Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
General: Shiny Happy MMO People
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
In her latest Player Perspectives column, MMORPG.com's own Isabelle Parsley talks about in-game festivals and world events. Inspired by the American holiday, Thanksgiving, Isabelle takes on world events both raving and ranting about them. You won't want to miss this one, folks, so check it out and then leave us a comment!
I had a big rant all prepared about how people aren’t people to each other anymore in MMOs – and I will in fact probably favour you all with a rantlet – but here in the States it’s Thanksgiving time, and although it wasn’t a holiday I grew up with, it’s a pretty good one. So one of the things I’m going to do today is be thankful for some of the good stuff that’s happened to me in, or because of, MMOs.
Read more Player Perspectives: Shiny Happy MMO People.
Comments
You're thinking too hard. Holidays aren't for getting together with people. They're for getting together with people that matter. Your mmo guildees and friends may seem like the best of buddies with you, but when it gets down to it you still need to turn them off and spend real time with your family, your kids, and some of your friends which probably haven't seen you in a long time.
So this doesn't really strike me as something to be irked about. Maybe I'm just the only one who still sees these things as video games? Whatever the case, happy holidays to you and everyone else too. Bit past for thanksgiving, but there's still a few more to go.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
Actually I'd say you're thinking too hard on it.
Also Isabelle, hate to say it's a pipe dream; but most people now a days enjoy proving to their so-called peers that they're better than them. Be it a pvp kill, a list of purple words, or a rating proving it. That's all.
I think between your ramble and gaeanprayer's post a unique idea can be born.
Speak MMO with those who matter. Strengthen your personal creed in any sort of social activity and don't try and hide what you believe. Censorship, even when polite, is wrong in my opinion.
I don't really have an opinion on the post one way or the other.
What sparked me to comment was the AO picture. I have been MMO-ing since UO and I miss those parties in the clubs in AO. Everyone throwing on their casual clothes and hitting the scene, there was nothing like it AO was and still is an awesome game albeit getting a bit long in the tooth. I may have to crank AO back up and whip out my trader.
Einherjar_LC says: WTB the true successor to UO or Asheron's Call pst!
In part I can agree with you. I've played MMO's where you could get special seasonal items when fighting monsters and perhaps get something with that package or plant the seed and then get another item.... But.... in the end, all people did was auto-fight instead of chopping critters together with friends. if you were looking for help with quest... Forget it. Not at those days.
Don't get me wrong, I loved the items, but there was a low droprate, so you really had to slaughter monsters for hours and hours (or days and days) before you perhaps could get what you want.... Too bad.
I wish MMO developers would make something during those times where you can just go on with your normal business and still get seasonal items. Hmmm.... I think an idea for some questlines for my own game just were born
~Have fun~
Grisaline
Ah.... Can't edit my post... Forgot to tell everyone Happy Thanksgiving and have fun!
Speak MMO. That's a keeper!
~Have fun~
Grisaline
This a thousand times.
hurrah on the post
That AO picture makes me want to play it again too!
Good article, reminds me of my early days in MMO's when most folks looked forward to meeting new and interesting people in them and didn't seem to be totally interested in their own personal interests.
As evidenced here, its the game mechanics currently employed in most games that make MMO's the empty, sterile environements they've become (and no, your great guild does not compare to what went on before)
Happy Holidays everyone.
"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
I have made friends in game, that have become rl friends, we get together, call each other around the holiday's, even take trips to pax and comic con, I have been friends with these people for almost 10 years now, so getting together with people that matter are sometimes your gaming friends, they are no less friend just because I met them online..
I think the behavior you've described can be observed far more often than during the periodic MMO festivals. It seems as if the internet provides enough separation between the people interacting that they often display less sociable qualities of their character. Or they may even take on false identities that (in their mind) justifies different behavior. People often feel less inhibited when interacting with others from a distance. If they're a gamer that has developed an achievement oriented mentality (not uncommon), and they're not obliged to behave as they would in person, well I think you're witnessing the results. I have observed similar behavior in drivers on the road. They cut me off, when they would not consider budding in front of me in a grocery store line-up. You are absolutely right, we should remember the people around us are real, and feel like we do about many things. When gaming, take the time to say hello and actually connect, however briefly, with the people around us.
MMORPG History: ULtima Online, Everquest, Everquest2, Lord Of The Rings Online, World Of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Horizons, Warhammer Online, Age Of Conan, Pirates Of The Burning Sea, Eve Online, Star Trek Online, City Of Heroes, Tabula Rasa.
Yeh i do agree, though i think it's slowly coming back...
In my guild there are a few asian members who play not from home, but from an internet cafe together, and amongst the US/EU part it sparked a bit of a discussion of "Hey, maybe it's not too bad". I am not saying gamers in the western world will rush to internet cafes to play, but I am saying, it's little signs like these that show there is space to create new communities.
PS: I do miss the AO days, but i am not coming back unless they fix the graphics. Not because o mind what they are now, but because I because they promised it so long ago :P
Meh to the cynical among us! I just returned to EverQuest (1, not 2) and within hours met someone I've friended and am having heaps of fun chatting with. There's something about the kind of people still attracted to these old school MMOs that tends to shut out the brats and anti-social jerks, I reckon. So horray for the players of Meridian 59, AC, AoC, and EQ, and happy holidays to you all!
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Great post and thankfully it made me feel better about the fact that I don't tend to participate in all the little in game festival events, they just seem "shrugs" pointless. For the most part I have no problem with any new content or any reason for delivering the new content so I would never go out of my way to speak against them but seeing as they are rarely if ever the kind of content I enjoy I haven't done many and don't plan to change any time soon.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
"So that’s one thing. Another thing, and far more important to me, are the friends I’ve made along the way. I made some friends in Asheron’s Call 10 years ago now who, today, are my neighbours in real life; but at the time I was in the UK and if you’d asked me back then, I never in a million years would have guessed that I’d end up on another continent living practically next door to them. (I’m not stalking them! Honest!) It was some years before we actually met in person, but these people were much closer friends to me – and still are – than a lot of my “real life” friends. The virtual/real-life line is a lot more blurred these days than it used to be, so that probably doesn’t sound all that weird, but 10 years ago it was a little odd to have really good friends you’d never actually met face-to-face"
I think this kinda speaks for many. In real life I really don't have a lot of close friends. I am a home person really and always have been. My friends I have made in the game are special to me. Many I have met in R.L. and I think the bond is stronger because we have something in common to talk about when the RL issues and things become less fun. Some I have not met but wish I could. Either way RL is always there but my MMO friends are too and many will probably be there when RL life ones aren't ...
Gikku
On another note. RL friends and family that don't play MMO generally think you are wasting your time and ridicule the gaming no matter what.
They do things they like and I say good for them. If that is what they want to do then so be it. Why can't they realize that this is what I like to do and enjoy?
Gikku
Well said Isabelle. I loved GW for the way even some npcs were virtual friends. Sounds odd but anyone who played through the storyline and end game cinamatics felt this a little.
I played muds in the eary days when most were only 30 level and continued, along with friends through the early 2000s. There was a group of us that got together every year or 3 and all of them got together to see the first LOTR movie. It was fun !
As far as rl, I enjoy seeing people ( or at least some of them) who are family on rare holiday get togethers but there are core friends and relatives that truely give me pleasure.
*BIG HUG! Isabelle you have a "happy one" too ...
Oh, and I hate to impose... but you'll have to drink my "pint" for me.
Good read. I remember back in SWG I would go to cantina events with lots of dancing, or sometimes we'd have parties in brightly lit PA halls, and have lottery drawings and good social fun.
I miss the wetspot cantina.
What your parents don't realize is that you aren't wasting your time. They are just being a loving selfish family like almost every other. They actually think you are wasting 'Their precious time with you'. Or something like that.
It's about their needs first and foremost. It's like how when someone dies and you begin to grieve, you aren't grieving for the person, you are grieving for 'your personal loss' of that person, and how that person won't be in 'your' life anymore.
Everybody is inherantly selfish, even selfless acts give a person some emotional satasfaction.
Couldn't agree more.
I can't say that people back in 2000 were any different, though. Plenty of douche's back then kill stealing, linking their uber gear, and acting like they were too cool for school. Its just now we can completely ignore each other instead of getting to know one another.
Good read. Although I have to say that it's hard for Holidays in MMOs to involve a more "social/get together and enjoy", when the core of these MMOs promote the complete opposite, taking players as slot machines.To suddenly encourage a more social environment, it would require to change the whole community's mentality, and core game systems for just 2-3 days.
To really promote social interaction past the "slot machine", an MMO really needs to be built with the social aspect as one of the top priorities. It's quite sad, I really miss the social aspect of older MMORPGs before it became mainstream like it is today. I can only hope that one day "that" MMORPG comes out where I can just stand in town all day and talk to people without having to worry about a gearscore or levels.
“I’m fully aware of the irony and the parallels with real-life in our frantic consumption-driven society; I just think games can attempt to rise above some of the more prosaic and excessive elements of real life. I’m an optimist.”
MMO’s are not an ideological statement of how we should live, they are escapism. People really need to leave their issues, beliefs, politics and religion at the launch.exe.
But I agree that people don't interact in MMO's like they used to, its about the kerr-ching, the achievements, we lost good gameplay when that happened. But I doubt designers thought that would happen, they no doubt saw all this as being extra, not realising it would replace social interaction. And now achievementitis is here we must have more and it must be in every MMO otherwise what are those brought up on a diet of pressing keys and ignoring other players going to do?
AC was a great game, shame the old greats never got a graphics update, I would still be there if they had. I did not realise you were a fellow Brit, have fun with chessey thanks giving stuff.
Yes for kids that probably holds a lot of truth in it. I am 58 years old, far from a child and so is my husband. I can agree if someone is on an ignoring their small childrean or not doing the housework or cooking, but that is not the case and the people that complain the loudest are those that don't spend any time with us anyway. When someone comes to visit we don't sit on the game we visit. We also do other things at times but neither of us like to run the roads, party and beat the church doors down stuff like that.
What you say is true but grieving for someone you don't spend time with or try to manipulate their life to suite yours is not the same.
Gikku
Why is it that every ttime I scan these pages people always have to have something derogatory to say? There's an old saying that my parents taught me well....If you don't have something good to say...SHUT YOUR GODDAMNED MOUTH!!!
Getting old is mandatory...growing up is optional.
When the holidays come around, I spend time with my family and friends in the real world.
I tend to tell my apprentices to go spend time with their families and lay off the text messaging, computers and online unless that one Online Community is THAT important to you. Masters/Teachers are the ones who tell me to not try too hard and to unwind during the holidays.
"There is a time and a place for everything, never give your intimacy and time away to the underserving" ~Words from a special friend.
If you have to choose all your "online friends in MMORPGs and Online Forumboards" over anyone in the real world, chances are you aren't doing well in the real world in the friends department or you have a very bad problems with people you know in the real world...Or I can be wrong and just believe you are just an addict to the internet and have forgotten a real world exists.
I do like planning some events during the Holidays....and running servers. Its something special for people, and I may attend for an hour or two. However, I won't surrender my days to those activities.
Just be aware on what the holidays mean to people, as well as the time you have and you will be alright.