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[Editorial] Guild Wars 2: Is There a Better Way to Enjoy an MMO?
BMunchausen
Staff WriterMMORPG.COM Staff Posts: 400
They say opposites attract, and that's definitely true of my husband and me, especially in regard to the way we play MMOs. While I spend hours customizing characters and combing the Internet looking for suitable names for them, he zips through character creation and slaps names like “Snackfood” on his avatars. This natural opposition extends well beyond character creation to define the way we play. It's also caused a lot of contention as we attempt to push our individual play styles onto one another. Try as we might, we continue to wrangle over the question: who's got the better approach to MMOs?
Read more of Neilie Johnson's Is There a Better Way to Enjoy an MMO?
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Men tend to be Aesthetic and women efferent.
"You are all going to poop yourselves." BillMurphy
"Laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep and you weep alone."
1 thing she could probably do is try to at least at a certain level, to run a bit more dungeons to get better gear. I do respect the fact she goes deep in the RP section that this kind of game gives but she could help her self a bit by lets say every 10 level ( 10, 20, 30,40,50 ) run more dungeons to get up to par on the equipment part of the game.
Like that her next 5 to 6 or 9 level will take her less time for 1 and for 2 she will be able to explore more the world around her, do better RP with others all without always be with someone or having to be careful because she might get ganked by mob or a player. Also i see she play's GW2 the set's in the instance are very good looking on a character and give the character a bit more life in the game when it comes to RP.
I don't see a problem with either way personally.
That is one of the good things about these MMORPGs, if they are made good they support both ways to play.
The problem that are left is not the game, it's the persons playing
As long as the people of "opposing" ways of play are capable of ignoring their "right" way to play when they interact then it's not a problem. I always claim that you can only decide what you do so vote with your feet if you can't stomach how someone plays and leave to do somthingelse. It's only when you stay and try to convince the other part of what he/she is doing wrong that it becomes a huge problem.
I used to read quest descriptions and dialogue, I used to take my time like the author. Many MMORPGs later, I am no longer interested in any of those things, because they bore me to tears. I usually just skip through it all and powergame, but I still read everything in more interesting singleplayer games. Not quite sure why this is. Maybe it's because it feels like filler designed to provide context to what is really just a progression system. Perhaps it's how fake it all feels when I know thousands of players are doing the same thing I am.
People talk about slowing down and immersing yourself in MMORPGs, and this was fair in older games, but newer ones feel designed from the ground up to be rushed. There's usually nothing interesting to do beyond following the progression system. I used to enjoy exploration, but why explore when every area leveled and connected to a questhub? You won't find anything cool, you'll just find quest areas you don't have the quests for, or monsters that instantly kill you because your level is too low.
You see Neilie, I want to feel like you currently feel, THAT is my desire. I've been playing MMOs for 10 years or so, and since the beginning I wanted to feel part of the story, like you do. But I haven't found that yet. Here's why, nothing I do, nothing I say will ever be imprinted in the story. I want, - what little I have to say- to be one with the story of the world I've chosen to live in.
If no developer comes with a solution to gather personal stories that real life players trasmute to the NPCs/Lore/World, I'll never feel like you feel. I'll never feel... "important". I want a game where players creates their own legends.
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I would say that I am both like you and like your husband. When GW2 was released in beta I was so impressed by the beauty of the game that I hardly even tryied it insteed just stod around in different angels and took screenshots. I truly hate when you have to rush through a dungeon without getting to know the story and everybody is angry with me cause I am taking to long.
But on the other hand I can also grind mats for something that I really want to inprove my gear for days in a row without doing anything else in the game.
However if I have to choose then I would play the game more slowly cause then you will never get boared with the game and you can always look forward to new content.
But being in the mix of things I always get an idea that I want to do and now I want to get all professions to lvl 80 and I am soon done with that and then we will see whats next, maybe crafting
But in wow you need to pay a sub every single month insteed so it's not that free in wow.
And LOTRO is so old and the graphics are so outtaded that character creations in that game is like choosing color on your pac-man.
I give you that Rift is a game that should be played by more people since it's very good in everyway and they really deserve a bigger playerbase. I don't like the game personally but it's very well done and they deserve so much more cred for a great game.
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.
word!
I just wanted to say I really love your article, Neilie! My husband and I are the same way. You have some relatable points and opinions.
I can understand that GW2's environment is not for everyone Like JNPC stated,
It would be great to see this in an MMO, and GW2 does have the Living Story and does take in account players input to change the game's story as a whole, but not individually to the extent JNPC is talking about.
Depends on the game and person plain and simple.
Anyhoo, xoxo great work Neilie
♥♥
xoxo
I try to enjoy a game fully from textures to music to narratives to scenery to stories and cut scenes.I go even further than that,i enjoy seeing how a whole game has been designed,does the entire game have coherency ,does it seem well planned and sticks to that plan?
I played a Square Enix game not long ago,forget the name,the one where dude has a chicken in his hair lol,i think was FFXII or one of those games.The game had an incredible story and thousands of cut scenes,i doubt anyone looking for story and CS's could find anything that comes even remotely close.However for me it was too much,i wanted more play time,it seemed like a story and CS would pop up every time i killed something.
Really the entire game has to come together as a well designed game.Example ,if the graphics are ugly,i am turned off right away,if the combat is brutally boring,i get turned off,no story or CS will save that game for me.
Nothing is blind to me,i have seen a real trend in developers of late to be cutting lot's of corners in game design and relying on talking a good talk or telling players what they want to hear but imo they are not delivering ,more talk than walk.I made this point because i strongly disagree with the QUALITY of these stories that others are calling great.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
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We are trying but that child of a horse has a damned army of overly powered mobs lol. i hear next place to be hit wil be DR
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I agree with the premise of the article.
I immerse myself in MMOs, those that don't allow it, or put up walls cannot hold me. Even an MMO rich in lore like TESO wont hold me because of the base design. I know there are invisible walls closing off faction lands, a PvP land and has two opposing storylines that conflict with each other so I will avoid it because it prevents immersion, in facts makes it seem rather retarded.
Cant see myself stopping to read a lore book when I know I am in a game world telling me that three alliances formed to attack a now fallen empire that no longer has the power to stop them all while the God of Rape is invading the world.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
Nicely written editorial!
I can relate because my husband and I have different playstyle. The only MMO we played together was WoW, and as time went on, there was a clear distinction of what type of MMO players we were.
He's playing FFXIV now whereas I continue to eviscerate folks in GW2. Try as I might, he can't get into GW2. And when I tried FFXIV, I can't get the groove of it as well. I figured out what it was: he was more into PvE while I was into PvP.
I like that you started the article with the line "opposites attract". I'm the hyperactive and creative guy whereas he's the sardonic and serious one. We balance each other out IRL. If I get too giddy, he brings me down a notch. If he's too serious, I joke around to enliven him.
It's just too bad that we can't play together. He doesn't like getting ganked while I laugh at being humiliated with a one-shot backstab in Stranglethorn Vale. I don't like dungeons, yethe has the patience on waiting for a tank, waiting for the pull, waiting for the healer after someone kicked the previous one.
Short version: welcome to the club
Longer: never understood the "rush to cap", "endgame is the real game" players... and it was much worse in the old days (old=a couple years ago) when the playerbase were much smaller and there were only a handful mmos on the market... I heard about a dude (really "heard", it wasn't me
) who was kicked from a guild because he started a new alt, thus "wasting his time instead of doing the alloted amount of raids / dungeons" (as if the endgame treadmill wouldn't be a wasted time...)
On the other hand, I disagree with the "This difference of opinion could be chalked up to differences in gender or to a disparity between what appeals to right/left brain-type people." part, I believe it could be chalked on the background.
As a male programmer/engineer, by your definition I should be the most hardcore elitist out there
I admit I love theory-crafting during building my characters (though not for min-maxing, just for the fun of it), and using my analyst half a lot, not for ingame mechanics, but for tearing down f2p models and charts and finding the most fitting route for my playstyle cost-wise (it's a nice meta-game 
).
Under background I mean the rpg genre itself. I love the story aspect of Rpg simply because that's what rpg is about. That's how I met rpg, that's how I've played rpg. I wrote numerous times here as well, I had the fortune to bump into two awesome GM's during my rpg years, with it, most sessions of my rpg career were like a bunch of friends sitting at a table and storytelling. Not dice-throwing 24/7, combat chart browsing, or any of those crap. Heck, in Amber there are no dices in the first place
In roleplay, combat is only a not-so-frequent element in places where it fits into the story and the life of the characters.
You wrote "While I of course enjoy the skills, combat, gear and loot that are endemic to MMOs", it's a sad thing those became this common... Among those I only "enjoy" the skills, because those are the building stones for the character. And of course there should be more than combat skills if the game is good. I'd put combat in a neutral place, and I don't give a [bleep] on gear and loot
I'm not saying, mmos (without rpg) should have a story, but it can't hurt them either, especially since nowadays every game with a net connection calling itself mmo... However, an mmoRPG, so a game which is using those letter as well, should have a story, imo. And nope, diablo and its crappy clones are not rpgs
also imo.
"I like to go slow. So sue me." There's nothing wrong with that (and lawyers are an overrated bunch anyways). Simply join an rp server and have fun. I don't play GW so I dunno how is the rp state there, but I know this (referring to the title), the only way to enjoy an MMO, or any other game in the matter of fact, is your own way. Gaming is for having fun. If you like it slow, go slow. In LotRO there's even a skill called Stop and smell the roses
I'm like this in every game I play, be it single player, co-op, or MMO.
My friend who I've played every game with never liked that I listened to character dialogue, read lore books and just generally took time to do things, always complained that I was "wasting time" and that his time was "more valuable". I sat wishing I had a friend like me, who cared about story, cared about lore, cared about what I do, but no, I don't have one of those friends, and not sure I ever will. Hell, I've even grown more impatient over time and don't like sitting around reading things unless they're quite short.
Anyway, that person is no longer my friend after 15 years as they've turned into a horribly abusive person after their failed relationship, so I play alone all the time now and actually don't have to feel rushed when going through a game. Much less stress on my life.