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[Column] General: No MMO
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
It seems that, more and more, MMO gamers are looking for a long term commitment but it seems much more difficult to find the right one. In today's Tingle's Touchy Subjects, we take a look at that phenomenon and more. See what we've got to say before heading to the comments.
It seems as though my spare time only has relevance if there is an experience bar, an inventory slot, and hotbar abilities thrown into the mix. Walking from A to B on the actual Earth will garner specific rewards: you might get that long-wished for bar of chocolate, or even a nice bit of cake, but there's no internal chat tab that illuminates with attractive purple text to tell you "QUEST COMPLETED, HERE IS 200EXP".
Read more of Adam Tingle's Tingle's Touchy Subjects: No MMO.
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Comments
EVE is my longterm MMO, 10y now and still the #1 unique innovating mmo out there and still growing and no showing of decline yet.....not many games can I say that.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
It makes it a lot easier to avoid MMORPG addiction since MMORPG games just aren't very good in their current incarnation. I have played a ton of mmorpgs, but how many did I play longer than a month? Not very many. Mr. Tingle is right about the honeymoon period, that can make all sorts of games seem interesting, and I suppose it lasts about a month.
There is another milestone that comes after the honeymoon period, which I will call the "Why am I doing this crap?" period. This is when a player realizes that picking hundreds of flowers, or killing tens after tens of mobs for quests, just isn't that fun. They start to think about the end game and about whether it will be fun or not. Is it worth it to do all this boring crap? Some may decide that yes it is. Others will decide that it is not, and they will quit the game to do something else.
I love the idea of persistent world games, but I don't have as much time as I did before I entered the real world. It's hard to spend that time doing boring crap in the name of progression. I hope to see more persistent world games in the future that get rid of the idea of long term character progression completely. An example of this game style is DayZ. As soon as you log into DayZ, the fun part of the game starts. You don't need to kill 100s of zombies to be able to go fight with other players, you just need to find a gun. You can advance your character in the short term by scavenging items, but eventually you will get killed and lose everything. Permadeath kicks in and you restart, but you still don't have to do boring crap, you just start playing the game again and scavenging for short term advancement once again.
Are you a Pavlovian Fish Biscuit Addict? Get Help Now!
I will play no more MMORPGs until somethign good comes out!
With todays MMO's, after that fist month you are already max level. The speed leveling in games now-a-days is insane. It kills the MMO before it really gets a chance to do anything. People, within one month, are at end game and there isn't enough end game content. So the players leave. I'm not saying it should take months to get to max, but it does put a lot of pressure on the developers to add more content asap.
Persistent worlds are fun. DayZ is fun, for a little while. Start game, run and find loots, kill zombies, kill/help people, die (because it WILL happen, often), repeat. Day in day out. In the end that doesn't seem any different then running x amount of kill quests over and over. DayZ, to me, was always that filler game. "I'm bored of this im'a go play DayZ for a little while." It will be liked by All shooter fans, and with the standalone some mmo type fans, but I think mostly the pickup players. The people just looking for something to kill time. With permadeath, there is only the short term goals. That works better for the people with little time to play or someone just looking for something to do.
Don't get me wrong I am seriously looking forward to DayZ, but a persistent world with permadeath isn't something the MMO world needs.
im exactly like you ... keep eluding myself the next mmo will be the Chosen One :
swtor,tera , archeage,teso, NW ,wildstar , kamelott , lineage eternal , but i think i only try to fool myself
I miss the hard part ... when it took me 2 weeks to get level 10
I have been pondering the same ting for the last 3 years. I don't what the spark is or was but nothing is making a long enough spark to stick around. Alot of the current MMO's are very repetitive in one form or another whether it is the mobs, terrain, or quest chains. The other issue is the time frame it takes to max level is way to fast. I think that is why I left WoW, I would by an xpac and would finish it in a week or two now. I remember at times I would avarage a bar per hour out of the 10 or so bars required to ding.
Something is not catching my full attention anymore and it does feel like a small empty void exists and nothing has filled it yet. I think the reason is because I played MMO's for 10+ years and it was the same time frame for years so it's almost like I need to do it to complete my day or it feels like I forgot to do something that i am supposed to do.
yes it is a addiction per say. Would I put my family after MMO's absolutly not, but when they are all sleeping or do something out of the house then I would play.
nethervoid - Est. '97
[UO|EQ|SB|SWG|PS|HZ|EVE|NWN|WoW|VG|DF|AQW|DN|SWTOR|Dofus|SotA|BDO|AO|NW|LA] - Currently Playing EQ1
20k+ subs YouTube Gaming channel
I completly agree.. miss the time s from L2 (C4) a place where u foind friends and have fun, u kill and get jill, actually need to play with other people, etc etc.
i had play GW2 , TSW, wakfu, Atlantica online, spiran knigths, Tera, Lineage (hate new version) , WoW and still cant find my rigth place to be...
Not to get too deep and philosophical, but what does the MMO world need? The jist I get from the Tingly-dubbed "nomads" on this site is that there's been an over-saturation of the gmae market, every MMO is just like the last, and only a select few with that indescribable "something" are truly worthy of our time.
"what MMOs need..." though is 75% of what you'll find on the mmorpg.com forums. Nobody can seem to put it into the right words and my question is, is it anything?
Speaking abstractly, is there always necessarily "something missing" from these new games, or are we as gamers so jaded and nostalgic that we can't accept and connect with these new titles, even if deep down we want to?
This. We've gome from King's Quest on a pc junior to Bioshock Infinite while MMOs have become more and more "streamlined". Don't you love that word "streamlined"?
stream·lined (strmlnd)
adj.
1.
a. Designed or arranged to offer the least resistance to fluid flow.
b. Reduced to essentials; lacking anything extra.
c. Effectively organized or simplified: a streamlined method of production.
Definition B brings tears to my eyes.
There is NO miracle patch.
95% of what you see in beta won't change by launch.
Hope is not a stategy.
______________________________
"This kind of topic is like one of those little cartoon boxes held up by a stick on a string, with a piece of meat under it. In other words, bait."
The main reason is, back then there were few MMOs now you have tons to choose from.
Nothing else is different with MMO that has changed, not dificulty nor solo nor else ruined MMO era, it's just so many of them who try to please one playstyle and nerf the other playstyle, that is untill someone will make a game that will be set for all play styles, like, pvp would have their own server, pve their own server, rp their own, and solo their own, each server would set to required dificulties.
Then everyone will have their own home to settle in.
21 year MMO veteran
PvP Raid Leader
Lover of The Witcher & CD Projekt Red
"So to wrap this up, do you feel like me? Do you pine for an MMORPG experience you just can't put your finger on? Are you a nomad, lingering in a netherrealm between games, never committing to any?"
Yes. Unfortunately, MMORPGs have morphed so that players who never liked an online world (a huge untapped audience) would spend their money. All these new players want to do is fight, fight, and fight yet again. Anything else is "a waste of my time."
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
I think we can lay the blame at the inherent antisocial features now prevalant in most mmos.
The auto group / auto dungeon / auto raid. You mash the button join those people for 30 minutes then depart never to group again.
IN the "olden days" you would form your group and while you had down time normally a few minutes between each battle you would chat and talk and get to knwo the different people in your group. forge friendships and then add them to a friend list and maybe group with them again.
Guilds were made up of friends who did things together because you knew how to play you would arrange your social life around your online family and you would feel part of it.
Now most of my friends have moved to other games non that really appeal to me i find that all new mmos have this lack of comunity. Everyone wants end game so they removed the downtime everyone wanted insta dungeons so they got rid of the lfg function. everyone wanted to raid so they put in an automatic raid feature.
Its basically removed all the social elements of the game, your playing an online game but your not really socialising with the other players. and so you dont get attached to the games you play because the people you meet may as well be strangers in the street you bump into apologise and move on, or the people on the bus you may recognise them now and again but you dont know who they are.
I tried going back to dark age of camelot all that i found was the game i loved to play with friends was no fun without them.
This is just flat out false. The modern MMOs are significantly easier. They are much more solo oriented. They are much less guild oriented.
Honestly, I think a lot of it was just the newness. People complain about quests now, but that was new and exciting when EQ2 and WoW came out with quests! Now we've all seen that before. EQ was new and exciting when they came out with big raid bosses and a 3D environment. But now we've all seen that before.
People can't go back, because the magic is old now. The magic is that fresh new experience. I still enjoy MMOs myself though. There are waaay too many good ones though and no subs does make it too easy to bounce around. I'm playing like 4 MMOs right now lol.
"There is no such thing as experience in real life, or at least in the sense of bubbles and dings."
I'm not sure about this - I've been in workplaces where everyone was fretting about where they were in the salary band and when they would reach the next level, complete with honorary titles, loot bags and reward perks. Office life is not all that different from a themepark game - it just happens much, much slower.
You're right that modern MMOs do have more solo content. But he's absolutely right that people were still bitching and moaning back then about "they ruined this, this game sucks my class is broken PvP is imbalanced waaahhhh". You just didn't have a lot of choices.
For years I have been in a similar state, Adam. Within the last 6 months, my excitement is rekindled, by the possibilites of first "Star Citizen", and now "Camelot Unchained".
Yes, they are both at least a year out, from now, but they have provided me with hope, in this "everybody wins", reversion to the mean, race towards idiocy, which has plagued the genre ever since WoW made it big.