Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Shouldn't mmo gamers in 2007 be ASHAMED of the shallow, non-challenging mmo that we have embraced??
Zaxx99
Member Posts: 1,761
Seriously. It's now 2007 and look at the most popular mmos that we as gamers have so graciously accepted as our mmorpg of the year 2007. Shallow and non-challenging. Now before all you WOW fans try and flame me and tell me that WOW is challenging, I really want you to "stop" first and ask yourself if grinding out those top levels are really challenging or if its just boring. There IS a big difference you know!
Isn't it sad when Ultima Online, even with all of its trammel "protect the weak at heart" nonsense is still one of the deepest and most challenging mmos out there? And what we have accepted as a replacement is pretty eye-candy that is nothing but a seriously long grind-fest and is quite honestly only a challenge to a retarded and blind monkey! Anyone's great grandmother or very young child can play and excel at a game like World of Warcraft. Hell, my 5 year old daughter plays it for crying out loud! She also plays "Barbie Horse Adventures" on my PS2. So perhaps 7.5 million should jump on Barbie's latest PS2 adventure because it too is simple and easy and mindless to play if you are over the age of say 8 years old.
Some of you may call me hardcore. And that I am the exception rather the rule of what mmo fans love today. But that's exactly my point! Shouldn't more of us desire more challenge in our mmos? Shouldn't we want SOME kind of consequence of dying in the game?? I'm certainly not saying we should love a game where griefing is rewarded, but for crying out loud,we should like a game where there is big rewards for big risks and the simple fact is most of todays mmos have very little if no "risk" what-so-ever! You never lose a damn thing if you mindlessly run your level 6 avatar into a red level 50 mob. The higher the risk, the higher the reward! But if there is no risk (as in no death penalties) then the game is basically "no risk, all reward". And we wonder why so many get so bored of todays mmos after just a short period of time. Compare that to the avid fans of older mmos like the original Everquest, Asheron's Call (1), and the old school Ultima Online (Pre-Trammel). In those classics where there is a huge risk vs reward challenge, the fans of the late 90's when those games blossomed STILL play their games almost a decade later!
We really should be ashamed for supporting such mindless, un-challenging, all-reward, no risk eye candy today.
Go ahead and flame away WoW fans. but atleast provide some kind of thought process in your flames, please.
- Zaxx
Comments
i too am an old school fan of the UO experience... especially the hardcore PVP server SIege Perious or whatever it was called...
but yes, WoW has its faults, not going to deny that. And indeed leveling to 60 is a somewhat painful process w/ a lot of grinding... and I think Blizzard knows this because they created all the really good and challenging content to be lvl 60 only.
I've played my char in WoW longer since hitting 60 as it took to get to 60 for a reason, ya it's all just to farm/hunt for better and better gear, and ya grinding through MC day in day out for tier 1 does get a little boring, and yes, grining out losing battleground after another gets reallllly boring, so it's def not perfect in any way.
But it's better then the rest out there. if anything a lot of the "end-game" content is tooo difficult.
requiring 40 people to organize, communicate, and excel through highly complex and challenging boss fights. even ZG/AQ20 success requires an insane level of concentration, teamwork, and skill. Blizzard dropped the ball on this a little bit, requiring all kinds of 3rd party mods/UI customizations and access to voice communication servers in order to succeed. Plus with the time it takes to complete these raids and the fact that only 1 out of 40 people get something useful per boss if lucky, it's too hardcore and too much of a grind for any but the most hardcore on players.
I spent 2 months from 6pm - 10pm every Mon-Thurs raiding... that's insane. With all the drama and headache of trying to manage a large raiding guild, especially horde side, it's far too difficult.
So yes, playing solo grinding through quest after quest level after level to 60 is easy. I imagine you haven't been through BWL, AQ40 or Nax ever if you think this game is not challenging....
Blizzard dropped the ball by making 40 man raids and even the two 20 mans too difficult for the average "casual" gamer. And, of course the game is FAR too gear dependant so if you don't raid you have very little opportunity for "good" gear.. unless you grind battleground for hours and hours every day...
that's my opinion anyway.
Both kinds of games have their strong points and their fans. And of course, there are quite a few people that can enjoy both of them.
And a game like WoW actually can be challenging, even outside of raiding. Try doing an instance with a group that hasn't done it before, at the level it is intended and with a setup that isn't completely cookie cutter definitely takes some strategy and can be a lot of fun.
Perhaps you should be a little ashamed because it's like sucking a baby pacifier when you are 24 years old. And by everyone and their brother supporting a game like WoW, all we will continue to have year after year is more and more mindless wow "clones" to try and duplicate or take a chunk of that mindless profit.
Look, I am not saying that a game like WoW isn't a solid and well build game. I am not saying that it isn't pretty, that it isn't fluid, or even that it can't be fun! I am simply saying that I strongly believe that many of us mmo gamers that might play a game like WoW should really have a strong craving for something more challenging. Fights that require atleast a little bit of actual skill such as some hand-eye coordination. Maybe I kinda feel that many of the people who love WoW so much really should appreciate something which requires a little more skill, a little more thought, and a lot more risk. Hell, I'd gladly trade in mindless grind in for some rewarding challenge any day of the week. I really think a few more of us should feel the same way. I dunno.
- Zaxx
After I quit WoW, I moved onto some other games. I finally had remembered why I started playing these games in the first place. The challenge defines the fun to me. Why play a game where everyone, including a monkey, can achieve a top tier, top equipped character? The accomplishment is completely ruined by the fact that everyone and their mom can attain such things. Hell, we used to have 1/3 to a half of the raids able to go AFK while crawling through their super linear dungeons and still win quite handily.
WoW is a polished game, if you are new the genre it a good starter game. But bragging about your skills in that game is the same exact thing as a 1st grader bragging about learning his ABCs and calling you a n00b. The risk defines the reward, and the challenge defines the achievement. Challenge doesnt need to be a giant monotonous time sink, nor does it need to be linear dungeons with bosses who have 26 gimmicks each. Sadly people like this road and will die for this game because its either their first MMO, or its the only game where they and anyone can be super powerful.
TwitchTV Partnered Streamer
MMORPG.com Spotlight Blog Writer
Co-Leader of Inquisition
Youtube Channel
Except that what big death penalties actually do PVE wise is to make the game incredibly boring. The vast majority of people then won't take on a serious fight without some perfect class setup (which screws anyone who doesn't want to play a cookie cutter build), and leveling ends up being mostly grinding easy in specificly constructed groups. Sorry, but I have no interest in supporting the 'know your (very narrowly-defined) role' crowd.
In terms of PVP, the only people who get any improvement are the 'gank people and take their stuff' crowd. Real PVPers want interesting fights, which tend not to happen in gank-and-loot PVP because people don't want to risk losing their stuff. While the 'hardcore' or 'gank-and-loot' PVPer enjoys one-sided fights and the loot they can take form people who had no chance, real PVPers are not satisfied with one-sided fights or with a PVP system that involves people spending more time replacing losses than actually PVPing.
And here we see the raw maturity consistently displayed by the 'hardcore' players, both the 'gank-and-loot' PVPer and the basement-dwelling 'hardcore' PVEer. "You should be ashamed that your video game preferences are not mine, liking a different style of video game than me is like sucking a pacifier" says an awful lot about the person making the comment.
Almost everyone I know who plays WOW has a job and still does great.
It basically depends on who you choose to play with, smart players know how to get into the best guilds, and who to /ignore :P
I always see WOW's failures posting about how the game is shallow, etc. I'm thinking these people lot a roll in SM or something, then come here to pout like they know something about the game, lol.
Then try DDO for something different, World of Vanquest 3: The Saga of the Burning Fae (Can I trademark that) it is not.
You must not leave until you free Arlos and have gathered your party safely in this hallway.
And here we see the raw maturity consistently displayed by the 'hardcore' players, both the 'gank-and-loot' PVPer and the basement-dwelling 'hardcore' PVEer. "You should be ashamed that your video game preferences are not mine, liking a different style of video game than me is like sucking a pacifier" says an awful lot about the person making the comment.
PERFECT! The OP is an immature elitist. He thinks his "hardcore" ways make him a better player. I have played 3 years of FFXI 7 of EQ (still play) and 1 of WoW and all are good games that offer something good. When he grows up and understands that it has nothing to do with being right or wrong it is just about choice and preference.
Some people don’t want to grind for 10 hours straight. Some folks have a life and just want to sit down and play for 20 min at a time and not spend an hour setting up.
In the end the OP will have to grow up to figure out he is ashamed of his intolerance of others choices.
Mug
In fact, that's why it's so dang popular.
Apart from that, 3/10. WoW bashing is easy, using it to prove your leetness is tired, and there were no meaningful suggestions about what *would* be good.
Who am I?
@Lorechaser on CoH
Badjuju, Splinterhoof, Plainsrunner on WoW (Moonrunner)
Shyy'rissk on SWG (Flurry)
ClockworkSoldier, HE Pierce, Letnev on Planetside
Gyshe, Crucible, Terrakal on DDO
And many more.
When I play an MMO I want to be able to change the world, or atleast play a roll in doing so. It's impossible to do this in WoW and I'm sorely disappointed.
LOL. This is ridiculous. To state that World of Warcraft is challenging is absolutely insane. Tell you what. Go back to the year 2001. Log onto the Darktide server of Asheron's Call and play a level 25 or so ANTI-PK as I did against tens of thousands of high level PK players and then come back and say that "WOW is challenging" again. Try dodging high level war bolt spells, healing damage with healing kits, protecting your armor and good weapon from being dropped on your corpse by constantly keeping more then a pack full of high value "Death items" and then go play WOW and clicking the exact same one, two or three hot bars over and over and over and over and telling me again that "WOW is challenging". Or go back to pre-trammel Ultima Online and try going out chopping some wood in the forest so you can try and make some furniture to sell and make a living and avoiding red murderers blasting you with ebolts and taking ALL of your corpse dropped inventory, including the 189 logs you have collected in your pack! Go out in Ultima Online and have a classic 15 minute battle with a dragon as a mage and then come back here and tell me that WOW battles are just as challenging as Ultima Onlines classic PvE battles!
The only challenge in WOW comes from trying to babysit all the damn kiddies in the required groups to beat the bosses and complete the quests in the game. Drama and dealing with so many inmature kiddos in a game like WOW is not where the challenge should come from.
- Zaxx
I'm not going to flame the OP. He has some valid points. All I'm going to give is my personal point of view.
Ok. I'm currently a WoW player but my MMORPG experience goes way back to the Imagination network....Remember that one? Sierra online? I've played everything from The Realm to City of Heroes. And all points inbetween including 4 years in Everquest.
That being said I enjoy and plan on sticking with World of Warcraft...Why? Because it's simple, plain, enjoyable fun. I don't need any more game developers beating me with a stick saying "Do you appreciate what you have now? Well, do you punk?".
Sorry. I'm 42 years old with a family. WoW is easy to get into and also easy to leave when I want to.
Simple....easy....yes. Fun? Relaxing? Stress free?....absolutely.
So stick that pacifier back in my mouth. As that country western song goes "When tough little boys grow up to be Dad's, they turn into big babies again."
Never be afraid of choices. More choices are always good things.
Wow, Zaxtor, you're so brave having to endure all that. When I grow up I really want be a heroic fellow like you...
Unfortunately, three of the earliest MMORPG's were UO, AC and Lineage. All three had open PvP... and had huge death penalties (or rewards, if you were the winner) in terms of lost gear. And they had few followers... mostly niche gamers who really loved them as they were. Then along came Everquest.
EQ changed the face of MMO's, adding a large PvE element to the genre and quickly became the most popular game of the era...shoving UO/AC/Lineage into obscurity.
Since then, many games have tried to follow one model or another...and it would appear that the winning model (i.e. draws the most subscribers) is represented by Blizzard's WoW. It is the most financially successful game (to date) and this has huge impact on developers looking to find investors in their next big game.
Some game development is a labor of love, and caters to a smaller niche, but the big -money productions have to follow a winning forumula (much like the movies) or they won't get funded. Hence we'll see many clones until someone breaks through with something truely different.
The OP and others like him seem extremely bitter than no one is making a graphically upgraded version of UO or AC.... and wants to lay the blame at the rest of us by saying we should be ashamed of the way we like to game. Because of course its our "fault" that we don't like the "hardcore" game style that he proposes and we're all "care-bears". (Always laugh at that one... like playing computer games is ever "hardcore"... right)
Following the hardcore gamers logic..the perfect MMO would be one where death penalties were permanent...and you had to start over... that would really add some thrill to it... (sort of like life). Wait, in real life I don't take risks that might get me killed... which is boring..so I play games that let me do so w/o any severe penalty.
All of these posts are the same.... why isn't anyone developing a game that I like.... instead of one that might make a ton of money? Same reason we have McDonalds ... it sells... and sells well. Doesn't mean its great... just makes money... which is the first priority of any game publisher (I realized, the developers actually do it out of love sometimes)
and I guess all of my replies to them are the same as well... I should just keep a copy of this for future use
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Corpse runs and the like are simply mechanisms used by dev teams to force players to keep retreading the same ground over and over again as a means to keep them paying subscription fees longer. Which is precisely the same thing in the end as raids on AQ40, MC, BWL, and Naxx; or the same thing as grinding out that huge chunk of faction for naxx or timbermaw. All of them are nothing more than timesinks to slow players down.
Now, obviously I am unable to speak for games that arent released yet such as Gods and Heroes, Age of Conan, and Warhammer Online but every game released and on the verge of release have failed in making any sort of generational leap forward. They all still have artificially induced timesinks that require players to grind against non existent ai for experience or loot. Until the developers move away from the AI routines created back in the 80's single player experiences do not expect this to change.
Allow me to elaborate. Fights in today's mmos from Huhu to Rag, from Krayt Dragons to HK-47, from Death Lord Hallate to Anakim, from Lockjaw to Godking Anuk do not require anything more than the simple knowledge of resistances and abilities. These are not hard fights, just time consuming. The AI of these "boss mobs" is no different than the ai of the lowest rat. They just have more resists, armor and hps, and add in a little randomization and wala you have your boss mob. This is the same thing that high level mobs in the original Pools of Radiance, Wizardry, Dragonlance, etc games all had. And you fight them in the exact same way today as we did 20 some odd years ago.
We of course have only ourselves to blame for this because there are enough people that will pay to play the same stuff over and over again. Only until the gamers themselves wisen up a bit and see through the pretty packaging for the lemon underneath developers will continue to throw the same boring repetitive junk at us.
The original poster wants to replace one timesink for another rather than truly advancing the genre. So while I agree that we should be ashamed of ourselves, its for an entirely different reason. I beleive that games should be challenging, but because of the ai in the mobs or the complex nature of the quests not because of idiotic timesinks designed to artificially restrict a players growth.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
i love the "TIME's person of the year" comment btw... brilliant
You are right that the difficulty in raid boss fights comes from just learning the fight, knowing what to do and when to do it. Once you do learn it, it's easy. But that is the same with every game ever made... ever... That super hard part, once you learn how to do it, becomes easier and easier. There is no way around that, ya raids are a lot of stupid, "have to stand in exact right place and do this and that and if one of the 40 monkeys your group messes up you wipe etc" . but perhaps the greatest challenge is managing the raid rather then the encounters themselves.
hence why Blizz was smart enough to cut every dungeon/raid in expansion into chunks, spend hour or two for a "wing" instead of 4-5 hours straight through whole thing... and to cut # of monkeys to max 25 rather then 40... MUCH more managable... darn near pugable (PUG=pick up group i.e. random players)
as for cookie cutter only grouping, ya it helps to have core 3 in group (warrior/mage/priest) but it makes it much more challenging and fun to mix things up!
and the 3 different talent trees for each class make for very interesting dynamics too. Yeah a fury spec warrior is pretty deadly in PVP and as a damage dealer in a group but do they make a good tank? not as good as a protection spec but it's doable if you are skilled. Agro management and tanking are probably the hardest thing to do. Not for one-mob-at-a-time pulls in the large raids but you have to be pretty darn good to be able to hold agro on four enemies at once while the other four members of your group are wailing away on them... and there is some strategy, focus fire on one target at a time to make tanks job easier and keep all aggro on tank to make healers job easier...
just illustrating some of the strategy that gives the game more depth and challenge... from a lot of the PUG's I've been in soo many people just aren't very good because they can't handle the challenge.
the game has it's faults, indeed. over dependancy on gear being # 1. but 7+ million people play it worldwide because it is leaps and bounds ahead of everything else.
you are a very intelligent person. if i was wearing a hat, i'd tip it to you. maybe even take it off and bow....
so then the big question for all of you and especially to the OP is......
What is better? How do we advance the genre?
better graphics, smarter AI, more customized? broader in depth, more content, varied play styles?
How do you advance the genre? By asking for more. By asking for games that aren't carbon-copy repeats of Tolkienesque stuff that's been re-treaded so many times it's worn a groove in its arse.
Look, I love the old MMO style. I love that great virtual world feel, however I do not feel threatened in any way by the fact that some people prefer other things. In fact I can even enjoy BOTH! I know crazyness! The world has shades of grey and no one is out to get me.
The fact is that those old style MMOs were fun. There was alot of great exploring and experimenting. However most of the experimenting was more along the lines of this:
Hakiko: what goblins?
Hakiko: I want to know more about goblins
Hakiko: can you tell me about goblins
Hakiko: I can fight the goblins
Hakiko: I am curious about goblins
Your skill in User Interface has improved!(1)
A main focus on the cheat sites was dealing with the user interface, not the game content itself. There were score of "How do I switch to run?" threads, and people (some of them Devs!) had to look things up to answer. But this was cool, we were the early adopters, we expect these kinds of things. We enjoyed video games so much that we were willing to put up with this to be on the bleeding edge. I don't blame people who prefer a more polished product.
Much of the "exploration" went like this:
You have entered The Dark Forest
A snake attacks!
A snake kicks you for 44569523 HP!
Thou art dead
Returning to bind site 2.5 hours from here.
Again we were fine with these balance issues because of the early adopter thing. However it is completely unreasonable to assume that a trained priest or wizard would not know what creatures can cream him 4 miles from home. With that many dangerous creatures right outside the city gates this would be a large part of any childhood education.
So the new generation of MMOs is a little easier to play, they take a little(not much) less time, and have less unexplainable sudden deaths. They are aimed at the more casual player who can't afford to loose half a nights work every time they die. They are also aimed at those of us hardcore players who just don'e have as much time as we like anymore.
We need those players. I want to see a new crop of virtual world type MMOs, I really do. These people provide the player base that will allow for true diversity in out genre. Remember when all video games were basically a spaceship flying through a side scrolling level. Those twitch shooters were hardcore!! No way my grandmother and sister could play those! But they could play Mario brothers, and Pac Man. They drove up the amount of money being pumped into video games and some of them were looking for more after they ate enough power pellets. The development money and increase in customer base allowed us to have Zelda and yes Ultima IV.
As this new influx of players starts looking for something new, and they will, we will see that the third generation can be about diversity and hopefully get that magical virtual world.
And here we see the raw maturity consistently displayed by the 'hardcore' players, both the 'gank-and-loot' PVPer and the basement-dwelling 'hardcore' PVEer. "You should be ashamed that your video game preferences are not mine, liking a different style of video game than me is like sucking a pacifier" says an awful lot about the person making the comment.
Pantastic just said all that needed to be said in this thread. I actually use to enjoy reading some of Zaxtor post. Sure, he was blunt, but he was very honest in his post. The post he started this thread with, sounds like something a racist would say. (Note in no way am I calling him a racist) "My way is right, and yours in wrong. So there is something wrong with you for not liking my way of gaming" is all I get from reading that opening post. What part of people have different taste is so hard for people to grasp?
In War - Victory.
In Peace - Vigilance.
In Death - Sacrifice.
Oh, and gain some self control. I'd bet these games wouldn't seem like such a drug if people stopped playing 40 hours a week.
World of Warcraft is a great MMO. Very few bugs, artistic environments, and stable gaming servers (when you take in consideration the # of players on at any given time). It's not the end all be all for people who dwell in caves, but 7 mil people find it fun.