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Where is the MM in MMORPG?
Mylon
Member Posts: 975
WoW is a strange game. It's hard to go anywhere without tripping over a couple people that play the game. But there's something curious about this. A tiny, tiny portion of the people you meet outside of the game will be able to play with you inside of the game. They're either on a different server, on a different side, at a different level, or, perhaps, not part of the "leet 40" of your raiding party. There's maybe 20 people you know IRL among your acquaintances that play the game, but you won't ever meet them in the game. Most friends in the game have to be made in the game. And you probably won't really play with that many people anyway.
And this isn't just WoW. This is most MMORPGs. It's just more pronounced in WoW because it has more servers than other games. The point is these games really aren't that massive. For all of the hype about 100,000 subscribers or whatever a particular MMO has, most server populations have some 3k people online at a time, if that.
I'm sick of games that split their playerbase up. Eve online and Guild Wars are two of the few games where any player can play with anyone else. Instancing or whatnot I could care less about. If it keeps the playerbase undivded I think it's worth it. In Eve, for example, when anything big happens in the "world", it's news and it impacts everyone. In other MMOs, when something happens, only the people on your server care because it doesn't affect anyone else.
And this isn't just WoW. This is most MMORPGs. It's just more pronounced in WoW because it has more servers than other games. The point is these games really aren't that massive. For all of the hype about 100,000 subscribers or whatever a particular MMO has, most server populations have some 3k people online at a time, if that.
I'm sick of games that split their playerbase up. Eve online and Guild Wars are two of the few games where any player can play with anyone else. Instancing or whatnot I could care less about. If it keeps the playerbase undivded I think it's worth it. In Eve, for example, when anything big happens in the "world", it's news and it impacts everyone. In other MMOs, when something happens, only the people on your server care because it doesn't affect anyone else.
Comments
agree , this is why i think guildwars is way more massive then wow, even with 3 times less total population.
Guild - http://lightness.goodforum.net/
Blog - http://www.pierrecarlier.com/
Well this post is comical to me atleast, sorry.
--When you resubscribe to SWG, an 18 yearold Stripper finds Jesus, gives up stripping, and moves with a rolex reverend to Hawaii.
--In MMORPG's l007 is the opiate of the masses.
--The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence!
--CCP could cut off an Eve player's fun bits, and that player would say that it was good CCP did that.
Yes, don't be fooled by the big subscription numbers. EVE would probably be the most massive game out there in terms of players playing in the same world. But 3000 people online is also massive multiplayer to me and would allready do much justice to the term.
The MM also does mean persistent world to me so GW would fail in that. And when I played it the international zone's were almost empty.
well if this is a gw vs eve
when i played eve , all i saw was empty space.
your experience in guildwars is as big as mine in eve.
there are places in gw that international dist are full everyday , but of corse you didnt reach those places ...
Guild - http://lightness.goodforum.net/
Blog - http://www.pierrecarlier.com/
Um, the whole point of massively multiplayer is that you have lots of people PLAYING TOGETHER, not crammed into tiny instances.
Its even less MM than the others, hell Counterstrike is more MM if you want to use that definition, at least you have more people in one instance.
Note: The cities are nothing more than rendered chat rooms, its outside of them that matters
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Agreed, I'd like to see more games where anyone can group together regardless of level.
So what stops you from asking which server or side your friends play on?
As for GW, I thought that the ability to jump servers was a terrible idea, since there were so many people that you never met anyone more than once (although the fact that everything was instanced probably affected that as well). People had no reason to maintain a reputation so the community was very cold and heartless.
As for WoW, I think the real problem was that raid instance locking mechanism, since it prevented cross-guild raiding. People would actually get kicked from some raid guilds for raiding with another guild since then they would not be of much use to their own guild that week. Normal instance runs could still have mixed groups, but there was not much reason to do normal instance runs (or anything else for that matter) once you got into raiding.
I don't know how things work in Eve since I only played it for a few hours.
Much of it has to do with technical limitations as well - WASD movement generates an enormous amount of network traffic which severely limits how many people can play on each server. Games with point and click movement can get around that problem but most players demand WASD control. GW got around it by making everything instanced and EvE apparently uses something like point and click movement, at least when not in combat. But the point is that it's just not possible to write a non-instanced game with WASD controls where more than a few thousand people could play at the same time, servers can process (and the network can carry) only so much traffic.
Um, the whole point of massively multiplayer is that you have lots of people PLAYING TOGETHER, not crammed into tiny instances.
Its even less MM than the others, hell Counterstrike is more MM if you want to use that definition, at least you have more people in one instance.
Note: The cities are nothing more than rendered chat rooms, its outside of them that matters
Outside doesn't matter in Guild Wars because Guild Wars isn't a grind fest. Its about partying, doing quest and missions with a group of people. Yes MM may mean everyone has to play together but Guild Wars doesn't have MM in its genre title.
Besides when you go outside in a regular mmo you'll proberly see about 20 people but when you go in a town you see hundreds. Basicly Guild Wars is minus 20 people, big deal.
Hmm... last night in DAOC I was running across the Hib bridge and ran into 20 Albs.... and then ran into 20 Mids and then ran inside the CK to find about 25 more Albs inside.... and of course, I was running with about 20 people myself....
Combat can be more fun when its random large group vs random large group... something games like WOW and GW (and most others) lack.
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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I just think that the way Guildwars built itself leaves it open for many endless possibilities in both PvP combat and story/questing
By far the better choice between it and D&D online.
I hope the Guild wars team puts more effort into mechanics and larger scale combat. (which I think they will)
A far as "MM" goes, when you take away the need for players to interact with one another on a casual basis, you take away the MM feel.
WoW allows players to group in 40 man raids which is fantastic, even band together in huge guilds. Yet there is very limited interaction within the guild unless it's guildie trying to recruit guildie into going on a raid.
Yes there is the random "LFRogue to open Mithril Lockbox"
But very little interaction with the MM part of the game
Games like Eve are pretty good in the fact that pretty much everything you do invovles interaction on both the combat and casual areas.
UO also made it so players heavily relied on one another in order to achieve their goals as well as others.
I'll take a fun game with 3k people on the server over a big empty world that all players can be on simultaneously any day.
http://www.mmorpgmaker.com
Um, the whole point of massively multiplayer is that you have lots of people PLAYING TOGETHER, not crammed into tiny instances.
If if that is YOUR LIMITED VIEW of the way things are done. Sorry, but true.
Um, the whole point of massively multiplayer is that you have lots of people PLAYING TOGETHER, not crammed into tiny instances.
If if that is YOUR LIMITED VIEW of the way things are done. Sorry, but true.
It is the way it is done period
I felt that WoW went overboard by doing so many instances, guildwars is even worse then WoW.
The only times I felt part of a community was in DAoC and SWG. And these games did not have instances.
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true for now , imagine when normal net conections reach 100 Mbit up/down ... i think only then there will be really huge persistent interesting games.
complex sand box like rpg and movement freedom like fps
Guild - http://lightness.goodforum.net/
Blog - http://www.pierrecarlier.com/
My firrends and I have been doing this for many years and we just don't have this problem. Some people just like to bitch and moan and be an advertising tool for eve. lol
Right. Me and my friends are going to play on one server. Then we meet a couple of cool people that have been playing together on another server. Who switches servers so we can all play together? After we switch servers we meet another person that's been playing the game, but they're also on a different server. They can join us on our server, but they're going to be low level and we can't do much more than PL them, but we can't all PL at the same time so some of us go off andventuring and the PLer ends up under levelled so now he can't do adventure with the rest of us anymore unless one of us stops to PL him, at which that person suffers a similar fate!
Then you meet another group of 10 people that have been doing something similar and they managed to get all of theire friends onto a single server, but it's a different one than your own. If you want to play together a lot of people are going to have to start all over again.
It's not quite as simple as asking what server your friend plays on. And this scenario assumes that people are willing to start over and consolidate themselves onto a single server. This often doesn't happen, and thus people play the same game but don't play together.