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Still banging away with complaints on MMOs I see.
Nerf09
Member CommonPosts: 2,953
I haven't played for a while, and thought I would start playing WOW again. So I visited their forum to remind me of why I quit in the first place. (It takes up allot of hard disk space, I was looking for an excuse not to install it.)
All the same old complaints:
"Blah blah, the Warlock is uber, just tweak this."
"Blah blah, the Priest is uber, just tweak this.'
"Blah blah, this mountain in the battlegrounds is 5 meters too high, I can't shoot at the (enter class) here with (enter spell or attack here), t counter the (enter XXX here)."
The problem with these games isn't the imballances, it isn't the lack of content, it isn't solo players vs. wierdos. What the problem with all of these games are is that you can never change the world you are in.
Some players get it. A minority of players, but not a small minority, not small enough to be ignored by developers. Money is money. The players that 'get it', get this deep down feeling inside that everything they do is pointless. They cannot change the environment they are in.
There are only 2 games I have ever played that allows you to change the environment you play in and that was Star Wars Galaxies and Ultima Online.
Even the players that 'dont get it', get frustrated so they complain about imballances, developers pandering to this group (solo vs. group, raid vs. whatever). If you could change the environment you were in (like you could do in SWG and Ultima Online), or maybe even with more options then those 2 games; then the imballances and other complaints wouldn't be so contrasting. Like in SWG, I played that for 2 months, I played the ranger, which was weak, but I never complained cause I had a kick-butt ranger camp that was disfunctional. I could change my environment. And since I could change the environment I was in, BALLANCE wasn't such of a concern.
Comments
That's the community you speak of. Any unbiased and experienced WoW player will admit to you that WoW has a sub-par community.
Environment ?! Heck, you can't even change the story of your character. He goes where the game has designed for him to go. He defeats who the game has already determined he will defeat.
These games are so linear that it's like playing the role of the character in a book, that someone else wrote.
Once upon a time....
There is actually a program that lets you change the terrain in WoW real-time...
These games maybe linear but in reality sandbox games are just not popular, and when your talking about investing tens of millions in making a MMORPG, the reward does not justify the risk.
That is the same for ALL games, look at how unpopular SWG is and Ultima Online, I think it speaks volumes for how much the majority of people feel about linear or non-linear games.
At the end of the day it comes down to structured fun, FUN FUN FUN, games are there to have fun, there are not meant to change the world, or make some major statement, or have you feel you are changing a living breathing world they are just there to produce fun. And with this fun make a profit at the same time.
Without profit and without fun, people just won't stick around and businesses won't create those types of games. Besides some people prefer fun to be handed to them when they only have a few hours a day, instead of having to spend those few hours looking for the fun.
Yes there is alot of FUN in this post!
I find that hard to belive and if there is i bet its not allowed.
"Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god."
-- Jean Rostand
I agree with metaldragon on this issue, there are hundreds of MMORPG's out there but they're all so linear, you can't do anything to change the world your in and your just hand held by the developers ( regardless of how easy or how difficult it is ) and your on a set path that THEY'VE designated for you, you can't make choices, the only choices you make are in character creation and even then it's all very pointless because half the people in it end up looking like you anyway.
I totally understand where your coming from though, I played Pre-Cu SWG and I find single player games more entertaining than MMORPG's right now, why? Because most MMORPG's now are just time sinks that hand hold you all the way, there's no different path to take regardless of what developers preach, your just stuck in the same place again and again in a never changing world.
This is why I find myself playing games like Freelancer and Oblivion constantly, your allowed to explore you don't have some invisible wall stopping your way, you don't have to stop when you reach the maximum level, I am getting just so sick of these games that say they're not doing it but when you get into the game itself you realize you've just wasted a lot of money.
Quoting people doesn't make you clever, in fact, it makes you all the more stupid for not bothering to read the quotes you post in the first place.
Hmms..
UO was popular in its time, wich was like ages ago, when the MMO market was tiny...
SWG was popular in its time, in fact, before WOW, one of THE most popular western games(p2p), until WOW came out and they made the game linear classbased, and not a sandbox much any more.
The whole MMO industry has become a "copycat" industry, where everyone competes by building near clones of the "most popular" ones, and slap their own textures on them... Until that change and developers gets funding to build their own games(instead of funding to build clones), we won't see sandboxes or many games that deviate from the levelgrind, linear, static world type of clone.
And to top it off, we ain't helping either. Not only are we buying the crap, but we also slap down anyone who utters a desire for more than the whack a mole gameplay games. Heck, if I said I'd like a game where people depended on eachother outside of combat, where crafters built everything, and werent "repairkit dispensers", doctors werent buffers but healers, bards wasnt buffers but entertainers and "healers" and where the game mechanics actually rewarded you for not going out 24/7 whack a moling... Well, I'd be castrated and told to go "play that boring arsed game The Sims 1-2"(Wich incidently has sold over 50 million boxes worldwide, and is/has still a expansion or the original game on top 10/50/100 sales list in ALOT of countries)...
Oh well, why should I be upset that I'm not currently playing any levelgrinder linear static clone game, it's not like I need to throw my $'s at the MMO companies. Not my fault that they don't value my $'s, despite that they need my $'s to earn their salaries
What pisses me off is the fanbois who blindly follow these games, in all honesty, look at WoW, in order to understand the game you apparently have to put several years in it, I played that game for two years then quit because I realized it was the same thing again and again. It's a load of crap that you have to play these games for several years to understand them, why? Because for the most part the games are so simply designed that you can tell what's going to happen in the first ten levels you level up, that's what I felt when I bought TBC just instantly I knew I was wasting my time because it was the same thing except with a different skin.
Quoting people doesn't make you clever, in fact, it makes you all the more stupid for not bothering to read the quotes you post in the first place.
Thats why ive been playing EvE for 4 years now. It is the first of its kind [A Sci-Fi trading PvP simulator] so its not copying off someone else. Also for the apst 4 years every 6 months or so the developers would add something that really only adds to the game [new mission system, New ships modules races etc]. And because its modular in design [programming wise]. they can upgrade core components such as graphics very easilly in comparison to other MMO's [in 5 months the graphics will be upto date].
Also EvE is starting a new section of gaming that revolves around actuall palyer avitars and not just ships so thats good too. As you can tell i love eve lol.
"Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god."
-- Jean Rostand
In my opinion the problem is that no matter how much a game offers, players always want more. The next to perfect game could be released, and somewhere, some player, some group, will say "It's missing X and Y features. IT SUCKS!"
World of Warcraft is actually a pretty good game. They took a game design they created and implemented it, it worked. They never aimed to do anything new or original, just make a working game. They weren't shooting for 9 million subscribers or to make a world wide phenomina, but that's what happened.
Regardless of how you view WoW, you can't ever tell anybody that it wasn't well put together. You can complain about whatever you believe to be missing features, but you always need to remember that those were features that were probably evaluated and rejected for one given reason or another. It doesn't matter what the reasoning was, regardless of what anybody thinks, they decided not to do it.
You then decide whether or not you want to play the game given the features the company who painstakingly went through the motions to create... they don't decide for you, you decide if you want to play it or not. Vivindi Universal is not standing behind you with a shock stick saying "Play WoW!"... that's your decision.
Furthermore, nobody is standing behind you with a shock stick telling you that you must read the dulldrums known as "Forums", where the most vocally EMO people in the world go to spill their dribble about how South Park mixed the classes for that episode with WoW in it... did you ever read some of those? That's just pathetic.
So, in conclusion:
Get out of your parents basement, meet a pretty girl, procreate. I promise if you have time for MMOs after that you won't care what it is you're playing nearly as much as you're whining about right now. :-)
- CaesarsGhost
Lead Gameplay and Gameworld Designer for a yet unnamed MMO Title.
"When people tell me designing a game is easy, I try to get them to design a board game. Most people don't last 5 minutes, the rest rarely last more then a day. The final few realize it's neither fun nor easy."
And it's those kind of responses that tell us to get a life which just make our points all the more clearer, you know absolutely nothing about me and I doubt anyone else who is posting in this thread, people who resort to personal insults in their arguments are usually just running out of things to back their comments up with, so at this point I'm just going to sit back and laugh in all honesty.
Quoting people doesn't make you clever, in fact, it makes you all the more stupid for not bothering to read the quotes you post in the first place.
There is still oxygen in the atmosphere, therefore people are still complaining.
What developers can do to eliminate some of those "cloning" is to remove freakin classes. Make it a skill based game like SWG and AC. Why they dont do this I do not understand otherwise to the fact that Publishers only want to do a tried and true method that will generate them cash.
Whats also the problem with WoW is that it pulled in so many "MMO virgins" so to speak that these people think this game is the best thing since sliced bread. Really, my friend who never played an MMO play WoW and thinks its awsome, but doesnt realize that hes just wasting his time away. He complains to me that "Im a prot warrior and even though I need to protect people it gets boring" but he KEEPS ON PLAYING. Even though he hates it. Sad, isnt it? He tells himself once he gets the best armor the game will become great. This carrot on a stick method is seriously hurting us in more ways than one. The PvP is linear and quite frankly HORRIBLE in WoW and people know it. They know it and they still play it. Why? Cause alot of them think the rest of the MMO's out there suck cause they have small populations of people, which is WRONG. The sheep follow the sheep.
Developers need to take the first step and remove classes and make it skillbased. Give more FFA PVP. PLEASE MORE PVP. More sandbox play, even if it is just small steps. Thats all we're asking.
This is a big problem. Youre supposed to buy into these big, epic storylines, that, in the end, dont change anything. Every player does the exact same quests, none of them, individually, have any effect on the game world. Sounds like a single player game to me. In fact, thats why I hate most single player games. They have a lot of birght lights and explosions, but really, youre just walking down a tight, narrow path the whole time. And, it seems like this is the direction that the bigger MMOs are taking right now.
Whats the number one reason most people stick with their current MMO? Community. To be more specific, their guild. Because, as it stands in most MMOs right now, there is no community outside of your guild. You cant effect/change the game world (outside of crappy housing zones) so all you really have is your guild, when it comes to dynamic content.
MMORPGs, be it sandbox or not, are all dull ever since I discovered Second Life. Sure, MMOs have the excitement of scripted violence, but they sorely lack in roleplaying and USER CREATED CONTENT. In Second Life, I can be anything I want. Not in the mood for fantasy today? I can equip myself in some power armour and go have fun in a sci-fi based sim. You can laugh at the graphics of SL but no other platform gives complete and total control to the player. All gaming environments inside of SL were created by the players. Every single building, uniform, weapon, spaceship, script, etc (we're talking REAL crafting here, people...one which YOU can directly profit from in real life dollars). Because of this, scripted violence in typical MMOs seems so petty and fruitless and not as exciting as I once thought it was. Dressing up and participating in and with user created content has more substance than any beautifully created static city in a typical MMO. The mere fact that we the players also created our content makes RPing more gratifying and rewarding than trying to do it in a pre-made world which players have no impact on.
But, whatever, I'm probably just some loser in RL and that is why I am in Second Life. I'm no longer cool enough for WoW. j/k
Lets Eat It!
Just because people like us like MMORPGs doesn't mean we don't have a life. That's like telling a golfer to get a life. People all have their hobbies, their fun.
I don't know how anyone can say that sandbox games aren't fun for gamers. Heck, most gamers today don't even know what a sandbox game is.
And yes, people will complain if they have a complaint. What's new about that?
Once upon a time....
Do we want a game world that's easy to change? Or do we want it to be a challenge?
Once upon a time....
people still complain about the ford taurus being dropped..and now they are compaining about the ford taurus being brought back!.
people still complain about checkers and chess.
people like to complain.
Too bad we couldnt make a company that could charge a monthly for complaints!
there could be :
*Complaint Bosses
*Complaint Questing
* and Complaint Raids!
oh wait..we have that already.
nm
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Still banging away with complaints about the forums, I see.
A litte fyi, you are part of the problem, not the solution.
Not to be rude but posts like yours are what slow down the advancement of the genre. Think about it for a bit, you'll realize what i'm saying is true. 
"Do not fret! Your captain is about to enter Valhalla!" - General Beatrix of Alexandria
"The acquisition of knowledge is of use to the intellect, for nothing can be loved or hated without first being known." - Leo da Vinci
The reason most people play WoW is the reason most people use Windows. Windows is Compatible with everything, it looks great, most people know how to use it, your brother uses it, your mother uses it, and its vigorously advertised.
It doesn't mean Windows is the best thing since sliced bread. Google, youtube, and forums we blab on RIGHT NOW, could run on DOS just as easilly.
WOW is unbalanced in a context because the pvp & pve balance isnt separated.
to take warlock as an example: if warlock manage to get the dots on you before he dies, you have a chance to die aswell..
if it whas balance, then the dots would dispell when the warlock dies.. just my point of view..
....Inferring that anyone whom disagrees with you is either inexperienced, biased or both. I love the ironic bias of your statement - there's simply no need to argue with you, you can prove yourself wrong in two sentences. Quite an accomplishment, though alas, not what you were intending, obviously.
I find incredible your ability to generalize several hundred sub-communities into one large community, and how you are able to compare, like-for-like, the vast choice of server communities in WoW, to the substantially fewer server communities in other games. WoW has around 200 European servers, EQ2 has 2 - yet you are able compare them all and call the others "sub standard".
I'm not suggesting that having more servers is better, give me some credit. I just think it's ludicrous that you think you can objectively compare them. You obviously do not play on my server, because it's probably has the best community I've ever been on since the days of Stormhammer in EQ, before they shut that server down due to lack of population. I think you're confusing stagnation and lack of liveness with that greater quality you claim other MMO servers have.
Most importantly, your profile tells us that you are 20 years old, which means when I started playing Everquest you were 12 years old.
So I think it's safe to completely disregard your "experienced" opinion of the maturity or quality of of MMO communities. 
No offense kid, but it's you (and several other jaded burn-out cases) spouting vitriol nonsense while us "fanboys" are decimating your arguments once again, with something a little more concrete, and actually enjoying the games we play, instead of hating. But because you can't handle the fact that someone who uses logic better than you - someone that is older than you, and is more reasonable and unbiased than you, and have debunked your excessively negative opinions on a game in a genre you are not experienced enough to judge objectively - I'm a fanboy, right?
What were you saying about bias again?
Recant crits your argument for 5 billion points of logic.
You die.
Still waiting for your Holy Grail MMORPG? Interesting...
I'm with OP on this... I think "sandbox" is the term describing what we are looking for (not exactly sure).
What if game mechanics was really some kind of low-level laws of nature, like physics and chemistry laws, (no getting energy from nothing (thermodynamics), a fantasy table of elements with different properties, etc). Maybe not too complicated, even morrowind-3 was pretty cool with the chemistry/potion-making. Mobs were little programs having desires, fears, abilities, handicaps, resources and just went around as their program directed. They mated, mixed dna, had variance in their behaviour, were never at the same spot generally, etc. And then you got buildings, towns, siege engines, weapons, armor, all kinds of things people make with tools/materials. Even social organizations could be formed, rules passed, laws defined and enforced etc.
No canned quests, no boring mob behavior (rat appears at spot x after 30 seconds from being killed, faces east, moves 5 feet, waits 3 seconds, turns around blah blah). No canned skills. No canned buildings. No canned armor/weapons.
I know at first it sounds crazy and like it would be a LOT of work. But eventually, somebody is going to do it. When that happens, all these existing MMOs will look completely ridiculous and boring.
It's also balanced by the fact some classes are better suited to smaller or larger battles than others.
It's also worth noting that you receive no honor for killing someone after you've died with dots.
Still waiting for your Holy Grail MMORPG? Interesting...