When I go to a book store, they also have magazines, newspapers, coffee, games, puzzles, and a variety of knick knacks. I don't feel exploited. So I'm also ok if a mmorpg website talks about other games as well.
Another day another bad Anaolgy ...
Now expand .. without your generalizing ..
If your favorite Bookstore .. for years .. was ..
hmm Star Journey / The Science Fiction Bookstore
Specializing in Science Fiction Books
And it did for years .. many years ..
But then you start to notice some Comedy books leaked in .. Then some Drama , and History then a Craft section .. Now only half the Store is Science Fiction .. The rest is a mix of stuff you have no interest in , and were not the reason you became a patron of said Book Store ..
And then the owner starts telling you well this Monty Python book has science in it .. Remember the part when they weigh a witch , which weighs the same as the duck which floats so the witch is made of wood.. This is like science isnt it .... isnt it ?...so its a Science Fiction book .... So now your book store owner presents very vague and weak similarities to your favorite genre of Science Fiction to introduce other genres into your Bookstore .. Which bums you out , because you really enjoyed the Book Store more when it was the Science Fiction Bookstore..And now you have to work your way thru so much other stuff and fight your way thru endless offerings of everything else , and then be assaulted at the entrance by giant poster .. ..
Of the newest Martha Stewart cookbook ....
and now all the Martha Stewart cooking fans telling you .. Hey we have every right to be here to .. we use Fire to cook , its like Science ..
There is also the fact that I don't pay for the privilege of using this site. They let me come here, read stuff, make posts, and so on for free. So again, I don't feel lied to or otherwise mistreated.
No one has posted how there is some mmorpg, or some mmorpg news, that this site is missing that they should have been covering but wrote instead about some MOBA. They seem to keep the mmorpg news up to date. If they miss something, you can always let them know.
I just don't see anyone being harmed. This is mmorpg.com, true, but it is not mmorpgonlyandothergamessuck.com.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
There is also the fact that I don't pay for the privilege of using this site. They let me come here, read stuff, make posts, and so on for free. So again, I don't feel lied to or otherwise mistreated.
No one has posted how there is some mmorpg, or some mmorpg news, that this site is missing that they should have been covering but wrote instead about some MOBA. They seem to keep the mmorpg news up to date. If they miss something, you can always let them know.
I just don't see anyone being harmed. This is mmorpg.com, true, but it is not mmorpgonlyandothergamessuck.com.
Most all of us here who frequent the site don't care if other games are covered. We care when we hear a fish being called a duck because they both enjoy water.
There is also the fact that I don't pay for the privilege of using this site. They let me come here, read stuff, make posts, and so on for free. So again, I don't feel lied to or otherwise mistreated.
No one has posted how there is some mmorpg, or some mmorpg news, that this site is missing that they should have been covering but wrote instead about some MOBA. They seem to keep the mmorpg news up to date. If they miss something, you can always let them know.
I just don't see anyone being harmed. This is mmorpg.com, true, but it is not mmorpgonlyandothergamessuck.com.
Most all of us here who frequent the site don't care if other games are covered. We care when we hear a fish being called a duck because they both enjoy water.
Ok. But two counter-points. One, think there is a fair amount of legitimate, good faith disagreement over what a mmorpg is. And two, if someone tells me, for example, that Counter-Strike is a mmorpg, when by my own definition it isn't, that won't make me think that it is. So again I don't see the harm.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
There is also the fact that I don't pay for the privilege of using this site. They let me come here, read stuff, make posts, and so on for free. So again, I don't feel lied to or otherwise mistreated.
No one has posted how there is some mmorpg, or some mmorpg news, that this site is missing that they should have been covering but wrote instead about some MOBA. They seem to keep the mmorpg news up to date. If they miss something, you can always let them know.
I just don't see anyone being harmed. This is mmorpg.com, true, but it is not mmorpgonlyandothergamessuck.com.
Most all of us here who frequent the site don't care if other games are covered. We care when we hear a fish being called a duck because they both enjoy water.
Ok. But two counter-points. One, think there is a fair amount of legitimate, good faith disagreement over what a mmorpg is. And two, if someone tells me, for example, that Counter-Strike is a mmorpg, when by my own definition it isn't, that won't make me think that it is. So again I don't see the harm.
On borderline titles, sure. Technology should eventually blur the line to the point the distinction is moot. It hasn't yet, and team-based MOBAs have no logical or rational reason to be included as an MMO. Anyone who participates in a thread about SuperData knows that revenue from titles like DOTA or LOL should not be compared to titles like WoW because they are in no way similar beyond the fact that WoW has arena PvP as a game mode. That's it.
Until I see SuperData and others start including CoD's numbers, I'll consistently laugh at the attempts to cherry pick titles just 'cause.
That's what I'm trying to say though, "Gray Areas". 100 people in a zone, 250 people in a zone, 600 people in a zone, and loading or non-loading screens.
Originally the division supposedly capped each smaller piece of the dark zone to 20, but I can't recall how many zones there were, but you could potentially run through each area of 20 capped players per zone, and you could probably count hundreds going from one point to the next.
Games with hubs can sometimes have hundreds of people in a hub, but only allow 4 to sometimes 10 people outside of the zones for content. But if we're counting one area that allows large groups in order to count it as an MMO, that opens up a host of other games too.
I think these little qualifiers are largely unimportant. In GW2 if I'm in WvW and there's a battle of 50 v 50, I think that's a pretty massive battle. 100+ people in a single area is a lot, and knowing that there's 100 where I'm standing and 300 somewhere that I can't see, doesn't change my initial perception.
If I can see 10 people at one camp, and travel to another camp and see 30 people, and bounce around and see all of these different people without a loading screen, that too doesn't change my perception of massive in terms of gameplay because I see them, but they are largely meaningless if I all they do is add to the aesthetics.
Instanced portions in MMOs... It's like working for a company in 10 story office building, on my floor I might see 30 people, but if i take the elevator loading screen I might see 120 on another floor. they are all people I work with but why does it matter if I can't see all 150 people at the same time? I work with them all the same even if our "meetings" are only 50 people at a time, so why do people need to qualify features that are largely unimportant and don't necessarily make their EXPERIENCE more massive?
This is where the difference in playstyle is coming through.
To me, and my playstyle, havings 100s in a zone does make a meaningful difference to my experience, even if they don't all congregate in the same area. What you refer to as people just being background aesthetics, I call the potential for community.
When you start splitting people off into instances, you dramatically reduce the likelihood of meeting those people again. This prevents you from building social bonds which in turn reduces the size and quality of the community which in turn reduces retention.
As a former guild leader, raid leader, pvper and social-minded player, this means being an actual MMO extremely important to me. It is a critical feature and without it, I won't play. I have zero interest in games like Destiny or The Division precisely because they're not MMOs. If they were MMOs, I would almost certainly have played The Division.
Being massively multiplayer is a feature. It is the only unique feature of the genre. I cannot find it anywhere else.
I'm happy for people to argue over the precise number required. As mentioned in previous posts, "massively" is a comparative term so you will always be comparing to normal online multiplayer numbers which means the number will change over time (typically going up). I use 500 as my qualifier, but you could easily use 250 if you wanted as that is still significantly larger than normal online multiplayer games. 100 or below isn't massively multiplayer, that's just normal online multiplayer numbers.
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
"At the time people who spoke that language commonly accepted the term when applied to PSO. Therefore it did apply to PSO.
At this point in time, most people who have MMO as a part of their language do no accept the term as it pertains to games like GW1 and Destiny 2. Therefore it does not apply to them."
Past tense and present tense are used properly so that no further explanation of my position should be required.
I can kind of agree with this but I also feel like it's dancing, the above says to me that the definition is hardline when people want it to be but not hardline when they don't want it to be
If MMO is a defintive term in 1999 and PSO qualifies in 2001, we can't then say MMO remains a defintive term in 2018 but games that fit the term in 2001 are no longer allowed to qualify, especially when bearing in mind that we had games like UO, AO, Asheron's Call etc to compare to at that time.
It would be like saying a "plane" means a bi-plane in 1903 but a bi-plane is no longer allowed to be called a plane in 2018 because people now view planes as being non bi-wing aircraft.
I got into computers in the early 90's. 386 processors were the rage and 486 processors were on the horizon. 1MB of RAM was "massive" then. Most people had 256KB or 512KB of RAM back then. A 10 MB HDD was called "massive." Some computers didn't even have a HDD. These were "massive" back then. Are they "massive" today?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
Words can have multiple meanings but used outside the proper context they are still incorrect usages. Tell a bunch of people you have a "fast car" and then bring out your non-modified model T and be like "Well it was fast in the early 1900s, I was just using the archiac meaning of the phrase 'fast car' ," and see how people react.
I told my brother that I'd give him all my baseball cards for a buck. Silly bro, he thought I meant a $1 dollar bill when I obviously meant the animal.
Meanwhile all the hot ladies out there catching fire from definition misuse.
I dated a "Babe" for awhile, but got arrested...
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
If you think that most other organizations don't have ulterior motives you're dead wrong. There's a reason to phrase "follow the money" is so widely used.
"At the time people who spoke that language commonly accepted the term when applied to PSO. Therefore it did apply to PSO.
At this point in time, most people who have MMO as a part of their language do no accept the term as it pertains to games like GW1 and Destiny 2. Therefore it does not apply to them."
Past tense and present tense are used properly so that no further explanation of my position should be required.
I can kind of agree with this but I also feel like it's dancing, the above says to me that the definition is hardline when people want it to be but not hardline when they don't want it to be
If MMO is a defintive term in 1999 and PSO qualifies in 2001, we can't then say MMO remains a defintive term in 2018 but games that fit the term in 2001 are no longer allowed to qualify, especially when bearing in mind that we had games like UO, AO, Asheron's Call etc to compare to at that time.
It would be like saying a "plane" means a bi-plane in 1903 but a bi-plane is no longer allowed to be called a plane in 2018 because people now view planes as being non bi-wing aircraft.
I got into computers in the early 90's. 386 processors were the rage and 486 processors were on the horizon. 1MB of RAM was "massive" then. Most people had 256KB or 512KB of RAM back then. A 10 MB HDD was called "massive." Some computers didn't even have a HDD. These were "massive" back then. Are they "massive" today?
To throw a bone out there to folks on the other side of the fence...
I think that's part of what drives their argument about modern games. Back in the early 2000's, with high speed internet being a little scarce, PC's being slower, and vid cards being weaker, folks tried to create MMO's and cram as many people into a free space as they could. I think this leads the "massive" folks to the idea that, as technology improved, developers would try to cram even more people into a map; where there might have been 30 once, new tech would lead us to potentially hundreds of people sharing a zone, or at least the potential for it.
But the reality became that by design, and/or many other practical factors, fewer and fewer people would come to share a specific zone, and instances and shards would become more prominent, even as technology improved and became more accessible.
So they see a "regression", despite tech improving. On that front, I get what they're talking about. But I get why the devs do it, more.
The "massive" qualifier in MMO is always going to be open for interpretation and that's fine. I think there are legitimate debates to be had about:
"Is a game that can have 100-300 players in the same area an MMO?"
I think when you drop down from the low hundreds into less than 20 players you've crossed the threshold from legitimate debate into absurdity though. The thing that has become very clear into me in these debates is people who say "Diablo is an MMO" don't care about the term MMO, nor this genre even a little.
Given that, I don't really feel they are qualified to define a term that belongs to a community they want no part of.
I think early on the novelty of fighting mobs together was exciting. My friends and I planned out farming strategies to get the drops we desperately wanted but so rarely dropped. At the time and in context I enjoyed that.
The point about population increase being a function of technology growth is interesting and it sounds reasonable.
An assumption was made by the industry (both studios and players), in my opinion, that more would automatically mean better. If a battle of 6 players versus 1 mob is awesome then 40 against and even bigger badder one is more awesome. If 1v1 PvP rocks, and small group versus small group is better, then massive battles should be the pinnacle experience.
Sometimes that may be true, but going back to what we originally were doing in MMOs... the RPG. It was as much about doing an RPG as it was about doing something together. The point was doing an RPG together. Instead of having an AI Baldur's Gate party we would have real players. We would be able to carve out our niche and shape characters with our friends and meet other people. It would be like a glorious massive tabletop party of excellent role-playing.
That never happened, but sometimes it got real close. That doesn't happen much anymore and that's also why I feel some old school veterans feel disenfranchised.
Aggravating the shallow RPG aspect of MMO was that propensity to cram more people in the world. Turns out good RPGs rarely have 50 key players running around in the story world at once (really check your favorite novel series) let alone 5000. WTF were we thinking?
So now we have the dilemma where better MMO community experiences are coming from games that aren't MMORPGs, but check enough of the boxes that people don't care. Secret World Legends is an example. People play online together but the RPG is more important than the MMO to the experience.
At least that's my perspective on it. Wordy. Sorry.
As someone who doesn't play a lot of video games with RL friends, I don't get any more sense of community out of a small multiplayer group game than I do MMORPG. It's quite the opposite.
I'm not sure I ever chatted with anyone in Vermintide 2 about anything other than "tome here" and such. Conversely, when I play an MMORPG and join a guild where I persistently see familiar folks, I chat periodically with them.
From what I understand, you have buddies who play many different games with you and with whom you interact with outside those games regularly (that's just me picking up from some posts and such, correct me if that's wrong). For someone who goes into an experience with a core group of friends, additional people are just noise. For someone who doesn't have a group they jump from game to game with, that's not true at all. ESA consumer report for 2017 shows that only 41% of gamers play with "friends," which means there's a huge amount of players (apparently the majority) who don't share the perspective of a pre-formed group of buddies they enter the game with. For those folks, like me, I'd say the perspective on which type of game provides the best communal RPG experience is very different.
While there are parts of MMORPGs where large crowds don't enhance the game play and can be downright annoying, there is one part where larger crowds are needed for a better simulation of what it's like to be a soldier or a squad playing a small part in a large battle.
For story purposes even good movies about wars or famous battles work best when they focus on a handful of characters and their individual, personal experience with the tiny part they were immediately aware of. But they still need to establish the overall context of the scale by pulling back, cutting to other key parts of the battle, using maps to show the larger picture etc.
In good PVP MMORPGs you do need large crowds for that pinnacle experience even if your own personal role is just a tiny part of it. It creates context to make it feel like a large scale engagement instead of a gang fight.
In other parts of MMORPGs those large crowds do nothing more than populate the world and make it feel busy which could be done better with NPCs since they do behave in character unlike most players. I have zero problems with instancing and micromanaging the population in those parts of MMORPGs where player crowds are more of an annoyance.
But the only type of PVP in those games that interests me is when they simulate large scale fantasy battle. I have very little interest in 6v6 scenarios that last 15 minutes or 1v1 duels. So whenever I think about a game being legitimately an MMO my measuring stick is always those large scale PVP battles. For that purpose IMO, bigger is always better.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
While there are parts of MMORPGs where large crowds don't enhance the game play and can be downright annoying, there is one part where larger crowds are needed for a better simulation of what it's like to be a soldier or a squad playing a small part in a large battle.
For story purposes even good movies about wars or famous battles work best when they focus on a handful of characters and their individual, personal experience with the tiny part they were immediately aware of. But they still need to establish the overall context of the scale by pulling back, cutting to other key parts of the battle, using maps to show the larger picture etc.
In good PVP MMORPGs you do need large crowds for that pinnacle experience even if your own personal role is just a tiny part of it. It creates context to make it feel like a large scale engagement instead of a gang fight.
In other parts of MMORPGs those large crowds do nothing more than populate the world and make it feel busy which could be done better with NPCs since they do behave in character unlike most players. I have zero problems with instancing and micromanaging the population in those parts of MMORPGs where player crowds are more of an annoyance.
But the only type of PVP in those games that interests me is when they simulate large scale fantasy battle. I have very little interest in 6v6 scenarios that last 15 minutes or 1v1 duels. So whenever I think about a game being legitimately an MMO my measuring stick is always those large scale PVP battles. For that purpose IMO, bigger is always better.
Interesting take.
I've never really felt that folks out in the world were an annoyance unless they went out of their way to be (chat harassment/trolling directly at me or gankers that I had no chance against due to level gaps).
I can see why some might, though. The most interesting thing about your (and @Torval's) post is just how differently our perspectives are despite all of us sharing a love for such a specific hobby.
While there are parts of MMORPGs where large crowds don't enhance the game play and can be downright annoying, there is one part where larger crowds are needed for a better simulation of what it's like to be a soldier or a squad playing a small part in a large battle.
For story purposes even good movies about wars or famous battles work best when they focus on a handful of characters and their individual, personal experience with the tiny part they were immediately aware of. But they still need to establish the overall context of the scale by pulling back, cutting to other key parts of the battle, using maps to show the larger picture etc.
In good PVP MMORPGs you do need large crowds for that pinnacle experience even if your own personal role is just a tiny part of it. It creates context to make it feel like a large scale engagement instead of a gang fight.
In other parts of MMORPGs those large crowds do nothing more than populate the world and make it feel busy which could be done better with NPCs since they do behave in character unlike most players. I have zero problems with instancing and micromanaging the population in those parts of MMORPGs where player crowds are more of an annoyance.
But the only type of PVP in those games that interests me is when they simulate large scale fantasy battle. I have very little interest in 6v6 scenarios that last 15 minutes or 1v1 duels. So whenever I think about a game being legitimately an MMO my measuring stick is always those large scale PVP battles. For that purpose IMO, bigger is always better.
Interesting take.
I've never really felt that folks out in the world were an annoyance unless they went out of their way to be (chat harassment/trolling directly at me or gankers that I had no chance against due to level gaps).
I can see why some might, though. The most interesting thing about your (and @Torval's) post is just how differently our perspectives are despite all of us sharing a love for such a specific hobby.
"Annoyance" is an exaggeration simply to illustrate that large crowds are just not needed to have an enjoyable experience in PVE and why small instances work just fine for me in that part of MMOs.
But my PVP is a whole different thing and reflects my experience and enjoyment of Dark Age of Camelot. For most of my time in DAoC I was an officer in a large guild that itself was part of a large Albion Alliance. Some of the most fun I had in that game was when we planned in secret large scale relic raids that had many different components like scouts, feints, distractions and well-timed main attacks.
My assignment for one of those massive fights might just be to be part of a feint attacking a pretend target keep to draw enemy forces. That might have been just 20 or 40 of us and many there on my squads might not even have been aware that it was a feint nor where and when the main force was going to attack. Those were coordinated engagements that often involved several hundred players just on our side and we needed that many to pull it off.
Back in the heydays of ESO PVP we planned and executed many such large scale attacks with multiple components. It's why ESO feels like an MMO to me no matter how managed population limits are with instances and zones in the PVE part - instancing there is just irrelevant to my enjoyment but I do need those large population numbers in Cyrodiil to make it feel like a proper MMO.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
While there are parts of MMORPGs where large crowds don't enhance the game play and can be downright annoying, there is one part where larger crowds are needed for a better simulation of what it's like to be a soldier or a squad playing a small part in a large battle.
For story purposes even good movies about wars or famous battles work best when they focus on a handful of characters and their individual, personal experience with the tiny part they were immediately aware of. But they still need to establish the overall context of the scale by pulling back, cutting to other key parts of the battle, using maps to show the larger picture etc.
In good PVP MMORPGs you do need large crowds for that pinnacle experience even if your own personal role is just a tiny part of it. It creates context to make it feel like a large scale engagement instead of a gang fight.
In other parts of MMORPGs those large crowds do nothing more than populate the world and make it feel busy which could be done better with NPCs since they do behave in character unlike most players. I have zero problems with instancing and micromanaging the population in those parts of MMORPGs where player crowds are more of an annoyance.
But the only type of PVP in those games that interests me is when they simulate large scale fantasy battle. I have very little interest in 6v6 scenarios that last 15 minutes or 1v1 duels. So whenever I think about a game being legitimately an MMO my measuring stick is always those large scale PVP battles. For that purpose IMO, bigger is always better.
Interesting take.
I've never really felt that folks out in the world were an annoyance unless they went out of their way to be (chat harassment/trolling directly at me or gankers that I had no chance against due to level gaps).
I can see why some might, though. The most interesting thing about your (and @Torval's) post is just how differently our perspectives are despite all of us sharing a love for such a specific hobby.
"Annoyance" is an exaggeration simply to illustrate that large crowds are just not needed to have an enjoyable experience in PVE and why small instances work just fine for me in that part of MMOs.
But my PVP is a whole different thing and reflects my experience and enjoyment of Dark Age of Camelot. For most of my time in DAoC I was an officer in a large guild that itself was part of a large Albion Alliance. Some of the most fun I had in that game was when we planned in secret large scale relic raids that had many different components like scouts, feints, distractions and well-timed main attacks.
My assignment for one of those massive fights might just be to be part of a feint attacking a pretend target keep to draw enemy forces. That might have been just 20 or 40 of us and many there on my squads might not even have been aware that it was a feint nor where and when the main force was going to attack. Those were coordinated engagements that often involved several hundred players just on our side and we needed that many to pull it off.
Back in the heydays of ESO PVP we planned and executed many such large scale attacks with multiple components. It's why ESO feels like an MMO to me no matter how managed population limits are with instances and zones in the PVE part - instancing there is just irrelevant to my enjoyment but I do need those large population numbers in Cyrodiil to make it feel like a proper MMO.
I get that. The reasoning makes sense. PvE content rarely requires more than, what, 40 people max? Do we even have 40 man raids anymore?
But your post has me wondering why folks will clamor to coordinate like that in PvP, yet even getting 40 people together to do a raid is line pulling teeth! Is the draw of fighting others and "winning" that much more of a motivator for folks to spend the time and coordinate the logistics, or something else?
Of course, even such coordination in PvP is becoming rarer these days, along with the coordination of large numbers of players for PvE.
A combination of solo-minded players, a PvE track that's almost wholly conducive to said solo-minded players (matchmaking systems make it much easier for the solo-minded player to dip his/her toe in group content with as little change in their gameplay as possible), and a significant group of gamers that come into the game with friends already picked out to adventure with (41% is large, even if not the majority) all likely contribute. I doubt that many of that 41% come into a game with a whopping 39 other friends.
While there are parts of MMORPGs where large crowds don't enhance the game play and can be downright annoying, there is one part where larger crowds are needed for a better simulation of what it's like to be a soldier or a squad playing a small part in a large battle.
For story purposes even good movies about wars or famous battles work best when they focus on a handful of characters and their individual, personal experience with the tiny part they were immediately aware of. But they still need to establish the overall context of the scale by pulling back, cutting to other key parts of the battle, using maps to show the larger picture etc.
In good PVP MMORPGs you do need large crowds for that pinnacle experience even if your own personal role is just a tiny part of it. It creates context to make it feel like a large scale engagement instead of a gang fight.
In other parts of MMORPGs those large crowds do nothing more than populate the world and make it feel busy which could be done better with NPCs since they do behave in character unlike most players. I have zero problems with instancing and micromanaging the population in those parts of MMORPGs where player crowds are more of an annoyance.
But the only type of PVP in those games that interests me is when they simulate large scale fantasy battle. I have very little interest in 6v6 scenarios that last 15 minutes or 1v1 duels. So whenever I think about a game being legitimately an MMO my measuring stick is always those large scale PVP battles. For that purpose IMO, bigger is always better.
Interesting take.
I've never really felt that folks out in the world were an annoyance unless they went out of their way to be (chat harassment/trolling directly at me or gankers that I had no chance against due to level gaps).
I can see why some might, though. The most interesting thing about your (and @Torval's) post is just how differently our perspectives are despite all of us sharing a love for such a specific hobby.
"Annoyance" is an exaggeration simply to illustrate that large crowds are just not needed to have an enjoyable experience in PVE and why small instances work just fine for me in that part of MMOs.
But my PVP is a whole different thing and reflects my experience and enjoyment of Dark Age of Camelot. For most of my time in DAoC I was an officer in a large guild that itself was part of a large Albion Alliance. Some of the most fun I had in that game was when we planned in secret large scale relic raids that had many different components like scouts, feints, distractions and well-timed main attacks.
My assignment for one of those massive fights might just be to be part of a feint attacking a pretend target keep to draw enemy forces. That might have been just 20 or 40 of us and many there on my squads might not even have been aware that it was a feint nor where and when the main force was going to attack. Those were coordinated engagements that often involved several hundred players just on our side and we needed that many to pull it off.
Back in the heydays of ESO PVP we planned and executed many such large scale attacks with multiple components. It's why ESO feels like an MMO to me no matter how managed population limits are with instances and zones in the PVE part - instancing there is just irrelevant to my enjoyment but I do need those large population numbers in Cyrodiil to make it feel like a proper MMO.
I get that. The reasoning makes sense. PvE content rarely requires more than, what, 40 people max? Do we even have 40 man raids anymore?
But your post has me wondering why folks will clamor to coordinate like that in PvP, yet even getting 40 people together to do a raid is line pulling teeth! Is the draw of fighting others and "winning" that much more of a motivator for folks to spend the time and coordinate the logistics, or something else?
Of course, even such coordination in PvP is becoming rarer these days, along with the coordination of large numbers of players for PvE.
A combination of solo-minded players, a PvE track that's almost wholly conducive to said solo-minded players, and a significant group of gamers that come into the game with friends already picked out to adventure with (41% is large, even if not the majority) all likely contribute.
Oddly enough the winning part was just the icing. It was just the planning and being part of a well done execution that was the fun and motivation for me. It was different back then and realm pride was a real thing. But despite the fact that even in Cyrodiil these days it's all about individual scores and earning alliance points currency, we still managed to do it there also.
I think the collective us vs. them and outwitting and kicking the alien others's butts still has a lot of appeal even in a time when it's all about "I kicked your individual ass" PVP.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
You have highlighted a part of the issue about Massively Robsolf, but I don't think we can underestimate the drive to make MMOs have more solo gameplay. This was done to make MMOs appeal to solo players and you really don't need Massively for solo play, that for me was the biggest factor in the changes that took place.
I think early on the novelty of fighting mobs together was exciting. My friends and I planned out farming strategies to get the drops we desperately wanted but so rarely dropped. At the time and in context I enjoyed that.
The point about population increase being a function of technology growth is interesting and it sounds reasonable.
An assumption was made by the industry (both studios and players), in my opinion, that more would automatically mean better. If a battle of 6 players versus 1 mob is awesome then 40 against and even bigger badder one is more awesome. If 1v1 PvP rocks, and small group versus small group is better, then massive battles should be the pinnacle experience.
Sometimes that may be true, but going back to what we originally were doing in MMOs... the RPG. It was as much about doing an RPG as it was about doing something together. The point was doing an RPG together. Instead of having an AI Baldur's Gate party we would have real players. We would be able to carve out our niche and shape characters with our friends and meet other people. It would be like a glorious massive tabletop party of excellent role-playing.
That never happened, but sometimes it got real close. That doesn't happen much anymore and that's also why I feel some old school veterans feel disenfranchised.
Aggravating the shallow RPG aspect of MMO was that propensity to cram more people in the world. Turns out good RPGs rarely have 50 key players running around in the story world at once (really check your favorite novel series) let alone 5000. WTF were we thinking?
So now we have the dilemma where better MMO community experiences are coming from games that aren't MMORPGs, but check enough of the boxes that people don't care. Secret World Legends is an example. People play online together but the RPG is more important than the MMO to the experience.
At least that's my perspective on it. Wordy. Sorry.
Massive battles are the perfect example of "be careful what you wish for", IMO. For example, I have yet to see a game where a zone boss is any more interesting to fight than any other mob. GW2's event bosses, for example, are impressive only in that fact that you can have dozens of players on the screen and still get an acceptable frame rate. That's a pretty great development feat, but it doesn't add up to fun, standing there spamming arrow attacks at a mob with 50 squinjillion HP...
I have yet to see a game that makes massive PvP battles interesting either, where currently your level of success depends more on how many enemy players target you than your actual skill. It's no fault of developers, it's just another one of those things that seems like it would be glorious when it's on paper, and is annoying or maybe even excruciating in reality.
That it works better in smaller scale shouldn't be surprising. It's the way socializing in reality works, as well. 4-5 people actively interacting with each other is plenty; any more than that just turns into chaos. You wouldn't go to a bar with 24 people and if you did, you'd quickly break off into 5-6 different groups. Why should we think we'd have a meaningful experience with 20-100 people in a game?
And actually, I would like to read a book where the main protagonist, dubbed "The one" by some old guy in a cave, ventures out and meets dozens of other "the one's" in their travels...
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Really, the essence of language is to communicate. If words get "morphed", there will always be someone who didn't get the memo.
That southerner comes north and asks the McDonald's clerk for a "coke" and gets a "Coka-Cola" instead of being asked, "What flavor of coke?", has only themselves to bl\lame for not communicating clearly. The same is true for the northerner getting asked, "What flavor?" after ordering a "Coke" in the south.
Comparative and general measurement words may easily change as we push technology and storage boundaries.
When all is said and done, whose responsibility is it to communicate clearly, the "talker/writer" expressing the thought or the "listener/reader" receiving the thoughts?
Really, the essence of language is to communicate. If words get "morphed", there will always be someone who didn't get the memo.
That southerner comes north and asks the McDonald's clerk for a "coke" and gets a "Coka-Cola" instead of being asked, "What flavor of coke?", has only themselves to bl\lame for not communicating clearly. The same is true for the northerner getting asked, "What flavor?" after ordering a "Coke" in the south.
Comparative and general measurement words may easily change as we push technology and storage boundaries.
When all is said and done, whose responsibility is it to communicate clearly, the "talker/writer" expressing the thought or the "listener/reader" receiving the thoughts?
It is the responsibility of both the talker and the listener to use and understand words used in their commonly accepted meaning.
If I go and say "I snapped a child's neck today" and the cops get called because they don't understand I refer to young chickens as "child" that's my fault for using a word in a way most people won't understand.
If I go and say "I snapped a young rooster's neck today" and someone calls the cops on me because they refer to young boys as "young roosters" that's their fault for understanding a word n a way most people don't.
Most people outside the MMO community don't know or care what MMO means. Most people inside the MMO community understand it as a persistent game world that allows for a large (Bare minimum 100) number of players to exist in the same space at the same time.
So people using it outside that context, are misinformed and frankly wrong.
Really, the essence of language is to communicate. If words get "morphed", there will always be someone who didn't get the memo.
That southerner comes north and asks the McDonald's clerk for a "coke" and gets a "Coka-Cola" instead of being asked, "What flavor of coke?", has only themselves to bl\lame for not communicating clearly. The same is true for the northerner getting asked, "What flavor?" after ordering a "Coke" in the south.
Comparative and general measurement words may easily change as we push technology and storage boundaries.
When all is said and done, whose responsibility is it to communicate clearly, the "talker/writer" expressing the thought or the "listener/reader" receiving the thoughts?
It is the responsibility of both the talker and the listener to use and understand words used in their commonly accepted meaning.
If I go and say "I snapped a child's neck today" and the cops get called because they don't understand I refer to young chickens as "child" that's my fault for using a word in a way most people won't understand.
If I go and say "I snapped a young rooster's neck today" and someone calls the cops on me because they refer to young boys as "young roosters" that's their fault for understanding a word n a way most people don't.
Most people outside the MMO community don't know or care what MMO means. Most people inside the MMO community understand it as a persistent game world that allows for a large (Bare minimum 100) number of players to exist in the same space at the same time.
So people using it outside that context, are misinformed and frankly wrong.
Comments
Now expand .. without your generalizing ..
If your favorite Bookstore .. for years .. was ..
hmm Star Journey / The Science Fiction Bookstore
Specializing in Science Fiction Books
And it did for years .. many years ..
But then you start to notice some Comedy books leaked in .. Then some Drama , and History then a Craft section .. Now only half the Store is Science Fiction .. The rest is a mix of stuff you have no interest in , and were not the reason you became a patron of said Book Store ..
And then the owner starts telling you well this Monty Python book has science in it .. Remember the part when they weigh a witch , which weighs the same as the duck which floats so the witch is made of wood.. This is like science isnt it .... isnt it ?...so its a Science Fiction book .... So now your book store owner presents very vague and weak similarities to your favorite genre of Science Fiction to introduce other genres into your Bookstore .. Which bums you out , because you really enjoyed the Book Store more when it was the Science Fiction Bookstore..And now you have to work your way thru so much other stuff and fight your way thru endless offerings of everything else , and then be assaulted at the entrance by giant poster .. ..
Of the newest Martha Stewart cookbook ....
and now all the Martha Stewart cooking fans telling you .. Hey we have every right to be here to .. we use Fire to cook , its like Science ..
No one has posted how there is some mmorpg, or some mmorpg news, that this site is missing that they should have been covering but wrote instead about some MOBA. They seem to keep the mmorpg news up to date. If they miss something, you can always let them know.
I just don't see anyone being harmed. This is mmorpg.com, true, but it is not mmorpgonlyandothergamessuck.com.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Until I see SuperData and others start including CoD's numbers, I'll consistently laugh at the attempts to cherry pick titles just 'cause.
To me, and my playstyle, havings 100s in a zone does make a meaningful difference to my experience, even if they don't all congregate in the same area. What you refer to as people just being background aesthetics, I call the potential for community.
When you start splitting people off into instances, you dramatically reduce the likelihood of meeting those people again. This prevents you from building social bonds which in turn reduces the size and quality of the community which in turn reduces retention.
As a former guild leader, raid leader, pvper and social-minded player, this means being an actual MMO extremely important to me. It is a critical feature and without it, I won't play. I have zero interest in games like Destiny or The Division precisely because they're not MMOs. If they were MMOs, I would almost certainly have played The Division.
Being massively multiplayer is a feature. It is the only unique feature of the genre. I cannot find it anywhere else.
I'm happy for people to argue over the precise number required. As mentioned in previous posts, "massively" is a comparative term so you will always be comparing to normal online multiplayer numbers which means the number will change over time (typically going up). I use 500 as my qualifier, but you could easily use 250 if you wanted as that is still significantly larger than normal online multiplayer games. 100 or below isn't massively multiplayer, that's just normal online multiplayer numbers.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
I think that's part of what drives their argument about modern games. Back in the early 2000's, with high speed internet being a little scarce, PC's being slower, and vid cards being weaker, folks tried to create MMO's and cram as many people into a free space as they could. I think this leads the "massive" folks to the idea that, as technology improved, developers would try to cram even more people into a map; where there might have been 30 once, new tech would lead us to potentially hundreds of people sharing a zone, or at least the potential for it.
But the reality became that by design, and/or many other practical factors, fewer and fewer people would come to share a specific zone, and instances and shards would become more prominent, even as technology improved and became more accessible.
So they see a "regression", despite tech improving. On that front, I get what they're talking about. But I get why the devs do it, more.
"Is a game that can have 100-300 players in the same area an MMO?"
I think when you drop down from the low hundreds into less than 20 players you've crossed the threshold from legitimate debate into absurdity though. The thing that has become very clear into me in these debates is people who say "Diablo is an MMO" don't care about the term MMO, nor this genre even a little.
Given that, I don't really feel they are qualified to define a term that belongs to a community they want no part of.
I'm not sure I ever chatted with anyone in Vermintide 2 about anything other than "tome here" and such. Conversely, when I play an MMORPG and join a guild where I persistently see familiar folks, I chat periodically with them.
From what I understand, you have buddies who play many different games with you and with whom you interact with outside those games regularly (that's just me picking up from some posts and such, correct me if that's wrong). For someone who goes into an experience with a core group of friends, additional people are just noise. For someone who doesn't have a group they jump from game to game with, that's not true at all. ESA consumer report for 2017 shows that only 41% of gamers play with "friends," which means there's a huge amount of players (apparently the majority) who don't share the perspective of a pre-formed group of buddies they enter the game with. For those folks, like me, I'd say the perspective on which type of game provides the best communal RPG experience is very different.
For story purposes even good movies about wars or famous battles work best when they focus on a handful of characters and their individual, personal experience with the tiny part they were immediately aware of. But they still need to establish the overall context of the scale by pulling back, cutting to other key parts of the battle, using maps to show the larger picture etc.
In good PVP MMORPGs you do need large crowds for that pinnacle experience even if your own personal role is just a tiny part of it. It creates context to make it feel like a large scale engagement instead of a gang fight.
In other parts of MMORPGs those large crowds do nothing more than populate the world and make it feel busy which could be done better with NPCs since they do behave in character unlike most players. I have zero problems with instancing and micromanaging the population in those parts of MMORPGs where player crowds are more of an annoyance.
But the only type of PVP in those games that interests me is when they simulate large scale fantasy battle. I have very little interest in 6v6 scenarios that last 15 minutes or 1v1 duels. So whenever I think about a game being legitimately an MMO my measuring stick is always those large scale PVP battles. For that purpose IMO, bigger is always better.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I've never really felt that folks out in the world were an annoyance unless they went out of their way to be (chat harassment/trolling directly at me or gankers that I had no chance against due to level gaps).
I can see why some might, though. The most interesting thing about your (and @Torval's) post is just how differently our perspectives are despite all of us sharing a love for such a specific hobby.
But my PVP is a whole different thing and reflects my experience and enjoyment of Dark Age of Camelot. For most of my time in DAoC I was an officer in a large guild that itself was part of a large Albion Alliance. Some of the most fun I had in that game was when we planned in secret large scale relic raids that had many different components like scouts, feints, distractions and well-timed main attacks.
My assignment for one of those massive fights might just be to be part of a feint attacking a pretend target keep to draw enemy forces. That might have been just 20 or 40 of us and many there on my squads might not even have been aware that it was a feint nor where and when the main force was going to attack. Those were coordinated engagements that often involved several hundred players just on our side and we needed that many to pull it off.
Back in the heydays of ESO PVP we planned and executed many such large scale attacks with multiple components. It's why ESO feels like an MMO to me no matter how managed population limits are with instances and zones in the PVE part - instancing there is just irrelevant to my enjoyment but I do need those large population numbers in Cyrodiil to make it feel like a proper MMO.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
But your post has me wondering why folks will clamor to coordinate like that in PvP, yet even getting 40 people together to do a raid is line pulling teeth! Is the draw of fighting others and "winning" that much more of a motivator for folks to spend the time and coordinate the logistics, or something else?
Of course, even such coordination in PvP is becoming rarer these days, along with the coordination of large numbers of players for PvE.
A combination of solo-minded players, a PvE track that's almost wholly conducive to said solo-minded players (matchmaking systems make it much easier for the solo-minded player to dip his/her toe in group content with as little change in their gameplay as possible), and a significant group of gamers that come into the game with friends already picked out to adventure with (41% is large, even if not the majority) all likely contribute. I doubt that many of that 41% come into a game with a whopping 39 other friends.
I think the collective us vs. them and outwitting and kicking the alien others's butts still has a lot of appeal even in a time when it's all about "I kicked your individual ass" PVP.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Massive battles are the perfect example of "be careful what you wish for", IMO. For example, I have yet to see a game where a zone boss is any more interesting to fight than any other mob. GW2's event bosses, for example, are impressive only in that fact that you can have dozens of players on the screen and still get an acceptable frame rate. That's a pretty great development feat, but it doesn't add up to fun, standing there spamming arrow attacks at a mob with 50 squinjillion HP...
I have yet to see a game that makes massive PvP battles interesting either, where currently your level of success depends more on how many enemy players target you than your actual skill. It's no fault of developers, it's just another one of those things that seems like it would be glorious when it's on paper, and is annoying or maybe even excruciating in reality.
That it works better in smaller scale shouldn't be surprising. It's the way socializing in reality works, as well. 4-5 people actively interacting with each other is plenty; any more than that just turns into chaos. You wouldn't go to a bar with 24 people and if you did, you'd quickly break off into 5-6 different groups. Why should we think we'd have a meaningful experience with 20-100 people in a game?
And actually, I would like to read a book where the main protagonist, dubbed "The one" by some old guy in a cave, ventures out and meets dozens of other "the one's" in their travels...
I'll be that guy shouting at the stars even though there will no one listening.
Cheers all and Fly Safe.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
That southerner comes north and asks the McDonald's clerk for a "coke" and gets a "Coka-Cola" instead of being asked, "What flavor of coke?", has only themselves to bl\lame for not communicating clearly. The same is true for the northerner getting asked, "What flavor?" after ordering a "Coke" in the south.
Comparative and general measurement words may easily change as we push technology and storage boundaries.
When all is said and done, whose responsibility is it to communicate clearly, the "talker/writer" expressing the thought or the "listener/reader" receiving the thoughts?
VG
If I go and say "I snapped a child's neck today" and the cops get called because they don't understand I refer to young chickens as "child" that's my fault for using a word in a way most people won't understand.
If I go and say "I snapped a young rooster's neck today" and someone calls the cops on me because they refer to young boys as "young roosters" that's their fault for understanding a word n a way most people don't.
Most people outside the MMO community don't know or care what MMO means. Most people inside the MMO community understand it as a persistent game world that allows for a large (Bare minimum 100) number of players to exist in the same space at the same time.
So people using it outside that context, are misinformed and frankly wrong.
VG