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Are MMO's worth playing in this day and age?
Normantis
Member Posts: 26
First I have played mmo’s for a decade and I have played a ton of them. I usually have 2 accounts or more depending on the game and how much I play. Saying this only to give an example of the money I am willing to spend on mmo’s.
I am finding it harder and harder to enjoy MMO’s and I am wondering if people feel as I do. Let me explain....
At one time I thought mmo’s where the top of the food chain when it comes to video games. Now I am quickly changing my perspective. Every day after work I log into Steam, my friends message me to say hello, I get game invites and have access to a really nice community. I see daily deals, games on sale for the prices of gold, cloths, and other such items in mmo’s. I go to mmo forums and most are filled with hate. I go to other video games site not mmo’s and there is a thriving community, modders and devs working together. Let’s take Paradox Interactive or example. They even release games made by modders or games improved by modders, Heart of Iron 2 Darkest Hour for example. These games have multiplayer functionality and I can choose which people I like playing with avoiding the “umadbro” types. Even buying a copy of some of these games and 1 for a friend is still less than 1 month sub fee.
What I am trying to say is these services like Steam offer allot of what I liked in mmo’s and instead of spending $30+ dollars on a cash shop or sub fee monthly, you can get a handful of games each month. You get bored buy a new game and it is still cheaper. I have a group of my mmo buddies feeling the same way. We have had some epic fights in games like total war, hearts of iron, etc, filling our need for pvp and even surpassing the game play of your standard mmo fair. There are allot of games that come very close to mmo’s, Mount and Blade for example for a fraction of the price.
So I ask you, are mmos worth it since you can get literally 1000’s of games for under $5? Are services like Steam helping mmo’s or hurting them? Do you see this trend (if it is a trend or just me) getting worse as more people grow bored of the same old same old? Is not spending money on a variety of games better than pouring it into just one? As the line between mmo and standard multi player games grey are mmo’s doomed to boredom?
These are my opinions and I would like to hear if I am not alone in this thinking.
Comments
I agree that MMORPG's aren't worth playing at the moment. That isn't because of cheap other games for me though. My problem is that MMORPG's are just inferior to other games at the moment. In a single player RPG you can experience an excellent story with great puzzles and confrontations. The MMORPG version makes you run around and kill 10 wolves over and over again. I liked MMORPG's when they really were about playing in a massive world with other players, but nowadays they don't take advantage of that. Modern mmorpgs seek to protect a player from others which really keep them from interacting in a real meaningful way. In mmorpg's that had open pvp and consequences for dying, you would see crazy wars between pkers, antipks, as well as organized wars between guilds. Without any consequences from dying this is rendered essentially meaningless. MMORPG's play like a crappy single player rpg with a co-op option. Single player rpgs sure as hell don't make you kill 10 wolves over and over...and if they ever do they deserve to fail hard.
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I will play no more MMORPGs until somethign good comes out!
Since very few MMO's these days allow you to build a unique char or reward hard work with anyhting other than levels and gear, I find that jumping around in F2P games is just as rewarding as P2P games. I dont even buy games when they first come out anymore. I'm tired of paying $60 for a game only to see it at half that price in less than 90 days. Dont buy into the hype, dont go flying in at release and deal with launch bugs and queue's. Games magazines and internet sites all make their money from ad's by developers/publishers so very rarely do they give an honest pre-release review.
I dont think we will ever see games like UO or SWG that allowed you to build unique chars and amass great wealth and beautiful homes. Allow you to explore other realms as you wanted to and not on some questline. Eve is the closet thing and the only game I am subbed to (its also becuase I can pay my sub fee with ingame currency). TSW and GW2 look ok but I'll wait until after school is back in around October and then decide if I want to pay half price after seeing the reviews and listening to other players.
i think alot of them are worth playing...They just aren't worth paying a monthly sub for.
To think MMOS were the best experience you could get in a videogame once. Not anymore.
An honest review of SW:TOR 6/10 (Danny Wojcicki)
Another question, are there any MMO's beeing made in this day and age ?
I only see games now, and to see it like this somehow lessen my frustrations on the inevitable progress. However, it also turns me away from games calling themselves MMO, because I weigh them with other games now.
I know its exxagerated, but basically more or less true.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
I agree with you guys.
The longest game I have played is Eve becasue it did have the sence of adventure and character building and no other game minus UO gave me that feeling. The modern mmo really does feel like a single player game for the most part. Maybe that is why I find it so easy to dissmiss them and turn to Steam for a new thrill.
I think you, like many others, have just outgrown the genre. Yes a decade or so ago, much of what we have now was new and fresh and fun and it was actually exciting to play thes egames and explore these new worlds. But with a decade of just copying and pasting the same game wrapped in a different skin over and over again its grown dull and tedious. Very few MMOs offer anything new and exciting. They might add 1 new feature here and there, but even those new features wind up being nothing more than a slightly tweaked version of an already popular feature in dozens of other games.
Not trying to turn this into a PC vs Console argument or anything, but consider how consoles and their games have evolved ove rthe years in comparison to MMOs and how much mor epopular and commonplace theyve become. I think one of those reasons is the huge variety they offer compared to MMOs. Nearly every MMO revolves around the same mechanics & playstyle. Meanwhile you have not only the standard consoles with regular controllers, but now also the Wii and Kinect addition to the 360, etc. Not only has the hardware itself changed drastically, but the playstyle/mechanics of the games are so varied. As they keep coming out with new hardware and new styles of games, the consoles keep getting more and more popular. Especially with the addition of what used to be PC only features to the consoles like web browsers and more and dmore multimedia stuff.
Along with the above, certainly some PC game shave brought some new things to the table too. But specific to MMOs... what has really change din the past decade? Sure we got new shinier graphics and stuff. But what else has REALLY changed, except for a few games most of which are unfortunately indie games without the money and staff to really make it big. Youre still using the same keyboard, same mouse, and using them the exact same way. Even when they add some cool ne wfeatures in, the rest of the game still feels like your eplaying the exact same game all over again.
I really wish they would make better use of the hardware to make some interesting to play MMOs. For example, youve got twitch style combat. Sure it can be fun for some, but why not expand on it? Why limit it to simply pointing in the right place but still pressing/clicking the same few buttons? Wouldnt it be more interesting to have to do things like say to cast a magic spell actually draw out a magical rune in the air in front of your character using your mouse? Perhaps have "partial" symbols, like a line this way means thsi effect, a line this other way is this othe reffect, a circle here, a triangle there, etc... have them combine in differen tpatterns for varying effects. Would be very interesting to see people trying to focus on the enemy during combat while also needing to have the control to accurately complete their spells.
Anyway, some games are taking some steps to make things more interesting and dynamic. But until we get out of this whole standard method of playing pretty much every MMO and start making them not just look unique or have a unique feature, but actually PLAY uniquely (like the various consoles & their games do), theyre going to continue feeling duller and duller a sthe years go on for most of us.
Single player games still don't offer a presistent world.
I can't quest in Skyrim and have people run passed me or have a conversation in a region chat with 30+ strangers for hours.
Once single player games can offer that experience I get by sharing a world with hundreds then maybe MMOs wouldnt be worth it.
Today I play MMOs for the journey, I love leveling new characters and meeting new people. I enjoy sharing a zone with people, I enjoy being in a overlly active guild chat or decent zone wide chat discussion.
Certain single player games offer a mmo type mechanic here and there but overall they don't come close to that experience.
This is why I still play MMOs, so yeah I think its worth it.
Playing: Nothing
Looking forward to: Nothing
Eve Online is, but that is a very unique exception, and at least for me it can be hard to maintain playing that very intense game for long periods of time. Also, one of Eve's only weaknesses is that it isn't well suited to quick, casual, in-and-out bursts of gameplay. You need at least a good 1-1.5 hours uninterrupted in an Eve "session" to do anything worthwhile (I do not consider AFK missioning/mining a suitable thing to do, dangerous and inefficient). And being married with a toddler, real life sucks up a good chunk of my time.
So I do play other MMOs when I have the short spurts of available time when I want more relaxed gameplay, as well as the occasional single player game (I really need to get back into Dead Island). I actually decided to give Maple Story a spin a couple of days ago for that precise purpose, and it seems to be working just fine for those quick casual play bursts.
Where's the any key?
This is the biggest argument I hear from my friends. I agree with you.
But soon, games like Shogun Total War (it has a very deep multiplayer aspects), Mount and Blade, DayZ/Arma, etc bridge the gap and get full multiplayer features mmo's have. We may see some new ground broken. I have pretty much given up on the old mmo dev team giants and am now looking in places like the single player market for new fresh approach to a multiplayer persistent worlds.
I think all games will go that way sooner or later.
Rpgs will have global chat system, hot drop grouping, Auction houses, persistent cities and maybe even worlds ( on a smaller scale maybe 30+ people sharing one world).
Once that happens MMOs will need to do soemthing different. Maybe something like Planetside 2? One thousand plus player battles would be tough to pull off in a single player game without extra income for server fees.
Playing: Nothing
Looking forward to: Nothing
Really is up to the individual.
I have no problem spending $10 on a cup of coffee every morning at work.
Some do not think it is worth it and that's fine.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Pretty good way to put it R2.....err Z3
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
I've found many many hours of enjoyment within the MMO genre, not every game has been outright fun from the start but they had tended to get better the deeper you get, but it seems these days that many players are expecting everything the moment they set foot within the game world.
It must be difficult for those that come across from successful games such as Everquest etc to a new game and have to start out at the bottom of the food chain again, the journey itself for these ppl is enough to make them throw their arms up in disapproval and head back home, rather than work at it and progress.
MMO's are worth it when your prepared to put the same effort into them that you did when you played your first MMO.
More to the point, I hate it when people claim that WE have OUTGROWN MMORPGs.
NO, we haven't, what we've outgrown is the simplistic linear systems from 1999. Literally, almost nothing has changed from Everquest, and what's more the only thing that HAS actually changed to some point is WoW dumbing down the basic EQ mechanics of the MMO genre.
I haven't "outgrown" MMOs. I still WANT to play MMOs & MMORPGs, but not this latest trash they've been releasing.
Look at the Console market! Almost every single game released on consoles play differently from the last. Even sequels play almost entirely different save for a few nostalgia commonalities. Yet, when you look @ the MMORPG market they're almost ALL the same post 2004!!! Why?!
Give us back the beauty, depth, complexity, and challenge that MMORPG's used to represent. I don't want to walk down the same virtual road everyone else has over 100million times.
The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity:
Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
When I read the title, I thought this was going to be another one of the many affirmation-seeking whines we rgularly see here. It was not.
The comparison of the virtual communities and social aspects - those in a modern MMO and those of Steam - really drives home how far we've drifted from MUDs and the earlier MMOs. Your point about the price vs variety and iteraction might be why so many have drifted to F2P MMOs and Facebook gaming, too.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
MMORPG, in theory, should be living world, sandbox where you log on and experiment a LIFE as someone else, be it a magician, a space bounty hunter or whatever.
Problem is that MMORPG, instead of going further in that direction (ie: dynamic world with consequences, politic, complex crafting, tons of social interactions etc) regress to instanced minigames. And yeah, why pay a sub for killing 10 boars and running the same couple of instances when Steam give you more for less ?
Subscriptions, imho, were a moral contract between us and the devs: i agree to pay you every months BECAUSE mmo aren't a normal game. I'm not talking about servers cost but about the living world concept. If the devs don't give us dynamic worlds (remember in UO: GM played rp story for us), the deal is broken and the mmorpg is a faillure.
When I first started playing MMO's (2002) I thought for sure the genre would evolve into better and more detailed virtual worlds. Little did I realize the greater playerbase does not care for this design, but rather prefers more simplistic 'games' instead. I manage to keep playing by focusing on the fun elements each title brings but I am certainly not satisfied."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
All depends on what you're looking to get out of them IMO.
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Cmon Kyl, we know you are the king of the happy ending.
I liked how EQ was a bit more deep, but the level of "alternate reality" some of you guys blather on about is not something I enjoy. As a matter of fact, the "world" you envision is boring as fuck in my eyes.
Unlike some of you guys though, I understand a persons preferences in gaming has nothing to do with education level. Nor does it have anything to do with motivation in life. It is simply a preference, and unfortunately for you guys, not many agree with ya.
I dont know what the future of MMOs hold, but I am sure online gaming isnt going away.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
The genre has developed into a "please the masses" machine. In the early days of MMOs the people that played them were in awe of the concept and presentation. Once they became mainstream the larger percentage of the players want instant gratification and easier to play models.
Just like water, the players will seek the easiest path from point A to point B. The developers are not going to put too many obstacles in their way because it might block the cash flow.
We need a new platform type that draws the less demanding casual players. This genre could then return to the innovation path instead of the business and design model we are suffering.
To answer the question of the OP: Plenty of MMOs out there worth playing and paying for. Plenty.
Most people, however, are playing games I don't play and only few people play the games I play. Fine for me - I think one gets a better community when one avoids the popular mainstream anyway.
I maintain this List of Sandbox MMORPGs. Please post or send PM for corrections and suggestions.
Actually, the current mmos are all not that great for me.
There are more multiplayer and offline games out there who offer a lot more fun....
* Skyrim & Fallout with new mods
* Arma 2 mods inclusive DayZ, so much offline and online content
* Mount & Blade: Napoleonic Wars ...big awesome multiplayer battles
....just some examples
Except that's not a persistent world.
You having a converation with some stranger doesn't lend to a world being persistent. I would say that's dynamic. There is nothing persistent about that converation and you might never meet that person again.
That's a dynamic world. Things happening out of the ordinary, things that happen that might never happen again.
Have you actually played skyrim? Because people run past me in the game all the time. Sometime the same people like that couple that is escaping the troubles or the guy who is bringing a cow to a giant ceremony or heck, even the headless horseman.
There are warriors on the road, thieves trying to sell you skooma and even a bard that travels around.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Yes, the MMO's are worthy this days. But you also need different ways of entertainment, otherwise you'll get bored pretty soon. I still remember the days of certain year (when Age of Conan hitted the store's shelves), when every old and new MMO (apart from EVE Online and WoW) sucked a lot. That year was horrible, and I can't even remember if there were a worthy singleplayer or multiplayer at that time.
Nowadays we have a lot of options, most of them cheap or without monthy fees. The market of the F2P is healthy, and they have a decent quality (in my case, World of Tanks is my favourite, and the game that consumes most of my time) We have a lot of single player games with a decent life span (The Witcher 2, lost of choices and replayability; Skyrim, almost a sandbox; Minecraft and its tons of mods, a sandbox; Diablo 3.... what to say about this one....) And of course, the MMO market is still interesting, but I think that companies are realizing that very few products have the right to ask for a monthy fee (sandboxes mainly, because they are pretty incompatible with F2P) And looking at the future, Guild Wars 2 and Archeage are really promising.... So yes, we are living a great moment for the MMO's and game market in general