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[breadbocks]

There probably has been >100 thread about this, but I'm too lazy to use the search/necro a thread. So, what are forumites' thoughts on MMOs? Good? Bad? Impossible to understand? What?

I personally think they are a great way to spend the last half-hour or so of a day.

[Soulwynd]

I find most to be boring, but there are some gems out there.

[Soulwynd]

The entire point of an MMO is to manage leveling speed of players, to cause them to waste more time than necessary *by design*, to stretch out what would be 30 hours of gameplay into months.

Those are the MMOs I avoid. If there's a sign of grind and no fun, I leave. It's one of the reasons I try to find mmos that focus on PvP and advancing through pvp. It's one of the reasons I enjoyed warhammer. The pve was very typical, but the pvp could be extremely fun and rewarding.

[SeaBee]

The entire point of an MMO is to manage leveling speed of players, to cause them to waste more time than necessary *by design*, to stretch out what would be 30 hours of gameplay into months.

Those are the MMOs I avoid. If there's a sign of grind and no fun, I leave. It's one of the reasons I try to find mmos that focus on PvP and advancing through pvp. It's one of the reasons I enjoyed warhammer. The pve was very typical, but the pvp could be extremely fun and rewarding.

I love advancing through PvP. What MMOs let you do that (other than Warhammer since you already mentioned it)? Or is there a relatively recent list I can see somewhere? Thanks in advance.

[Thexor]

The entire point of an MMO is to manage leveling speed of players, to cause them to waste more time than necessary *by design*, to stretch out what would be 30 hours of gameplay into months.

Those are the MMOs I avoid. If there's a sign of grind and no fun, I leave. It's one of the reasons I try to find mmos that focus on PvP and advancing through pvp. It's one of the reasons I enjoyed warhammer. The pve was very typical, but the pvp could be extremely fun and rewarding.

Frankly (and I know drumming up a specific MMO is a fast way to derail this, so I'll keep it short) this is one of the reasons I loved Guild Wars. Low level cap, no (non-cosmetic) benefits to 'grinding' endgame content, no real motivation to play besides having fun (which is the reason I bloody well play games, online or not!). Then you remember: "right, no monthly fee". So they've got no incentive to keep you grinding for months on end - they have to provide new content for players if they want more money, so that's what they do.


It's kind of silly, really, the insistence on grinding in your average MMO. Why in my right mind would I pay you $15 a month for the privilege of repeatedly performing a repetitive task? If somebody released an MMO as a single-player game, it would rightly be deemed a complete piece of crap - repetitive quests, constant grinding, half-assed storyline. Take a crap RPG, slap in some shoddy netcode, charge money every month, and you've got a blockbuster. 

[Jack A T]

Grinding-focused MMOs: CRAP.

Play for "free" MMOs: ...NO JUST NO.

Games that have actual interesting aspects to them while being MMOs (City of Heroes and the character creation system, EVE and scamming, for example), however, I find playable.

Basically, I want games that are fun.  If they're MMOs, that's fine, as long as they're actually fun.

[cappstv]

I once play runescape and a little bit of me is now dead inside.
God that game sucked.
The greatest MMO is Chip n' Dales MMORPG

[breadbocks]

The entire point of an MMO is to manage leveling speed of players, to cause them to waste more time than necessary *by design*, to stretch out what would be 30 hours of gameplay into months.

Those are the MMOs I avoid. If there's a sign of grind and no fun, I leave. It's one of the reasons I try to find mmos that focus on PvP and advancing through pvp. It's one of the reasons I enjoyed warhammer. The pve was very typical, but the pvp could be extremely fun and rewarding.

Frankly (and I know drumming up a specific MMO is a fast way to derail this, so I'll keep it short) this is one of the reasons I loved Guild Wars. Low level cap, no (non-cosmetic) benefits to 'grinding' endgame content, no real motivation to play besides having fun (which is the reason I bloody well play games, online or not!). Then you remember: "right, no monthly fee". So they've got no incentive to keep you grinding for months on end - they have to provide new content for players if they want more money, so that's what they do.

Agreed. I've given a few subscription MMOs a try (Read: WoW style), discovered a lack of fun, and avoided them since. Most free MMOs just barely don't cross the line between subscription and free, by giving you 4 or so zones and a boss and maybe 2 hours of gameplay then say "You gotta pay to enter this zone". (Read: Most "Childrens" or "Family" MMOs) But there ARE a few chunks of rough diamond in the heap of quartz. They don't look like much outwardly, but are amazing.

[Soulwynd]

I love advancing through PvP. What MMOs let you do that (other than Warhammer since you already mentioned it)? Or is there a relatively recent list I can see somewhere? Thanks in advance.

Global Agenda is another. Face of Mankind as well, depending on your faction. I wish there were more, but those are all I can think of right now.

As for mmos I recommend:
Anarchy Online - Old school, can be really grindy, but it's also really fun if you have the expansion packs and participate on sieges, tower wars, etc.
Neocron 2 - Scifi german mmo. Used to be a bit better if you ask me, still full of bugs, but it was pretty fun despise some of the grind it has. The pvp had some fun moments, but I liked the setting mostly.
Warhammer - If you enjoy TF2-style pvp in a mmo environment. The PvE is very Wow-like however, but the public quests are fun, specially at higher levels when you can gather a huge amount of people, or you start doing the PvP public quests where both sides fight to complete objectives.
DDO - Can be grindy, but it's free now and really captures some of that table-top feeling.

Frankly (and I know drumming up a specific MMO is a fast way to derail this, so I'll keep it short) this is one of the reasons I loved Guild Wars.

I kind of hated it. Working to unlock skills for pvp was incredibly boring. Course, you can pvp with the basic skills, but it's not always fun. At least not for me.

[nenjin]

MMOs have become as formulaic as the current gen of FPS. That's my major problem. The systems are the same in many games, the ethos is the same, the content is the same.

EVE has a more interesting, player-driven dynamic going than most, and that's what the next crop of MMOs will have to do to get my money. There needs to be way more emergent game play than MMOs offer today. They're all, thanks to WoW, these rigid games of whack-a-mole and dodge the fire at higher levels. I don't necessarily like PvP, but it's one of the few things I can actually care about when it comes to MMOs, because the content sure as hell isn't stimulating anymore. Much like after 100s of hours of Diablo II, all you see is loot and monsters, it's the same with WoW. After a few hundred hours, all the mystery of the game is stripped away and what you're left with is just...mush. Bland, generic mush that you shovel down day in and day out for reasons you can't even articulate anymore.

So I've pretty much written off this and the last two crop of MMOs to come out, and am going to continue doing so until one hits that really shakes up the traditional model of things. I want to go back to the days where dungeons were more environments to play in than these masses of corridors and pre-planned fights and loot drops. I want a game that actually tries to simulate something again, instead of abstracting everything down to following quest nodes around and doing completely obvious shit as part of a level grind. I want a lot of the freedom we used to have back, including the freedom to seek adventure and die a lot because we were exploring.

Oh, and I want MMOs to quit holding people's hands. I could say that in general of a lot of games today, but MMOs in particular are like overly sympathetic mothers. Every time you scratch your knee, and boo hoo, it comes in and goes "oh it's ok, that didn't matter ANYWAYS. Here, see, you're alive again, and everything is all lovely dovey again. Now go back out there and have some fun, champ! Oh, and have some free tokens for being such a good sport."

Peh. I remember when MMOs actually felt like worlds, and not just a mass of content equally spread out so the player always has a shiny light to focus on. WoW really jaded me on this. The game isn't a world so much as it's an ocean of emptiness littered with oasis's of simple, repeatable content. And you're just a little fishy, swimming through the emptiness, gobbling up every little pellet you come across and looking for the next.

I'm probably going to have to wait a few years though, until the current crop of MMOs really starts losings subscribers (or fold within a year like APB) so publishers start throwing their money at something different.

[Sowelu]

The entire point of an MMO is to manage leveling speed of players, to cause them to waste more time than necessary *by design*, to stretch out what would be 30 hours of gameplay into months.

By this logic, the entire point of a multiplayer FPS is to cause players to waste tons of time shooting at each other without actually doing anything useful.  I mean...If you're having fun, why not?  Even grindy bits CAN be fun.  If you ever think "Damn it, I shouldn't have to waste so much time on this part to get to the next part", well, that's a poorly designed MMO and one you shouldn't play.  But remember that Battletoads had those, too...

If you like casual puzzle games, then Puzzle Pirates is totally awesome and sweet.  You're playing the minigames that you would have otherwise been playing ANYWAY...  Except now, when you do well at them, it *means something*.  To me, that's what MMOs are good for.  They take a game that you theoretically would be playing anyway for short-term enjoyment, and they give your actions a long-term reward.  It's the same reason that people play long-term campaigns of football games (or Blood Bowl for that matter):  You would be playing the individual games anyway, but now there's even more meaning behind each one.

If you're not enjoying every hour that you spend playing a game, you shouldn't be playing it in the first place.

[Virtz]

MMOs have become as formulaic as the current gen of FPS. That's my major problem. The systems are the same in many games, the ethos is the same, the content is the same.

I don't know about MMOs in general being formulaic. MMORPGs I'd agree are incredibly formulaic these days. The same hotkey system, the same simplistic combat system (at most with manual aiming) and the same god damn DPS/Tank/Heal setup everywhere.

Now, I'm probably naive to believe this stuff, but the things Guild Wars 2 developers say it'll do sounds pretty impressive. That is, they say they're doing away with the sort of instancing you see in MMORPGs these days and that quests like saving a city from some invading force will mean an actual invading force that might actually take over that city. Of course, this could also mean they'll just instance the entire freaking world to do that, but I don't know, it's always a glimmer of hope that MMORPGs will stop being so generic.

[nenjin]

By this logic, the entire point of a multiplayer FPS is to cause players to waste tons of time shooting at each other without actually doing anything useful.

Have you played the recent crop of FPS? That's exactly what they do. They throw points at you for doing every little thing, and take away your prone so you are almost always exposed, almost always getting shot. Causing players to waste tons of time shooting at each other without doing anything useful pretty much defines current FPS. Tactics pretty much boil down to: flank and throw all your grenades.

That is, they say they're doing away with the sort of instancing you see in MMORPGs these days and that quests like saving a city from some invading force will mean an actual invading force that might actually take over that city. Of course, this could also mean they'll just instance the entire freaking world to do that, but I don't know, it's always a glimmer of hope that mmorpg's will stop being so generic.

Even something like that would be a nice change of pace. I remember in EQ when a guild woke the Sleeper on our server. It was a big moment. It also made the most hated guild on our server, for screwing everyone else out of the Unawoken Sleeper loot. Those kinds of dynamics and interactions don't exist anymore. Crazy as it may sound, I almost miss the rare spawn hunts too, especially the ones that took whole guilds to kill. Those were some exciting game days online, rushing out with the guild to try and get that rare spawn before anyone else, and all the logistical nightmares and side-stories of people who had SOMETHING happen to them on the way to this little gala. Stuff like "Hey guys, sorry I'm late, someone trained 30 Gnolls in HHP and it was bedlam for 20 minutes until we killed them all."

[Sowelu]

By this logic, the entire point of a multiplayer FPS is to cause players to waste tons of time shooting at each other without actually doing anything useful.

Have you played the recent crop of FPS? That's exactly what they do. They throw points at you for doing every little thing, and take away your prone so you are almost always exposed, almost always getting shot. Causing players to waste tons of time shooting at each other without doing anything useful pretty much defines current FPS. Tactics pretty much boil down to: flank and throw all your grenades.

Oops, sorry.  I'll stop having fun now.  :(  My point:  You missed it.

[devek]

I'll play a MMO when someone invents a good one that isn't a timesink.

No, I don't want to kill 500 sheep to get a sword+1.

Me and my buddies are trying to design one that almost entire relies on player/team skill.