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10 Years of MMORPGs: Grinding Towards Endgame?
nexen
Member Posts: 55
We're fast approaching the 10 year anniversary of the first world-wide MMOs, the first massively popular massively online games. How far have we come since back then? How has the industry evolved? How have the players evolved? Which really matters more? Most importantly, where will MMORPGs be in another 10 years time?
Let's start by looking at the past. While there were world-wide MMOs before it, as well as numerous MUDs, Ultima Online really brought the concept of massively multiplayer gaming to the masses. It was in the world of Britannia, in that first year of UO, where online gamers of every shape and form resided. And it was there where a large portion of the MMORPG terminology (that we all know and love) was spawned. Few would be entering the gameworld considering themselves to be "PKs" or "Carebears".. Or leaders, visionaries, businessmen or warriors, for that matter. But in that first year, the basic social structure of MMORPG worlds was to be created, and a vast number of people discovered their online personas.
In a way, this first year sculpted the most interesting and realistic online societies ever seen. Lack of choice meant everyone who was interested in massively online gaming was there, thrown into the mix. All kinds of personalities, from the 12 year old nerdy kid who wants to feel big, to the 20 year old student that wants to compete, to the 30 year old that wants to escape, to the 60 year old that just wants to explore. The entire spectrum of gamers, all living under the same roof; conflicting, bonding, cooperating, killing.
For the next 7 or 8 years, the MMORPG industry seemed to be exploding in slow motion. More games, more players, more technology, but more divisions. Games for every type of player became available. An online world diversely filled with people of all types became a distant memory, as people were efficiently sorted into their group's game. This segregation is most likely the main reason behind the hostility between PvPers and PvEers. Over the years it just made the PvPers think more and more that the PvEers were "hiding", while the PvEers seemed to be getting more and more protection from harm with each additional patch. PvPers quickly became connected with griefers in the PvEers' eyes, and PvEers quickly became connected with carebears in the PvPers' eyes. Neither view was accurate, but both views helped tremendously in widening the gap between the two playstyles even more, making it harder and harder for a developer to make a game which catered to both sides.
DAoC was the first major attempt to bring these people back together. And it succeeded, to an extent (but not without gaining a reputation of having the most whiny playerbase of its time - IGN vault message boards, only recently outdone on the whine-o-factor). The problem was that at this time, both groups were at each other's throats. Mythic had to impose some serious limitations on both PvP and PvE in order to keep people happy. As a result, while it successfully pulled some of the good kids and the bad kids back together, they were all forced to use safety scissors and circular paper so nobody got hurt.
Eve Online was the first game since UO to successfully bring both ends of the player spectrum back into the same world. A feat that I can't even quite explain, but which has worked amazingly well. CCP striking the perfect gameplay balance where PvEers and PvPers actually rely heavily on each other was certainly a major factor. The massive single-server universe allowing people to find their own space (at least early on) was also a factor. However, I think that - above all - it was the players that made this work. Out of nowhere came this myseterious tolerance; even though these two hostile groups were shoved in the same room, somehow a deal was struck and a peace was found. I'm not talking about a total peace of course; enough hostility remained to give EVE the incredible landscape of player-made war that it has, but there wasn't so much hate that scores of people were leaving the game in anger and frustration. The end result has been an extremely unique virtual world; an epic sandbox in which thousands of people interact, the developers occasionally reaching in to replace a broken toy or to hand out more spades. This is player evolution and gameplay evolution resonating to a glorious effect.
Then of course, WoW came along. The slow motion explosion triggered by UO quickly became a nuclear blast on double speed. MMOs were already fairly popular amongst mainstream gamers; WoW brought MMOs to the real mainstream, ie. the average citizens of Earth. Chances were that if you owned an iPod, you played WoW. Like many people I'm sure, I've been constantly trying to decide whether this was a good or a bad thing. Anyone who knows me knows my views on WoW, and I refuse to make yet another thread about them (at least for the time being, heh). The thing I'm talking about, which I can't decide is good or bad, is the absolutely massive rise in popularity that WoW has created: Popularity in MMOs, popularity in gaming in general; popularity even in the internet. Popularity of speaking like you're mentally challenged. It's caused countless ripples throughout cyberculture. Tidal waves really, not ripples. WoW has done for MMO gaming what Sony did for consoles, or what Counterstrike did for FPS games.
But what was really new about the playstation? What was really new about Counterstrike? About World of Warcraft? Look at the latest generation of MMORPGs, then look back at the first generation. Has the genre really evolved that much in terms of gameplay? The most obvious difference is accessibility, easy of use. In fact, that seems to be the main difference. Blizzard found the secret path to mainstream success: Take a decade-old formula that works and make it user-friendly and polished to the bone. If this was 100 years ago, the Blizzard devs would probably all be shoe shiners. Yeaah...
Whatever your view on WoW is, though, there's absolutely no denying that it's changed the future of MMORPGs in a very big way.
There are now millions and millions of players floating around the genre. The majority are already looking for something new; some going back to older games they never played and others desperately whoring developer messageboards in an attempt to get into the next major beta. So then, where are MMOs heading? What End-Game is the industry slowly grinding towards?
Well, firstly; more subdivision. For better or worse (most likely worse), the fact that there's now even more money in the industry means there's going to be even more choice, even more competition. This makes that dream of once again having a real virtual world filled with people of all personality types even more unlikely. Every type of gamer will be catered for with their own, practically personalized, MMO. By doing this, communities will be considerably easier to manage, and to please. The devs can take a much more linear approach to the evolution of their game and not have to worry about making tough decisions which will please some of their players and anger others. The players themselves will be surrounded by people of similar minds; some will like this result, others will find it to be an extremely bland experience. Just like the real world would be an incredibly dull place if everyone was exactly the same, I imagine the same would be true for a virtual world.
Right, so gameplay innovations and technology progression aside, we can quite surely expect to see more choice. But in 10 years time, chances are the world we live in will be a very different place - what does that say about the world we game in, the cutting edge virtual worlds that are at the forefront of modern information technology? Is the Matrix Online suddenly going to become based on the film (heh)?
Crazy sci-fi predictions aside, it's pretty obvious that MMOs have a very big future. Not just in gaming either, virtual worlds will no doubt have all kinds of applications. Online shopping could start using virtual worlds, or the internet at large, even.
Focusing on gameplay though, where could we go next? What is the MMORPG utopia, the holy grail, the end game?
In my mind, it is all about making fully-functioning online societies. At a base level, the kind of world I describe inthis post, one where everything is run by players; from the most top-level politics to the punishment of a common thief. Ok, so I'm describing Eve Online or something, right? Yeah, I'm looking at Eve Online or the original UO, but then thinking what it would be like if the developers took it one step further. Or two steps; 10 years worth of steps, in fact. Yes, Eve has a very lifelike social model, with leaders, producers, diplomats, fighters and everything else under the suns. But what elements are holding it back, what is stopping it from being a "real" virtual world?
Player made content is certainly going to become a big part of MMOs in the future. I'm talking about the sort of thing you can already see in games like Second Life, where players are able to actually design their own models for the game with physical properties and stuff. If a system like this could be implemented into a player-run game world, it would probably have a rather huge effect. Obviously the tools used to create stuff would all need to fit in-game, and be in-line with the restraints of the world (so that you don't get people creating ridiculous items out of nothing, for example). Implemented correctly, you'd basically be allowing these game worlds to evolve and progress on their own.
With good enough technology, the game at launch could just be an undeveloped world, fresh from the big bang or whatever back story you want to put in. The players are dumped on this vast planet which would probably just consist of mountains, trees, lakes and seas, as well as wildlife. The trees, rocks, clay, animals etc could all be used as resources, and then there would also be some slightly tougher "wildlife" that would act as a threat, and perhaps form some of the pve content. Hell, technology in 10 years could probably support giving each species of animal it's own (reactive) evolutionary pattern, so that new monsters create themselves. Every few months the developers could release an expansion pack, which would just be a blank CD...
So it isn't too hard to imagine a real "living, breathing world" (hah), and when you think about having thousands of players running around forming communities with rules or sailing off to start anarchist islands away from the rest of the world or digging underground to form isolated cavernous cities where knowledge is power, one thing comes to mind: It just has to have a fully open pvp system. It would be the real world in electronic form, and not only would it be ridiculously immersive but the academic possibilities would be endless, too. You could pretty much "try out" different forms of government and see what happens, chuckle to yourself as the monarchy you started a few months ago suddenly falls victim to a civil war and you get WTFBBQ'd by your nation.
Thing is, this all comes back to my desire to have everyone playing the same game. If developers keep subdividing the MMORPG community and filing us all away in our own personalized mini-mmorpgs, the sort of thing I describe above just won't happen. People will get too used to the idea of everything being the way they want it to be in MMO games, and won't be able to cope with a game that almost mimics real life, where you could make it big or lose it all at the whim of thousands of other players.
So in conclusion (whew, I'm not looking forward to proof-reading this), we should be encouraging developers to push MMORPGs to their full potential. We should be encouraging them to craft real worlds that can be populated by real people of every variety; unpredictable worlds, like the real one we live in, with ups and downs and not just one unfaltering line of contentment (hey, I'm running out of phrases here). A world that evokes passion rather than just entertainment. I know, I know - it's all just a game, you say. But developing an MMO that's nothing more than a ride is such a waste of potential. Going on rides is largely an individual experience. Sure, you can go on with a group of friends and have a bit more fun, but when you start trying to fit a server full of people onto one ride, people start getting slightly frustrated. So hey, save the rides for the singleplayer/co-op conventional games - we've got worlds to build.
________
-nexen-
Comments
Ive been preaching this standpoint since the so called "next gen" mmorpgs, since I realized were still in the same rat cage.
Ive broken it down to "The Big 6" in terms of what you can do in todays mmorpg:
Kill monsters
Kill players
Quest
Craft
Explore
Socialize
As far as I know, you could do all these things in MuDs, and frighteningly enough, the same things youll do in todays state of the art, top of the line MMORPG. Unfortunately, people arent asking for better. Theyre content with "the next big thing". After all why would the farmer care what the cows want as long as hes gettin their milk? MMOs should be light years ahead of MuDs, but intrensically theyre not, at least in MuDs you had to use your imagination a bit, but in todays mmorpg, people are lucky to imagine what a great game could be. Bring back the RPG in mmorpg. else were all just playing super diablo....
Question Authority. And the people that run your games? Authority.....
Wonderfully well written post. Thank you.
You described what I was feeling far better than I could have myself. I miss the days of UO and player created content. UO was mostly just a set of tools that players were given to do with as they please. There was no "content", no story, just a world. Players would create the story, for better or for worse. Player run towns and RP events would spring up, and people felt ownership in the world. Even the devs joined the fun and controlled monsters in spur of the moments town raids that player would have to defend against. There were even nights I logged on just to gather in a house and celebrate some one's birthday. We did nothing but chat. That concept seems so foreign now. Almost seems silly, but I loved it.
Walking in the woods, heart pounding. You see movement in the trees....PK'ER!!!! Nope just a deer, but my goodness, that was actual fear you felt. You see a group of "red names" and you run for your life. Murdered in cold blood. Sure it made you mad. That is just one of the countless emotions UO gave us. Revenge was so sweet though when you finally caught one of those PK'ers, oh so sweet. And yes, I played the side of the murderer too. That was a rush I would not think possible in a video game. This game had teeth, and it bit hard.
I'm not sure if the vast majority of players would even be willing to put that sort of effort into a game anymore though. Games like WoW (yes I played) have made many of us lazy as we are now used to spoon feeding of content and ideas. Can we recapture the magic of UO? It is not up to the devs, it is up to each of us. Carebears and PvP’er must once again learn to work together to make the next dynamic world. We can not be separated from each other anymore.
Thank you for your time.
why is it... 9+ years later, i find myself looking at a 2d game and thinking...
they can grow plants
fully customizable housing
no real "classes", you can learn/unlearn any/all skills
5 ( i think it's still 5) toons per shard, so you can have crafters that only craft AND adventurers
law/chaos and good/evil factions still there?
pre carebear uo combined with the updates they have in place, PLUS space to actually place large homes....
even a 2d god's eye view world, this sounds better than most of the game out today.
and i know what you mean about pks. for the first literal week i played, i'd get just outside of guard range in brit and get whacked by a pk. every single time. eventually i figured out that the game WASN'T just about getting pk'd and looted. but you're right, your heart was pounding cuz you could and would lose everything if you died. i hunted Baron Sengir for weeks. one day a friend saw him by a town, i recalled and killed him. dude had a pack full of invul armor and um, whatever the highest rank weapons were. i just couldn't believe it. i had a couple friends come loot with me. after that, we used those items as rewards when promoting people in the guild and for prizes at the weekly guild events. i never did get to thank that old pk'er...
but yeah, invul armor and the uber weapons did me little good. living life safely in uo was just no fun for me. i wanted the rush. if i hadn't died that day then i just wasn't trying hard enough.
if they would make it where you can capture various towns for your faction, yeah, UO would be the best (2d) game in a 3d game world. meaning it's better than most 3d games.
the one thing i'd like to add... eq was the second game to come out. it introduced farmable, timesink bosses for uber items. if it's farmable and takes 8-16 hours to finish, then by being farmable, it's easy, by taking a long time it's a timesink. both of these make a game dull, boring. i don't care how pretty it is, it's craptastic.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
PvP is evil. No compromise or acceptance EXCEPT MAYBE with WAR, if Mythic fails that, I put PvP in my trash can forever!
Raiding is a mistake. A nice mistake, but since the players are what they are, it is a mistake in this form. Uber Guilds can't be trusted with players happiness, raiding must be re-envisioned completely, in a way that nobody has to raid, short of raiders. Someone who care for grouping should not raid, there is no point in having a soloer raiding, it hurt everyone. The reasons why Raiding is a mistake are similar to why Communism can't work, Communism would be the ideal system if humans where not humans, but we are what we are. Raiding in the current form can't work for about the same reasons.
Am I Hiding from PvPers? Nope, I am denying them acceptance in my world, can't care less about them. I will give WAR a chance, one last chance for PvP. I have more than a few doubts about it however, I never actually enjoy any PvP, not even when I was winning as I feel bad for the peoples I defeat.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
MMOs have come a long way in the graphics department. games like wow are dummied down so they can get all the blizznet types to play, thusly taking advantage of that huge free play audience. but by the same token, all they did was take the warcraft genre, instance-tize EQ, and call it a brand new and exciting game. bleh, more of the same is not worth anything.
eve online, ryzom, horizons, uo, shadowbane EVEN COx and pre-cu swg. all of these things do a lot of things right. some have a great skil system and/or class system with man viable high level builds. some have the right idea about a truly social/political world and how to do a player-run economy. if you could combine all of these games, taking the really good parts of each, and throw it into a single mmo....
ah, only if....
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
Sad to c that MMORPGs have been around for awhile and most of them (even the new ones) still have the same old same old level based systems.
We need more skill based games, Levels are boring but it caters to all the "i have a 3948568932459347 level knight" crowd
I played UO for 7+ years, and still log on occasionaly.
I played DAoC for 3+ years.
I played L2 for 1.5 years.
And although i still kinda play WoW it has died for me in about 9 months of playing it, i am only waiting for the next thing to get me.
So do i agree with your vision of mmorpgs? well i would 10 years ago, but not anymore, these days all i want is a game with which i can spend the, few, free houres each day i have, and have fun.
With the WoW explosion mmoprgs were introduced to a genre of gamers which was not traditionaly attracted to mmorpgs, the casual easy going gamers, those who don't agree that farming 8 houres a day for 3 years to reach lvl 75 is an achievement, or don't agree that spending 5 to 6 houres each day raiding in a 40 people group for months in order to get better items is really admirable, and in general they don't agree that achievemnts in a video game are things that you should be so proud of as to consider them life goals, ofcourse in the end even WoW disspointed these players because although it did give them the impresion for a time beeing that it was a mmorpg designed for them it was only for a very limited time as it had other group of players to try and please asswell.
You have a vision of what mmorpgs should be in such a way, that those who play it will need not search for other things in life to satisfy them.
On my part i trully believe that it is about time mmorpg's/mmo's become specialized and their identity be clearly stated with big red letter on the box.
PvE raiding game
Solo PvE game
Group PvP game
RvR game
Free PvP game
FPS game
Political game
Economical game
Evolution game
RTS game
TBS game
Card game
etc etc
As with everything else i buy to entertain myself, i want to know perfectly well what the next mmorpg is about, and with the large number of mmorpgs beeing created i now can demand it, as you said when UO was out if you wanted to play a mmorpg that was your only choise like or not, not today, today i want to play a game amongst like minded people, if i enjoy PvP advertise the the game as PvP and stay true to it's identity so that all those who don't enjoy it can stay out of it, what benefit would i have whatsoever to play a game wth people who don't like it, on the contrary if there is an element in game that i thorougly enjoy but a highly vocal group of people hate it, it is quite possible they will destroy it for me?
I hope WoW is the last attempt of a mmorpg designed to please everyone because thats exactly what it is, and although it may have an enviroment where every playstyle can feel content and comfortable for a while it has not introduced that element which would make you say wow about it, or take your gaming to the next level of enjoyment.
UO had that magic, and it was exactly because all kind of players mingled in it that it was destroyed, the free PvP it offered was it's best feature for those who enjoyed it and the worst for those who hated it, and it was the out of game war between PvP'ers/Griefers and PvE'rs/Carebears which caused the shallow design of the next mmorpgs to be so restrictive, in a sense we are still living through we just pulled ourselves out of the dark ages EQ imposed and are now int the middleages of the mmorpg universe but we are still far away from reinaissance.
Anyway i am rambling, playing video games is nothing more than that, playing video games...you don't need extremely complex and inovative systems in a video game to have fun playing it, what you do need is to play it with others who also enjoy it, and this is what mmorpgs are about, playing with your friends a game.
Save the energy for RL matters, instead of franticaly spending all your energy and time virtually advancing something which you down even own do it to advance your RL status and then play a game with friends to relax and relieve some stress.
Well for one that would be an interesting idea to have world from scratch. But completely empty is just plain bold. Food, equipment, skills, & magic (if it exist) would all have to discovered, honed, and mastered as to teach to others. That would be interesting indeed.
Do you think a world like this would need death? Because how would history progress if everyone is still alive persay? How do you get the sword of Legendary Bob if Bob still alive and carying the sword persay. Show the pregression of the timeline mean that your character would eventually die and you have to start a new one? I personally would love that in a game. Some kind of lineage.
Faranthil Tanathalos
EverQuest 1 - Ranger
Star Wars Galaxies - Master Ranger
Everquest2 - Ranger WarhammerOnline - Shadow Warrior
WOW - Hunter
That's right I like bows and arrows.
Well, what else would you do in a game? I mean, those aren't narrow gameplay choices. You've got all combat (either vs players or versus non-players), all questing/preplanned missions of any sort, all making stuff, all looking around the game world, and all interacting with other people in the game outside of combat (in-combat already covered). I mean, list a 'New Seventh' that isn't in current games to go along with 'The Big Six', I don't think there really is anything. Edit: I guess you could add some things like 'auction off goods', 'buy and sell property', 'race', but then they're all in some existing MMORPG and/or MUD too.
I agree that games need more variety, but listing out really broad descriptions of gameplay like that isn't really useful, it's like declaring that all books are a copy of some set of a dozen or so stories because you can broadly summarize their plot the same way.
To have permadeath or not is an interesting question and no doubt a tough one for developers to do well.
At the moment we seem to be getting a huge number of games in development, of which very few are daring to break from the mold of level based questing, more or less PvP, bit of crafting for good measure.
What i would like in future games is fun obviously. I agree with a previous post that skill based would be nice, quests yes, crafting yes. PvP yes but i don't want to be killed every 10 minutes by someone massively better than me, where's the fun in that? Like the last but 1 post an evolving world where if players kill a legendary creature it stays dead, otherwise whats the point? The more random the world is in terms of quests, what npc and creatures do the better. Basicly it needs to be unpredictable. But if i go exploring i want to find something, not just wander about in the wilderness and come back with no story to tell. I like to be able to play solo even though most MMO's are designed with grouping in mind, but group up if i want.
I think a lot of players need an aim, which is why level based games are popular with lots of quests like WOW. This is why i think Permadeath could be great, because you have a limited amount of time to make your mark on the virtual world.
Good God almighty that was a long post!!! I was so exhausted by the end of it that I didn't bother to read the replies. You deserve an award or something for the longest OP in this board's history. I may be wrong, but you're definately in the top 3.
So the cure to all our problems is "THE ULTIMATE SANDBOX GAME", huh? I think you're only half right there. Yes, "hardcore" MMO players want this "living, breathing, virtual world" that they've been hearing about since before Meridian 59. The rest of the gaming community want's something closer to a combination of Street Fighter, Gauntlet and Animal Crossing with just a dash of Yahoo Games. Most gamers want a place to socialize, compete and cooperate for a few hours after work or school. I have no doubt that you're idea would have a nice little number of subscribers, but it would be closer to the number of people playing Second Life right now. come to think of it, SL has been growing in much the same way as Eve. Before we go all limp and creamy over our "ideal", I think we need to consider the people that have tried this genre and found it lacking. Specifically, we need to focus on WHY they found it lacking. That can be summed up in one word: grind!
The game you "envision" (everyone else has had that same "vision" I assure you) is doable but totally outside the box that most developers are in. It would take some heavy resources to get past the pre-production stage and as the stakes get higher, the risks that publishers and investors are willing to take get smaller. Not only that, but a "living, breathing, virtual world" (whish I knew how to make a trademark symbol) requires mechanics that force interdependancy between total strangers. These are massively MULTIPLAYER online games. People that play them want to interact with other PLAYERS not the objects in the game. As such, you have to design the economy (and ecology?) in such a way that players will have to interact with eachother in order to survive, otherwise this isn't going to work. You cannot have a "living, breathing, virtual world" where everyone is a loner or grouping for nothing more than protection. Look at Civ 4 and A Tale in the Desert for an idea of how this could work. Of course then you'd be pissing off the people that want to solo all the time, but the made the decision to play a MULTIPLAYER GAME.
Developers are used to making big boxes of "things" for the player to interact with, not means for players to interact with eachother. This is where MMORPGs are lacking. There is no reason to interact with anyone except your RL friends that you drag with you from game to game. This is a design flaw that is killing this genre. To quote Danni Bunten (designer of M.U.L.E.) "No one on their deathbed ever said that they felt they should've spent more time with their computer."
So if you want to bring PvPers and PvEers together, you have to compromise, and then you get into the things the PvP 'lobby' complains about.
the more i read on these forums, the more i keep thinking about "maybe i should play UO again".
i guess i could live in the non-carebear lands. maybe i can find a shard where there's lots of free space to roam and build a mansion!
hmm, i'll have to find uoassist and whatever other approved 3PPs they have now.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
The problem with this is that it's a very bad idea from the game company's point of view. If they make an interesting encounter for this legendary creature, it's something that 1 person/group/raid (per shard/server) will get to complete one time, then the work they did on it is all for nought. Gaming companies don't like to spend lots of time, effort, and creativity making an encounter that occupies a tiny fraction of their playerbase for less than one billing cycle, it's just not worthwhile.
Plus once the legendary monster is dead, who cares? Only people who happened to be at a level to really pay attention to it (when I was level 30, I really didn't care who got into a level 50 instance first) at the time it was killed will know, and even then it's just a one-time event, soon to be buried under whatever-else-you-do in that game. If there's a bunch of different 'legendary' monsters with similar abilities, you'd end up with one group of people ransacking all of them ASAP, plus a bunch of mildly different monsters don't feel like a single legendary monster.
IMO this is an idea that sounds a lot better than it would be in practice; it's the kind of thing that works well for single/group games, but there are problems with it in an MMO.
I have a great mod that works to add permadeath to any game; when a character dies, simply go back to your account management screen and delete your character. BOOM instant permadeath regardless of what the devs want. Oddly though, I haven't heard of anyone actually doing this...
TV. After the game when my friends had all gone home it occured to me
that my friends may be loot whores.
How
do I know which friends are worthy of beer? How do I tell my real
friends from the people who are just using me to get at my beer?
Then it hit me. DKP. I need help working on a DKP system for my RL friends.
Raid
loot is the best loot in a MMO because developers want to reward
players for positive social interaction... interaction that most people
wouldn't suffer through if not for the rewards.
I give out beer
when I have my friends over because I want to reward my friends for the
positive social interaction that may not occur if not for the free beer.
I
figure what I'll do is make a chart on poster board, pick an activity
for each night of the week and give my friends 1 point per hour spent
at each activity. At the end of the week when we gather I'll tally the
points and distribute the beer based on who has the most points.
"Friends" who don't tally any points don't get any beer... after all
that would make them a loot whore since they didn't earn their beer by
participating in my fun social activities.
Obviously any
"friend" that consistantly fails to make DKP will be booted from the
group. I'll simply fill their vacancies by placing an ad in the
personals.
middle aged people who like beer. Friends of the Funk will be hardcore
hanging out on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday nights starting
at 8:00 PM EST. Prior drinking experience is preferred but not
necessary. FotF will use a DKP system to distribute beer. Failure to
accumulate sufficient DKP may result in your dismissal. PST for invite.
AOL brought millions of people to the web. Was that a good or bad thing? Statistics 101 informs us that 70% of the population is less than "good". Have you enjoyed conversing in online discussion forums since the plague of AOL unwashed heathens arrived?
Have you enjoyed an online MMO since the plague of unwashed WoW players arrived?
Your admiration of EvE is...cute. But let's face it, EvE in the final analysis is a PvP game, purely. PvE consists of the same ten missions you do over and over and over again. Or mindlessly mining asteroids for days on end. And what of PvP in EvE? It consists of six to ten pimply-faced lEEtz0iDz camping a stargate and pwning every shuttle that comes through. The sight of a Battlecruiser might send them fleeing away with stinky boxers.
Any semblance of actual warfare is long impossible in EvE. The lag is so phenomenally severe that a fleet engagement consists of everyone jumping into the sector, then taking your girlfriend out to dinner and a movie. An hour after you both return and make love, twice, your screen might have become responsive again and painted enough of the sector for you to see that you were podded ten seconds after the jump. A jump that began about two hours ago....
You could even write an email to CCP and describe how your ship was destroyed during a two hour server-side lag stall during which you had no keyboard control and could not respond in any fashion. And they will tell you there's no way to determine if it was them or your computer....
Leave aside the fact that you're running an Athlon FX-60 in SLI with two gigs of RAM, RAID 0, and a 1.5 Mbps up / 30 Mbps down internet connection, and the same damn thing happened to every other one of the seventy people involved. Trust me, I've been there.
Let's face it people. The MMO genre is offically dead. It's become pablum, and that's all it's ever going to be for the forseeable future. Back when it was just a few million actual, mature, intelligent computer people life was good. Now the floodgates have been opened, every pathetic moron can play, and there's lots more pathetic morons in the world than there are people with intellect and standards.
And every one of those sons of female dogs has full access to Mommy's VISA card. That's the future of MMORPG's.
OldManFunk, I'll buy you a beer for that post but you'll have to wait 30 days to drink it, as you're still a trial member in my BKP system.
"Well, what else would you do in a game? I mean, those aren't narrow gameplay choices. You've got all combat (either vs players or versus non-players), all questing/preplanned missions of any sort, all making stuff, all looking around the game world, and all interacting with other people in the game outside of combat (in-combat already covered). I mean, list a 'New Seventh' that isn't in current games to go along with 'The Big Six', I don't think there really is anything. Edit: I guess you could add some things like 'auction off goods', 'buy and sell property', 'race', but then they're all in some existing MMORPG and/or MUD too."
ill tell ya what I want...
i want to build a sailing ship, with fully interactive pirates, sea life, and other players to fight, same goes with air ships.
I want inns where I can go throw some darts, play some poker with some strangers
I want NPCs who arent just spam when you click me bots but actually have a rythm of their own ie sleepin at times working during other times etc
I want merchants to physically have to sell their stuff via wagon which they will drag from town to town, but only after they have hired other players to protect them from other bandit players on the trip between towns
I want player factions not just good vs evil, but a system with real political intrigue
I want a GM per server whose only job is to sit at the comp and further the story line. (like they used to do in MuDs)
I want crafters to be in high demand because they can make just about anything you need.
I want gear that doesnt have 1000 different numbers on it, because then you turn people into stat zombies when you should be focusing on roleplaying
I want a mount that I actually have to feed and make sure its taken care of, the better you take care of it, the better it performs
I want gear that breaks, why you ask? because loot whores are no fun and detract from the enviroment
I want stuff thats just sittin around, a stick, a key on the floor, a sandwich in someones hand to all be manipulated by yours truly
I want people to be able to pickpocket each other, steal each others items etc
I want a law enforcement system that will punish bumbling thieves via dungeon time in which they pay fines and spend 30 minutes in the town square gettin taunted by passers by
I want players to be able to set up camp outside of towns as save havens for people to stop and rest on journeys
I want to enlist in the kings army to defend our territory or take someone elses
I want to be a brigand and sit by the side of the road with some of my buddies and wait for people to rob and leave for dead
I want to play a monster when I get bored
I want my character to be unique
I want most any and all numbers (ie stats, hps) to be gone from the game
I want bodily injury to be more than just your hps - what the attack just hit you rfor, I want to see someones hand get cut off, and I want to see then rush to a healer to fix it before they bleed to death
I want minimal xp loss per death, but huge xp loss if you cant find someone to ressurect you before a certain time ie your corpse rotted
I want proffesions that you cant get right away, ones you actually have to work for
I want mobs in an area to get harder the longer you hunt there, after all who doesnt have an older brother to come kick your butt for pickin on em
I want guilds to not be just groups of people you raid with, I want them to be guilds of profession where you have to actually learn your skills, not just click and poof you are a master
I want weather to affect gameplay
I want gathering resources to be a sub profession, ie miner, lumberjack, herbalist, all accessible as long as you are willing to put in the time and effort
I want to advance without having a level attached to myself
I want mobs to be smarter, id rather fight a longer fight and get the same xp as fightin 1000 orcs in a row
I want people to critically injure sometimes killing in 1 stroke, but the same goes for monsters
I want to set ambushes and traps
I want to have to travel between different areas, not just zone zone zone you are there, but actual travel rife with danger from bandits monsters, other players etc
I want people to start the game at a certain age, and as they progress through the world age normally
I want incredible customization, and I do mean incredible
I want a game that non role players are actively punished with time in the dungeon
I want to get stupid drunk in an inn and get arrested for wreckin the joint
I want to wrap this up before I fall asleep at the computer
What a I really want is a game not ruined by people lack of imagination
There ya asked me what I want, there ya go :P
Until next patch that is.
People accept getting killed because of this and don't cry OMGWTFGRIEFHAX!!!!! (Well some do).
It's just that PvP is so pervasive in EvE that there is no escaping it. Everything in EvE is a competition against other players even if you just want to build stuff.
In most MMOs there's is essentially no reason for PvPing aside from the fun of it. PvPing in EvE it actually does something.
...and EvE PvP is actually fun, both sides of a fight have a lot to lose, their ships, implants, and even skillpoints if their clone isn't updated, so both sides are fighting frantically to win.
If there were more games like EvE and less like WoW I'd be a lot happier.