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*Sigh*
Stormakov
Member UncommonPosts: 200
First off I'm going to say that I've been playing MMOs since the beggining of time. I bought UO the day it was in stores, and then escalted to EQ and have been hooked on MMOs ever since. I've probably spent most of my years playing DAoC (4 and a half years atleast.) but have tried every single MMO there ever was to try. I am an avid fan of PvP and I don't mind PvE grinds as much as others do (I solo leveled many toons to 50 in DAoC heh).
However, now adays I find myself at a loss. I can't seem to get into any MMO at the moment and I don't know why. I've lost my love for DAoC not because of the game, but because all of my friends have left it. I've been playing WoW on and off, but I just can't seem to get around all the little kiddies running their mouths off 24/7 and the lack of any friendly guilds. I've just recently picked up PSU and enjoy it a great amount, the community is wonderful, but again I am still not feeling the addictive attachment I did when I first started playing MMOs.
I am impatiently awaiting WAR and hope that it is everything they're cracking it up to be.A game that revolves completely around PvP (The fact that you can level off enemy players and aquire randomly generated loot from is a phenomenal idea.) is just what i'm looking for. But I just really want something to give me back that addict's fix for a good MMO.
Is it just me, or is anyone else feeling this way? I feel like MMOs have hit a huge sink hole in the past 3-6 Months and i'm having a hard time rising above it all.
Any comments or suggestions are appreciated, i'm just looking for some awnsers or people who can relate.
Comments
I agree about the PvP XP, it is a good idea, not quite original, but still good.
As to the current slump, a lot of people feel the same way.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Hemingway
Im with you all the way. I too played UO from late Beta and when I sold my 2 accounts I had just cracked 6 years. I also played EQ (as well as UO) for 2 years, then basically everything on mmorpg.com released list and Betad pretty much everything on both lists.
Right now Im playing WoW and Im enjoying it, but mainly because Im in a good guild and I think its more about the social interaction of the game right now than the game itself. Although I do like WoW a lot so
However I really feel your pain. No MMO since UO and EQ and to a certain extent DAoC has caught me like those games did. I remain very hopeful about VSoH and Age of Conan, but beyond that.... its enough to make a guy swap hobbies lately...
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"MMOs, for people that like think chatting is like a skill or something, rotflol"
http://purepwnage.com
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"Far away across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees. To hear the softly spoken magic spell" Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
I guess that is just gonna get worse as the genre becomes more and more mainstream.
A semi-hypothetical example that springs to mind would be:
I wasn't really into comp games when the whole mmo scene took off, save for some rts games and other strategy types so I never played the original MMO's, but what I did used to do was play the old skool rpg/strategy games. We had a gaming club where we would meet once a week and play things like 40k, D&D, Talisman, Blood Bowl, Necromunda, Magic etc etc and it was awesome. The people that came to the club were all of similar like minded personalities, there were never any serious disputes except usually over strategies in the games, choices of troops/characters/cards etc etc and it was all mostly light hearted and playful. We would all share with each other to some extent, we were mostly teenagers and still at school so people would let each other use their different armies in games like 40k and necromunda etc or borrow a deck for a game of magic so that we all didnt need to go out robbin banks to play all the games. Basically we all tried to get on with each other and relax in our few hours every week when we were away from the normal day to day world, a paradise for geeks and semi-geeks if you will
/me takes his rose-tinted spectacles off
Now compare this to the hypothetical part:
Say suddenly all of these games for some reason had suddenly hit a mainstream fad, where the only way to be cool was to play them. Suddenly every asshole that you knew from your high school was playing and joining your club, the general atmosphere quickly became sullied as different backgrounds/personalities and teenage arguments about inconsequential things started breaking out on a regular basis, chav's threatening to break your nose outside if you had the audacity to pwn them in a game, people's cards/models etc starting to mysteriously disappear. Our paradise would have quickly become a nightmare.
Now obviously these are two extremes that I make to help illustrate my point, however, as the MMO genre has become more and more mainstream (originally computer and rpg geeks) the same sort of change is also going on in my opinion. Only the thing that makes it slightly more annoying is that you're not in the same room/town/region/country even continent as the people you play with anymore. Therefore the anonymity of the net and lack of a threat of a good pummeling allows them to be even more annoying and down right offensive. I mean in my war games club we had some goofy/annoying people that would get on yer tits from time to time but a few jokes at their expense or whatever and the always possible but unlikely threat of physical retribution kept them in check.
Unfortunately I cant see this getting better unless some dev's who have rose tinted spec's like mine decide to make a game that won't appeal to mainstream peeps but will catch the attention of old skool rpg-ers, hopefully not just text based games or I'll quite happily go back to single player comp games and old skool D&D. The more people that enter the genre the greater the types of mentalities/personalities that are gonna be playing though. There isn't anything fundamentally wrong with this and I'm not trying to say MMO's are fulll of morons and unfriendly types I dont/wont team/guild with its just an occupational hazard these days in this industry, not sure we can change it now.
Just have to find a group of online like-minded people and try and stick with them, deciding to have a vote every now and again whether you stay in one game or move to another. Obviously you can't please everyone in the group all the time but I'm taking one on the chin for the team at the moment; can't play the game my group is playing for personal reasons so pretty much resigned to waiting till next summer till we all jump ship.
EDIT: I suppose I'm a little unfair in places; there are games that attract more people that I would rather not play with than others but they all have some, a few ignore functions and/or some mental repetition of 'patience is a virtue, patience is a virtue' and its playable. Guess I was just whining about not being able to find another 'paradise' but then it would lose the MMO aspect of the game and I might as well go back to a rl club.
It does make you want to sigh from time to time though
Unlike many people, my first MMO was not my fav nostagia causing good ole days, but once I got into Shadowbane it was so great to have something REAL to fight and die for...
something tangable to go home to, that I was dynamically a part of, help to grow and build, and something that was there, built by OUR hands, day in and day out that was as real to everyone else...
I loved having strangers in my town shopping, and training, it felt like I was mayor of sweetassville!
Nothing no matter how much graphically or mechanically better had been able to capture that for me, AoC is where my hopes are pinned.
The only think with ANY real innovation other than a new kind of timesink or grind.
Something that should be marketed for people who don't have 8 hour stretches to play a game.
Something at least TRYING to pander to adults...
And something where I can make my mark, in the shape of a city, that all can see that I've effected the game in a real sense.
Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood. -Nietzsche
I second that. Stopped sending the MMO pimps my money a LONG time ago. They (the developers and producers) want the games in the genre to be disposable; like Doom and it's many clones. (Look at how many rehashes and sequels of Doom and Quake iD Software itself has made) They want you to enjoy yourself, but not to the point where 1 game will keep you entertained for 10 years. They don't make any money that way.
The way it is now; one grindfest replaces another. You keep burning out on game after game; and they keep giving you more of the same. It keeps your expectations low, the need for their originality low, and their profits high.
Anyone else still fire up Heroes of Might and Magic 3 from time to time? I do. Still a great game. Haven't bought any other 3D0 products since then. And what happened to 3D0? It's not a company anymore, I know that much.
Hope you got your things together. Hope you are quite prepared to die. Looks like we're in for nasty weather. ... There's a bad moon on the rise.
Hope you got your things together. Hope you are quite prepared to die. Looks like we're in for nasty weather. ... There's a bad moon on the rise.
I think the majority on these Forums would agree that we are in a major low point for games worth subbing to at the moment.
The up side is that I have been able to catch up on all the single player stuff I missed out on ( Spellforce for example - RTS/RPG mix - 10/10
This is how I feel about the internet in general Vociferor.
It is a terribly snobish thing to say but it really seems to me that over the past couple of years the net has become overun by weak minded bigots and salesmen. ( I rate those two as equal by the way )
There are few forums around now that aren't renderd worthless by semi literate oafs trying to seem cool ... just like in some MMORPG's I could mention
Look to War for the next game of choice. Many possible hits coming out Q4 2007.
The first is that no new game experience will ever duplicate the magic that each of us felt with the first MMO we liked. It's just human nature. You will never recreate that experience. And all of the MMOs that come later down the road are being subconsciously compared to that original experience, and are (rightly) found lacking.
Second, there just isn't much new. I mean the few attempts to do something "new" have been poorly done (like Auto Assault, for example). There isn't much new or noteworthy or creatively different being produced at the moment, and that is an issue. Sure, new *games* have been released, but the models they use are the same as existing games, more or less, with a few little things here and there tweaked and changed. There hasn't been anything revolutionary for quite some time, and that's creating a moribund situation.
Third, there also has not been, since WoW was released 2 years ago, a game that took an existing genre and made it better. WoW did that with the EQish genre of games, but that's now very old and Blizzard has gone 2 years before adding to its game. In that time there really hasn't been another WoW-like attempt to take one of the other predominant styles of game (either a DAoC style or UO style) to the next level, and as a result the whole thing has become a bit stale.
We'll see about the new ones. There are always people who are enthusiastic about the new ones, and currently I see enthusiasm about AoC and WAR. Enthusiasm is a good thing, but to be honest I am in a wait and see mode as to whether these games actually add anything new or not.
I think gaming in general is in a very moribund state ... offline SP games are not much better off, in my view, at least not any of the ones I'd be interested playing. It's just a slow time for the gaming industry. I mean, what fall/holiday season have we seen so few true blockbuster releases? It's a very slow time.
Unfortunately single player games are not much better off. Look just at RPG's ...
Oblivion surely improved graphic in TES series. But it transformed game with huge and complex system into a xbox console like game.
Gothic and Dark Messiah were released in state of early pre-alfa
And the sequal to best rpg of all times - and one of most ingenious games ever on pc - NWN
Came out as the game that is worse than original in every possible aspect , and it is almost in state of early beta.
What is happening with game companies. I can not fanthom. Today not only that it takes huge amounts of time to release a game. But also designers seem to be taking crazy pills.
If Fergus Urqhart comes out with a game like NWN2 that spits in face of every gameplay logic. The game that blantly spits into promise of multiplayer (although it was the very thing that made nwn1 what it was)
What is than to expect from games on much smaller budget?
What happens when Blizzard. That managed to create only playable MMO in last two years. Totally disregards any sanity check in regard to its expansion and brings you
WoW Burning Crusade - Now with 80% more raid content !
"Before this battle is over all the world will know that few...stood against many." - King Leonidas
True now if we just could figure out why...
It's possible that a game could be subpar without all the bells and whistles and still be really fun it all lies within the community I think....
I think back to my early EQ1 days. I didnt love it because it was a super cool fun game (actually it was kinda slow boring and tedious) the people and interacting with them in "our" world was fun though. Epic battles won and lost with friends. Drama between guilds and players on Rallos Zek the diplomacy it took just to keep your guild alive and not crushed by higher lvl guilds. Some people back then I truely hated their in game persona or how they played now I look back and that is why it was fun.
Which is why I don't play WoW; or any MMO on the market right now- for that matter. Playing my offline single player games; and my online FPS games. That's it- MMORPG can kiss my ass.
Hope you got your things together. Hope you are quite prepared to die. Looks like we're in for nasty weather. ... There's a bad moon on the rise.
I started back in 97 with a little known mmo called the 4th coming. The feeling of starting my first mmo has been equaled a couple times. I played t4c for quite awhile from beta to release to being made a gm and having the power to make my own events/quest for players. It was quite a thrill and privlege.
The first 9 months of playing daoc played a cleric on pellinor until the infamous albion caused nerfage.
I'm still a bit bitter about it.
I jumped around a bit after that AC was pretty good but didn't inspire me to play it with the dedication of the two previous mmo's. I really couldn't get into anything until i got into the wow beta.
I've played through a few betas and i was just utterly floored by how finished wow was three months before release.
Played wow from release for 6 months. Hit 60 way to early like i'm sure a lot of people did at the time. Ran the typical small instances strat,scholo,lbrs,urbs until my eyes bleed out from there sockets. Picked the wrong character again a pallie, here comes that nerf bat to be waved upon me once more! Grew extremely bored and quit.
Tried ryzom, lineage a few others but nothing has kept my attention for long.
Recently I went back to wow to level another character and it's been fun going through some of the old quests and finding others that I didn't complete. I probably won't get anywhere near 60, boredom usually sets in way before that.
A lot of these lineage clones are really old and tired I'm surprised most of them can stay in business.
My hopes reside on darkfall and chronicles of spellborn with pirates of the burning sea being an outsdie pick.
If darkfall lives up to half the hype and they release sometime soon I can see myself having that old feeling again.
Only time will tell.