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What MMORPG do you think is the most immersive out of the current ones out? I am looking for one that feels like a living, breathing world. And first person perspective is also nice for this, but not required.
Thank you for your thoughts!
Chris
Comments
Immersion is just another word for fun. If you aren't enjoying yourself you can't be immersed. You'll fight the premise and want to be doing something else the entire time.
So what you are actually asking (subjectively speaking) is what is everyone's favorite MMO.
'Sandbox MMO' is a PTSD trigger word for anyone who has the experience to know that anonymous players invariably use a 'sandbox' in the same manner a housecat does.
When your head is stuck in the sand, your ass becomes the only recognizable part of you.
No game is more fun than the one you can't play, and no game is more boring than one which you've become familiar.
How to become a millionaire:
Start with a billion dollars and make an MMO.
But I disagree with you there, the word 'fun' is not really a synonym for immersion.
But you could tell me what you think is the most immersive game for you Velocinox?
Immersion is many things to many people. Some people feel immersed with loads of content stretching out in front of them, others with mystery and danger in the world, others by story content and still others by seeing thunderstorms and flocks of birds in the sky.
It all depends what does it for you.
For me I was immersed in EQ2 and WoW because of the content, EQ1 for the dangerous world full of wonder, SWTOR for the story and LOTRO for the beautiful world.
Fun to most comes in vastly different forms. Some it comes from combat, some from PvP, some are just looking for an immersive world they can virtually live in. As for me, I am in the ladder category and feel that immersion is one of the most lacking things of just about all current MMO's. Past MMO's focused far more on creating another world where you could loose yourself in for years. Then came the onslaught of Themeparks which more or less turned these worlds into lobby based games and gave little reason to get out in the world and become part of it.
Unfortunately, my answer will be little help currently but for me, the answer is Archeage. The scope, detail, beauty and pure vastness of it's world is unmatched by anything I have ever seen in an MMO. This is also why, nothing else being released is even on my radar anymore and cannot hold a flame the immersion gratification that I get while playing it. This is the first game that I have found in quite some time that I am confident that I will be playing for years not months like so many other releases.
While this is little help for you now, I can tell you if you are an immersion junkie like me, you must check it out when it finally reaches our shores.
No it is not.
May be "If you aren't enjoying yourself you can't be immersed" ... may be true. But the reverse "if you can't immerse youself, you cannot have fun" is certainly not true, at least for me, and some others.
Case in point, LFD is immersion breaking. it adds to my fun. Meta game (like optmizing gear with theorycrafting) is immersion breaking. it adds to my fun.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
I disagree.
Immersion is the act of losing oneself in the world of the game of which one is playing. To blur the line between this world and the artificial one on the screen. To feel like you are literally INSIDE the game world, and not simply playing a character within that world.
Answer to the OP - WURM Online
Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
I think people missed the point. Immersion and a living breathing world simulation is the question here.
Whether it is fun or not is subjective. That is always the case, no matter what kind of world is designed.
Many people like the idea of world simulations because they can be more challenging. Travel is meaningful. Night and day mean something. Weather means something. NPC act more like real people instead of quest givers with question marks above their heads. MOBS act like real enemies instead of standing there like bags of experience to be harvested.
The trend now is away from that. Most gamers don't want virtual worlds. They want to be led along by the nose. They want to be spoon-fed. They want easy content. They want to be able to solo everything. They want to have goals that are achievable in slices of time commitment as little as ten minutes. They want WOW and GW2 and their clones. That is the consensus of what is fun.
Making a commitment to a challenging game is foreign to most. But I think it will change eventually.
The best scene from the first Matrix movie was when Agent Smith was interrogating Morpheus. Smith said the first Matrix created a world with no downsides, as this was what the Matriix thought humans wanted - in other words non-stop 100 percent "fun." But humans rejected this, for reasons Smith cannot fathom. He muses it must be because humans like to be miserable.
I think it is because at a certain point our nature seeks out challenges, even though they can be stressful and uncomfortable at times. Without challenge and risk, achievement becomes less meaningful. People realize that 100 percent stimulation 24/7 can numb and exhaust. They begin to value a more measured pace.
At a certain point, people just won't be able to stand eating huge bowls of sugary candy for every meal - the mind and body begin to reject it. People won't want to be like the couch-ridden humans in Wall-E, with every want and need taken care of by Buy-N-Large so that their bodies and survival skills have atrophied.
I think immersive worlds will make a comeback in the future because people will demand it. They will reject the Candy lands we have now.
You can be immersed in a lot of things that are not fun.
I don't think you know what the word immersion means.
It doesn't mean "fun"...it means how phsychologically involved you are in an event, the experience doesn't need to be "fun" to be involved.
I second the above colored text. I don't find very many MMOs to be immersive, but I have plenty of fun with them anyways. Case and Point Warframe is a lobby mission based MOG that I personally don't find immersive due to the lobby, but I have plenty of fun playing it. FFXIVARR is pretty immersive now in my opinion.
I find most MMOs to be non-immersive. Things that break immersion:
Good post, I totally agree with you on the static NPCs thing. I also found a lot of EQ1 and WW2 online to be immersive.
It's a subjective matter, but this type of description is best way to express your opinion on immersion.
I can live with 1 and 2, in fact I don't want it to be different. Because changes to these mechanics would feel as if it has been forced, afterall you still know it's scripted so why bother so much. It's a detail that is not so important to me.
3 and certainly 4 is a pain and immersion breaker. Especially 4. This would be my number one. Zones is OK, but no invisible walls or loading screens.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Favorite MMO: Vanilla WoW
Currently playing: GW2, EVE
Excited for: Wildstar, maybe?
And towns always look like nudist colonies...just because people can =/
This is what Immersion means when playing RPGs...
Sadly for me to be really immersed, certain things need to be taken care off..
- First, having good Voiced over quests helps really well for me to be immersed in a story...
- The world itselves needs to feel vibrant and alive... if all NPCs stand around like pillars, it breaks my immersion
- Annimations needs to be of a certain quallity... Cluncky annimations break my immersion
- Character building needs to go slow withouth to many huge changes, slowly getting more abbilities... full respecs every 10 levels that make me play the character totally different break my bound with the character and also break my immersion..
- To much flshy mellee attacks that look like spell annimations, and overbright spell effects break my combat immersion.
- Having a dynamic world where things happen, like in GW2 adds to my immersion
so knowing what adds to my immersion in games is clearly important, sad thing however is that non of the games i played totally delivered.... Lotro came close, and was pretty much the most immersive game so far... SWTOR had great stories, but lacked the interactive world design. ... GW2 also did a lot of things right, but not having a main story somponent and swapping builds every 10minutes ruined the immersion for me, also the seasonal content they added was so gimmicky and not related to a fantasy world that totally killed it
.. In good old EQ the world itselved got me enthralled and immersed, untill i eralised that at higher levels we need to camp spawns and stand in line for fights... TSW was also very immersive, but the combat broke my immersion.
Some other games like WoW where very immersive at release, but they changed to much intoo a game over the time..
Immersion for me works best on my first character in a world.
For the future, TESO looks like the game that might immerse me i9n their world for quite some time
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)
Darkfall Unholy Wars should be tried!
It's a sandbox game with open world pvp and full loot drop. Sea combats, players owning castles and houses and not as much grind as Darkfall Online had.
You are welcome to join EU and contact Jakob Miller, leader of Organized Chaos and we will give you a really good start in the game!
I agree with previous posters about (in immersion order from highest to lowers):
1. EVE Online
2. Lord of The Rings Online
3. Fallen Earth
FFXIV is quite immersive until you enter combat, then it's all flashy and unrealistic, so it's not on the list. Still, the world is stunning, great day/night cycle, weather system, etc.
GW2 has a beautiful world but heavily scripted dynamic events happening over and over and over and over in same places really break immersion for me (same can be said about FFXIV really).
I am an immersion junkie as well and would simply recommend Skyrim with some immersion mods. Most of the good ones are on the first page here, for example:
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/searchresults/?src_order=1&src_sort=0&src_view=1&src_tab=1&src_cat=78&src_showadult=1&page=1&pUp=1
I play heavily modded Skyrim with well over 100 mods and, sadly, can't find an mmorpg that is at least half as immersive and realistic as Skyrim is to me.
"Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted.
Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world."
Hans Margolius