Go quest in a level 15 region at level 10. That's pretty challenging.
Do a 5-man instance that is several levels below your character on normal, then do it again on heroic. You'll find that damn challenging.
Try leveling a character to max without ever doing a quest, dungeon, or raid.
Play the game without gear. People like Bachus are always yammering on about how skilled they are. Let's see it.
Play a character with the weakest race/class/specialization build.
Should I go on?
Point is, many players today want challenge force-fed to them. It's pure laziness.
Either that or they are incapable of being creative and making their own fun.
It shouldn't fall to the player to find avenues of game play or strategies which outright debilitate them in order to imbue their game of choice with some form of challenge.
I know. I feel the same way about grocery stores. Food is meaningless if you don't consume it, so I'm not responsible for developing avenues or strategies that get the food into my belly. If grocery stores sell me the food, they are obligated to bring it to my house, prepare it, and shove it in my mouth. It shouldn't fall on me to find ways of doing this -- after all not delivering the food, preparing it, and feeding me interferes with my right to be healthy. The scoundrels.
GW2 was the last MMO I played seriously (at launch and for the first 3 months or so).
I think the key thing for me is to be part of a community. I've found all MMOs I've tried to solo my way to max level I've quit without getting there. E.g. TERA and Neverwinter.
I haven't played an MMO in over 4 months or so. Still here in the vague hopes something will come out. But alas nothing this year. (EQ Landmark maybe, but too little known about it)
Currently waiting for the MMO industry to put out something good.
Originally posted by Jean-Luc_Picard One one, simple reason for me. Because they stopped being fun.
They stopped being fun for a reason, was thit allways the same reason? Probably not.....
Yet it's always the same reason for me. The community sucks. I don't want to spend any time around any of the people, therefore I'd rather play a SP game which is more fun and you don't have to deal with endless online assholes.
The reason why I quit most MMOs is, that there's nothing left to do after you've beat the max-level content and got all your shinies. Usually takes some 3-4 month with 2 characters.
Endgame is simply lacking in most MMOs, especially themeparks and that's quiet possibly the reason why the only MMO I've really played for an extended time (7 years) is EvE Online.
1) Fast Leveling (If I can grind 10 levels in the first 5 hours I stop playing unless is insanely fun like GW2)
2) Fast Combat (If I can't type messages while I am fighting, that's not the game for me)
3) Lack of Community interaction (If I don't feel the need to ask for help or for a group in chat, that's not the game for me)
4) Shallowness (Usually all the Casual games that I can play in Autopilot)
I like this list. Everything is too fast now. There is no tempo to the games and worlds, other than spamming buttons as fast as possible. The goal is to reach end game as quickly as possible. Why anyone would do that is beyond me.
I will add.... too many instances, too many hybrid jobs, too much worthless customization, a very queer atmosphere that prevails in most new MMO worlds, and too much instant travel.
Edit: Oh yeah, no more death penalties is a bummer too.
The reason why I quit most MMOs is, that there's nothing left to do after you've beat the max-level content and got all your shinies. Usually takes some 3-4 month with 2 characters.
Endgame is simply lacking in most MMOs, especially themeparks and that's quiet possibly the reason why the only MMO I've really played for an extended time (7 years) is EvE Online.
I feel there should be more to do while you're reaching for end game, instead of more end game content. I don't mean that there should be a bazillion more corny quests and dungeons, but that the existing content should be harder and take longer.
Originally posted by Mr.Kujo My reason is simple, I quit when there is nothing more I want to achieve. If I did everything I wanted I see no more point in repeating content over nad over just for the heck of it.
That is a reason to play another game, not a reason to quit MMOs.
IN fact, why does "quit MMOs" even means? It is not like i will have a sacred vow of not play any MMOs anymore.
And if you are talking about quiting a specific MMO .. well .. do you have to ask? Every game gets old and boring sooner or later.
Originally posted by deniter In short..The goal has become more important than the journey.
Well said!
I quit: - EQ1 because my guild folded and I bought World of Warcraft and City of Heroes. - WoW (the first time) because of the art style. - CoH took a few breaks from it but always came back after a few months. It shut down. - Wizard101 (and the rest of the MMOs I've picked up) because I "beat it", or made max level. It had some re-playability, but only in the schools of magic. You still went through all of the same zones and quests.
MMOs have lost the reason I played them to begin with - Rich, deep, worlds where my character can live.
- 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
SWG - some guild of fuckwits founded a city called New Berlin (or was it New Stoke? New New York?) in the middle of Tatooine. That drove me away for a while. And when I came back the game was infested with Jedi.
AoC - after Tortage, the whole thing sank like a granite turd. Massive tits might function like buoyancy aids but even they couldnt keep it afloat after level 20.
WoW - charming but not my cup of tea.
Vanguard - brilliant but just too buggy.
LoTRO - game played a little too fast and loose with an IP that I'm just a wee bit too anal about.
Fallen Earth - never quite got into the whole post-Apocalyptic thing.
SWTOR - APAC server shutdown. Couldn't be arsed renaming all of my characters on a US server.
Neverwinter - a fun, free, short-term distraction. Good for a few weeks but not one to stick with.
TSW - havent technically quit, just haven't managed to get beyond the naming screen yet.
UO - after having played a 3D MMORPG (AC1), it was hard (read impossible) to get immersed in the isometric fixed camera graphics of UO again. I still played 5 solid years and it was definitely a memorable experience, a 3D game with UO's character development and gameplay would get my subscription immediately (maybe Shroud of Avatar...).
EQ - UO and AC1 were simply much better games. And all the camping and downtime was just plain boring.
AC1 - the game was simply getting old after 5+ years of playing it and WoW got released.
AO - fun game, but the grindy gameplay with forced grouping and camping got old . AO at release was basically EQ in space, just a bit better but not much. The character development system was awesome though, and the world too, that's why I stayed longer than expected.
DAoC - I've played that game way too long, willing to give it a chance - very, very boring leveling and shallow end game too. Mythic, in my book, is just a bad MMO developer who had the luck to occupy a niche when there was no direct concurrence. Today, a game like DAoC would drown faster than the Titanic, and WAR confirmed that.
SWG - shall I really tell you?
AC2 - that one got old much faster than the first one - very linear gameplay, very poor class balance (PvP was a mess, PvE was favoring a couple of classes). I still have fond memories of my lugian "reap zerker" though, a very fun class (one of the not "gimped" ones too), that's why I stuck with the game longer than expected.
L2 - the awful grind made poking my eyes out with a fork seem fun, so I left before that happened.
WoW - still playing.
EQ2 - WoW was a much better game at that time, and still now (for me at least).
LotRO - still coming back when new content gets released since I have a lifetime and get it all for free.
AoC - nice game... the 20 first levels. Then it went down the drain, and away from my hard disk. And the world didn't feel like a world, but just random pieces of a world with no direct relation to each other. It's a shame, because it had a quite good and dynamic combat system (MUCH better than TSW).
WAR - I didn't think Mythic could make so much worse than DAoC, yet they did it.
DFO - DFO-UW - gank fests, not sandbox MMORPGs.
MO - same thing.
Guild Wars 1 - not a MMORPG, couldn't get immersed in that lobby world.
Vanguard - poor quality, bad design, too bad because it had some good elements.
Aion - same as L2.
DDO - same as GW1.
Rift - very linear game and world, the promised "dynamic events" are actually just nuisances and get annoying very quickly, no real cities which made the world even worse and less immersive, the graphic style looked like Warhammer 2 (beurk!) only the character customization was not bad.
Tera - The graphics, while high quality, weren't my cup of tea (some really horrible mob designs), the questing was so bad it made WoW questing look like it was written by JRR Tolkien himself, the combat was just not that good and rooting you for each skill - very dull game.
DCUO - CoH - CoV - Marvel - I like good super hero movies, but I do not like that theme in a MMORPG. Games like "Batman: Arkham Azylum" are MUCH better in that genre in my opinion.
Fallen Earth - the gameplay is quite shallow and grindy, and the setting just isn't my thing.
TSW - Funcom strikes again, same flaws than AoC for the world (not feeling like a world), and also a very bad combat system.
SW:TOR - gave me a bit over 6 months of solid fun, not a bad investment, but once I went through the content once on each side, I lost the will to level another alt and go through exactly the same areas again. Tried to go back after F2P, but their awful cash shop added to the other flaws made me log out faster than the time to post this.
STO - I really wanted a good Star Trek MMORPG, but that one just isn't good at all. Instead of a wide open galaxy to explore, like in the series and movies, they give us canned instanced crap with very little exploration possibilities. Well, it's a "Cryptic" product, what did you expect?
GW2 - still playing.
Age of Wushu - really tried to give that one a chance, but the game is not what it pretends to be, definitely not a sandbox like some pretend(ed), and gets boring rather quickly too. Another game made mostly for Asians and for a few western die hard fans.
Neverwinter - hello, king of linearity (even worse than Rift). Poor combat. Bye bye boring game.
FFXIV - just a bad game.
FFXIV arr - still not good enough for me to pay to play it. I rather give my money to Blizzard or ArenaNET, who deserve it way more.
I'm sure I've forgotten some, but that's it out of my mind so far. I've also played a load of F2P and other crappy games that aren't even worth mentionning here, so I stick to the mainstream "AAA" titles.
and here, ladies and gentlemen, we see the prob the player base (and thefore devs) have nowadays.
a) too timeconsuming and then b) too easy...
yeaaa. right, whatever bro. if you search you always find a reason i'd say.
i'd suggest to make up your mind before you start the next game
Im glad someone else picked up on that as well.
WoW vanilla raids to time consuming
=
Players bitching about it then leaving
=
Blizzard makes them to easy
=
Players bitching about it then leaving.
Starting to see the pattern here?
Thre is a difference between a short raid and an easy raid... An 8 hour molten core lasting raid like in vanilla is just way too long, but a 30 minutes raid and walkover like current raids is the whole different side of things.
its good that you noticed this, because there is something like ballance, and thats in the middle... But you guys need to see that thee is a difference between the total ammount of content ( long raids) and the challenge of that content...
We didn't do MC in one day. We broke it up into 2 days. Its all about prospective. Could you do a 8 hour MC run? Sure. Could you do MC runs on two separate days so you don't go insane? Yep.
And like i told another poster. The raids were long because the content ( at the time ) was challenging. Hard boss fights. A shit ton of trash mobs that could wipe your party in a heart beat. You needed people to work together. Now all you need is a few people to face roll through content.
and here, ladies and gentlemen, we see the prob the player base (and thefore devs) have nowadays.
a) too timeconsuming and then b) too easy...
yeaaa. right, whatever bro. if you search you always find a reason i'd say.
i'd suggest to make up your mind before you start the next game
Time consuming is not actually the same as difficult...
It was time consuming because it was difficult....
Sorry, I was there and was doing it, so I know this is not true. The most tedious parts of raiding involved farming crap to be ready... farming non-raid dungeons to get resistance gear, farming reputations to get keys, doing long boring attunements quests just to get to the content. The most awful period for that was of course TBC, but vanilla also had it's share of mindless grinding to finally get to the good stuff.
Just have a look at this...
Was that hard? Nope, it was tedious. And that doesn't include the resistance gear grinds, like e.g. fire for MC/BWL/Ony, and then Nature for AQ, and frost for Naxx.
The time consuming part was definitely not needed to get to the fun/challenging part.
That kind of crap didn't separate the good from the bad... it just separated the "no life" from the "people with a life".
and here, ladies and gentlemen, we see the prob the player base (and thefore devs) have nowadays.
a) too timeconsuming and then b) too easy...
yeaaa. right, whatever bro. if you search you always find a reason i'd say.
i'd suggest to make up your mind before you start the next game
Time consuming is not actually the same as difficult...
It was time consuming because it was difficult....
Sorry, I was there and was doing it, so I know this is not true. The most tedious parts of raiding involved farming crap to be ready... farming non-raid dungeons to get resistance gear, farming reputations to get keys, doing long boring attunements quests just to get to the content. The most awful period for that was of course TBC, but vanilla also had it's share of mindless grinding to finally get to the good stuff.
Just have a look at this...
Was that hard? Nope, it was tedious.
The time consuming part was definitely not needed to get to the fun/challenging part.
That kind of crap didn't separate the good from the bad... it just separated the "no life" from the "people with a life".
And here you have the real problem with MMO today. People want everything handed to them on a silver platter. No one wants to put the time in to do anything to get the things they want out of the games they play.
So an answer to "Why did you quit MMOs" Is because of people like this poster above.
Here you have what your typical MMOer would say about the Onyxia raid. (mind you this is just to get to the raid. not the raid its self)
"OMG! i have to take a flight path from IF to The Wetlands to take a boat that i have to WAIT for to Azshara then swim to Onyxia! Unthinkable! Ok im here. Wait i cant get in. I need to do a key quest? A QUEST! No one fucking told me! So i came all the way over here for nothing!?!?" What do i have to do for this quest? WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT! FUCK THAT SHIT! Blizzard make its easier for me to do these noooooowzploooooox!
And just FYI. The no life conversation is getting old with your crowd. I had a full time job raising a son and i had no problem getting the things i needed to get done in game or RL. Took a little longer then some but it still got done.
And just FYI. The no life conversation is getting old with your crowd. I had a full time job raising a son and i had no problem getting the things i needed to get done in game or RL. Took a little longer then some but it still got done.
The life conversation is more relevant than ever. And I don't know what "crowd" you're talking about, but I've been playing MMOs since UO (beta), I've completed all the WoW vanilla and TBC content, yet, I still think that some parts were way too tedious without any good reason and without bringing anything to the general gameplay. I did it, but at some times, I really felt like a hamster jumping through hoops just to finally get to the fun part which I enjoyed, actually fighting the baddies. The system was also utterly awful if you happened to be forced to take a break from the game, be it for work, family or leisure (holidays) reasons. When you came back, you were so far behind both the gear and keying grind you had almost no hope to catch up.
WoW was a much better and balanced game during WotLK. The whole dumbing down from Cata and Panda wasn't needed, but neither was the whole tedium of some major parts of Vanilla and TBC.
I still consider Ulduar as the best raid ever added to a MMORPG. Much better than anything in Vanilla or TBC. Just my opinion, of course. The opinion of a guy who went through all the hardcore content, and is able to drop the virtual muscle flexing "zomg I'm better than though I played UO and I did all key quests in WoW:TBC" and recognize that parts of those games were utterly flawed, tedious and therefore not needed.
There seems to be a reoccurring theme that one of the core concepts of "true" MMORPGs is they have to be massive, tedious timesinks. Some of the classics certainly had them but today's games simply can't support it. TL;DR: Today's reality doesn't support your nostalgic delusions.
I'd say the main reason is the demographic change- since WoW's popularity there are a lot more MMO gamers that simply wouldn't tolerate eight hour camps and the bottom line for any production corp is to make money. Having you sit with some guildies, piss bottles lining the floor and taking up bandwidth isn't doing that. Even when I played on P99 there was considerable complaining about guild monopolies on certain spawns and running trains on competitors. Is that kind of thing exciting? It can be but it's also really terrible game design.- particularly if you want more people playing.
Secondly, another thing (at least in EQ1 and early CoH as I recall) that I didn't have to deal with are the bots and goldsellers. If you think in today's games there would be any chance of getting items from a unique long-spawn mob with bots and such out there you are absolutely wrong. Maybe if it's programmed so that all that do damage can get the loot such as in GW2 but then I suspect that players willing to do all day spawn camps were the same ones that had to be a special little snowflake as well.
Originally posted by Jean-Luc_Picard One one, simple reason for me. Because they stopped being fun.
They stopped being fun for a reason, was thit allways the same reason? Probably not.....
My reason, when I reach the skill cap. This is why I need heavy, viable character customization.
That is also my reason for leaving most of the games that I stuck with past the first week. Once and a blue moon I'll max a second character but that always does it for me. In general though, my desire to play takes a huge hit once I reach max level.
The only two exceptions I can remember are Lineage 2 and Eve Online. In the case of Lineage 2, "A" grade gear was just too expensive. Given the amount of time I could devote to the game, I wouldn't of been able to afford it for a decade. In the case of Eve, I played for 3 years, it was just time to move on.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. -- Herman Melville
UO - Played for 6-7 years pretty much did everything plus the game was becoming a gear/item grind.
A thru Z mmo since - hit the repetative gear grind and got bored.
Just something about grinding for gear, running the same instance over and over and over again that I can't take. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if the dungeons were world dungeons instead of instances. Don't like the whole static group set up that instances create.
And just FYI. The no life conversation is getting old with your crowd. I had a full time job raising a son and i had no problem getting the things i needed to get done in game or RL. Took a little longer then some but it still got done.
The life conversation is more relevant than ever. And I don't know what "crowd" you're talking about, but I've been playing MMOs since UO (beta), I've completed all the WoW vanilla and TBC content, yet, I still think that some parts were way too tedious without any good reason and without bringing anything to the general gameplay. I did it, but at some times, I really felt like a hamster jumping through hoops just to finally get to the fun part which I enjoyed, actually fighting the baddies. The system was also utterly awful if you happened to be forced to take a break from the game, be it for work, family or leisure (holidays) reasons. When you came back, you were so far behind both the gear and keying grind you had almost no hope to catch up.
WoW was a much better and balanced game during WotLK. The whole dumbing down from Cata and Panda wasn't needed, but neither was the whole tedium of some major parts of Vanilla and TBC.
I still consider Ulduar as the best raid ever added to a MMORPG. Much better than anything in Vanilla or TBC. Just my opinion, of course. The opinion of a guy who went through all the hardcore content, and is able to drop the virtual muscle flexing "zomg I'm better than though I played UO and I did all key quests in WoW:TBC" and recognize that parts of those games were utterly flawed, tedious and therefore not needed.
PS: Onyxia never was in Azshara... =P
If you want to play games that get straight to the fun, im sure there are plenty of games for you to choose from. And don't play coy with me. You know what crowd im referring to. And what you call "tedious", i call game play. i had great fun going on "key" quests and helping fellow guild mates get attuned for such things. Like i said, you just want the reward with very little time invested. Jump on, kill a boss, collect reward, move to the next game to rinse, repeat.
Psst. thats the "crowd" im referring to
And sorry. Dustwallow Mash. My bad. Its been 7 years since i last visited Azeroth.
If you want to play games that get straight to the fun, im sure there are plenty of games for you to choose from. And don't play coy with me. You know what crowd im referring to. And what you call "tedious", i call game play. i had great fun going on "key" quests and helping fellow guild mates get attuned for such things. Like i said, you just want the reward with very little time invested. Jump on, kill a boss, collect reward, move to the next game to rinse, repeat.
Psst. thats the "crowd" im referring to
And my posts should have made it obvious that I'm not part of that crowd. But I guess your defense against people who do not totally agree with you is aggression, insulting and assumptions.
You answered to none of my arguments, and ignored most of what I said.
Comments
I know. I feel the same way about grocery stores. Food is meaningless if you don't consume it, so I'm not responsible for developing avenues or strategies that get the food into my belly. If grocery stores sell me the food, they are obligated to bring it to my house, prepare it, and shove it in my mouth. It shouldn't fall on me to find ways of doing this -- after all not delivering the food, preparing it, and feeding me interferes with my right to be healthy. The scoundrels.
GW2 was the last MMO I played seriously (at launch and for the first 3 months or so).
I think the key thing for me is to be part of a community. I've found all MMOs I've tried to solo my way to max level I've quit without getting there. E.g. TERA and Neverwinter.
I haven't played an MMO in over 4 months or so. Still here in the vague hopes something will come out. But alas nothing this year. (EQ Landmark maybe, but too little known about it)
As last seen in the 90s, you mean? Too expensive. Sorry.
(10 million players we can get on the cheap, do we really need to budget for this?)
{beancounters, up up and away!} = death of mmorpgs
Yet it's always the same reason for me. The community sucks. I don't want to spend any time around any of the people, therefore I'd rather play a SP game which is more fun and you don't have to deal with endless online assholes.
Fix the people and I'll play the games again.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
While not going into details with every games i would say :
1) Most MMO nowday are far too easy and not punishing enough, i for one who believe something can't be rewarding if you can't fail.
2) A mmo back then was about the journey not the end. I don't care about endgame i wanna start a long journey and do it by level 1.
3) It can be time consuming and as we get older and / or more busy its hard to find the time
My list is too long............
Anyway I generally quit for those reasons
1) Fast Leveling (If I can grind 10 levels in the first 5 hours I stop playing unless is insanely fun like GW2)
2) Fast Combat (If I can't type messages while I am fighting, that's not the game for me)
3) Lack of Community interaction (If I don't feel the need to ask for help or for a group in chat, that's not the game for me)
4) Shallowness (Usually all the Casual games that I can play in Autopilot)
The reason why I quit most MMOs is, that there's nothing left to do after you've beat the max-level content and got all your shinies. Usually takes some 3-4 month with 2 characters.
Endgame is simply lacking in most MMOs, especially themeparks and that's quiet possibly the reason why the only MMO I've really played for an extended time (7 years) is EvE Online.
I like this list. Everything is too fast now. There is no tempo to the games and worlds, other than spamming buttons as fast as possible. The goal is to reach end game as quickly as possible. Why anyone would do that is beyond me.
I will add.... too many instances, too many hybrid jobs, too much worthless customization, a very queer atmosphere that prevails in most new MMO worlds, and too much instant travel.
Edit: Oh yeah, no more death penalties is a bummer too.
I feel there should be more to do while you're reaching for end game, instead of more end game content. I don't mean that there should be a bazillion more corny quests and dungeons, but that the existing content should be harder and take longer.
That is a reason to play another game, not a reason to quit MMOs.
IN fact, why does "quit MMOs" even means? It is not like i will have a sacred vow of not play any MMOs anymore.
And if you are talking about quiting a specific MMO .. well .. do you have to ask? Every game gets old and boring sooner or later.
A burn-out of generic theme-park MMO's is probably what made me stop playing them.
I will be making a return to EVE soon though!
I quit:
- EQ1 because my guild folded and I bought World of Warcraft and City of Heroes.
- WoW (the first time) because of the art style.
- CoH took a few breaks from it but always came back after a few months. It shut down.
- Wizard101 (and the rest of the MMOs I've picked up) because I "beat it", or made max level. It had some re-playability, but only in the schools of magic. You still went through all of the same zones and quests.
MMOs have lost the reason I played them to begin with - Rich, deep, worlds where my character can live.
- 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
EQ1 - EQ2 came out.
EQ2 - guild eventually abandoned it.
AO - I have no idea. It was a really cool game.
DAoC - just kind of drifted away from that one.
Neocron - it was a bit rubbish
SWG - some guild of fuckwits founded a city called New Berlin (or was it New Stoke? New New York?) in the middle of Tatooine. That drove me away for a while. And when I came back the game was infested with Jedi.
AoC - after Tortage, the whole thing sank like a granite turd. Massive tits might function like buoyancy aids but even they couldnt keep it afloat after level 20.
WoW - charming but not my cup of tea.
Vanguard - brilliant but just too buggy.
LoTRO - game played a little too fast and loose with an IP that I'm just a wee bit too anal about.
Fallen Earth - never quite got into the whole post-Apocalyptic thing.
SWTOR - APAC server shutdown. Couldn't be arsed renaming all of my characters on a US server.
Neverwinter - a fun, free, short-term distraction. Good for a few weeks but not one to stick with.
TSW - havent technically quit, just haven't managed to get beyond the naming screen yet.
UO - after having played a 3D MMORPG (AC1), it was hard (read impossible) to get immersed in the isometric fixed camera graphics of UO again. I still played 5 solid years and it was definitely a memorable experience, a 3D game with UO's character development and gameplay would get my subscription immediately (maybe Shroud of Avatar...).
EQ - UO and AC1 were simply much better games. And all the camping and downtime was just plain boring.
AC1 - the game was simply getting old after 5+ years of playing it and WoW got released.
AO - fun game, but the grindy gameplay with forced grouping and camping got old . AO at release was basically EQ in space, just a bit better but not much. The character development system was awesome though, and the world too, that's why I stayed longer than expected.
DAoC - I've played that game way too long, willing to give it a chance - very, very boring leveling and shallow end game too. Mythic, in my book, is just a bad MMO developer who had the luck to occupy a niche when there was no direct concurrence. Today, a game like DAoC would drown faster than the Titanic, and WAR confirmed that.
SWG - shall I really tell you?
AC2 - that one got old much faster than the first one - very linear gameplay, very poor class balance (PvP was a mess, PvE was favoring a couple of classes). I still have fond memories of my lugian "reap zerker" though, a very fun class (one of the not "gimped" ones too), that's why I stuck with the game longer than expected.
L2 - the awful grind made poking my eyes out with a fork seem fun, so I left before that happened.
WoW - still playing.
EQ2 - WoW was a much better game at that time, and still now (for me at least).
LotRO - still coming back when new content gets released since I have a lifetime and get it all for free.
AoC - nice game... the 20 first levels. Then it went down the drain, and away from my hard disk. And the world didn't feel like a world, but just random pieces of a world with no direct relation to each other. It's a shame, because it had a quite good and dynamic combat system (MUCH better than TSW).
WAR - I didn't think Mythic could make so much worse than DAoC, yet they did it.
DFO - DFO-UW - gank fests, not sandbox MMORPGs.
MO - same thing.
Guild Wars 1 - not a MMORPG, couldn't get immersed in that lobby world.
Vanguard - poor quality, bad design, too bad because it had some good elements.
Aion - same as L2.
DDO - same as GW1.
Rift - very linear game and world, the promised "dynamic events" are actually just nuisances and get annoying very quickly, no real cities which made the world even worse and less immersive, the graphic style looked like Warhammer 2 (beurk!) only the character customization was not bad.
Tera - The graphics, while high quality, weren't my cup of tea (some really horrible mob designs), the questing was so bad it made WoW questing look like it was written by JRR Tolkien himself, the combat was just not that good and rooting you for each skill - very dull game.
DCUO - CoH - CoV - Marvel - I like good super hero movies, but I do not like that theme in a MMORPG. Games like "Batman: Arkham Azylum" are MUCH better in that genre in my opinion.
Fallen Earth - the gameplay is quite shallow and grindy, and the setting just isn't my thing.
TSW - Funcom strikes again, same flaws than AoC for the world (not feeling like a world), and also a very bad combat system.
SW:TOR - gave me a bit over 6 months of solid fun, not a bad investment, but once I went through the content once on each side, I lost the will to level another alt and go through exactly the same areas again. Tried to go back after F2P, but their awful cash shop added to the other flaws made me log out faster than the time to post this.
STO - I really wanted a good Star Trek MMORPG, but that one just isn't good at all. Instead of a wide open galaxy to explore, like in the series and movies, they give us canned instanced crap with very little exploration possibilities. Well, it's a "Cryptic" product, what did you expect?
GW2 - still playing.
Age of Wushu - really tried to give that one a chance, but the game is not what it pretends to be, definitely not a sandbox like some pretend(ed), and gets boring rather quickly too. Another game made mostly for Asians and for a few western die hard fans.
Neverwinter - hello, king of linearity (even worse than Rift). Poor combat. Bye bye boring game.
FFXIV - just a bad game.
FFXIV arr - still not good enough for me to pay to play it. I rather give my money to Blizzard or ArenaNET, who deserve it way more.
I'm sure I've forgotten some, but that's it out of my mind so far. I've also played a load of F2P and other crappy games that aren't even worth mentionning here, so I stick to the mainstream "AAA" titles.
My computer is better than yours.
It was time consuming because it was difficult....
We didn't do MC in one day. We broke it up into 2 days. Its all about prospective. Could you do a 8 hour MC run? Sure. Could you do MC runs on two separate days so you don't go insane? Yep.
And like i told another poster. The raids were long because the content ( at the time ) was challenging. Hard boss fights. A shit ton of trash mobs that could wipe your party in a heart beat. You needed people to work together. Now all you need is a few people to face roll through content.
Sorry, I was there and was doing it, so I know this is not true. The most tedious parts of raiding involved farming crap to be ready... farming non-raid dungeons to get resistance gear, farming reputations to get keys, doing long boring attunements quests just to get to the content. The most awful period for that was of course TBC, but vanilla also had it's share of mindless grinding to finally get to the good stuff.
Just have a look at this...
Was that hard? Nope, it was tedious. And that doesn't include the resistance gear grinds, like e.g. fire for MC/BWL/Ony, and then Nature for AQ, and frost for Naxx.
The time consuming part was definitely not needed to get to the fun/challenging part.
That kind of crap didn't separate the good from the bad... it just separated the "no life" from the "people with a life".
My computer is better than yours.
And here you have the real problem with MMO today. People want everything handed to them on a silver platter. No one wants to put the time in to do anything to get the things they want out of the games they play.
So an answer to "Why did you quit MMOs" Is because of people like this poster above.
Here you have what your typical MMOer would say about the Onyxia raid. (mind you this is just to get to the raid. not the raid its self)
"OMG! i have to take a flight path from IF to The Wetlands to take a boat that i have to WAIT for to Azshara then swim to Onyxia! Unthinkable! Ok im here. Wait i cant get in. I need to do a key quest? A QUEST! No one fucking told me! So i came all the way over here for nothing!?!?" What do i have to do for this quest? WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT! FUCK THAT SHIT! Blizzard make its easier for me to do these noooooowzploooooox!
And just FYI. The no life conversation is getting old with your crowd. I had a full time job raising a son and i had no problem getting the things i needed to get done in game or RL. Took a little longer then some but it still got done.
The life conversation is more relevant than ever. And I don't know what "crowd" you're talking about, but I've been playing MMOs since UO (beta), I've completed all the WoW vanilla and TBC content, yet, I still think that some parts were way too tedious without any good reason and without bringing anything to the general gameplay. I did it, but at some times, I really felt like a hamster jumping through hoops just to finally get to the fun part which I enjoyed, actually fighting the baddies. The system was also utterly awful if you happened to be forced to take a break from the game, be it for work, family or leisure (holidays) reasons. When you came back, you were so far behind both the gear and keying grind you had almost no hope to catch up.
WoW was a much better and balanced game during WotLK. The whole dumbing down from Cata and Panda wasn't needed, but neither was the whole tedium of some major parts of Vanilla and TBC.
I still consider Ulduar as the best raid ever added to a MMORPG. Much better than anything in Vanilla or TBC. Just my opinion, of course. The opinion of a guy who went through all the hardcore content, and is able to drop the virtual muscle flexing "zomg I'm better than though I played UO and I did all key quests in WoW:TBC" and recognize that parts of those games were utterly flawed, tedious and therefore not needed.
PS: Onyxia never was in Azshara... =P
My computer is better than yours.
There seems to be a reoccurring theme that one of the core concepts of "true" MMORPGs is they have to be massive, tedious timesinks. Some of the classics certainly had them but today's games simply can't support it. TL;DR: Today's reality doesn't support your nostalgic delusions.
I'd say the main reason is the demographic change- since WoW's popularity there are a lot more MMO gamers that simply wouldn't tolerate eight hour camps and the bottom line for any production corp is to make money. Having you sit with some guildies, piss bottles lining the floor and taking up bandwidth isn't doing that. Even when I played on P99 there was considerable complaining about guild monopolies on certain spawns and running trains on competitors. Is that kind of thing exciting? It can be but it's also really terrible game design.- particularly if you want more people playing.
Secondly, another thing (at least in EQ1 and early CoH as I recall) that I didn't have to deal with are the bots and goldsellers. If you think in today's games there would be any chance of getting items from a unique long-spawn mob with bots and such out there you are absolutely wrong. Maybe if it's programmed so that all that do damage can get the loot such as in GW2 but then I suspect that players willing to do all day spawn camps were the same ones that had to be a special little snowflake as well.
That is also my reason for leaving most of the games that I stuck with past the first week. Once and a blue moon I'll max a second character but that always does it for me. In general though, my desire to play takes a huge hit once I reach max level.
The only two exceptions I can remember are Lineage 2 and Eve Online. In the case of Lineage 2, "A" grade gear was just too expensive. Given the amount of time I could devote to the game, I wouldn't of been able to afford it for a decade. In the case of Eve, I played for 3 years, it was just time to move on.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
UO - Played for 6-7 years pretty much did everything plus the game was becoming a gear/item grind.
A thru Z mmo since - hit the repetative gear grind and got bored.
Just something about grinding for gear, running the same instance over and over and over again that I can't take. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if the dungeons were world dungeons instead of instances. Don't like the whole static group set up that instances create.
If you want to play games that get straight to the fun, im sure there are plenty of games for you to choose from. And don't play coy with me. You know what crowd im referring to. And what you call "tedious", i call game play. i had great fun going on "key" quests and helping fellow guild mates get attuned for such things. Like i said, you just want the reward with very little time invested. Jump on, kill a boss, collect reward, move to the next game to rinse, repeat.
Psst. thats the "crowd" im referring to
And sorry. Dustwallow Mash. My bad. Its been 7 years since i last visited Azeroth.
And my posts should have made it obvious that I'm not part of that crowd. But I guess your defense against people who do not totally agree with you is aggression, insulting and assumptions.
You answered to none of my arguments, and ignored most of what I said.
Can we rewind and try again?
My computer is better than yours.
Add another +!. I don't think it helps that if you've played one you've played them all attitude to mmorpg development.