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Is this an MMO or a linear RPG?
pencilrick
Member Posts: 1,550
Think about it. Every zone you start in gives you a handful of quests to lead you to the next zone, where you get a handful of quests to lead you to the next zone, where you get a handful of quests to lead you to the next zone, where you get a handful of questst to lead you to the next zone, where you get a handful of quests to lead you to the next zone, and it goes on ad nauseum.
At some level, you begin to realize that you are on a self-imposed tour of a fantasy amusement park, where gameplay resembles a linear RPG more than a traditional MMO.
This is not an MMO world. A true sandbox MMO plops you into a world and you explore and test it and adventure from there. You should feel like your character exists in a game world and not some game progression track.
Sure, there may be some optimal progression of zones to level up in, but there should be no yellow exclamation point or question mark to tell you, "Folks, that was our last ride, it's now time to move on to the next ride in this kiddie-land amusment park."
I don't know about the rest of you, but I"ve had enough of this Candyland on training wheels. Give me a real sandbox game world, give me XP penalties when I die so those dungeons I go into are actually scary. Make me work for my levels so I take pride in them.
We need more from our MMO's and, sadly, WOW's financial success is only enticing developers to make more "WOW's."
And that's not the kind of game for me or, I suspect, many of you.
Comments
Go play Vanguard....
But anyway, different flavours of this topic appear all over this site on a daily basis, so you are not telling us anything new
Subscribtions: EVE, SWTOR WOW, WAR, DDO, VG, AOC, COV, FFXI, GW, RFO, Aion
+plenty of F2P, betas, trials
Female Dwarf player: WOW, VG, WAR, DDO
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Due to the recent economic crisis and spending cuts the light at the end of the tunnel was turned off. Sincerely, God.
I whole-heartedly agree. Games have become too pre-fabricated. No more is innovation the key to success. It's now just giving us the same cheeseburger with different seasonings. I got bored with WoW before hitting level 20. Too much grind, to linear, too blah.
In my eyes an MMO needs more than just lore, more than just uber gear, more than just numbers. It's needs an engaging story that can move at my pace and when I want to move it. I want it so *I* make the decision to move to this area or that area. I want choice in my questing. Let me choose to save the damsel in distress, or let the dragon eat her to save the village. Let me decide what I wanna do.
Give me quality as well as quantity. I want choices to look as I want, not look like 50% of the population. I want not only gear, but items that may not do a whole lot, but add to immersion in the game world. Give me crafting that makes NEW things, not pre-rendered recipes. Let ME make things not ever seen before in the world. Don't make a chore, make it a proffession, something I would have fun doing. Mining rocks isn't fun. But finding an abandoned mine I must remove the inhabitants of, then setting up a mining camp would be.
Very few MMO's seek innovation, quality, or uniqueness. EVE is one, CoX is another, Anarchy another. But you don't hear of them because they are not made by mega-developers who wish to please the simple-minded. Give me a game that tells WoW to hurry up and graduate.
agreed
RIP SWG
You do realize you don't have to do the quests. The game doesn't explode or anything if you just ignore all those Yellow exclamation points. Honestly.
ROFLMAO. Please tell me where CoX has any of the features you described? CoX is WoW lite.
You do realize you don't have to do the quests. The game doesn't explode or anything if you just ignore all those Yellow exclamation points. Honestly.
lol for him maybe it explodes if he dosnt do quests:P. Azeroth is probably the one game world that I actually feel like I can explore and adventure and not in some caged box. Nobody says you have to do quests, maybe for you, you can find a lake and do fishing all day:).
i would say linear mmo but TR is worse lol
Why are you singling out WoW? Just about every mmo released has been "a tour of a fantasy amusement park", before and since WoW was released.
WoW probably has the best user interface I have seen for quests in a MMO. It is easy to criticise, but can anyone provide a practical suggestion for an alternative?
Here are some examples I have seen in MMO's or rpg's:
1. You have to talk to NPC's, there are no prompts that the NPC has something to tell you. I have seen this in several forms.
2. The NPC says something when you go past if they have information for you. This is more realistic and can be either text or voice.
3. There is a central meeting place in an area (eg. an inn, a reward notice on the village notice board), where you can pick up rumours about what you might do or who may have information for you.
4. Should a NPC use voice or text? Voice is more realistic and immersive. However, you can read and comprehend a lot faster than people talk. Voice can be slow, particularly if it is a long speech. Also, if you are talking to them a second time to clarify what they said, you may only want to hear a small part of what they said. Voice can be very annoying if the NPC says the same thing every time you go near them.
5. The NPC's are just moving parts of the scenery. They offer no information, just background colour.
While I agree that the exclamation mark and question mark symbols used in WoW detract from the "immersive quality" of the world, it is less annoying than some of the more "realistic" NPC interactions in other games. The WoW implementation is a compromise between a user friendly interface and faster game play versus a more realistic world.
Whether or not the quest system in a world is linear, is a separate issue from quest log interface and NPC interaction.
ROFLMAO. Please tell me where CoX has any of the features you described? CoX is WoW lite.
There's something sad about a 44 year old yelling "ROFLMAO"
If it ain't dead you're not pressing 2 hard enough.
In WoW you don't have to do the quests in a line you can go to other places and do other stuff like Quests, trading, try to level, talk or just sit around and drink beer in-game so its kinda a linear RPG but its still a mmorpg
No matter MMO or RPG, I have played for 2 years.
ROFLMAO. Please tell me where CoX has any of the features you described? CoX is WoW lite.
There's something sad about a 44 year old yelling "ROFLMAO"
Roflmao just doesn't look right. Looks like I tried to type something with my fingers on the wrong home keys. We do normally capitalize acroynms like NASA or USA. That way people realize it's an acroynm. Or maybe you object to a 44 yr old even using the term? So I'm too old to use ROTFLMAO? Maybe you're just a little too uptight? Should I remind you that you are on a video game forum? When in Rome...whoops you probably don't like cliche's either do you?
Short answer to your question: "Is this a MMO or a linear RPG?" Yes.
Long answer:
MMO = Massively Multiplayer Online
Massively - 9.3+ million people is pretty darned massive
Multiplayer - 9.3+ million is pretty darned "multi"
Online - Do you have to connect to the interwebs to play? Yes.
So, in short, you are saying that what works and is fun and entertaining for the majority doesn't work for you. You are saying that despite being the most popular MMOG for a reason, it's simply not for you.
I can understand that. Everyone is different, everyone is entitled to their own opinions.
But it sounds as if you simply cannot understand why people like this game, and are trying to "educate" the rest of us as to why we too shouldn't enjoy this game. It's a hopeless cause and has been attempted... I dunno... about a thousands times on these forums?
I believe that people such as the OP seem to have this feeling that they need to somehow convert the masses away from WoW so that developers will create what they believe will be their own ideal game. Because, it just makes so much sense to not pay attention to what is the most popular and successful, to throw out everything that makes a game like WoW popular and instead go back in time to the kind of game play and ideology that kept the MMO genre in the "niche" market...
Let's go into what you said in more detail. You said that you are given a handful of quests to lead you to the next zone, where you get a handful of quests to lead you to the next zone... etc.
What's the alternative? You kill X number of monsters in an area to get stronger, so you can then go kill X number of slightly more powerful monsters in a new area to get stronger... so that you can then go kill X number of slightly more powerful monsters in a new area to get stronger....
They really are two sides of the same coin. Quests at least try to give you a reason to go kill X monsters, or go to town Z etc. They even give you extra experience so that you don't have to grind as much.
You say that "at some level, you begin to realize that you are on a self-imposed tour of a fantasy amusement park." What's the alternative? You wander around on a self-imposed journey to find stuff to do that won't kill you in two seconds. What is SO wrong with a little direction? If the game tells me, "You shouldn't go there, you'll die instantly. Instead, you should go here, you can handle this." I'll listen to that.
You say "Give me XP penalties when I die so those dungeons I go into are actually scary." I have never understood this mentality. "I've already failed, please kick me in the junk while I'm down. Thanks." In a MMOG, you are paying for your play time. Dying, and then having to do a corpse run, ressurect, repair, re-organize, etc. is time lost. It is time where if you wouldn't have died, you'd still be playing and gaining something. What you ask for, is when you die that you don't just lose time (which you are paying for) to gain something, but you also want to take something away. That hour of play time yesterday? Time that you are paying real world cash for? It didn't mean anything. Now, you have to re-gain everything you lost. Essentially, you are paying twice for the same progression.
I don't know about you, but I like money. The less money I have to spend wasting time on tedius and overly harsh time sinks the better. I've already been killed, I've already failed, and I have to pay the price for that failure in terms of time lost, in game resources for repair, etc. Why kick me while I'm already down?
I understand that you are talking about risk vs. reward. The more you have to risk, the better the reward will be when you are successful. That makes sense. Put yourself on the line, risk failure and incurring costs for that failure, and when you are victorious, that victory will be all the more sweet and satisfying. I get that. But why punish? When we've already risked and failed, why rub dirt in the wound?
You said "Make me work for my levels so I take pride in them." Do you work in real life? I do, I have a job. I like my job, but it's still work. Why would I want to go home and have to work some more? I'd rather be having fun. True, playing a MMO means that you have to invest time in order to progress. That's all the "work" I want to be doing in a MMO. I want to be rewarded for the time I spend playing. So why turn my gaming fun time into work? True, I get rewarded for my work too. I get paid for going to work every day. Do I get paid for playing my MMO? No, I have to pay for it. When I invest money and time into a MMO, I am doing so in order to provide myself with entertainment.
Like going to see a movie. You pay for the ticket, you invest the time you could be doing something else to instead go and watch this movie. You expect to be entertained. If the movie isn't entertaining, do you feel like you've gotten your money's worth?
I'm sorry WoW is not the kind of game for you. I wish you luck in finding a game that you enjoy, but please don't come onto these forums with a high and mighty attitude trying to tell all of us that we are some how wrong or stupid for enjoying a game that we like, and instead we should want what you want.
Your opinion doesn't matter to me. You wasted our time writing this thread, and now I've wasted a chunk of my time responding to it. Well, actually I must thank you. You've given me something to waste 10 minutes of my time doing while it's slow at work! Thanks!
Consider EvE Online
Torrential
Torrential: DAOC (Pendragon)
Awned: World of Warcraft (Lothar)
Torren: Warhammer Online (Praag)
wow is fun but there needs to be more interaction with the world as it is very dull. The only change you see is sometime in outlands if you look on your map towers in your zones will be blue instead of red. They need to give the players more freedom to destroy and create their own world.