demanding in recent years. Also: larger. Games have improved, a lot. They cater more to player desires. A lot. The novelty of being able to play online with thousands of other folks in the same persistant world has worn off, and the entitlement has set in.
They want challenge, but they want it handed to them on a silver platter and they want to get lots of head pats and prizes for success. They want lore but they don't want to read quest text. They want to be rewarded for everything they do, and they want those rewards to be better than whoever decided to go around doing something else. They don't want to quest. They don't want to grind. They want leveling to be satifying but not fast. Not slow either. They want immense worlds, but they don't want to have to spend lots of time traveling across it.
It goes on. And I know it's kind of typical of the human condition, so on and so forth, but it's frustrating to see so many people so intent on not enjoying the games that they play.
Simply put, new players are 'worst' in terms of needing instant gratifcation. Old players are 'worst' in terms that they feel that even simple tasks should be made difficult and into a 'chore' just because it makes it 'harder' despite the fact its more tedious then it ever was difficult.
I say, excellent summation of the salient points. Sums up my opinion on this whole tedious argument succinctly.
People are the same but I think the big difference is how games today are designed. In another thread someone had a good description of how games have become all about compotition, down to ever last detail. People are always competeing for rolls, for xp, for spawns and gear. Instead of looking at another person as someone to play with that person could leech my xp, win my gear drop, grab my spawn first, etc. You are set in direct conflict with everyone else and unfortunetly direct conflict brings out the worst in many people. This of course happened in older games also but now there is much more to fight over and the stakes are much higher. If you don't win that sword you can't progress, if you don't maximize your xp gains you will be out leveled. Plus add on the fact that every item has a real world value to it you twist the screws that much more.
People are the same but I think the big difference is how games today are designed. In another thread someone had a good description of how games have become all about compotition, down to ever last detail. People are always competeing for rolls, for xp, for spawns and gear. Instead of looking at another person as someone to play with that person could leech my xp, win my gear drop, grab my spawn first, etc. You are set in direct conflict with everyone else and unfortunetly direct conflict brings out the worst in many people. This of course happened in older games also but now there is much more to fight over and the stakes are much higher. If you don't win that sword you can't progress, if you don't maximize your xp gains you will be out leveled. Plus add on the fact that every item has a real world value to it you twist the screws that much more.
What you said, but the single player design is more of an issue. I only hope GW2 truly is cooperative to save the genre.
The people may have not been any different back then, but the way they acted toward one another, in general, was much different, in my opinion. I believe this is largely attributed to the game mechanics. Players were much more interdependent than they are in modern games, in my experience.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Yes things were "better" back in the day. But EQ1 and DAoC wasnt really back in the day.
For the those of us who remember AOL and the days of the early internet, oh around 1991-1995. The playerbase for online games, was considerabley smaller, and more mature, as it was made up mostly of adults over the age of 25. Because most online games back then used to charge by the hour, OMG!!! I can remember some of Kesmei's later products used to charge 2.99 a hour. Online gaming was still very geeky, and not mainstream like now. Where you have every kid and his mother playing online games, because its the cool thing to do.
Now todays online gamers, do the same thing as they do in real life. Some are bullies, others are bullied. The roles maybe reversed in their real life world, the bully in a online game may in fact be the bullied in the real world. This isnt always true but sometimes it is. That is the draw of the internet and MMO games, its not just that you can play something else and do something you cant do in real life. Its the fact that you can be someone else, someone you are not in real life. If you are a social intravert you can be the most popular person in the forums because you are great and trolling or bullying other players.
This is the state or st8 of the internet gaming industry.
Comments
I remember in EQ1 there was an issue about killstealing. Whoever did the most damage got the loot rights.
This was happening so much that SOE/Verant decided the best way to handle it was to nerf wizards. So they raised the resist rate on wizard nukes! Nice solution there guys.
Then there was the "Play Nice Policy" because of the rampant training of other players. It was happening so much that SOE made it to where you could report other players for training mobs.
Example #3: Early on in EQ you could drag another players corpse to a safe spot AND you looted their corpse in the process. Does anybody think the looting was changed because the noble and curteous players of EQ were resisting the temptation to rob another player of their hard-earned gear?
The popup permission box that comes up when another player is trying to rez you? That went in because players were helpfully rezzing other players with their worst exp rez spell.
So much of what you see in current MMOs is the product of evolution, developers learning from the glaring mistakes of EQ1 and making damn sure they weren't repeated.
My youtube MMO gaming channel
YES! There is indeed with out a doubt that they just might have very well been. Have you played any of todays easy mode single player MMO crap games that todays devs seem to continue to try to shove down our throats since Blizzard sold thier souls to the devil?
The truth shall indeed set you free even though it might piss you off!
The truth hurts.. Think about it!
just......think about it.....
Despite your bad anology (which it was), You have to have a forced community in a MMO, We have a forced community IRL. BUT the thing that makes it diffrent is the "moral" forcing that happens in real life arn't there in game.
For instance, IRL what makes a good community? nice people? a small town? good jobs? none of that can be force in a MMO...
so they had to create other things that "force" us.
I mean in a MMO if you kill the guild leader its not like your going to go to prision for 50 years. Also no one is "forcing" me to craft in a mmo...its not like I really need that food or clothing. and when it rains? just stand in the rain.
Please check out my channel. I do gaming reviews, gaming related reviews & lets plays. Thanks!
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In game friends.. not real friends....
That's half the reason why I probably subconsiously don't like vent/TS and preffer typing. Bit too personal...lol.
LOL, thank you, sir! I guess people forgot what the acronym MMORPG stood for. There's good SPRPGs out there on the various platforms.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
I have to jump in on this one.
I 110% disagree with the OP I have been a avid mmo player for many years, Played UO from release till Stygian Abyss
Played EQ from release till Ldon
wow from releas till current and many other games inbetween from eve to darkfall daoc you name it i prob have played it.
At any rate i am going to say that the skill level of the players has declined by HUGE ammounts.
Players today are just not as skilled as they were back in the good days of mmos.
Here are a few reasons why
MMOS for the most part have become much more easy to play and adjust to as well as much much more easy to get max level, So easy that people hardly have to learn to play the class to hit max level. Anyone remember the exp lose of eq1 or the items that you would lose when you died in Linage 2 or UO? Punishing a player for being stupid is not always a bad thing it forced people to learn to play the game.
An other factor that i think plays a role is back in the UO / EQ days your PC would run you $2000++ easy if not in the $3000 range to be able to play these games. Why does this matter? Well most of the people who could drop that kind of money may have been a tad more smart then todays current gamers who can put a 300 dollar pc on lay away at walmart.
Bottom Line is players today are far less skilled then players of the past if the OP is really a 12 yea vet he would know this.
Im thinking more like wow fanboy who doesn''t play the game so well.
I read it and found it contained little sense i'm afraid. Content that requires players to interact does not force people who do not like each other to interact. I'm no WoW advocate but you do realise that if you don't want to go on a raid with a load of arsehats no one is forcing you to raid with them.
If someone cannot get on with enough people to actively thrive in a social game then that says far more about the individual than some horse shit notion of the game "forcing" community upon them.
You say SWG was an example of non forced community. Um well there is content in there that requires a group and if you happen to be a complete antisocial rtard then by your logic SWG is just as guilty of "forced" community. So is RL and so is anything that requires social interaction.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
It's just the internet in general...and I think a sign of the times.
Well I gave to agree with your premise per usual Loke.
I would say though that the solo ability WoW ushered in was a double edged sword though. If you played EQ latenight, you were aware of how some nights you could go without KEI. Or a healer....or tank etc.
WoW allowed folks to play as their schedule fit them. No longer were you tied for multiple hrs. Lets face it, if you had a rep as someone that routinely bails on groups, you had a bad name just like ninjas. Instead folks suffered the next day at work/etc cause they were forced to play much longer that they had desired.
EQ helped that somewhat when they allowed bods to be summoned to that one zone in PoK....but until they put in hirelings, you still were at the mercy of who was on.
I am done with MMOs AFAIK. Playing TOR for the story, and maybe a little MMO play...but not much. Solo style fits me well. I would like to see where MMOs make it that raids are basically our old groups(say 6 to 10 folks). Tune the content to be challenging, and not ever have the zerg mechanics in place again in a MMO. Make it last 1 to 2 hrs. Give about 8 to 10% better gear.
That way a person can have their solo/duo content with a friend, and if they went to get a larger group to run bigger content, they can as well.
IMO the days of 40 to 72 man raids should be a thing of the past.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
The things you don't seam to understand is that the WOW ability to solo was a reaction to the EQ prohibition of solo gameplay. Because EQ really prohibit solo players back then if you don't remmember, seam like people have very short memories. The whole themepark was an anti solo fest, and Wow like in many themepark domain kick the genre right in the balls. Those games EQ/Wow are like at the opposite extreme, even thought they are both themeparks. But Wow was a reaction to EQ, because poeple were asking to this over and over in all mmo forums around the globe, in mmorpg.com as well. But people just don't have a clue and think everything happen just like that without any rational reason.
Did you read my post?
I played EQ from Feb 01 till mid 06....I know what it was about. If you had bothered to read, you would see I addressed needing others.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
Well i wasn't pointing at you particularly, shouldn't have quoted you i guess, even if your post made me react and write what i did. I was talking to the general consensus in this thread that solo gaming is bad, and we should go back to group play. My point was to put back fact where they belong, because its clear most people or forgot or are unaware of them.
I think DAOC is a fine example on how people back then WERE BETTER.
The thing that most people seem to be oblivious to, is that 3 facions are always a 2 faction-game in potence. More often than not the dynamics become "2 factions ally and bang on the third".
Whie this is great when the 2 small ones ally against the big fish in the pond, its a death knoll for the game when the 2 big ones bang on the smaller.
in DaoC there was a lot of the first, and not so much on the second, and even then, not for long.
People would willingly reroll from the zerg to the underdog at the tip of a hat. Big nations would sign truces with the other 2 to help them catch up in terms of active population, level and gear.
Compare it to nowaday's WAR.
Among many other things, small and big, WAR died simply because the game mechanics favoured a "rich grow richer poor grow poorer" environment, and NOWADAYS players simply jumped ship to whatever realm was the strongest.
It was demential, as soon as one side, be it order or destruction gained momentum, everybody and their dog would either reroll to them or quit the server and move to another where their realm of preference had the advantage.
In servers with heavy facion imbalance, you could witness over and over again a 2-step recipe for failure.
1) people in the underdog would either ragequit the game, reroll to the other faction, or move to other server where they could get their easymode zerging.
It never occurred to them that biting the bullet and working to improve, or hell, simply playing the game as it is, against unfavourable odds could be even MORE fun.
2) people in the zerg realm would NEVER reroll to the underdog, would NEVER help them thru truces or whatever.
They would curbstomp them wherever they found them, at every chance. Then spit on their corpses.
Then that people would find themselves in a dead server due to utter lack of opposition, cry to Mythic that their game "sucked" even tho it was THEIR FAULT for PURPOSEDLY going after the ezmode, and leave the game out of sheer boredom.
/golfclap retards
"back then" people would make things work
this generation of "I want it all, in a silver plate, and i want it now" morons kill games, then blame the developer and leave
simple as that
I think there is a very vocal portion of players as a whole (not just in this agerange or that) who have gotten pretty lazy and demanding in recent years. Also: larger. Games have improved, a lot. They cater more to player desires. A lot. The novelty of being able to play online with thousands of other folks in the same persistant world has worn off, and the entitlement has set in.
They want challenge, but they want it handed to them on a silver platter and they want to get lots of head pats and prizes for success. They want lore but they don't want to read quest text. They want to be rewarded for everything they do, and they want those rewards to be better than whoever decided to go around doing something else. They don't want to quest. They don't want to grind. They want leveling to be satifying but not fast. Not slow either. They want immense worlds, but they don't want to have to spend lots of time traveling across it.
It goes on. And I know it's kind of typical of the human condition, so on and so forth, but it's frustrating to see so many people so intent on not enjoying the games that they play.
I say, excellent summation of the salient points. Sums up my opinion on this whole tedious argument succinctly.
People are the same but I think the big difference is how games today are designed. In another thread someone had a good description of how games have become all about compotition, down to ever last detail. People are always competeing for rolls, for xp, for spawns and gear. Instead of looking at another person as someone to play with that person could leech my xp, win my gear drop, grab my spawn first, etc. You are set in direct conflict with everyone else and unfortunetly direct conflict brings out the worst in many people. This of course happened in older games also but now there is much more to fight over and the stakes are much higher. If you don't win that sword you can't progress, if you don't maximize your xp gains you will be out leveled. Plus add on the fact that every item has a real world value to it you twist the screws that much more.
What you said, but the single player design is more of an issue. I only hope GW2 truly is cooperative to save the genre.
I agree with the OP.
Companies target casuals because of their number and because we casual gamers have larger disposable income.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
The people may have not been any different back then, but the way they acted toward one another, in general, was much different, in my opinion. I believe this is largely attributed to the game mechanics. Players were much more interdependent than they are in modern games, in my experience.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
To the OP...
Yes things were "better" back in the day. But EQ1 and DAoC wasnt really back in the day.
For the those of us who remember AOL and the days of the early internet, oh around 1991-1995. The playerbase for online games, was considerabley smaller, and more mature, as it was made up mostly of adults over the age of 25. Because most online games back then used to charge by the hour, OMG!!! I can remember some of Kesmei's later products used to charge 2.99 a hour. Online gaming was still very geeky, and not mainstream like now. Where you have every kid and his mother playing online games, because its the cool thing to do.
Now todays online gamers, do the same thing as they do in real life. Some are bullies, others are bullied. The roles maybe reversed in their real life world, the bully in a online game may in fact be the bullied in the real world. This isnt always true but sometimes it is. That is the draw of the internet and MMO games, its not just that you can play something else and do something you cant do in real life. Its the fact that you can be someone else, someone you are not in real life. If you are a social intravert you can be the most popular person in the forums because you are great and trolling or bullying other players.
This is the state or st8 of the internet gaming industry.
So much crap, so little quality.