MMORPGS

[Rayne]

I'm interested to hear your opinions on MMO's - What ones have you tried? Did you devote serious time or just dabble? Do you feel they're dated and dull or immersive?

Personally I've dabbled with WOW (*gasp*) but only ever reached level 20 or so. Generally my interest fizzles out when level-ups stop coming. I've also tried the Phantasy Star PSP titles which were all solid fun but not quite popular enough to keep my interest up.

Part of the reason I don't bother with MMO's is down to the fact my friends absolutely HATE them the other part is down to the archaic and boring mechanics they all employ. Dress it up any which way you want, clicking a button and watching numbers roll off an enemy is NOT exciting

[DPrinny]

Games with out a end seems like hell, only really played the free ones

Played
PSO Blue burst on a private server - got tiresome with the same worlds and teams of people that just wanted to do the same boss rush mission over and over.
EUO - Was fun, but the owner kept adding more skills to it and messing up some of my characters with them new skills
Wakfu - Ok played due to the series and the awesome trailer, to bad the game turned out not as good as it seemed, a multi player SRPG seems great, till you realise that it is only you and all the low level monsters are annoying and hard to beat.

It seems in all of them you are stuck grinding to get to a better level and this gets tedious

[Rayne]

^^ My thoughts exactly, the exploration element is really fun. The feeling of being in a 'living' world with real people, meeting strangers and questing together is exciting, however that quickly fades when you're faced with tedious click and snore gameplay.

Truthfully games like Skyrim provide that intoxicating feeling of exploration but add a fun combat system to the mix

[pratty]

I've never played any and I don't think I want to.

I'm probably not best qualified to comment but I do get the impression they seem like they're designed to cynically hook you and keep you playing with no end in sight. I'm sure a lot of players enjoy them regardless and feel like they are getting there moneys worth but I like having an ending and some sort of closure to my games, and I don't like the idea of continuous pay-as-you-play for any game, I never played seriously in the arcades for that reason.

[DPrinny]

Well the free ones you are getting your moneys worth.

Its the Minecraft thing again.
Play endlessly for hours and get nowhere

They can be fun for a bit, but its like with most game. The same thing over and over gets dull

[Vyothric]

I'm not even going to go into it. Just don't do it

[Rayne]

At least with Minecraft your creativity can shine through and you'll have cool creations at the end of it.

The payment model for MMO's has never bothered me really, most are only about £6/8 a month. At that rate you'd get about 6 months worth of play before you reached the £40 a new retail title would cost.

[rocky1980]

Played WOW up till level 48ish it was fun but nothing you cant get from a single player game. Also I was in the beta for STO (Trek online) its OK even for me a hardcore Trek geek, fine if you want to Feds the KDF is nothing like the Hoard in WOW which is a same they are more for PvP. To be honest if you have a significant other,kids, a job that takes over you life then STAY WAY one thing all these games have in common is they are all massive time sinks no matter how many hours/days/weeks/years you put in you will NEVER be done

[DPrinny]

At least with Minecraft your creativity can shine through and you'll have cool creations at the end of it.

The payment model for MMO's has never bothered me really, most are only about £6/8 a month. At that rate you'd get about 6 months worth of play before you reached the £40 a new retail title would cost.

Unless the game is full of c**ts.

Minecraft you really need to play on a decent server to get the most out of it. Building on your own is sad.
First time on a server I built a massive sand worm with fire in its mouth.
It pissed somebody off as he dont like big things and liked his tiny village

[QuantumCrayons]

clicking a button and watching numbers roll off an enemy is NOT exciting

I really enjoy it, but maybe that says something about me!
MMOs aren't something I play, I don't have the drive to do it, but I like numbers!

[DPrinny]

Action MMORPGS FTW

[Rayne]

clicking a button and watching numbers roll off an enemy is NOT exciting

I really enjoy it, but maybe that says something about me!
MMOs aren't something I play, I don't have the drive to do it, but I like numbers!

In fairness there is a certain satisfaction to it, it's nice seeing just how much extra damage you do after a level up, stat boost, new item, etc. That said I don't think it makes for a fun combat system once you get past the 20 hour mark

[NorthWay]

The big MMOs seems to have gone to the same school of MMO design: Stats. Global cooldown. Stuns. Roots. Ranged. Melee. Tank. Healer. Damage. Miss. Dodge. Parry. Block.

I play WoW myself and I see the changes as they roll in release by release. Blizzard are terminally frightened of any item that holds any usefulness in a later content release. Talents are being streamlined so they don't have to watch out for exponential number of combinations (which was the cool thing I thought). Old content is strangely being deleted or shortened to pale shadows of what it used to be.
Going from 1.x to 2.x the players were largely dumbfounded by how their hard won old gear was instantly dropped for quest rewards or other drops. This was however largely the fault of Blizzard who had to make better gear than the highest level epic items in 1.x, something which rather a small base of the players had experienced. Making sure more players see more of the content has been a focus point and a rather successful one.

However, what I _do_ know is that WoW is in many ways a tragedy technically. They have maintenance for up to 8 hours once a week.The player with the fastest connection has its actions triggered first (no timestamping or rollback). The server for some insane reason _trusts_ the client and is sent actions, not keypresses - that is why you saw the flying lvl1 ads in WotLK, and also why stealthers use lag hacks to capture flags instantly.

I am looking forward to the release of The Secret World and hope it will be good. They have the exponential talent combinations, and hopefully some good tech.

[Misery]

At least with Minecraft your creativity can shine through and you'll have cool creations at the end of it.

The payment model for MMO's has never bothered me really, most are only about £6/8 a month. At that rate you'd get about 6 months worth of play before you reached the £40 a new retail title would cost.

The payment model for MOST of them has changed recently, since the F2P model works alot better for most people than the pay-per-month model.

It depends on the game though. One way or another, getting really into any one of them, you WILL pay money for it.... which is only fair. These are EXPENSIVE as all hell to run. There's a reason the pay-per-month payment model lasted for a bazillion years as it did.



Anyway, I've been into the genre for a long time, which tends to surprise anyone that knows me well enough.

As for what games I've played.... you name it, I've probably played it, and was also probably in the beta.

My favorites are Everquest, City of Heroes, and I used to love Anarchy Online.

My disliked games are.... pretty much just WoW. And no, I'm not gonna argue with anyone about THAT game. Basically, I played Everquest WAY too much to actually like WoW very much, which always felt like a more simplistic version of it. I dont actually think it's a bad game though, mind you, I've just always taken EQ over it.


I have *alot* of free time, so these games work with me well. I'm also resistant to their addictive nature, as I dont sit still very well and cant stand more than a 2 hour session of pretty much any game at a time, and I dont bother with guilds.

I think the genre can be a real blast if you can find the game that suits you; even more of a blast when you have friends playing with; though meeting random people in-game can be interesting too.


Currently I'm playing Rift, one of the last subscription-based ones currently out there. Though I'm barely anywhere in it yet, pretty much just started. Wanted a more traditional type of MMO this time (as opposed to CoH's explody chaos, and similar games), and this one delivers on that front.

[Carrot007]

I currently play SW:TOR. It's good but given my spare time and not being around much I may as well be playing a single player game!

The thing that gets me down about MMORPGS is that unless you have 24/7 to devote to them some people think you are not doing enough. More care is needed for casual players. Unfortunatly the usual option is selling leveling in some way. Sorry paying instead of doing is not good too.

I have played other MMO's. Can't remember them all! But some are City Of Villians/Heros, WOW, SW:G, puzzle pirates.

SW:G in the earlier days was pretty much perfect! Possibly best around when jump to lightspeed came out (real space combat!). The people were fun, you could have fun as a dancer, the ecomomy was real and useful. However they decided that releasing a new game using the same graphics and locations was the way to go. It was not a new game so not many new players and a lot of the old players left because it was not the game they had got used to. SW:TOR is a completely different sort of game but it is what it is (so far).