Biggest problem is the sandbox mechanic lets the few become strong and once that happens, they pretty much stay there. Everyone else has very little chance of ever overthrowing a strong power. Having everyone the same would make most sandbox players shy away from the game since they want something to progress and get better with, but at the same time it creates an imbalance that goes beyond what a normal themepark would. Its a whole capitalism deal. A few top players take control of everything while the rest are little peons. The top dine on the finest foods, surf and turf all they like, while the lower end have bread and scraps every night.
This has absolutely NOTHING to do with the Sandbox Mechanic and is actually a flaw even in Themeparks. This flaw actually has more to do with the loot and advancement mechanics than the sandbox mechanic. Oh and to prove this also happens in theme parks, leveled content seperates the old players from the new players making it so that they don't interact with each other at all. So this problem exists in ALL MMORPGs.
--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.
I have been playing MMO-s for a decade now, reading forums, blogs and web sites dedicated to that part of gaming.
I played almost every MMO out there, including bunch of f2p asian grinders.
In that time, I followed many debates about sandbox against themepark, casual against hard core etc..
In last few weeks I tried one new game, very hot at the moment (I wont name it, you know which one) and I come to realization…
Do we actually try to find gaming worlds opposite to games?
Is that sorce of frustration for many of us, than failure to “live” in our games, opposite just to “play” them?
After few hours in that new game, I come to conclusion – it’s a nice game, its not a world.
Your last sentence is what I think everythime I play the "latest" MMO
I think many of us are looking for a world to get lost into rather than just a game.
I hope developers take note of this sentiment because I believe is rather widespread among the community
I play WoW, but for me WoW is just a game
EQ was a MMORPG, that's the kind of MMO I am looking to play in the future............unfortunately no developer seems interested in reviving the old school branch of the industry, so I will stick with WoW
Originally posted by najob75 I have been playing MMO-s for a decade now, reading forums, blogs and web sites dedicated to that part of gaming. I played almost every MMO out there, including bunch of f2p asian grinders. In that time, I followed many debates about sandbox against themepark, casual against hard core etc..In last few weeks I tried one new game, very hot at the moment (I wont name it, you know which one) and I come to realization Do we actually try to find gaming worlds opposite to games? Is that sorce of frustration for many of us, than failure to live in our games, opposite just to play them?After few hours in that new game, I come to conclusion its a nice game, its not a world.
It's not really a conundrum. You can sell a virtual world to a few people, but you can sell a game to many people. You can sell a game that doesn't have a virtual world, but you can't sell a virtual world without a game. When it comes down to sales and people playing, the virtual world becomes superfluous.
I don't deny that there are people for whom virtual worlds are 'the thing most wanted', but there aren't enough of those people for any serious, large scale development.
You would have to sneak a virtual world into the mix by making it a game or laying a game on top of the virtual world, so that it a place to play, instead of just a place to live a virtual life. Even then you're going to have issues as people starting gaming the system to win the game. People are nothing if not good at wrecking things (both in the real world and in virtual worlds).
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Funny enough I was just pondering this question before seeing this thread pop up. Perfecting timing to hit "home"...
My basic idea behind this is a world means realism/simulation. You can't really achieve this with AI, the only thing a dev can do to push the artificial is in realistic cycles, weather, day/night, etc...
You need a player driven game to achieve a true feeling of a world. The concepts behind EVE or Shadowbane are perfect examples of this. The game world becomes what the players make of it, that is the only true form of dynamic game-play. AI will always be scripted and circular with no real shift in dynamic outside of what is finitely coded in.
Even in a game like Skyrim scripted characters become an after thought, as well as the dynamics of the world, there's little variation in where the world starts and where it ends after 200-300 hrs of play, every where you travel is where it started more or less.
Player driven societies have much more freedom and fluidity.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Funny enough I was just pondering this question before seeing this thread pop up. Perfecting timing to hit "home"...
My basic idea behind this is a world means realism/simulation. You can't really achieve this with AI, the only thing a dev can do to push the artificial is in realistic cycles, weather, day/night, etc...
You need a player driven game to achieve a true feeling of a world. The concepts behind EVE or Shadowbane are perfect examples of this. The game world becomes what the players make of it, that is the only true form of dynamic game-play. AI will always be scripted and circular with no real shift in dynamic outside of what is finitely coded in.
Even in a game like Skyrim scripted characters become an after thought, as well as the dynamics of the world, there's little variation in where the world starts and where it ends after 200-300 hrs of play, every where you travel is where it started more or less.
Player driven societies have much more freedom and fluidity.
You can make pve seem much more world like with dynamically created enemy cities, armies and raids and all sorts of fun things. Its just that no one ever bothered in an mmo. I can write a relatively simple code to cause all this to happen. The thing is that players will flip a shit if they get lazy and let a huge raid build up and stomp their city into the ground. Most players don't want a virtual world, they want those fucking ridiculous static mobs like in WoW.
Funny enough I was just pondering this question before seeing this thread pop up. Perfecting timing to hit "home"...
My basic idea behind this is a world means realism/simulation. You can't really achieve this with AI, the only thing a dev can do to push the artificial is in realistic cycles, weather, day/night, etc...
You need a player driven game to achieve a true feeling of a world. The concepts behind EVE or Shadowbane are perfect examples of this. The game world becomes what the players make of it, that is the only true form of dynamic game-play. AI will always be scripted and circular with no real shift in dynamic outside of what is finitely coded in.
Even in a game like Skyrim scripted characters become an after thought, as well as the dynamics of the world, there's little variation in where the world starts and where it ends after 200-300 hrs of play, every where you travel is where it started more or less.
Player driven societies have much more freedom and fluidity.
You can make pve seem much more world like with dynamically created enemy cities, armies and raids and all sorts of fun things. Its just that no one ever bothered in an mmo. I can write a relatively simple code to cause all this to happen. The thing is that players will flip a shit if they get lazy and let a huge raid build up and stomp their city into the ground. Most players don't want a virtual world, they want those fucking ridiculous static mobs like in WoW.
I don't believe that, as much as I can understand why you feel that way.
I once played on a private UO shard where the Dev set up Dungeons to grow in population and players could wipe them out, only to have said dungeon start a slow growth all over again. Players farmed it, allowing the dungeons to grow to a peak level then going in and harvesting all the loot in one fell swoop.
That wasn't the same thing as what you're doing, but I think players will do basically the same thing if they can with yours. I think your system can be less abused if you include the MOBs having a chance to just pick up and move away, and also add in random variations to the growth so they are much less predictable.
The thing is, on message boards we have the individuals. But inside of game play, you have leaders that form things. This can be good or bad and both, but it happens.
I should add that that private shard had a limited number of players, so it was much more social and thus had more social peer pressure to go along with the groups. In a more massive game things may change, and there may be a race to get there first. Lots to consider in such things.
Funny enough I was just pondering this question before seeing this thread pop up. Perfecting timing to hit "home"...
My basic idea behind this is a world means realism/simulation. You can't really achieve this with AI, the only thing a dev can do to push the artificial is in realistic cycles, weather, day/night, etc...
You need a player driven game to achieve a true feeling of a world. The concepts behind EVE or Shadowbane are perfect examples of this. The game world becomes what the players make of it, that is the only true form of dynamic game-play. AI will always be scripted and circular with no real shift in dynamic outside of what is finitely coded in.
Even in a game like Skyrim scripted characters become an after thought, as well as the dynamics of the world, there's little variation in where the world starts and where it ends after 200-300 hrs of play, every where you travel is where it started more or less.
Player driven societies have much more freedom and fluidity.
You can make pve seem much more world like with dynamically created enemy cities, armies and raids and all sorts of fun things. Its just that no one ever bothered in an mmo. I can write a relatively simple code to cause all this to happen. The thing is that players will flip a shit if they get lazy and let a huge raid build up and stomp their city into the ground. Most players don't want a virtual world, they want those fucking ridiculous static mobs like in WoW.
I don't believe that, as much as I can understand why you feel that way.
I once played on a private UO shard where the Dev set up Dungeons to grow in population and players could wipe them out, only to have said dungeon start a slow growth all over again. Players farmed it, allowing the dungeons to grow to a peak level then going in and harvesting all the loot in one fell swoop.
That wasn't the same thing as what you're doing, but I think players will do basically the same thing if they can with yours. I think your system can be less abused if you include the MOBs having a chance to just pick up and move away, and also add in random variations to the growth so they are much less predictable.
The thing is, on message boards we have the individuals. But inside of game play, you have leaders that form things. This can be good or bad and both, but it happens.
I should add that that private shard had a limited number of players, so it was much more social and thus had more social peer pressure to go along with the groups. In a more massive game things may change, and there may be a race to get there first. Lots to consider in such things.
I am aware of what you refer to. The thing is that my growth scales to the player population with the rift system. Further dungeons send out colonies and a whole continent can be linked into a single creature entity if players get unlucky. If you check out my website that describes creature functions that haven't necessarily been described here it will show you.
www.lordofthedawn.com
rifts breeding growth auras and all sorts of other mechanics exist. Rifts would cover it if players didn't get new gear and skills and magic. Since they do there is breeding growth and all sorts of other systems. Sure, at some point players will either have won or lost a given world, but there are more worlds to retreat or expand to. And a single world could last a long time. Plus the player combat system could take over if players start controlling outcompeting the system too much.
Perhaps the system can't be refined well enough to last forever without human employment. But it can certainly last a few years, and a designer could always interfere.
You can still achieve something in the game even if you cannot compete 1v1 with top players. What is my motivation to play more if someone who plays less can easily compete?
Simple. Progression. You get better stuff. It is NOT always about other people.
Plus, while you do not need to compete 1v1 with top players, it is a HUGE waste of resources to build content ONLY for top 1% of players. It is MUCH more effective taking WOW's approach of having varying difficulties in the same content.
An MMO should strive to create a world, but only to the point where it doesn't come at the expense of making it a fun game.
Exactly.
But that's basically what ToR is; game first, world second. They've tried to present a living world, but only when it wouldn't harm gameplay.
Even as a game it's not perfect (90% of the mobs have no special abilities) but at least it focused on what successfully entertains most players (gameplay.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
You can still achieve something in the game even if you cannot compete 1v1 with top players. What is my motivation to play more if someone who plays less can easily compete?
The motivations to play are fun and mastery.
When a game doesn't blindly pursue world simulation at the cost of good gameplay, it often results in a game players find fun to play on its own merits -- something they don't need to be bribed to play. I don't experience any meaningful progression in Puzzle Pirates or BF3 or LoL, yet I've played these games because they're just outright fun to play, and because there's a sense that I can become better at them.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Cuathon, you seem to have a great lack of understanding between the concept of "Freedom of choice" and lack of freedom. I'll agree that most Themepark MMORPGs don't offer enough things to do, but do you know what? There's no choice in having a normal life or being a no life supernerd who basks in the glow of a computer soldered into their seat. THOSE, solely are the people who need limiting in an MMORPG, and it's real easy, and doesn't violate the rule of the sandbox in spirit, the exceptions only prove it.
To quote what you said above, about someone has a choice to go out and spend 10 hours drinking - no they don't. They might spend a few hours out socializing and talking with friends, but 10 hours? I've never seen a person who wasn't an alcoholic or a barfly do that, and I barbacked for years enough to know faces of comers and goers. I sure as hell have put in those days in games though, and they don't need to exist or be reinforced, or even encouraged by shitty mechanics. This is why I preach for the next wave of sandbox games on the horizon that want to be PvP focused to have Siege timers and enforce them into server primetime friday-sunday.
You can certainly like old grindfest timesink games, but that doesn't make it anything less than bad taste. Nothing in any MMORPG will amount to really any form of skill, lets not delude ourselves into thinking time dedication not related to physical activity and memorization is any form of that. That's the entire issue open world games that have no limits at all. A teeny tiny percent of the game playing population, people like me, will ruin it for everyone else. I was a member of Goonswarm in EVE at our peak, I know quite a bit about good time ruining and playing for 10 hours a day because you lived a double agent life and needed to make appearances on both accounts. This is not normal, not by a mile, not even for gamers. We need to be limited bigtime. Supernerd elitists especially need to be shunned for the grognard neckbeards they are. They can cry crocodile tears all they want.
Cuathon, you seem to have a great lack of understanding between the concept of "Freedom of choice" and lack of freedom. I'll agree that most Themepark MMORPGs don't offer enough things to do, but do you know what? There's no choice in having a normal life or being a no life supernerd who basks in the glow of a computer soldered into their seat. THOSE, solely are the people who need limiting in an MMORPG, and it's real easy, and doesn't violate the rule of the sandbox in spirit, the exceptions only prove it.
To quote what you said above, about someone has a choice to go out and spend 10 hours drinking - no they don't. They might spend a few hours out socializing and talking with friends, but 10 hours? I've never seen a person who wasn't an alcoholic or a barfly do that, and I barbacked for years enough to know faces of comers and goers. I sure as hell have put in those days in games though, and they don't need to exist or be reinforced, or even encouraged by shitty mechanics. This is why I preach for the next wave of sandbox games on the horizon that want to be PvP focused to have Siege timers and enforce them into server primetime friday-sunday.
You can certainly like old grindfest timesink games, but that doesn't make it anything less than bad taste. Nothing in any MMORPG will amount to really any form of skill, lets not delude ourselves into thinking time dedication not related to physical activity and memorization is any form of that. That's the entire issue open world games that have no limits at all. A teeny tiny percent of the game playing population, people like me, will ruin it for everyone else. I was a member of Goonswarm in EVE at our peak, I know quite a bit about good time ruining and playing for 10 hours a day because you lived a double agent life and needed to make appearances on both accounts. This is not normal, not by a mile, not even for gamers. We need to be limited bigtime. Supernerd elitists especially need to be shunned for the grognard neckbeards they are. They can cry crocodile tears all they want.
That was hyperbole. They could be doing lots of things, drinking, sports, socializing, playing other games, watching TV, it doesn't matter. I have spent 10 hours or more in a row at Bread Co. playing MTG with friends, every thursday for a couple years though.
I didn't say it was a skill to play a lot. What has skill got to do with mmorpgs in any case? The only skill is mastering the interface, mathcrafting, and understanding the game world and the creatures in it. That's more of an education issue than skill I guess. You can limit the power of supernerds, who don't all have neckbeards thanks very much. And supernerds can make the game more fun for other people.
I used to play this game called dungeon inquisitor where I used a mechanic the way devs didn't expect, just asking people to be my followers without being bffs, and i hit the 50 follower cap and blew threw game stuff and started doing some nearly endgame pve right before I quit, and when I left I made several people who were not supernerds really happy selling my rare high quality creatures and passing out my gold and items. There was not one person, hardcore or casual, who was happy for me to leave because I allowed them to achieve things they would have been unable to do, either ever, or at least for many months.
I played a similar role in Warring Factions where I would join the weakest faction and do their research and explore and do things that never occured to them like just run probes to all the general areas of the enemy homeworlds day 1 before people got up intel blockades. I also traded money for population and vice versa and did colony hookups and I made it possible for the players in that faction to compete on an even playing field with elitist cliques in other factions. Just because you used your power for evil doesn't make me a bad person.
I also played ATITD and did the boring grindfests that no one else wanted to do and helped out newbies and many guilds with stuff. In this case I was given sheepsies in return and everyone was happy. I love sheepsies.
I can ruin people's good times in some cases, although I don't see why I would unless I was really bored.
I didn't say it was a skill to play a lot. What has skill got to do with mmorpgs in any case? The only skill is mastering the interface, mathcrafting, and understanding the game world and the creatures in it. That's more of an education issue than skill I guess. You can limit the power of supernerds, who don't all have neckbeards thanks very much. And supernerds can make the game more fun for other people.
No game is worth playing which doesn't involve skill, because every game worth playing involves meaningful decisions.
So skill has an awful lot to do with MMORPGs.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I didn't say it was a skill to play a lot. What has skill got to do with mmorpgs in any case? The only skill is mastering the interface, mathcrafting, and understanding the game world and the creatures in it. That's more of an education issue than skill I guess. You can limit the power of supernerds, who don't all have neckbeards thanks very much. And supernerds can make the game more fun for other people.
No game is worth playing which doesn't involve skill, because every game worth playing involves meaningful decisions.
Comments
This has absolutely NOTHING to do with the Sandbox Mechanic and is actually a flaw even in Themeparks. This flaw actually has more to do with the loot and advancement mechanics than the sandbox mechanic. Oh and to prove this also happens in theme parks, leveled content seperates the old players from the new players making it so that they don't interact with each other at all. So this problem exists in ALL MMORPGs.
--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.
Your last sentence is what I think everythime I play the "latest" MMO
I think many of us are looking for a world to get lost into rather than just a game.
I hope developers take note of this sentiment because I believe is rather widespread among the community
I play WoW, but for me WoW is just a game
EQ was a MMORPG, that's the kind of MMO I am looking to play in the future............unfortunately no developer seems interested in reviving the old school branch of the industry, so I will stick with WoW
It's not really a conundrum. You can sell a virtual world to a few people, but you can sell a game to many people. You can sell a game that doesn't have a virtual world, but you can't sell a virtual world without a game. When it comes down to sales and people playing, the virtual world becomes superfluous.
I don't deny that there are people for whom virtual worlds are 'the thing most wanted', but there aren't enough of those people for any serious, large scale development.
You would have to sneak a virtual world into the mix by making it a game or laying a game on top of the virtual world, so that it a place to play, instead of just a place to live a virtual life. Even then you're going to have issues as people starting gaming the system to win the game. People are nothing if not good at wrecking things (both in the real world and in virtual worlds).
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
An MMO should strive to create a world, but only to the point where it doesn't come at the expense of making it a fun game.
Funny enough I was just pondering this question before seeing this thread pop up. Perfecting timing to hit "home"...
My basic idea behind this is a world means realism/simulation. You can't really achieve this with AI, the only thing a dev can do to push the artificial is in realistic cycles, weather, day/night, etc...
You need a player driven game to achieve a true feeling of a world. The concepts behind EVE or Shadowbane are perfect examples of this. The game world becomes what the players make of it, that is the only true form of dynamic game-play. AI will always be scripted and circular with no real shift in dynamic outside of what is finitely coded in.
Even in a game like Skyrim scripted characters become an after thought, as well as the dynamics of the world, there's little variation in where the world starts and where it ends after 200-300 hrs of play, every where you travel is where it started more or less.
Player driven societies have much more freedom and fluidity.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
You can make pve seem much more world like with dynamically created enemy cities, armies and raids and all sorts of fun things. Its just that no one ever bothered in an mmo. I can write a relatively simple code to cause all this to happen. The thing is that players will flip a shit if they get lazy and let a huge raid build up and stomp their city into the ground. Most players don't want a virtual world, they want those fucking ridiculous static mobs like in WoW.
I don't believe that, as much as I can understand why you feel that way.
I once played on a private UO shard where the Dev set up Dungeons to grow in population and players could wipe them out, only to have said dungeon start a slow growth all over again. Players farmed it, allowing the dungeons to grow to a peak level then going in and harvesting all the loot in one fell swoop.
That wasn't the same thing as what you're doing, but I think players will do basically the same thing if they can with yours. I think your system can be less abused if you include the MOBs having a chance to just pick up and move away, and also add in random variations to the growth so they are much less predictable.
The thing is, on message boards we have the individuals. But inside of game play, you have leaders that form things. This can be good or bad and both, but it happens.
I should add that that private shard had a limited number of players, so it was much more social and thus had more social peer pressure to go along with the groups. In a more massive game things may change, and there may be a race to get there first. Lots to consider in such things.
Once upon a time....
I am aware of what you refer to. The thing is that my growth scales to the player population with the rift system. Further dungeons send out colonies and a whole continent can be linked into a single creature entity if players get unlucky. If you check out my website that describes creature functions that haven't necessarily been described here it will show you.
www.lordofthedawn.com
rifts breeding growth auras and all sorts of other mechanics exist. Rifts would cover it if players didn't get new gear and skills and magic. Since they do there is breeding growth and all sorts of other systems. Sure, at some point players will either have won or lost a given world, but there are more worlds to retreat or expand to. And a single world could last a long time. Plus the player combat system could take over if players start controlling outcompeting the system too much.
Perhaps the system can't be refined well enough to last forever without human employment. But it can certainly last a few years, and a designer could always interfere.
Simple. Progression. You get better stuff. It is NOT always about other people.
Plus, while you do not need to compete 1v1 with top players, it is a HUGE waste of resources to build content ONLY for top 1% of players. It is MUCH more effective taking WOW's approach of having varying difficulties in the same content.
Exactly.
But that's basically what ToR is; game first, world second. They've tried to present a living world, but only when it wouldn't harm gameplay.
Even as a game it's not perfect (90% of the mobs have no special abilities) but at least it focused on what successfully entertains most players (gameplay.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The motivations to play are fun and mastery.
When a game doesn't blindly pursue world simulation at the cost of good gameplay, it often results in a game players find fun to play on its own merits -- something they don't need to be bribed to play. I don't experience any meaningful progression in Puzzle Pirates or BF3 or LoL, yet I've played these games because they're just outright fun to play, and because there's a sense that I can become better at them.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Cuathon, you seem to have a great lack of understanding between the concept of "Freedom of choice" and lack of freedom. I'll agree that most Themepark MMORPGs don't offer enough things to do, but do you know what? There's no choice in having a normal life or being a no life supernerd who basks in the glow of a computer soldered into their seat. THOSE, solely are the people who need limiting in an MMORPG, and it's real easy, and doesn't violate the rule of the sandbox in spirit, the exceptions only prove it.
To quote what you said above, about someone has a choice to go out and spend 10 hours drinking - no they don't. They might spend a few hours out socializing and talking with friends, but 10 hours? I've never seen a person who wasn't an alcoholic or a barfly do that, and I barbacked for years enough to know faces of comers and goers. I sure as hell have put in those days in games though, and they don't need to exist or be reinforced, or even encouraged by shitty mechanics. This is why I preach for the next wave of sandbox games on the horizon that want to be PvP focused to have Siege timers and enforce them into server primetime friday-sunday.
You can certainly like old grindfest timesink games, but that doesn't make it anything less than bad taste. Nothing in any MMORPG will amount to really any form of skill, lets not delude ourselves into thinking time dedication not related to physical activity and memorization is any form of that. That's the entire issue open world games that have no limits at all. A teeny tiny percent of the game playing population, people like me, will ruin it for everyone else. I was a member of Goonswarm in EVE at our peak, I know quite a bit about good time ruining and playing for 10 hours a day because you lived a double agent life and needed to make appearances on both accounts. This is not normal, not by a mile, not even for gamers. We need to be limited bigtime. Supernerd elitists especially need to be shunned for the grognard neckbeards they are. They can cry crocodile tears all they want.
I think OP has put before him an interesting question, as he/she sort of asked if the game world is disjointed from the gaming experience as such.
This is where 'design' or 'game design' is so important, where the details are meningful and where it all, somehow, make sense.
I am of course alluding to the necessity of a game's 'world' to be interactive to such a degree as to have the 'world' interacting with the gamer.
That was hyperbole. They could be doing lots of things, drinking, sports, socializing, playing other games, watching TV, it doesn't matter. I have spent 10 hours or more in a row at Bread Co. playing MTG with friends, every thursday for a couple years though.
I didn't say it was a skill to play a lot. What has skill got to do with mmorpgs in any case? The only skill is mastering the interface, mathcrafting, and understanding the game world and the creatures in it. That's more of an education issue than skill I guess. You can limit the power of supernerds, who don't all have neckbeards thanks very much. And supernerds can make the game more fun for other people.
I used to play this game called dungeon inquisitor where I used a mechanic the way devs didn't expect, just asking people to be my followers without being bffs, and i hit the 50 follower cap and blew threw game stuff and started doing some nearly endgame pve right before I quit, and when I left I made several people who were not supernerds really happy selling my rare high quality creatures and passing out my gold and items. There was not one person, hardcore or casual, who was happy for me to leave because I allowed them to achieve things they would have been unable to do, either ever, or at least for many months.
I played a similar role in Warring Factions where I would join the weakest faction and do their research and explore and do things that never occured to them like just run probes to all the general areas of the enemy homeworlds day 1 before people got up intel blockades. I also traded money for population and vice versa and did colony hookups and I made it possible for the players in that faction to compete on an even playing field with elitist cliques in other factions. Just because you used your power for evil doesn't make me a bad person.
I also played ATITD and did the boring grindfests that no one else wanted to do and helped out newbies and many guilds with stuff. In this case I was given sheepsies in return and everyone was happy. I love sheepsies.
I can ruin people's good times in some cases, although I don't see why I would unless I was really bored.
No game is worth playing which doesn't involve skill, because every game worth playing involves meaningful decisions.
So skill has an awful lot to do with MMORPGs.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Slots. That is all.
Oh, roulette, too.