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[Column] General: 5 Reasons Why We Still Love MMOs
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
It’s easy to get carried away with cynicism. The MMO market is lacking in both quality and quantity for new releases, as well as overall diversity. We’ve reached a point where the games available cater to a wide range of different audiences and anything new is seen as little more than a hybrid of concepts or unappealing to the mass market. Innovation isn’t dead; it’s just harder to come by these days.
Read more of David Jagneaux's The List: 5 Reasons We Still Love MMOs.
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Comments
my top MMOs: UO,DAOC,WoW,GW2
most of my posts are just my opinions they are not facts,it is the same for you too.
I can find myself in the article, yeah. I often do many of those things, like enjoying the atmosphere even when I'm not interacting with others. Or sometimes chuckling at how god awful some character looks, or feeling entertained by how it's a tribute to someone, or going "Damn, that one did a great job! I may have to look into getting one of my characters an outfit like that."
Then there's the occasional goofing off about things on the chat, or talking with guildies and friends about the game, or about some upcoming content.
And of course there's the actual teaming itself. It can be a lot of fun to take down challenging enemies as a team. (Both in PvE and PvP)
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
This isn't a signature, you just think it is.
Here's my list:
1. Entertaining time waster
2. Progression provides sense of achievement
3. Distraction from reality
4. Role playing allows exploration of personalities *
5. Playable with friends and family
* people with characters having no personality of their own, won't understand this
I could write a long response article detailing why the very reasons you (and by most accounts myself) still love MMOs but instead I will provide a short summary:
The older generation of MMO gamers remember UO, EQ1 and DAoC. We remember the freedom and choice of those worlds. If players didn't do it, it didn't happen. That is what creates a social, living and breathing virtual world. Since the release of WoW developers have seen a pie in the sky worth too much to provide players that freedom as it seems risky to them.
With today's MMO player base being so wide you have a lot of players that simply don't fit that open world, player's do it all mentality. Thus we are left with the single worst adaptation to the MMO, the Themepark.
So while there are beautiful MMOs out there with fun combat and unique characters and there certainly are immersive environments and some social interaction they are sadly on rails. From one hub to the next. From one closed off instance to the next. Simple, boiled down game play that seperates players and leaves all the fun to be generated by scripted developer work rather than player driven activity. It's unsustainable if your title isn't named World of Warcraft and veteran players might still tell you it's not even if you are.
As a glimmer of hope, Crowfall seems to understand this but I fear that eventually they will succumb to their fear of narrow customer base appeal and add in themepark-styled mechanics that will stifle player-driven fun. Time will tell.
I agree with the list. But I feel that MMO's have failed terribly because of #1. I don't feel like I'm part of a world at all, I feel like I'm a (un)willing script.
Once upon a time....
Having two types of gameplay, Interacting With Other Players and Not Interacting With Other Players in the same MMO means that one must fall by the wayside. Being able to get to top level solo shows it was solo that won.
Atmosphere and world size have suffered terribly down the years, notable exceptions like ESO and TSW come to mind, but by and large it has been a trip to tinyworld.
As my guild mates so often say, we like MMOs in spite of what they have become. It's the people that make us still love MMOs.
It's another reality that can have an effect on you in real life. Players have met and formed long term friendships in MMO's and even married and raised a family together while still playing. Long time players have died in RL and had a memorial given for them in-game and some games have had a little momento built in remembrance.
I'm sure every MMO player have stories about all the funny little things that happened in-game that they will always remember. For many, an MMO is both an escape and extension of their lives.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Umm.... being able to play with other players and choosing not to, well you can do that with pretty much everything, even single player games. Most games have a multiplayer option now.
Witcher 3 does character development a billion times better than any MMO. So does Dragon Age Inquisition, and more. And whats more, fans can create mods that give you even more options.
Most MMO's severely lack in immersion. Gold sellers run rampant with no control by most developers (FF14 is one of the worst I have seen in the last 20 years of MMO's). If you leave chat on, and hence play with other players, you WILL have your immersion disturbed when they start using terms like "u" and saying swear words and the like. If you want immersion, you play a single player game where you won't be disturbed.
What world? I have said over and over again that I want to live in the world not on it. There is not a single MMO out there that allows me to do this. And at this point, I'd say that I've played around 50 MMO's. Publishers don't want a true universe, they want to pump them out as quickly as possible, ride the wave of "new" for a little while, then move on to the next. Not a single developer has created a true world yet. There are some that MAY be developing a true world (like Citadel of Sorcery) but I am not going to hold my breath on that. In fact the games that have developed a true world are Skyrim and Witcher 3, both single player games.
I hardly ever play MMO's anymore. They do not offer what they once promised.
For some reason an MMO that is left off everyones list of great MMO's, including the author of this article, is Eve. I take breaks from time to time, but there is no other game that keeps me coming back. I don't expect everyone to like Eve. Space may not be your thing, but it is a universe where the players create the bulk of the content. There is always something to do in the game. If you choose not to create content, its not the games fault, it's yours.
Right now I'm playing with 29,000 other people on a single server, and I have 375 people in my corporation. Someone is always saying, "hey, lets do an OP." Can you play this game solo?... sure can. Exploring, stealth bombing (wormhole hunting), Industry (market, crafting, mining) are all great ways to play the game solo.
If you don't like making the effort to play your game, that's cool, but don't say there aren't great MMO's to play because you don't have the time or the desire to play them.
To those who want to play some mmorpg but cant decide what to play .. i invite you to Runes Of Magic.. older mmo.. not that good graphic as games these days but i find it really enjoyable also playerbase is good.. not that big as in some mmorpgs but its good.. i play on private server
www(.)rompvp(.)com
I dunno. EVE is a pay-to-win (passive skill leveling as long as you pay a subscription) game with corrupt devs (see multiple posts on this--do a google search) so I am not sure why it would be anyone's ideal game (unless they had a subscription for a while and enjoyed the pay to win aspect of it.)
One problem for me is that MOBAs are much better as far as fair competition. If you lose in a MOBA, you know it was because you (or you and your team) sucked. If you lose in an MMORPG, it could be for a variety of factors--who paid most in the pay to win cash shop? Who levelled in pve the most to get best gear and then switched to pvp? etc etc
I think that as far as pvp goes, MMORPGs are basically extinct but don't realize it yet.
As far as pve grinding goes, yes MMORPGs still have a place. I think that sometimes people just want to turn their brains off and click a lot for a bit--and then get a little popup window saying "You are awesome for clicking a lot!" When you combine this with character customization, so that people can relate to their avatars, you get a winning formula.
YOU should have written an article on this. I like your list better.
I totally agree with most of your post but I fear your term "player-driven fun" is just a metaphor for gankfest for many so called pvper's, something imo that to date has done nothing but drive players away past the initial honeymoon phase of a new game, or has been responsible for the game itself "evolving" into something it was never meant to be.
In order to play the majority of mmorpgs players are forced to "interact" with other playstyles(this goes for both pvp and pve) which can be good or bad, depending on the game's design.
Unfortunately, even the games that are designed specifically to try and combine the playstyles tend to fall short because it seems the players themselves have no "toggle" switch when it comes to self-control.
So either games need to have a pvp toggle, thus allowing mayhem among those who want it without driving away those who don't, or the game itself needs to provide specific servers for pvp or non-pvp if they want to attract the full spectrum of mmorpgers. I really don't understand why any mmorpg would not want to do this since the failure to do so severely limits their earning potential.
A game can keep making pve content up the wazoo to try and keep the "sheep", but once the sheep have been driven off by the other players, what's the point, plus the majority of these so called pvper's that keep calling for "player-driven" content will leave once they've driven all the "sheep" away anyway because "their" content will be gone and truly new players who don't yet know what their gameplay preferences are, are a rare breed.
I agree with 99.9% of what you said, I just shortened it to the important part.
This is me in a nutshell.
I still stop in on this website maybe once or twice a month to keep up with the news, but I rarely actually play a MMO anymore. I have a lifetime sub to STO and pop in once in a while to play a bit, but I still to this day have never had a max level captain. I tried playing some SWTOR a few months ago, but only paid for one month and probably only played for 2 weeks. I still haven't re-downloaded GW2 and this computer is 2 years old now. I wouldn't even bother with WOW, even though I played that for years. WOW ended for me when we beat the Lich King. I really liked EVE, but the interface was just old, the spreadsheets in space moniker was apt. I played NWN on AOL, UO, EQ, DDO and most of the other classic MMO's so I think I have a good sample to judge from.
I play mostly strategy games like Civ now, or Gal Civ, or Endless Space/Legends. Crusader Kings 2 is cool. I picked up the newer Shadowrun and Wasteland games, I want POE eventually when the price comes down. (Almost got it on the steam summer sale.) I've most recently been playing Baldur's Gate 2 and Masterwork Dwarf Fortress. Oh and a little Darkest Dungeon, but I'm waiting on full release to really sink my teeth into that one. I've got a ton of older games over the years on sale that I have yet to play or replay.
So I really have plenty of games to play. I do hope that a better virtual world is coming, but I am not playing current MMO's. They do not offer what they once promised, indeed.
( Note to self-Don't say anything bad about Drizzt.)
An acerbic sense of humor is NOT allowed here.
This....
EVE is most definitely not pay-to-win. Yes, all skills train passively and yes an older player like myself can fly most of the ships in the game.
What a lot of people looking in from the outside don't realize, however, is that a six month old player who has stuck to a solid skill training plan and trains directly for a specific ship, or class of ships, like for instance Gallente cruisers, will be just as good in that one ship as I am and I've been playing for ten years.
In other words, when I'm flying around in a Moa then I'm only using about 10 million out of my 160 million worth of skill points. You can't use all 160 million skill points at the same time. I can do more things with a 160 million skill point character, not necessarily do them better.
PVP is dying in MMO's because almost every themepark MMO in existence is getting it wrong. PVE should be a gear treadmill with ever increasing tiers of gear and ever increasing rewards for killing powerful new bosses.
PVP, on the other hand, should be a game of dynamic territorial or resource control.
It should never be gear related and there should be no such thing as PVP gear, especially tiered PVP gear. It stratifies the player base and it discourages new players from entering the PVP arena when someone with Tier 10 PVP gear can one shot them in their Tier 1 PVP gear.
That's a very sarcastic and denigrating way to put it. When my last guild successfully killed Thoth Amon in Age of Conan, one of the most difficult raids in any MMO I've ever played, we were literally cheering in our TS server. It was a great night and a great victory and we had actually accomplished something quite difficult as a team. This is what MMORPG's should be about.
I've had many similar experiences in MMO's. All of my memorable MMO experiences were with other players accomplishing a difficult task or just having fun running an easy dungeon while everyone was drunk.
Bump love this response