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Professional MMO'er
Eunuchmaker
Member UncommonPosts: 204
Some of you may know that the Tera open beta is currently underway. Someone posted this in the general forums:
"As this is beta, you will find a particular brand of crazy I like to call the professional MMO'er. They are absolutely certain that their view is completely correct and that if you do not cater to them, it will destroy the game. A few warning signs of a professional MMO'er are:
1. Demands for more timesinks
2. Demands that things in game that are fun be incredibly exclusionary or have a ridiculously
low droprate.
3. Demands for the implementation of tedious mechanics as if they somehow build character.
4. High minded intellectual criticism of trivial aspects of the game as if they are game breaking.
You see, the professional MMO'er is a creature with a ridiculous amount of time on their hands, and a desire to be on top in a game. They know they have the advantage of time, and as they have nothing better to do, enjoy grinding out long measures of time to show everyone else they have what is "fun".
They do not enjoy bringing others up, but bringing others down. You cannot please them. You cannot reason with them. And as their sole purpose is a selfish means of shoving everyone else down so they can be a special snowflake, they ruin whatever game they touch.
Don't listen to them devs. Cater your game to appeal to a wide audience with engaging gameplay and fun, but actually obtainable rewards. Your professional MMO'er will whine, complain, and throw a fit, but they'll be there. Because ultimately, what the professional MMO'er needs is to stand out from the crowd, and the bigger the game, the more they can stand out. Cater to the sane, don't worry, the insane will always follow." -- Wirius
I don't agree with all of it, but it's a fun read. What do you all think?
Comments
Was definately interesting and i can agree partially just like you, lol.
they should try get a gf imo, or go watch a movie, play some sports or build models.
spent too much time on virtual world is not good.
I find the gamer community as a whole quite odd, I read about one chap complaining that the client was causing his PC to reboot. After further Q&A we determined that his 350w PSU could not handle his i-5, 8GB ram, 560ti computer....Lol
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
<========= LOL
WOW,eq2,Vanguard,WAR,LOTRO,AOC,Rift Aion, SWTOR, TERA.
Currently playing GW2.
I have an idea of what that person is saying and I know who they are talking about. I do think that there is a small group of people who are hard to please because they love MMOs but have so much extra time they blow through content. They then proceed to hit the forums because again they have a lot of extra time and are now irritated that they are bored with their current MMO.
I think all of us to a point are selfish gamers, at least where MMOs are concerned. After all we are paying money to play, right? Because we put more meaning into things we pay for it hits a certain personal string if we don't feel we're getting our "monies worth".
What both sides need to realize, casual & hardcore (this is the issue IMO), is that each company is trying to cater to both. Casual players are not going to have the advantages that go along with playing 10 hours a day. It is going to take you longer to get gear, be zen with this as I have to be, heh. Hardcore people are going to be snearing at casuals because casuals are actually having fun one month in because they didn't start off with a 36 hour max level power session. Each playstyle has positives and negatives. Game changing decisions ultimatly rest with the developers.
In TERA's case I think it's a little of both. As far as I know gear is not hard to come but as long as you can defeat the encounters. Now I must go get some math done so I can continue with my level 7 Warrior (<-----casual).
Just not worth my time anymore.
/teethclinchinhale
I hope he didn't damage his equimpment. At least he knows now and I hope he leaves it off until he gets another PS.
Just not worth my time anymore.
I guess that considering that post irked me I'd be considered a professional gamer. Yes I MAKE more time to game than most other people, its a choice and gaming is my hobby. I work and have a family life , I simply choose to spend my leisure hours glued to a monitor. That said .... the original post is rubish. It assumes much and makes excuses for many.
I'd wager the majority of those who share my hobby wished mmo's were more difficult, more rewarding, and certainly more fun. Some of us wish they were more grindy , which isn't a bad thing, and is solely dependant on the definition of a grind. To me sitting at a camp for a few hours and killing the same mobs for experience or loot is a grind. That doesn't mean its unenjoyable , I've had many of the most memorable momments of my mmo life sitting at a grind camp. I , personally, think item rewards have taken a turn for the worst begining with WoW the game that brought the casual gamers into the mmo fold. When people like myself say we want items that are harder to obtain, and more rare we don't mean we want some uber, super selective item of owning. It means we want to work for something, not just show up to a raid. Most of us who played EQ understand that there should be TONS of hard to obtain items, so that everyone can pick and choose. I also abhor artificial limitations such as encounter sizes, lock-out timers, and 1-2 drop bosses. Raiding shouldn't be used as a stop gap end game, it should be built in such a manner that its enjoyed by everyone in addition to end game quests, exploration, and alternate advancement.
Meh its late.
You're only a professional MMO'er if you're makin money playin it.
Ikr.
Anways i like how Tera moves away from that but doesn't go total easy mode either. The increase in drop rate helps everyone get geared and doesn't require retarded amount of time and luck like CBT (i never got a gold lance in all 5 cbt Q_Q finally got my gold lace in SM 2hrs ago ^_^) but the content is still challeging and pvp skilled based ^_^
I'm sorry but i must side myself with the "professional mmo'er".
My first mmorpg was UO (on a non-OSI shard), reaching gm on a skill was hard and required months, still the people loved it, there were no quest and you had to create your story, still I was never bored. I could spend an entire day mining in search of some rare ore or just take a boat and explore.
I remember one of the hardest skill was blacksmithing, reaching GM Blacksmith was really a long process but once you reached that level everyone knew you and everyone asked for your services.
At the same time most of the single players RPG (just bear with me a second) were all about spending points every level to customize your character as you see fit, you had total control over your character.
Then WOW came, at first I was excited MMORPG + Blizzard what could go wrong? Everything.
I understood crafting was dead as soon as i crafted my first item and i tryed to sell it to a vendor, he was paying me less than half of what materials used to craft the item costed, not to mention the speed at which the trade skills were rising.
With WOW Blizzard opened the mmorpg world to mass market, they bring in the casual players (plus players from FPS and RTS), and since those people enjoyed it they started to try single rpg too.
What's bad about this?
Simple after some time, i started to see an auto level up functions in some games and i was like "wtf? who would give up the opportunity to customize his character?" Well a lot of casual players. So after some time they removed the stat points all toghther (some games still use it like a cookies to old players, "here spend this useless point so you are happy"). Then since it was working they introduced the tree system like wow.
Oh well at least i have some degree of control, i though, but the casual players were able to screw even with just 3 trees.
So everyone started to use builds and after some time there were 2/3 viable builds for spec and then Blizzard went even further and destroyed even the tree system with just 1 single build per tree, now with Diablo 3 they removed even this and changed it with a linear progression where you have almost no choice at all.
And now I start to read complaints that a week to reach the level cap up is too much "after all leveling up is not necessary" "it's so '90", that items are useless "they are so old school", crafting? "meh", customization? "it unbalanc the pvp, no thanks!"
Were all this will lead us? In my opinion will transform the RPG (MMO ot SP) in FPS with a more complex story. So i have to ask...
For the players in the category "hey i have a job" "hey i have a family" "i can only play 1 hour max and i want to have fun" "farming items is like a job and i already have one" "leveling up is for no lifer" etc why don't they bloody play FPS or MOBA games?
Really if you think of it, if you remove leveling, items, customization from an RPG and if you are interested in PVP there is the perfect mmorpg for you it's called Battlefield 3.
That's my opinion, but maybe I'm just bitter cause I loved UO and i miss it
I think I am beginning to realize the over simplification of the mmorpg concept myself at this point
I never could get in to wow after playing other games before that , I played EQ 2 for many years on Nagafen pvp server and still think it was one of the best games on the market , the items in that game are incredible as are the raid dungeons. I fear that what I am witnessing now is a dumbing down of the whole genre in general which is unfortunate , nice graphics with no substance , all show and no go seems to be the new immersive norm .
As an example , several years ago I played Hero Online which falls hard in to the " Asian Grinder" catagory and at times it felt more like a job rather than an adventure . However , be it as it was it required "effort " to progress in the game . The mobs were not easy to kill , if you died you would lose experience and go backward and anyone could kill you at anytime during the game except for in safe areas , this was quite discouraging for many people .
The crafting of rare items costed a fortune and had a very low success rate while the materials were hard to obtain drops that fetched a high price on the market , not many players had the best gear or weapons . You had to keep up with all of this in order to survive against hostile players and hard to kill monsters . Once they began allowing RMT the game pretty much was never the same , like what happened in Archlord also anyone with enough money irl could rule the game .
The other thing is there was no such thing as a pre built character , you earned a few skill points and stat points each time you leveled up and it was up to you to add the right amount of str or int or dexterity etc. Same with the skill points , the decision making process was entirely your own and if you screwed it up you were stuck with a gimped build period which would result in poor performance , they charged $30 to re allocate stat points if you gimped your character . Your stat points for your build had a huge affect on how your character could perform and once they were gone they were gone .
What this did though was give you the ability to be creative , there were endless ways you could allocate your stat points and if you did a good job using your own ideas you could be proud of your succes at making a viable character .
Also there were very few quests in the entire game , leveling was done through killing mobs at a very slow pace.Although all of this could seem tedious and difficult , it was a game where you had to earn the mastery , it wasn`t handed to you and if you failed no one was there to hold your hand or give you a ticket for a free ride through the themepark .
Since then I have played many many games , Darkfall seemed ok but still there were all these people crying about the skill grind and how hard it was . I guess I just haven`t noticed how developers seem to be making games that take no effort at all , everyone is a winner so we can all feel good about ourselves , but really where are the objectives ? Where is the competition ? Where is the challenge?
They don`t have the skill to compete and progress so they ask for games that require little or no effort , I mean why not just start the adventure with a pre leveled fully geared fully skilled character that has a full bank account and an auto group finder so that all they have to do is sit back and watch the game play itself .
If I don`t have time for something that requires it , thats my problem not anyone elses . It`s ridicules for people to expect developers to take the "game" out of a game because they feel that they should be entitled to " easily obtainable rewards " that require a limited amount of effort .
And you are correct , MOBAS are a great way to have fun with pvp without the time sync of a real mmo . Sadly . my favorite MOBA style game " Land of Chaos" was recently changed and you guessed it............ dumbed down to easy mode for the masses. lol
Currently playing: EverQuest
Waiting for Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen
They fail because developers " believe " that creating easymode games attract the masses when in reality people just become bored and move on to the next promise of a better experience .
There is something to be said about playing a game that rewards you for your decision making process rather than having someone make all the decisions for you except for perhaps your character creation and what outfit you are wearing when you ride out to conquer candyland .
I agree - the fun is in the journey. If I only have an hour or two to play, that doesn't make the game any less fun - it just means that the game lasts longer.
The only way I can see the "I only have an hour to play" argument working was in the forced grouping, when it would sometimes take an hour+ to get into a group, or running missions/instances that took an hour+ to complete. That being said, I like the long, sweeping epic quests like EQ1 Epic Weapon quests, that would take a long time to complete and a lot of commitment (and could be broken down into logical parts that could eventually (and I use that term loosely) be completed in hour-long play sessions).
I really like games with Mentor/Sidekick type mechanics - it lets friends who may play at different intensities to still play together in some capacity. City of Heroes was great with their system, I thought. EQ1 tried really really hard with the Spirit Shrouds, and I thought they had a lot of potential if they were just developed a bit further.
Cheers!
MMO Vet since AOL Neverwinter Nights circa 1992. My MMO beat up your MMO. =S
Just one thing, everyone that thinks he is a professional MMO'er should get a real life.
Just my 2 cents
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)