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EverQuest: What You Really Get From an Online Game
Everquest is a game centered on rewarding you for how much time you put into it. This is the core design philosophy behind the game, since they charge you by the month and make more money the longer you stick around. What they don't tell you is that taking your money is about all they're interested in. They care little for player complaints, and less about player suggestions and requests. They're in this to milk you for all you're worth, and that's the first thing you have to know.
The second thing you have to know is that the game stops being fun. By that time though, you're so "addicted" to the game, you don't realize it. The game becomes a source of frustration and anger instead of a source of entertainment and fun. It becomes a chore. It becomes a job. You plod away at the keyboard, obsessed and consumed with getting that new item, or finishing that last quest, and while so consumed you begin to hate the game. Vehemently. It's a game that goes on forever, and one that you can never win.
After playing the game for a while, you'll start conversing with other players, and you'll see the one thing all players have in common is that they all hate Sony - the designers of Everquest. (It should be noted that Verant, the original development company, has been absorbed into Sony Online Entertainment -- so will be referred to as Sony for simplicity) This is baffling at first glance, because they send Sony $12.95 every month for a form of supposedly voluntary entertainment, which they enjoy, and yet they despise them! Look a little deeper though, and you'll see that most people who dislike Sony are the ones who no longer have fun playing Everquest. They aren't getting what they want out of the game anymore, and they look to Sony, being the source of all changes and improvements/breakdowns in the game, as the cause. Right or wrong, this is the state of affairs; the consumers hate the company providing them with a service that they think they enjoy.
Let's go back to the part about Sony not caring about their customers. Recently, they changed their GM (Game Master) Customer Service system such that, instead of one GM being assigned to each game server permanently to handle problems, there would instead be a smaller pool of GMs roaming all the servers infrequently. When enough player problems on a server requiring GM help cropped up (around 30), a GM would be sent to handle the petitions (problems) one at a time until finished, and move on to the next server. This had the effect of increasing wait times on getting petitions answered from a few hours to many hours, or even several days by many accounts. This was introduced supposedly as a cost-cutting measure, which would improve efficiency. They'd have to hire less GMs if they pooled them up into a roving band, instead of assigning one for each server. In actuality, while this may have made things more efficient on Sony's side, the players were left waiting for days until that magic number was reached where a GM would log on to the server to help them out.
On Sony's website, there is a link to a feature called Developer's Corner. Over the two years this has been up and running, the person in charge of Customer Relations at Sony, Alan "Absor" VanCouvering, has turned it from a section dedicated to answering player questions, into a simple Press Release box with little useful information. Where there would be several updates per day, now there are perhaps one or two per week. Answers to player questions are few, and replies to player emails are fewer. Since most answers to customer questions are now handled on specific, "class" (ranger, paladin, monk, etc) message boards by the developers themselves (once in a blue moon of course), one is left wondering what Absor is paid to do. Twiddle his thumbs perhaps? The world may never know.
This leads up to a lack of will at Sony to address their customers with any sort of respect. Often, sudden "game-changing" features will be added or removed in a patch, with little or no explanation given to the players, and no recourse for the players themselves other than to submit comments to the black hole at the Dev Corner. Other changes can render a class' or items' abilities weaker, slower, or even drastically altered or removed from the game. Again, the players have no say in the matter officially, and rarely get these changes reversed through massive online signature petitions. It is quite common now for these sorts of changes to come completely unannounced and unexplained, leaving the players themselves to bug test, figure out what happened, what is wrong, and leaving them again to wander off to the Dev Board asking what the purpose of the change was. Far too often in this process, the sheer discoordination and incompetence at Sony is revealed, as the changes happened accidentally or were not intended to occur in the manner they did. The bottom line being, you can go to bed one night with a great character and items, and wake up in the morning to find all that has changed; leaving you holding your member and your opinions mattering less than a pig's squeals in a slaughterhouse.
The final aspect of the will at Sony to disassociate from the customers is how they handle disputes between players. In the Everquest game world, you can find yourself in competition with other players for the ability to play the game. Yes, in EQ, you compete with other players for the right to kill the monsters. It's massive artificial scarcity. If you aren't online early enough, or if you don't move fast enough, you lose. MOBs (as monsters are known) spawn at predictable intervals; and the design of the game itself, added onto the times that Sony resets its servers for patches, means that if you don't live in Europe or on the east coast, you and your guild (an organization of players) are provided with less game content than any other time zone or area. You get to have "fun" as another guild of players in another part of the world kills a mob required to advance in the game while you're in bed, or at work, and nothing can be done about it. Often, players will do this purposefully to keep you from killing other, stronger mobs, so they can keep that part of the game to themselves. The GMs will not help you, the Guides (volunteer player GMs) will tell you they can't do anything (and that's true, they are impotent for the most part), and you and the 60 people in your guild are left holding your collective members for six months while you wait for said east-coast unemployed or European guild to take pity on you and let you have the mob. Fat chance.
Sony of course doesn't mind these situations in the slightest; because you see, this is their high-end game. Where in the lower levels you'll spend your time getting great items by fighting mobs that take seconds to prepare for and a minute to kill, at the high end you are required to spend multiple hours (sometimes up to twelve hours) with a "raid force" of 60 or more people just killing useless, annoying mobs (which drop little or no loot) put there as obstacles. Finally, when you reach the boss mob, the fight may last perhaps 30 minutes or more. This 30 minutes of combat is certainly not fun, as all you do is point your character at a mob and press a single button to auto-attack. Many melee-classes go watch TV for the duration of the fight. Your clerics (usually eight or more) cast the same healing spell in a long healing chain to keep your warrior alive, and your wizards all cast the same damaging spells for the 30 minutes of the fight. This is to kill a single mob (in this case, named Aten Ha Ra), which drops four items for your guild.
These situations are 'lovingly' referred to by the players as timesinks; gameplay traps intended to waste your time and keep you playing longer. There are hundreds of them; others incredibly longer than simply getting to a mob. Several quests required to advance in the game require you to spend 100+ hours sitting in single locations, killing hundreds of mobs in 12-hour stretches for a "rare drop", such as ore in the ssraeshza mines, which you use to create "bane" weapons; or the shissar commanders for key pieces; with which to fight the boss mob of the zone. Unlike the other parts of the game, these timesinks are required for advancement, and there is no getting around them unless you wish to stop playing. This is of course not fun at all, but as said above, by this time you'll have long stopped having fun with EQ. You'll do it anyway though, as thousands of others have, because you, like them, are addicted. The quest to kill the shissar Emperor of Ssraeshza is one of the most vicious timesinks in the entire game, but it is merely one example among dozens. To even reach this area of the game requires months of non-stop raiding with your guild; sometimes up to a year of raiding. Only then will you be powerful enough to enter.
Expansions to the game are put out about once per year. These cost around $30 to buy when released, and are required to visit new zones, gain new levels, and so forth. For anyone just entering the game now to be on equal footing with others, they will need to buy the original game and all four expansions at retail price. Of course, no expansion yet released by Sony has been complete when it hit the shelves. Often the final zone in the expansion would be left unfinished, or in such a state of bugginess that it was unplayable. Other zones will be incomplete or have bad pathing for the mobs. Items and monsters will not be "balanced" for difficulty, and players will sometimes stumble onto great equipment for their characters, only to have Sony later decide it is too powerful, and "nerf" it. When an item is nerfed, it's reduced in effectiveness or power, often to the point of absurdity, or it simply stops entering the game world. This rewards players who gun through the new expansion as fast as possible to get the upper hand over their competition on the server, and punishes anyone who cannot put 12+ hours of EQing in per day. The problems with expansions highlight another aspect of Sony which is decidedly underwhelming: their playtesting (or lack thereof). Many bugs in the new expansions are left for players to discover themselves and work around; fixes are often delayed by as much as a week while Sony tries to find a solution. In Everquest, you pay to be a bug tester, and receive no feedback or acknowledgement that any bugs you report are fixed, or even looked at, unless its fix shows up in a terse (bi-) weekly patch message. Most bugs are left unfixed due to their overwhelming numbers.
Class balancing is an on-going project of Sony to try to make sure each class (warrior, cleric, wizard, ranger, etc) has its own niche, and feels useful and meaningful in the game world. They seem oblivious to the fact that items are just as much a part of the game as classes though, and it seems they let their zone (game area) developers run wild with items, creating more work for the developers. If you're keeping a tally, the Mrylokar's Dagger in NToV was one of them. The Mistwalker from Lady Vox was another. These weapons were both nerfed because they were too powerful, and made the classes who could use them much too strong versus the mobs of the time. There is no feedback to the players on what the "visions" for the classes are supposed to be (beyond the vague three-line descriptions in the manual), and no way to for the players to venture a guess of what might be "too powerful" and in line to be nerfed next. Playing EQ is a lot like playing in a casino; you can see your winnings vanish in the blink of an eye out of sheer bad luck. It is not a game where you can ever feel secure.
All this pales in comparison to player harassment, of course. From sexual-orientation insults to other players spamming your chat bar, EQ has it all. There are other forms of harassment too: Often when in competition with other guilds (as you will find yourself quite often if you play long enough), you will see them employ tactics such as "training" mobs onto you to keep you away from the contested mob encounter or zone. A "train" is typically a large number of powerful mobs (10-20), which the other guild will gather up from the zone and dump onto your raid in order to kill you. The GMs will again do nothing about this, nor will the Guides, unless they are there to witness it. Being that there are typically only a half-dozen GM/Guides on a server of 2500+ players at any given time, and that trains are completely unpredictable and random, there is of course almost no way for them to witness these events. While server logs exist that can prove this malicious player harassment occurred, they will usually refuse to even take a look, because it constitutes work, and simply dismiss the problem outright. Your guild is then left holding their collective members once again. Do you see the pattern forming here?
Everquest is a game full of people who want to "win" and "be the best" at any cost. This includes griefing you and your guild, making your gameplay miserable. Why not simply quit then, you ask? If the game isn't fun and sucks this badly, why would anyone play it? Well, because they are addicted. They are addicted to the mobs, to the loot, and to the social atmosphere with other people in their guilds. They have invested so much time in these characters (often hundreds of days of play time, sometimes more time than they spend at their jobs), that they can't will themselves to give it up. They play on instead, hoping things will get better, and nursing a great and deep hatred for Sony and the game itself. If you play long enough, you will see this as the universal truth. People who quit are viewed as giving up on their guilds; they are ridiculed, denounced, and hated. There is massive peer pressure to keep playing. Often people you thought were your friends in the game were simply using you to advance, or improve their characters. Online relationships between people in EQ are fickle, and are only good as long as everyone's getting a good dose of the drug (loot, advancement in the game, and good social relations with their guild).
Perhaps now you've begun to see the other side of EQ: The buggier side, the darker side; the side of despair and anger, fear and frustration. The game will absorb your life if you let it, while the days and weeks melt away into oblivion. I have barely touched on the repetitive gameplay you must endure to reach the top levels of the game: killing mob after mob, hundreds upon hundreds in an endless non-challenging stream to gain experience. I have not said anything about linkdeath (losing your connection) from Sony network problems, or server crashes where you lose any experience or items recently attained (and for which you are not compensated by customer service). I have not said anything about the Legends(TM) subscriptions, where you get to pay $40/month to get the customer service that you should be receiving anyway. There are many other problems with this game that I did not go into here. Before you get into EQ, realize what you're jumping into. Look before you leap.
David Sanftenberg
aka Dolalin Bonewielder
62 Necromancer of Lanys T`Vyl
Maybe EQ needs some kind of player-based political system to make such decisions...it could also add a whole new level to the game.
Everquest is a game full of people who want to "win" and "be the best" at any cost.
Because they can't be in real life. Yay for delusions of grandeur!
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
DON'T PLAY IT.
Gaming addiction is not a behavior of gamers... it's a behavior of addicts. The games just happen to be there for the addict's mind to latch onto.
Blaming particular games (particularly in a manner which reeks of personal bitterness) for addictions is like blaming alcohol for alcoholism, or blaming heroin for junkies: it's a foil. The real ones to blame are the ones who are addicted.
But what do I know. I'm just looking for anonymous gay sex.
"What they don't tell you is that taking your money is about all they're interested in. They care little for player complaints, and less about player suggestions and requests. They're in this to milk you for all you're worth, and that's the first thing you have to know."
Welcome to Reality. I hope you enjoy your stay.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm not going to try and lecture you or come up with some kind of witty retort.
Simply stated:
It's a video game. If it pisses you off, turn off the computer, go outside and take a walk.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
I have never played EverQuest, but I have been curious what all the fuss was about. Of course every time I try to find out by searching on Google, all I find is people talking about playing, but no one actually describing the point of the game or even posting a screenshot. I really want to know what the game is about.
You say the game is addictive. Great. Tell me why. Tell me what keeps drawing you back. Don't feed me your laundry list of problems with Sony's sysadmins. Don't complain to me about how Sony doesn't care about their users. Tell me about the freakin' game!
Pioneered eh? ever heard of UO?
Your pain is funny
...all have this in common. You are at the mercy of whomever develops it. MMORPGs run by large commercial outfits are particularly able to lose sight of the target, which is player satisfaction.
Still, one cannot blame Sony entirely. Players have unreasonable expectations based upon their unique point of view. They want a 'fun' game. The makers of the game are concerned about bottom line, and game balance, in that order.
I run a free mud so i have a bit of perspective on this. I used to play muds, but it's like crack. So I just code lightly for those who are still addicted and try to run a sort of 'halfway house'.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I sunk 2 years of my free time into the game. Had something like 150 days played time (that's 24 hours x 150) and all it got me was a poorly rendered avatar that could still die to the lowest level monsters if left alone for 5 minutes.
Ended up selling the account after I came to my senses. Got my money back on the software costs and monthly fees, but I'll be on my death bed wishing I hadn't spent all that time wasting away playing EQ.
I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am.
A simple solution to all MMORPGs.
The introduction of an age system.
An age system will benefit those that don't have a lot of time to game, but want to play the game, those that have time to be a little better than the lite gamers, but its still competitive, and you can discourage addictive play. The simple idea is the more you play, the more you age (until death).
For example:
For your 'lite' gamer that can't spend a lot of time on the game, they can start off with an 'auto-30-year old char.' This character has a good deal of skill without having to spend time getting the skill. So you can jump on, be competitive with those that spend a great deal of time building their character, and still have fun.
For your 'heavy' gamer, you start off with a '16 year old char.' This character can be better than the auto-30 year old, by playing him until he reaches that age, and building the skills yourself. You get the benefit of better skills than the lite player by spending time building your character by yourself, but its still competitive, and, therefore, fun.
For the 'addict', you have a death age. When you char hits 40, your skills begin to degrade until you eventually die (yes, you character is no longer usable. Its gone.). This is a tactic to discourage addiction.
Of course, this would never be implemented on a system that has a monthly charge, because the addicts are the ones willing to pay it, but it would be good for games that don't have a monthly charge.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Have been the sort of, if you don't like it, don't play it!
I think it's this sort of defensive vitriolic reply that defeats the point of the article. That being, if you are considering playing EQ than you should probably save your money for something else. Albeit an obvious point. I myself found the game to be unfun after about 6 months running into many of the same problems. What did I do? Quit. I mean really, you EQ fan boys should just move along from this thread, it's not intended for you as I see it.
And share your experiences so that others may gain from them. Oh wait, that is what he is doing.
XML causes global warming.
I don't pay monthly fees for games. I pay one-time fees for games and then play them all I want, online or off. You hear that, game developers?
Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
The most startling fact about EverQuest is how well it conforms to the Skinner Box model, making one believe that Verant specifically designed their product around principles to make it more addictive than it would be otherwise.
Here is an interesting read on that subject.
Honestly, if the company is exploiting psychological theory in order to make their game addictive on purpose, its not much different from cigarette companies using nicotine or cola companies using caffiene IMO.
Bad? Maybe... I've heard of a lot of otherwise well adjusted people playing EQ to thier own detriment. But then, ultimately it is the responsibility of the individual to take care of themselves.
I can't wait to see 100s of geeks bouncing aorund chanting "these are not the droids you'r looking for". Then again perhaps I can. I'll be stearing clear of SWG unless they have a system to filter out all the hard core Star Wars gimps.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
that was the exact reason I stopped playing... It stopped being fun. I just hit that point sooner than most people. But now my fiance wants to try out Asherons Call ... is that any better? Should I split the cost of an account with her?
When is Rekonstruction going to finally come out?
You plod away at the keyboard, obsessed and consumed with getting that new item, or finishing that last quest, and while so consumed you begin to hate the game. Vehemently. It's a game that goes on forever, and one that you can never win.
"He loves and hates the ring, as he loves and hates himself."
-Gandalf in the first LOTR movie, referring to Gollum.
Well, hey, I didn't spend all those years playing Dungeons and Dragons and not learn a little something about courage.
Anyway, is anyone at all convinced that any of this will change with the new games being developed? SWG is close to being released, and I already see some problems...
My big concern is Everquest 2. Some of these issues are big and annoying enough to piss off everyone but the people who are playing EQ right now, and why would they want to lose their Uber characters?
We've had a lot of discussion of this over at eqii.com, and I dont think we've come to a decision whatsoever. It seems to me that for some reason people look past these huge problems to play the game, and I just dont understand it.
--onyx--
" It's a game that goes on forever, and one that you can never win."
So your saying that the only winning move is not to play? How about a nice game of chess?
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Except for the fact that you're paying for it, I didn't see any part of the rant that couldn't have applied to a text mud a decade ago.
I guess the only difference there was that anyone who was on 'em was normally a college student or researcher (or you didn't have internet access) which changed the overall mindset of the population, and we weren't paying, so there was no reason to feel compelled to play to make the most of our subscription -- some people would take a long hiatus (ie, on academic suspension after gaming too much and having to take a semester off), or there'd be those of us who would just hang out and talk to people, maybe game a little on the side.
Oh...and the fact that the coders didn't get paid. Normally meant that most of the people who wrote the game also played it regularly, and would fix whatever it was they thought was broken.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
No need to malign our culture. It's just an insightful indicator into the larger problems of David Sanftenberg.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Not only are you supporting terrorism but also the tabbaco industry. See double the evil! You dont want to support evil do you?
This is nothing but an example of how someone who is inclined to be addicted to something behaves. "Oh, we hate Sony, they are so mean to abuse us like this" blah blah blah. Well, believe it or not, you're the one with the power, take you money and do something else then and stop bitching about a stupid game. And don't give me that "Everquest is like crack" BS, I know you won't suffer any physical hardships by quitting. Be an adult and take responsibility for your own actions, Sony has nothing to do with the fact that you have let yourself become addicted to a stupid game...
This is probably the saddest thing I've ever read. I'm not which part is actually the saddest though, the time the guy put into whining about a damn game or that it was posted on Slashdot as a "news" item. This is a lengthy, whiny EQ messageboard post and should have stayed there.
Oh no, this game sucks and the people playing it are dumb enough to keep paying to play it even though they hate it. Call the National Guard! For pete's sake, get a damn life, turn off the computer, find something else to do. Even if you do say you're "addicted", there's nothing physical to the addiction, you're not going to have withdrawls or anything. Sheesh.
but they keep billing me
:>
I cancelled back on October before the billing cycle for that month. I have been billed for three months now. They finally cancelled ONE of my accounts after I had repeatedly asked they cancel ALL accounts in my name, since the in-game cancel option doesn't seem to work.
Every month I get some incompetent monkey piece of shit emailing me back telling me "your account has been cancelled, you will not be billed again".
I know they have done this to others as well. Maybe a class-action lawsuit would be in order?
By the time they've realized the hate for the game, they're addicted. So this is not an "easy" solution.
Um, did I miss the part where video games can now directly stimulate your pleasure centers? Addiction is not the same as laziness.
Either you like the game, or you don't. Exert some control over how you spend your time instead of passively absorbing whatever mindless pseudo-entertainment comes your way with the least effort. Turn off Everquest. Turn off the TV while you're at it. Go outside, take a walk. Go hiking, or skiing, make a friend, get some exercise. Get a dog from the pound, and take it for a long walk every day. Do something that gives you something to remember when you get old.
include $sig;
1;
Has anybody considered a Class Action lawsuit for poor service?
I'm certain that a couple lawsuits would make Sony note that it's more profitable to keep your customers happy than to drag them along on your whims.
And, I want to note that I know people will say "just quit" instead of a suit but there will always be somebody to fill the gap if there's a boycott etc. Only legal action ( e.g. Money ) will speak the message to Sony.
Every commercial game produced is released in order to make money. The reality of this seems to have escaped the author of this review.
As a consumer, you have a number of choices. You can choose to buy the game and play it, or you can choose to buy the game and not play it. You can also choose not to buy the game, as well.
The problem that the author is trying to address has nothing to do with Everquest; It has everything to do with the perception of value. He wants you to know what you're getting into, and he obviously feels that EverQuest is not worth the money.
Some games are addictive; The only difference is that you're not spending $x every month to play Tetris. Saying that 'you can't win' doesn't make a whole lot of sense. There are a lot of games you can't win; I own several of them.
Spy Hunter (the arcade game) was a great game. It cost twenty-five cents, and there's no way to win. It goes on forever. If you want to play Spy Hunter as long as you want to play EverQuest, it'll cost a hell of a lot more, unless you have crazy-mad Spy Hunter skills.
EverQuest offers a flat monthly rate. Some people pay something like $10 an hour for this, because they only play a couple hours a month. Some people are logged in sixteen hours a day. From an entertainment point of view, the people who are 'addicted to the game' are actually getting more value for their money. Read that again. Addicted to EverQuest: Hopeless gamer, or thifty shopper?
Maybe they don't update their site as often as they should. Are site updates part of the cost, or can anyone access them? If you're not paying for it, it does not apply to the 'value for money' problem. Poor updates, inefficient game masters... If you don't want to deal with this, don't buy the game, I suppose. On the other hand, I wouldn't rush out and buy a game that claims 'Kick-Ass Support!' and 'EXTREME GAME-MASTERING.' Game companies in the future will likely feel the same way, and just keep putting hot chicks on the boxes in the store.
All in all, I do appreciate the honesty of the rant, and I do believe that many people may not understand the value proposition of EverQuest before they buy the game and start playing. On the other hand, caveat emptor, baby!
Emmett Plant
CEO, Xiph.org Foundation
Man, that is so gay
Man, that is so homophobic. Idiot.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
I'm in the same boat as the parent poster, mostly because I can't imagine paying per-month play charges. Can anyone fill me in on why EQ would be better or worse than a detailed, well-populated traditional mud? It seems like many of the complaints about EQ would fit into any laundry list of complaints about even the best ol' text based games, which have exactly the same 'addictive' draw but generally don't require you to shell out to Sony.
Honestly, I've been trying to give up Arctic for like 8 years now... would EQ be a decent crutch to wean myself with?
[13:49] [YG]ben: eq saves money on doing other shit
[13:49] [YG]ben: you dont have to go to the "movies"
[13:50] [YG]ben: or go "hang out" whoch in sarasota means spend $20 on something
[13:50] [YG]ben: and a tank of gas laste at least 2 weeks
If Sony can get away with anally raping its customers on EQ, what makes you think they won't do the same and worse on a game where thousands will play simply because it's a Star Wars game?
No, my friend, there will be no happiness in SWG. The same morons that worked on EQ work on SWG... It's silly to expect anything good out of them.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's addictive because it's fun.
Whether or not the author wants to admit it, it is VERY MUCH like the BEST parts of a casino, without the chance of losing your entire paycheck (well you could, but at 12.95 per account that's alot of accounts!)
Whether or not he gets 'screwed' by changes he doesn't like, the reason he plays is because he LIKES that moment when you THINK you will all die, but you win in the end.
He LIKES the teamwork.
He LIKES the feeling of progress when you waste 100+ hours but finally get that last brick of whatever.
He LIKES clicking combine and have an item appear on the end of the cursor or a text message show up saying, "You have gotten better at Tailoring (250)".
He LIKES talking to friends.
He LIKES planning things, following through, and tasting victory.
He LIKES seeing: "You have gained experience! Welcome to level 62"
He LIKES going back to places he's been and feeling incredibly powerful, like Sauron blowing through the enemy hordes.
He LIKES see his armor get better, his skills go up, and being able to kill bigger things.
He LIKES all of that, despite bad timing keeping him from getting certain mobs, bad luck keeping him from getting certain drops, bad planning preventing him from keeping things that are too strong for the game design, bad customer service to explain why his uber sword of necro dick licking had to be taken from him.
Most of all, he likes all of that despite his bad perspective that convinces him someone OWES him something. It's a game and it's addictive because it lets you set your own goals and work with other people to achieve them.
Maybe his problem is just that he needs to work on how he sets his goals.
Never confuse volume with power.
"David Sanftenberg ...if he had made it to level 63 before being 0wn3d by some 1337 h4x0r 12 year old with an entire summer to burn playing it, he might not be so disgruntled.
aka Dolalin Bonewielder
62 Necromancer of Lanys T`Vyl"
Else he could just be a poor schmuck that actually PAYS for a game that obviously sound about as fun as hammering a nail through ones "member" as he keeps putting it.
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
Some of what you said is EQ specific. Some is coporate greed and indifference.
At the moment, The Sims Online has just jumped from beta to production, and is "the hot thing" for Electronic Arts. I've got to believe indifference will be minimized at this point; maybe greed, too. The "mob" and "timekiller" stuff doesn't seem to apply.
Should EQers move from pikes to pizza, from dungeons to decorating, swords to Sims?
And the big question for Sony, since any individual player has time for at most one online addiction: How many will switch?
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
Blaming particular games (particularly in a manner which reeks of personal bitterness) for addictions is like blaming alcohol for alcoholism, or blaming heroin for junkies: it's a foil. The real ones to blame are the ones who are addicted.
As far as i can tell, the story being discussed was not meant to blame Sony for creating an addictive game, it was to blame Sony for creating a poor addiction. It seemed more aimed at convincing current addicts to realize they aren't having fun, and warn new customers away from the game, than to actually alter or condemn the behavior of Sony itself. (Of course, it did seem *very* keen on condemning Sony, but i think that was more meant to be a secondary effect of the article. Altering Sony's behavior, on the other hand, the author appears to have given up on.)
While, yes, of course, it is addictive personalities and addictive substances that are to *blame* for putting persons like Mr. Sanftenberg into situations like this, it is of note that addictive personalities have a wide variety of addictions to choose from, and there is nothing wrong with attempting to steer potential addicts toward more pleasant things to waste their time and effort on than, say, Everquest, even if said steering is done in something of a rather bitter manner. Semianonymous gay sex, as you suggest, is i think a far more rewarding time sinkhole than MMORPGs.
-- super ugly ultraman
He actually describes the game pretty well. :P
You create a character with six vital statistics, a spell/skill book, and a bunch of empty slots for inventory. You put armor and weapons in your inventory slots. You walk your blocky 100-triangle avatar out in a third-person view, you click on a monster to target it, and you hit a key to start auto-attacking it. You sit there twiddling your thumbs until either it dies or you die.
Once you get a few levels, you can start getting spells and skills. These make it slightly less boring -- you make your character sit, and memorize spells, and then drag them to a bar on your screen, and you can hit 1-8 to cast them in battle. It's still pretty boring.
That, right there, is the game in a nutshell. You use a mix of auto-attacking and spells (or, being honest, either one or the other depending on your class) to kill creatures and level up. There is no plot, no rise in stature beyond who has the best items (aka phat lootz) and highest levels. Oh, and one thing the article writer forgot to mention -- those high-level planar raids have to be signed up for on a calendar up to two months in advance.
Yes, that's the game. What people get addicted to is the in-game chat, the shared experiences and what people share when they've got little else to do. I played EQ for two years before getting bored with it, and never got beyond lv20 -- my fondest memory of it is just BSing one night with a friend, drinking myself silly in-game (there's actually an Alcohol Tolerance skill) and doing drunken leaps off the bridges of a tree city called Felwithe.
The author's mostly just a whiny little technogoth -- but the game really doesn't have that much to offer. For the cost of the game and four expansions, and a few months subscription, you could easily buy an XBox and a copy of Splinter Cell, or upgrade your video card and play Doom 3 in a few months... or, my preference, do something nice for your significant other. Believe me, I'd rather have warm arms around me than an item in EQ anyday.
I did appear to be one person's opinion of the Everquest universe, but everyone has their own opinion on MMORPGS. I personally became "addicted" to Asheron's Call (1) and then am currently playing Asheron's Call (2). A much smaller fanbase (7K after 3 weeks of release), compared to over 100,000 for EQ, but I also enjoy playing stand alone games, or free online games such as Halo on Xbox, or AoE on the PC. Homeworld is great, Metal Gear Solid on the consoles as well.
One person's alternate fantasy/addiction is another person's misunderstood waste of money. I think we'll see a lot more MMORPGS come out, some come and go, because people want to interact with other human beings, not a bot, not a macro, not a program. I find a great sense of teamwork having 4-5 other humans from around the world, maybe a magic user or two, a melee, two archers and just healing each other, fighting, some witty banter, and not necessarily the big time commitment of EQ, but enjoy to enjoy the sense of community. Also, in the other games, or on specific servers, people want to KILL each other and have a human opponent to defeat. Each to their own.
One of my most memorable moments in online gaming was surprisingly in WWII Online a few weeks ago. I had chosen to play a French rifleman since the town where the action was didnt have any tanks to spawn, and when I appeared in the base, I heard this drone in the sky. It didnt sound like a bomber, or a lone fighter zipping by, I panned up and looked and saw 5 (YES FIVE) bombers almost in perfect formation heading towards the front lines. Now each bomber can have 3+ humans flying in it, all from different places on the internet. How does one fly in formation online with other people on the internet? I was amazed and laughed, but its a sense of teamwork which will keep the masses coming for more for online games.
Relive the BBS Past - One Byte at a Time! www.ssabbs.com
I can understand what he's talking about, even if it seems a little extreme. I've seen a similar thing happen with Anarchy Online. I know a few people, and have done all I can to avoid this myself, who have gotten so wrapped up in finding one item or making the "uberest" character they can that it has ruined the game for them. There is one item in particular, the Grid Armor, which is one of the rarest items in the game. The highest version of it, Mk 4, is extremely rare. I have known people who have spent over 100 hours in the game just looking for it or trying to accumulate the credits(the monetary unit) to buy it from another character. A few of them quit when it seemed like if they couldn't get the item, the game wouldn't be fun, yet it wasn't fun trying to get it. There is a point where it stops being so fun, but you keep playing. The most interesting is the people who blame FunCom (the makers of AO) for all their problems. There are still many bugs and inbalances in AO, and some people have quit because of this. Most people continue to play for those really good parts of the game they started for, but dying repeatedly from a bug to the point you can't gain a level really gets on your nerves after a while. I think what it comes down to is the escape from reality. That is where the addiction really lies. It is a roleplaying game, and by it's fundamental quality it allows you to take on another character, personality, and life for a while. In this other world you can have friends, or be successful, or powerful, or whatever it is you really want ot be. I think a lot of people try to use AO as an escape from life and that is where they go wrong. When it isn't all that much more perfect you find you hate it even more than real life because you thought it could be perfect. It's kinda like growing up and wishing you were a kid again when everything was so easy, even though all the same problems of the world were out there. Some people do get nearly addicted to the game, and they are addicted to the escape, in my opinion.
The current game on the market is Dark Age of Camelot, and at this time (although this may change, but hopefully not) it costs half as much at 6 UKP per month, or 5 UKP if you pay for longer in one go. I have not experienced any abuse to date off players. Mainly because the GM's really do stamp on people and ban the accounts when sent evidence of such activities. Any of the above problems are also stamped on, like dragging monsters to other people etc. Players views are taken into account, they welcome logs of encounters for play balance etc. And hopefully they will continue to do so, and not fall into the problems that EQ did. And To be honest if a company wasn't there to make a profit it wouldn't be a company, but a organization.
--+> Life, is there any?
Graphical IRC with some fighting :).
Article failed to mention that people are making real money from the game as people are willing to spend real money to help them get ahead, without having to put the time in. This probably works to EQ's benefit...
If I was going to make an MMORPG I'd certainly have rare items and mobs, but with some more randomness too, and better CR. Obviously I'd want people to get "addicted" so they can stay playing for as long as possible.
I've played EQ on and off for awhile, but had a clean break from it once I put fully installed Linux with no dual boot, until WineX came out of course (but I still only occaisonly play with it...).
As for Legends, yes you get customer service, but you also get more dynamic campaigns with GM run events, something EQ used to do more back when it was still relatively new (and too much complaining by lower levels dying seemed to have helped kill most of these events imho).
StarTux
Nethack .
One of these days I'll ascend, but until them, that dev team is a bunch of complete bastards.
And more than likely those who run Star Wars Galaxies will employ more money making schemes. The maintainers of everquest have added pay services such as a premium server, name changes for money, server transfers for money, and such. While there is a strong resistance to this from Everquest players as it goes against the precident of the game, there will be no such precident in Star Wars Galaxies. I think we can expect to see a situation in where, not only haveing more time but also having more money allows you to advance beyond other players.
I do security
http://www.progressquest.com
I guarantee you won't have any of the problems this guy mentions. There are plenty of monsters, you'll never worry about artificial scarcity. There are fantastic items, and they never get taken away from you. There are no level caps or future expansion packs required. And now that they have added guilds, you can have everything you had in EverQuest, albeit without the fancy 3D rendered graphics.
But this guy said the only factor is spending time, right? Well, then Progress Quest is the best choice...there is no other factor but time!
- JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Oh, by the way, if you want to ask some players without their panties in a wad, these are the people to talk to:
Wizards
Warriors
Rogues
And finally, the truly sick in the head obsessed players:Tradeskillers
Never confuse volume with power.
"... leaving you holding your member... the 60 people in your guild are left holding your collective members for six months... Your guild is then left holding their collective members once again..."
I didnt know people got off playing EQ... I guess with AOL doing away with their sex chat rooms, something had to fill the void...
You are one sick puppy...
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
While Mr. Sanftenberg has written a very compelling piece as to why Everquest is the bane of gamers everywhere, it is the single opinion of a single person, who from what I can see, does not have any credentials besides his own (obviously bitter) experience playing the game.
With the reach and influence of slashdot, do those who decide what to post ask themselves "should we post this"? Note that I have never played, nor do I ever plan to play Everquest, however, I feel that without posting an opposing view, Slashdot has obviously taken an editorial stance on this issue that could influence a large community. I have noticed this type of article being posted more often of late, which leads me to wonder what direction /. is moving in. What happens when /. posts an article that is against something that is truely a good thing, but because of the contributors skewed (and unprofessional) view of things, and this site's influence, the result is overly negative in the real world?
Some responsability or accountability should be taken when deciding what articles to post, and when they are completely based on one person's views (especially one as bitter as Mr. Sanftenberg), some effort should be made to ensure the other side of the story is posted, so that the reader can see the entire picture! Otherwise, the article should not be posted at all!
Moderators rate people's comments, but perhaps Moderators, or the general readership of /. should be able to rate the post itself, and whether it is appropriate to be on /. at all.
-Lokatana
I found the game to be pretty boring...it costs too much time to build your character and nothing exciting occurs until you get to the 35th level(or so I'm told).
I think the appealing part of this game is that you get to do things together with other people and accomplish gaols--but I'm not a social person(by habit is more anti-social) and playing solo is pretty boring.
It is always the solution. Gamlbing, alcohol, TV, anything. YOU GIVE IT UP.
After such a long post about a game that is buggy and the corporate-sized publisher that "cares more about profit" (surprise?) - I felt like this guy needed intervention, not sympathy.
If this were a single player RPG with bots, he'd play it, review it and be done. Upgrade, patch and expand, yay. But who cares after a while? It's a game! REMEMBER THAT PART?
mug
If you think you have a problem...
I spent much of my teens playing videogames. Although I found time to do other things ( played high school bball for a number of years ), it was not uncommon for me to put in 18 hour days, several days in succession during break. And all in all I preferred video games to people a lot of the time, which I suspected was not healthy.
I started my computer science degree because of this fascination with games.
Eventually it occurred to me that the video game was just a generic "challenge" for me, and that there were more rewarding challenges out there because the payoffs are not mostly virtual.
My point is find out what the game really does for you, then try different things that fulfill that need. For me...
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
I'm not gonna sit here and "defend" Sony or Verant or Absor or any of them, even though I have had the pleasure of meeting with them personally and sharing beers with them. This article is obviously by a bitter gamer who wants to smear EQ's reputation through the mud, and that's fine. This is the age of the Internet, and it's his right to do that.
:>
I left the Guide program due to hardware issues about a year ago - after about two years of service. This was back when we had our own GM on the server, but it was difficult to get in touch with him during his work hours. Why? Because of kids. Because he had to clean up after scammers and recover lost items...He was insanely busy for his entire shift, and he wouldn't really be on server all that much.
When I was a Guide, I can safely say that out of every 20 petitions I fielded, I was able to help about 17 or 18 of them. I was able to help the majority of the players I conversed with during my shift. But you don't hear about them. You don't hear about the people that had the volunteer CS staff help them in a quick and expedient manner. They don't come out and say "Thank you." You only heat about people like the author of this article, who feels he has been wronged. The ones that say that we didn't care.
And then, there are the people who petition and won't let you help them. Even if you do exactly what they ask, they will still curse you out and and call you incompetent. Or, if you inquire more information about the problem, they demand that you stop asking questions and just fix it. (As if we had access to the source code and could just recompile it on the fly...) Yes, I know. This is reality. This is how I was treated working in Retail, too. But luckily, people like this were very, very, VERY few and far between.
We did care about every situation, every petition. I was a Guide on one of the two Teams-PvP servers, so not only did we have to deal with training and kill stealing, but we also had corpse campers, bind rushers, and immortal healing. Some of these were no-nos, and some of these (like immortal healing, where someone outside of PvP range would heal someone who's killing you) were deemed "Okay" by Sony. Did I agree with the ruling? Not really, but there's really not much Guides could do. The author of the article is right - we pretty much had our hands and feet tied. We were the eyes and ears of the GM's - nothing more. We could unstick players from walls and document warnings for behavior if they were dumb enough to still do it while we were staring at them. (We could be invisible.)
I don't know how things are now inside the program, but I can say that when I was in it, we actually were helping many people and people enjoyed their time in EQ because of the ways we helped them. There are far more of those type of people than the type of people like the author of this article. However, everybody that will reply to my message here will be the bitter types that will tell me that I'm just a Sony PR person that believes the kool-aid fed to me by Michelle Butler for two years. (Just you watch, some AC will just cut and paste that exact sentence, or change a word or two.)
I stopped playing EverQuest because all my friends did - and there was no reason to stick around. However, we're all waiting for Star Wars: Galaxies. And you guessed it, it's by the same guys who made EQ.
For the bitter ones, you might want to stay away from all online games, because it will just be "Wash, Rinse, Repeat" for you.
If you're still open to an enjoyable experience, we're in for one helluva ride.
I think the moral of this whole topic is: EQ in moderation is awesome. But don't let yourself get bitter. That only brings you down.
Have people died while using the product?
EQ : yep
Smoking : yep
Bicycles: yep
Food: yep
Clothes: yep
Do people spend more money the product then they have?
EQ : Yep
Smoking : Yep
Bicycles: yep
Food: yep
Clothes: yep
Is the product marketing to children?
EQ : yep
Smoking : yep.
Bicycles: yep
Food: yep
Clothes: yep
What the hell is your point?
Casca
I'm not quite sure if this really belongs on Slashdot... It is, after all, not much more than a glorified whine.
That said:
The author seems to have neglected the megainflation that I have heard plagues EQ, thanks to a combonation of exploits in the economy and macroing. This is probably the main reason I'm glad I'm playing DAoC instead of EQ.
I think EQ will prove to be just a beta for MMORPGs to come. (Well, UO initially did, EQ improved on that, and then come EQ's successors). Dark Age of Camelot, which I play, seems to have taken a lot of the best elements of EQ, while removing its flaws.
Customer Support: Biggest negative about DAoC - It is a bit better than EQ's, but still leaves much to be desired. Mythic does sometimes put in highly demanded features, but in other cases sees fit to completely ignore a poll that says 80%+ of players want a particular feature, without even commenting on why they don't want to implement it.
Economy: DAoC has zero inflation. A guild can go from rich to flat broke in 2 weeks just by claiming a frontier keep. Guess that needs some explaining, so now to explain how DAoC makes gameplay a lot more enjoyable long-term.
In EQ, it appears there are two types of servers - Standard servers where you can't attack any other players, and PvP servers where you can attack anyone. Standard servers - They get boring pretty quickly. PvP - Lots of cheaters and getting flattened by the hardcore players. DAoC is halfway between the two - The game is split into three realms. You can't attack anyone from your own realm, but it's open season on the other two. Each realm has a frontier with small castles (keeps), and there are rewards for killing people from other realms (realm points) and capturing keeps (Access to a high-level dungeon with above average loot/XP per mob and power/strength relics). This allows you to level to 50 peacefully, and then go out and start flattening other players.
Keep doors take wood to upgrade/repair. Wood costs LOTS of money... As a result, DAoC has no inflation. (There are also no ways a macroer can make quick cash, since not a single item sells for more than the cost of its ingredients.)
Some servers have worse "uber guild" attitudes than others. But even on the worst servers attitude-wise, players from smaller guilds are almost always welcome in small hunting groups and RvR raids.
Thanks to recent patches, almost any item in the game can be crafted. Thanks to this, there isn't intense competition over loot drops, because people can customize their own weapons/armor complete with stat bonuses. (At a price, of course...)
There's an upcoming game called EVE that is going to have an insanely complex and intricate economy, where it's entirely possible to progress without any violence whatsoever. It should prove interesting if it lives up to the hype.
From all I've heard about SOE's track record, I'm not so sure if SWG will live up to its hype...
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There are many people that cannot do without a certain thing even though they are in no chemical process attached to it. Such is Everquest. To tell someone just to 'stop' is like telling a kleptomaniac to stop stealing or an alcoholic to stop drinking. It can be done but it is not easy and there will always be the draw to go back to it
I do security
At least netrek is addictive without the monthly cash.
And the game hasn't been improved in years! (Well, unless you count the extinction of Paradise...)
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
Did the EULA Sony presented you with require that you keep playing a game you hate?
Did it take over your PC and allow nothing else?
Don't talk bollocks. Try setting your goal as working alone or with a single partner. Try setting you goal as ridding the world of monsters or evil or whatever; can't be done.
EQ is a badly designed load of shit game that lives off it's players' foolish belief that anyone that designs a game must, surely, want the game to be interesting and fun and that if it turns out not to be either the company will fix it. That way they don't have to rationalise to themselves why they wasted hundreds of dollars on a piece of crap, and don't even have the piece of crap to show for it at the end!
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Don't forget the expansion coming out, Kingdom of Stone, the phone version coming out, the single player version coming out, EQ2, and of course, EQ for the PS2.
... it's easy to stand there and laugh at those of us who have been there and tell us simply to "stop" or "don't".
For someone who has never had to kick a habit, like drugs, drinking, sex, smoking, etc
Face it, people are stupid, and the internet is the place where they all meet.
If you can do with out the graphics, there's still plenty of free MUDs out there.
I gave 'em up years ago, but man, they were fun. And if you managed enough levels, you usually got the chance to learn to code and add your own stuff onto the game. It was quite an enjoyable experience.
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
The original article is a troll. The writer vastly exaggerates the addiction, the problems, and the state of the game.
I've played the game since three months after release and I still enjoy it. I've gotten good customer service. I don't obsess over it; I take breaks.
The ones with addiction problems who hate the game yet can't stop -- they have problems that don't stem from EverQuest. EverQuest addiction is merely a symptom of an obsessive personality or other psychological issues.
Hmmm, time-consuming, buggy, sucks down money, built to keep you enthralled, no joy yet you have to do reptitive tasks endlessly- wow, is this an EverQuest or a Microsoft article?
Sorry, just had to do it.
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
Up until about a week ago, I was completely addidcted to EQ. I had this horrible epiphony while grinding exp where I suddenly realized how boring this really was. I had been playing this character for 1.5 years, had him up to level 53(out of a total of 65), and just knew that I could NEVER accomplish my in-game goals. After 2 years I had gone beyond the fun of it, the roleplaying factor, and the friend factor. I was in it for two things: loot and power. For about 6 months now, I had been bullshitting myself. I would read the webpages of the uber-guilds and see requirements like: 8 hours a night, everynight, logged in play time, or you WILL be removed from the guild. I'd look over at my wife feeding my daugther and give a big "fuck that" to the game. I often wish I could go back and start over. The fun in this game isn't at lvl 65 doing uber crazy raids. It's a few lvl 10's in a some dank forest running for their lives. I really wish I would've appreciated that when I was in that place.
But no matter, after a few "uninstalls" over the last few month where I would re-install it 6 hours later, I finally broke the addiction last week. I told a freind my password while I was at work, he logged in without my account, wiped all my characters permanently and canceled my account. He then came to my work, I gave him my house key, and he went home and snapped every single EQ cd I owned in half. It sounds pretty fucking pathetic, but after failing to quit multiple times, it needed to be done. Hell, I've had a new 2ghz/geforce 4ti4600 rig since August, and NOTHING was installed on it except windows 2k, and EQ. THAT'S IT.
Seriously, quit the fucking game. Their's a ton of really dope games coming out soon, and none of them require 12 hours a day from you. Now, to bust out some Impossible Creatures.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
You sit down at a table with a little board with 64 squares. You choose one of two colors, white or black. Not many choices in Chess huh?
You get 6 different types of pieces and each one can move in a slightly different fashion. The goal is to capture the "King".
That, right there, is the game in a nutshell.
--
Like most games that require skill, it can be a little boring until you gain some. At level 20 you had barely opened your eyes to the game. I personally enjoyed the hell out of EQ for my first 20 levels. Seeing new places, meeting new people, getting my ass handed to me and learning how to go back and hand out a beating of my own.
EverQuest isn't for everyone, but it's not nearly as trivial a thing as the parent post would like you to think. Try it. If you don't like it, you have wasted about as much money as a movie at the theater.
You know what I love about EQ players like this one? They get treated like crap and continue pumping cash and effort into a game that most companies would consider to be in the "Alpha" state of development as far as quality is concerned.
And they never just quit. These people are losers, dorks with no lives and no spines. I have an EverQuest account that has been active for a couple years. I haven't logged on in months, and one of these ultimate-losers (I don't even know who anymore.) pays the bill for me. EQ players need to wake up and smell the damned latte: YOU ARE LETTING PEOPLE EXPLOIT YOU. Now I will present the steps to getting over EverQuest.
1- Cancel your account. Really.
2- Move out of your Mom's basement.
3- Get a haircut, and I mean a real one, not just a trim of that disgusting mop on your head. I don't care if you look like Richard Stallman or black-and-white era beatles, have a barber make you look like a man.
4- Shave. Daily.
5- See a dermatologist. Stop using that excuse about an HMO approval and just spend the fucking 6- Buy nice new clothes. Get them somewhere nice like Macy's, Bloomingdale's, or Lord and Taylor.
7- Put on your nice clothes, go out into the world, and make friends who are NOT gamers. Girls are especially nice.
8- Have fun. Learn what sunlight is like. Get a dog and take him camping with you.
At this point, when you have realized what REALLY matters in life, you can start playing EverQuest again. Only then will you be able to get over all the little bugs and bad customer service, because you just won't care anymore.
telnet mirkwoodmud.org 4000
"More organs means more human." - Zim
Of course people could just stop (the same as with any addiction), but when you reach that point your perspective is skewed. You don't want to give up the time you have invested and will overlook the faults hoping against hope that Verant will get off their arses and fix the problems with the next expansion or update. Of course what usually happens is the problems don't get fixed, but the cycle repeats.
I was in the same situation myself. Although I wasn't "hardcore" (playing an hour or two at most a night), and have a real life too, I found it quite a struggle to leave. I can well imagine that others would find it nigh on impossible. Ironically for me it was Verant themselves who managed to snap me out it. The Shadows of Luclin expansion release was such a hamfisted, buggy travesty that I lost all confidence that they ever gave a crap about the game. Considering the ludicrous amounts of money they made each months on subs I was damned if I was going to put up with it any more.
It doesn't sound from their pre-release attitude with their Star Wars rpg that they have learnt from the experience. SW players can look forward to being fucked over and ignored, bugs will go unfixed, the game will be repetitive, and expansions will still be buggy, but a hardcore will still be addicted despite that.
You mean Sony isn't concerned for my personal welfare? That they just want my **money**? Next thing you'll be saying is that they don't really care about those recording artists they represent either.
Capitalism can be a cruel mistress...
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
OK, now. This is getting ridiculous. At least the "IN SOVIET RUSSIA" posts are funny, but these are just old. Yes, open source is wonderful. It solves every problem on the planet. It is the meaning of life. Come on now, this is ridiculous. Next thing that somebody will post is , "Hey, you think cancer could be cured if medicine was open sourced?"
Truth. Victimhood is rampant. When was the last time you heard someone not blame something. Just say "Yeah, I guess that's just me" or "I was wrong"? Awhile? No shit.
"I really wasted a few months on that online game. I feel as if I'm wasting my life. Live and learn. How about doing something productive with my time?"
Also:
Couching this in the second-person passive voice does not fool anyone.
will absorb your life if you let it
Stop speaking for me. I'm old enough to think for myself. I think you need to get "addicted" to something like work.
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
Just my one cent. (taking off the one cent bonus since it doesn't have much to do with the article)
While I've never played Everquest, I am familiar with obsessive\compulsive behavior (through my own experiences). :). Pen & paper RPG's have several advantages over online, in that the players interact face to face, there is more room for creative input, more options for character development, and ultimately costs less. It still won't get you laid, though :)
The problem, I think, is that by the time a game like this stops being fun you have a huge time investment in it. Walking away from the game at that point would be difficult, because then it would feel like all those hours (or weeks, months, years) were wasted. Even if you are not having fun, I imagine that it feels like you have to keep playing simply to justify all the time you've already put into it.
Of course, the sad thing is that this time is already "wasted", since there can never be a conclusion to these games. Since the only real reward of these games is the fun you have, then if it stops being fun you should stop playing. For a while, at least. Maybe it will be fun to play again if you stop for a few months.
As an aside, I think Everquest addicts should stop playing EO and maybe start up a D&D (or other pen and paper based rpg) with their friends, to wean themselves away from it (sortof like methadone
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
I just got an xbox recently as a gift with the live subscription. Gaming has apparently taken on all types of new money making schemes. Microsoft (which has you pay a per year fee for server access) enforces a CC number for all accounts. even if they were a gift like mine was. This is to allow you to 'unlock' features in games. Want the extra outfit for your character ($5) please. There is a setting so that it's not automatic and I have the setting toggled so. I wouldn't be suprised if the 'more you pay' type mentatlity creeps into games more. They are probobly tired of seeing all those scammers on eBay making a mint off selling gold pieces (or whatever the currency for the game is), enhanced characters, etc.
Once companies realize that adult gamers have little else to dispose their cash on you will probobly be able to start a lvl 80 character for the low low price of $24.99. After you've purchased the game and online subscription of course. Don't forget to get the extra cache of power weapons upgrades... only $4.99 this week...
I agree, after reading the article I just felt like saying to him. "It looks like someones online character needs to do a little meditating". :-)
I'm personaly am not interested in a game where you are unable to win or at least get a high score like the good old days. Maybe if I had enough time and money I'd try Everquest just to form my own opinion of the game.
Shit, I quit smoking, you'd at least think people could quit a video game.
You know, my initial thought was to respond to this in detail. I played EQ for some time, and eventually got bored with it and quit. Thus, the *GAME* is not any more addictive than any other recreational activity. Many, many people are far more "addicted" to television, sitting in front of the tube letting the hours melt away with absolutely nothing to show for it (and in fact, paying a monthly subscription to a cable company or satellite provider!).
Why don't you go on about how these poor people are being mistreated by the television networks? Afterall, THEY have no say in what they get to watch either. Customer service never pays any attention to the television viewer, and certainly diputes amongst family members over what channel will be turned on are ignored. Why some kids will actually set the VCR up to tape a channel just to keep their sibling from watching something else! Artificial scarcity of resources and regular "spawns" of TV shows are commonplace here too.
It's a game. It's a way to ignore reality for some amount of time so you don't become so depressed/angry at your situation/boss/President/etc, that you go postal. When it starts being more effort than fun, you stop playing it. If you can't do that, you have an addictive personality and need help. Be thankful you're only addicted to a $10/month game instead of crack or trips to the casino!
Not every game needs to have a "win-state". The point of a mud (and EQ is nothing more than a DikuMUD with a graphics engine replacing the room engine) is to enjoy playing it... there often is no ultimate goal (well, for some it was becoming a builder... but you can't do that with Sony), other than to be more powerful than your neighbor. The main difference is that a graphical mud doesn't let you use your imagination the way a text game does. Try reading a book instead of watching a movie sometime, you might get the idea.
Thanks to your review I can guarantee I will never play Everquest, the mention of timesinks alone is enough to turn one off.
This doesn't mean that all online games are like this though, or that they have to be. I've been playing Unreal Tournament 2003 for the past few weeks, and it has been a blast. No monthly fees, no hoops to jump through, just plain fun.
Maybe it's not the Everquest game that is so bad, as the sales model.
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
Maybe I should have added that all my friends were addicted to it, and altho I no longer played, I've seen them go through 30 to 60, and just never saw much difference. About the only thing I ever enjoyed seeing on their monitors was seeing the Planes for the first time. Really, I think I actually did myself a huge favor by getting out before 25 when the game still felt new to me, but just not interesting enough to continue paying. Of them, only two of them are still playing, and that's mostly because they've got too many friends in their guilds to put it down. The rest have all either gotten bored with twiddling thumbs between raids or decided that money would be best spent elsewhere or saved in the current economy.
:P
FYI, I'm also not a newbie to MMOGs -- I used to be a regular reader of Lum the Mad, and I've also gone through UO, AC, AO, and DAOC in their turn. I'm not saying all MMORPGs are boring, but I would definitely say that Everquest is the least entertaining in the long run of them all.
Although it could be worse. You could be playing World War 2 Online.
Bizarre how all the games seem to be based on capitalism. Is it that we don't enjoy anything else? Are we really this greedy at heart?
I've seen this phenomena before, and everyone has probably been exposed to it whether they understood it or not.
:)
After putting enough time into something that turns out to be unsatisfying, sometimes your mind becomes it's own worst enemy. You don't want to stop, because doing that would be an admission that you've been wasting countless money and time for far too long. Facing that fact is often difficult for people to deal with, and so they will rationalize a reason for continuing their unsatisfying behavior, and display hostility to others who quit, because quitters disrupt the illusion that the activity still has merit.
Examples:
- Everquest and some other mud-like games.
- A company that continues to use an inferior product simply because they were conned into spending an excessive amount of money on it originally.
- People that linger too long in obviously bad relationships
- Javier, of Les Miserables fame
How is open source going to pay the bandwidth bill for 80,000 people being connected at once?
"Well, we'll take paypal donations or something."
"John wants X bug fixed and he donated like $500 this month. Think we could do it?"
"Man, we should just make a company out of this!"
Iduno. Of course, you are correct: This is not an isolated incident. However, if I'm going to maintain my faith in humankind, I have to believe that they're a vocal, but very small minority.
And in that regard, they do not reflect our current culture, but rather an aspect of human nature. I'm sure that there were similar numbers of people that thought and behaved this way in 1950, 1900, 1850, and 1800.
Call me optimistic by comparison: Sure, our culture may be crappy, but it's never been better!
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
A former roommate of mine got in on the ground floor. One night he cancels all social events, due to some guild event.
Later he walks into the kitchen and starts making dinner. He then consumes dinner, in the living room, watching TV. It occurs to me that he cancelled all social events, including an evening with his girlfriend. "Oh, did the meet get cancelled or postponed?"
"No, we're fighting right now. I just put it on autoattack. It'll take another 20 minutes or so to win, so I'll check on it later."
Um, OK.
I remember when some class finally got the power it was promised when the game was released; but it cost too much and didn't work right, anyway. Roommate was trying to show me how cool it was, but it made litle sense and was anticlimactic (you did something like 10 extra points of damage every how and then).
I remember trains, and chatty people, and all that. I remember my roommate developing a whole new vocabulary - bubs and zoning and whatever else. I remember patches with reputations worse than NT service packs, and useless tech support, and dropped connections, and lost characters due to server-side upgrades, and more.
This was all before the first expansion pack!
I say, yes, the game sucks you in with a feedback loop you can't escape from (I think it's called a Skinner Box?). I knew all this before the first expansion came out. While I agree with the entire screed (from an observer POV, anyway) I can't understand how it took you that long to realize all this. Most people jumped off a while ago, and the rest are getting exactly what they deserve.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
This is the game that never ends,
It just goes on and on, my friend;
Somebody started playing it, not knowing what it was,
And they'll continue playing it forever just because,
This is the game that never ends,
It just goes on and on, my friend;
Somebody started playing it, not knowing what it was,
And they'll continue playing it forever just because,
This is the game that never ends,
(repeat ad infinitum)
Excuse me, I have to go play... er... do something.. er.. non-..computer related.
If you or anyone you know ever gets this bitchy about a goddamn video game, you're playing too much. Period.
No, don't try to argue. Turn off your PC for a day. A week. A month. Go do something else. Come back and realize how fucking pathetic this sounds.
Trolls make great pets. Adopt one today!
In the last 4 years I have bit my lip many times to say these 3 words.....This story pushes me over the edge:
/. "news for nerds", but I always felt proud holding the nerd flag without a D&D insignia on said flag....And I feel the same way about EQ.
GET A LIFE!
You know who I feel sorry for....That is the poor tweeb in customer support that has to deal with these (forgot about reality) wackos. I know this is
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They'll notice if you transfer more than $15,000 (or gold coins, astro credits, zenny coins etc...) from one user to another and audit it, just like the federal gov't. "Are you sure you didn't arrange this transfer via ebay?!!"
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
Pr0nQuest is a game centered on rewarding you for how much spunk you put into it. This is the core design philosophy behind the game, since they charge you by the month and make more money the longer you drool at the screen. What they don't tell you is that taking your money is about all they're interested in. They care little for player complaints ("No, not Grandma again!"), and less about player suggestions and requests (More cheerleaders, less NYC hookers.) They're in this to milk you for all you're worth, and that's the first thing you have to know.
...
...
The second thing you have to know is that the pr0n stops being fun. By that time though, you're so "addicted" to the pr0n, you don't realize it. The pr0n becomes a source of frustration and release instead of a source of entertainment and fun. It becomes a whacking chore. It becomes a hand job. You pull away at the joystick, obsessed and consumed with getting that new DIVX rip, or finding that last photo series, and while so consumed you begin to hate the pr0n. Vehemently. It's a desire that goes on forever, and one that you can never get to the ultimate climax.
These situations are 'lovingly' referred to by the ooglers as dicksinks; pr0ntease traps intended to waste your spunk and keep you whacking longer. There are hundreds of them; others incredibly hotter than simply getting to a orgy. Several series required to complete your collection require you to spend 100+ hours sitting in single chairs, killing hundreds of sperm in 12-hour stretches for a "rare drop", such as a nipple shot of Britney Spears; or the latest Pamela video; with which to excite the little boss. Unlike the other parts of the pr0n, these dicksinks are required for excitement, and there is no getting around them unless you wish to stop playing with yourself. This is of course not fun at all, but as said above, by this time you'll have long stopped having fun with pr0n. You'll do it anyway though, as thousands of others have, because you, like them, are addicted. The quest to find the cherry popping video of Natalie Portman is one of the most vicious dicksinks in the entire world, but it is merely one example among dozens. To even reach this area of the game requires months of non-stop whacking with your "sword"; sometimes up to a year of panting heavily. Only then will you be powerful enough to enter her.
Perhaps now you've begun to see the other side of pr0n: The buggier side, the darker side; the side of despair and guilt, fear and sticky carpet. The pr0n will absorb your life if you let it, while the days and weeks melt away into oblivion. I have barely touched on the repetitive teasing you must endure to reach the top levels of the pr0n: downloading pic after pic, hundreds upon hundreds in an endless non-exciting stream to gain a collection. I have not said anything about dickdeath (losing your erection) from brain network problems, or hard drive crashes where you lose any pictures or videos recently attained (and for which you are not compensated by email spam). I have not said anything about the PlayBoy(TM) subscriptions, where you get to pay $40/month to get the pictures that you should be receiving anyway. There are many other problems with this pr0n that I did not go into here. Before you get into pr0n, realize what you're jumping into. Look before you whack.
Blog,Twitter
I keep wondering this myself. Granted, the only games I've written are really crappy, certainly not worth paying for. But I can't help to think, that with even just a few hundred subscribers I could afford to support myself with the game, and colo a suitable server.
What do you really want out of a game though? Personally, I think most want to be a "hero"... but that will always be impossible with something like Everquest. As I see it, I'm thinking I would take applications to play, and try to weed out the idiots and shitheads. Also, you don't "create" a character, you'd get to choose from a lineup... many of which were in existence as NPCs. (Of course, I would try to make sure there are at least 2 or 3 that are particularly appealing). You'd get a short, personally written bio of your character, enough background to play it well. I'd try to get an idea when you'd be playing, and match it up to the liefstyles/location of your character candidates. Maybe you can only play during the EST evening, which is midday in the game world, so you have many to choose from. But EST morning players would have characters primarily awake during the night. Too artificial?
Instead of making it a competition to get items/scores, you'd be presented with all sorts of situations... imagine being the newly hired town guardsmen, and stumbling upon 2 of your coworkers murdering the shopkeeper. Do you try to do something about, try to stay hidden (you could be next), or try to get in on it (maybe they'll split the protection money 3 ways). If you report it, how do you know the guard captain isn't in on it?
People playing out of character would be warned once, and then booted... my opinion, is that many of these situations would evolve on their own, just by playing in character. The rest would be induced by GMs.
How many people, and how much would they pay, for something like that?
Well... DUH... Did you see the name on the box?
Ñ'
As a US citizen, my life ceases to exist every April 15th.
And somehow chess is more interesting than checkers. The thing that makes chess interesting is what it requires of the player. That is also true of any other interesting game or sport. So what is it about Everquest that actually makes it interesting? My (limited) experience with the game seems to be that it requires nothing of the player but sufficent free time.
he forgot the /rant on the end of that 'article'
However, the author makes soem very good points. I had a pretty bad customer service experience that made me quit the game.
My January bill (jan 2001 i think.) was run twice. I had two deductions from sony out of my checking account. No big deal, 12.95 isn't going to drive me into chapter 11, but I still wanted my money. I call support and offer up the usual information, then the support guy starts getting ansy. He wants to know the cardholder information again.
I had purchased my copy of the game from a co-worker. he played the game a week, decided it sucked, and offered me his copy for ten bucks. What the hell, I bought it, fell in love with the game, and played for well over a year. But I wasn't the person who originally activated the account. I dumped all the original characters, and started anew.
A few months into my gaming experience i noticed that Sony had taken a major stance against selling characters and accounts. BFD, i wasn't planning on selling my level 20 cleric anytime soon.
But back to the support call. Once The tech finds out that I didn't buy the game from a sony authorized retailer, all support stopped. I didn't have an in game issue, I had a billing issue. Nothing. No help at all. Once he found out that I wasn't the original cardholder, he gave me the polite support equivilent of a "gofuckyerself." I'd had an extra 13 bucks taken from my account and there was nothing that I could do, or that they were going to do, to fix the problem. I'd played for well over a year, bought an expansion. But to them that and a buck would get me a cup of coffee.
Now, here's the amazing part. This is what'll get this modded up to 'interesting' or dare I say even 'insightful.' I CANCELED MY ACCOUNT! Yes, that's right. I had a bad customer service experience, and thus I took my money elsewhere. Suport was unresponsive, So I quit contributing to their salaries.
That's what really gets my goat about peopple who incessantly rant about how awful $GAME_OF_CHOICE is. They spend time ranting, raving, and bitching about how bad $ASPECT is, but they keep sending their fucking money. Don't like the econmics of the company? quit! think Necro's have an unfair advantage in melee? quit!
Granted, I've just spent a good deal of time ranting about a bad experience / aspect, but i actually did something about it. The author goes on and on about quitters being ridiculed by guildmates, sony being crack dealers, etc. Give me a goddamned 'Henry Rollins delux edition' clue by four so I experience the joy of getting addicted to clocking the author in the skull. Addicts my ass. Spend some time around a drug rehab center, then try calling a hardcore EQ player an addict.
Ridiculed by guildmates? If i was really worried about be made fun of by people I'll never see / meet / give more than passing serious thought to, then i wouldn't be posting to slashdot. The author of that 'article' is the EQ equivilent of a karma whore.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
EverQuest retail, like you said, is $9. Your first month is free. The original EverQuest is all you need to get started, and really it's all you will be able to do till you gain a few levels. By then you'll know if you enjoy the game enough to buy some expansions for it. If you don't, you are still out less money than the movies and the geek talk :)
:)
Not that you can't do both, I am just saying that for $9, if you are into RPGs at all it's worth a shot and you might just find you have stumbled on the cheapest form of entertainment known to man
All I want for christmas is... ....an angry mob!
If EQ was designed from the get go to be a Skinner box and addict you - that was grotesquely immoral. It really was.
I think we'll see the day when games like that are illegal.
Remember when there was Coke in Coke?
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
The bad things about the game all basically boiled down to the fact that you're playing with a bunch of immature teenagers...
People get this bizarre concept of "honour" about what constitutes acceptable tactics. I say the levels and weapons are the way they are, and they should be used to their fullest. However, when I use a certain tactic (such as piston-camping or the redeemer-toss on Facing Worlds) I'd invariably be called names and accused of cheating. Rather than try to outsmart me with counter-tactics, these weenies would rather complain about how unfair I'm being. (Never mind that they could use the exact same tactics against me.) I presume these same people would accuse me of "bishop camping" if I beat them in chess. In contrast, our clan had counter-tactics at the ready, and we used them. To me, that's the fun of the game. If you fall for a trick like piston-camping more than once or twice in a game, you're an idiot, and deserve to lose.
Playing in a clan, even a clutz like me gets pretty good at the game. Afterward, when I joined a random server to play a game or two, I'd often get accused of cheating, simply because I won a few melees or captured a few flags, and sometimes I'd even get kicked off the server, even without using "cheating" tactics (see above).
The politics of the clan became a bit much for me after a while, and I turned the reins over to a friend of mine a little while before half the clan left to start their own clan. Invariably, all the problems came from the teenagers. By the end, most games were played by three old-timers (averaging 28 years old or so) and one particluarly mature and talented teenager. At that point, my personal fun level increased dramatically, since we were all there just to have fun competing, not to boost our egos in a make-believe military organization.
But all these things are relatively minor, especially compared with the woes that some EQ players apparently experience.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Any change in any part of the game has a signifigant chance of effecting multiple other parts of the game that no-one could predict. Players beat challenges with a speed that is awe-inspireing and demand more. Infact, the players do nothing but demand. ANY imbalance in the 15 classes causes thousands of complains. People get mad about the time that servers are patched, things spawning to fast and too slow. Things being too easy and too tough. Items entering the too fast or too slow. Players will use any method to win they can find whether legitimate or blatently exploitive. And then get mad when exploitive methods are removed.
SoE (Sony online Entertainment) is trying to satisfy hundreds of thousands of people of different levels, different classes, different races, different play times, different lengths of play and different goals, and at the same time trying to keep the game sustainable for the future. You can satisfy all the people some of the time, or some of the people all the time, but never all the people all the time. And those unsatisfied will be as loud about it as they possibly can.
I'm not trying to justify how SoE runs the game. I disagree with a lot that they do. They are by no means saints. But they DO face a daunting task.
I do security
Like all game experiences it's subjective. I have been playing EQ for (counts on fingers) 3 years and a month now and I still love it. Watching over your friend's shoulder as they went from 30-60 I can understand why you wouldn't see anything new. But I bet when your friend dinged 60 (got level 60 for you non-players) (s)he was ecstatic. It would be the same way if you were playing a MUD and a friend was watching.
"It's lines of text scrolling by really fast. How is that cool?"
"But 100 of us just ultra-killed the lich demon lord in two minutes!!!"
"Where? I see text..."
The guild I am in raids three nights a week and once in a while we do spend time twiddling our thumbs. Usually when a dragon is sitting on our corpses and just hoping we come back for more. Times like that are boring, but I read a book until we can get moving again and if I get too bored I can always just log off.
I still find EQ to be a ton of fun, even if I am sitting there practicing a tradeskill. It's a great sense of accomplishment to get that next level, or item, or skill.
Problem with twinks is that they are willing to pay money for someone else's account who has spent the time get the 1337 character. Mature accounts go for big bucks.
Bel, the mostly sane.. "Of course I can't see anything! I'm standing on the shoulders of idiots." -- Me
I think we can expect to see a situation in where, not only haveing more time but also having more money allows you to advance beyond other players
Oh no... yet another example of where time == money!
Why does this perpetually surprise people? Even better, why do people always scream and moan about it? It's a game folks...
And yes, I say this as someone who has a L60 Enchanter and a L55 Ranger in EQ. Both played by me from L1, not bought. I quit the game 9 months ago though, so I have a bit of perspective on it now.
After all, it *is* called EVERquest...
The thing that makes a good EverQuest player is the same thing that makes a good chess player, or football player, or Quake player. Skill. It's hard to see from the outside, and because it's a computer game people trivilize it but if you play the game for a while it quickly becomes apparent that two level 23 warriors are not always equal :)
One of the most important parts of EverQuest is grouping. You find 5 people to group up with you go adventuring, usually to gain experience. Do this for a while and it becomes readily apparent that Monk 1 can't pull for shit but Monk 2 can get a single mob out of 10. This enchanter lets the entire group die from 3 mobs while this other enchanter can manage 6 mobs in the camp and still keep everyone's buffs fresh. This warrior has aggro the second the mob is in the camp but that one lets the mob run around beating on the casters.
Now, of course if you have never played EQ or something similar you don't know what I am talking about, but that is the point. It's like saying to someone who has never played chess; "I captured his queen in the second move! HAaaaaahahahhahahahahhaa" and the blank stare that comes with it. "Isn't the queen just another piece?"
This article is all about "addiction". Like there is a chemical dependency or something!
Nicotine is the most addictive substance on the planet, yet the physical addiction is gone after 3 days of not smoking. It's all mental after that.
Mental addiction is far stronger than physical addiction.
What type of Clie fell apart? I have several friends who just got NX70's for xmas.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
> If the game isn't fun and sucks this badly, why
;)
> would anyone play it? Well, because they are
> addicted. They are addicted to the mobs, to the
> loot, and to the social atmosphere with other
> people in their guilds.
Just because this ONE GUY doesn't like the game anymore and has noticed he's only playing because he's addicted does NOT by implication include the rest of the playerbase.
For some, the teamwork, that "social atmosphere" he so briefly mentioned is enough to make the game "fun". Yeah don't get me wrong getting loot and riches or whatever aids in the fun, but since there aren't too many avenues in the real world for a person like me to participate in team oriented "adventures" (for lack of a better term), doing it in EQ is good enough.
I log out when the game frustrates me, I log out when I'm bored, and only play when I want to help out friends get stuff done. I'm even a member of a so called "uber" guild, which means 99% of my playtime involves one of the mentioned "timesinks".
I despise Sony (Verant if you prefer) as much as the next guy, but the game itself is still fun because it's one of the few ventures out there for paper pushing desk jocks like me to take part in a team "sport". Suffice to say I don't appreciate this guy herding me into his definition of EQ and the people who play it. He can be mad all he wants, and I hope he deals with his addiction.
Just don't include me in it.
Is to give the players everything they want. Players are, by and large, whiney greedy bastards. They all say they want an environment where they have complete control and the best stuff, but the second you give that to them is the second they get bored out of their mind.
paintball
I'm suprised no one has brought up the many other games available in the same genre.
/roll if there is a contention. If you (or your group) didn't do like 50%+ damage to it, you can't loot it. Also you don't get loot from grays so no farming the same spot forever.
/appeal and it tells you the wait time and how many appeals in queue and how many CSRs.
:)
One of them is Dark Age of Camelot. While not a perfect game itself its better then EQ in almost every regard. In fact sony hiding server populations and many of the newer features in EQ were pathetic ripoffs and "inspirations" copied from DAOC (much like many DAOC features were copied from EQ, UO, AC, etc). The released information about EQ2 looks more like DAOC rehashed then EQ... That should tell you something.
DAOC servers are broken down into three types. The first is the most numerous, Realm vs Realm. This is where there are three realms, each with their own PvE content, that fight over forts, etc against members of opposite realms. On these servers your "uberguilds" are no where near as obnoxious as on EQ because it takes team work and alliances and overall good relations with your fellow realmmates or else your leadership is going to be laughed off and you are not going to be invited to relic raids and similar.
The second server type is PvP. There are two servers, each where people can kill each other and travel freely between the three realms. I have to admit, it me its a pit of d00dness, but some people seem to really enjoy it.
The third server is Co-Operative (aka "CareBear" aka what most EQ people play). Here PvP is limited to formal duels and you can travel freely among all three realms. With the expansion pack and all three realms open to you there is _a lot_ of high quality content.
For more information you can poke around http://www.camelotherald.com. And while there poke around the server, guild, and character pages and note how pathetic it is to pay Sony $40/month for what Camelot gives to you for $12.95/month.
Some comments on EQ "problems" not present in DAOC:
- Training. Mobs pulled by other people not in your group leave you the hell alone and turn to their spawn points. This prevents _many_ problems that pissed off players, etc in EQ. If you don't touch a train, it doesn't touch you. (Of course in the dungeon Darkness Falls people have AE groups that often screw up and touch passing mobs and there are a few bugs, but its _nowhere_ near EQ)
- Death and corpses. No finding your corpse, no asking for a bind or finding a bind npc (which was added in response to DAOC), no corpse graveyards, no waiting five hours for a GM to help you figure out where the hell your corpse is. You die, you lay there and either wait up to X minutes for someone to rez you, or you release and go back to your bind point with all your gear. You just loose a relatively small amount of exp, a relatively small amount of money (to buy back the CON points you lost), and the time it takes to get back where you were.
- Camping - nowhere near as bad. There are plenty of spots to camp and wait lists are almost nonexistant except for one or two spots server wide (which I don't really understand considering there are many other spots but I guess people love killing the same mob over and over again for 10% more exp then other uncamped spots... *shrug*)
- Loot - loot from creatures killed by a group is randomly distributed between members of the group. Most servers have a code of honor about "need before greed" and most people happily
Also camping for a day plus for loot is pretty rare. Crafting in DAOC is infinitely more viable and with armorcrafting and spellcrafting you can create some very nice suits of armor, etc with magic stats that rival anything you can get from a drop in the old world. (In the new world most of the drops from creatures are randomly generated items... so camping a particular spawn is kinda pointless)
- Quests - needed mobs respawn fast, almost all of them (with the exception of a couple stages of an epic quest) can be done alone. If multiple people have the same quest they can group and when the mob dies they will all get the same item.
- Kill stealing - very rare in comparison, the CSR (Customer Service Reps - aka EQ GM's) _do_ care and actually do crap about it. The game also has some safe guards built in dealing with looting, etc (see above)
- Customer Service - stuck/emergency game stopping appeals usually get a response in 5 to 10 minutes. Other lower priority requests get a response in anywhere from 15 minutes to two hours. My average seems to be an hour. With that said, I have not had a reason to speak to a CSR in over four months. No lost corpses, no quests that didn't work, no kill stealing to complain about. How do I know the wait times?
From speaking to others and you can actually type
- Faster repop rates - The "Uber" mobs pop a lot faster and are usually surrounded by so many pops that its near impossible to claim a spot for a prolonged period of time. I think the slowest repops are the three dragons, which are a tad under a day (but then again, people only tend to raid them once a week anyways).
- Level cap is 50. It wasn't raised by the expansion pack (*cough* kunark *cough*). Post-50 character development is done via realm points earned by killing enemies in RvR (or on the carebear server, killing the high level mobs that attack and take over the frontier forts). It takes _far_ less time to reach
- Content. Yep, EQ wins by shear numbers. But falls flat in comparison to the carebear server and expansion pack when it comes to content available to people who are not in uber guilds or are below level 50.
- Feel. On the RvR servers, the feeling is much friendlier for the most part. Guilds work together. There are arguments, and blow ups, alliances, etc... makes things interesting.
There is a lot more. But this is long enough already.
I played EQ for about 16 months and I've now played DAOC since its release. DAOC has proven to be much more fun, less iritating as a whole, with much more to do. I've rolled so many characters for fun on different servers in the same it took me to level up two EQ characters to a level where I would have had to invested a year or two and whored myself out to some guild to see the "end game".
--- polarbear
While I greatly appreciate his taking the time to write this thing, I'm somewhat amused that he signed it with his in-game moniker. If this is such a vile addiction and he theoretically recognizes it as such ...why is he still playing?
...jeepers. Just stop.
Again, David, if you're reading this, I don't intend this as a flame. I doubt I'd ever start playing but your post pretty much put the nail in the coffin and for that I'd like to thank you for your efforts. But
My
Limekiller
I dont have a significant other you insensitive clod! Dont forget to write for your audience!! ;p
I have played EverQuest, up to and including the "end game" as a member of the strongest guild on a server, and I have to disagree with the general slant of Mr. Sanftenberg's comments.
EverQuest is a game, a form of entertainment, and a fun way to fill your spare time if you are into any of the things it provides, from RPG/Action/Adventure gaming to online social interaction to powergaming. You can enjoy playing EverQuest in 1hr sessions or 16hr sessions.
I had a ton of fun playing EverQuest. I started when the first public beta was offered, and I have great memories of exploring the giant landscape with a helpless little avatar that was scared for his life. I interacted with other characters and formed friendships that now exist outside of EverQuest. I played the "end game" and completed the "timesinks" that Mr. Sanftenberg describes so horribly and enjoyed them.
EverQuest is a game and a hobby, and it is easy to get "addicted" to any hobby. I know people that obsessively modify their cars, tweak their computers, work out at the gym, or watch TV. You can spend hours doing anything, and at least EverQuest is cheap. For $12.95 a month you could go to the movies maybe twice, you could pay a fraction of your cable TV bill, or you could buy a new fan for your modded computer case -- or you could play EverQuest. If you figure hardcore gamers are playing 5 to 6 hours a day or more, then that $12.95 a month doesn't seem so bad.
People have issues with class balancing, however if all classes didn't have relative strengths and weaknesses then why even bother having different classes? Who cares if your class only does 80% as effective as another class in some statistical category that you can only really measure by parsing hours and hours of logs - there is some other category your class does better, and in my experience the person playing the class contributes much more to the overall effectiveness than the class itself. The way to not enjoy playing EverQuest is to focus on "min-maxing" your character, not being satisfied until you are the "best". Sure, strive for new accomplishments, set goals for your character, but also enjoy the ride. The "timesinks" referred to in the post usually have some positive component to them. For example the Ssra mines and commanders are great places to earn experience for your character. The 60 man raid force clearing through the trash mobs to fight a boss mob is not a "timesink" but rather what makes the end game of EverQuest fun to play: 60 people working together to accomplish a goal.
I enjoyed my time playing EverQuest. I don't play now because I have very little spare time these days, but I will likely start playing again one day when I do have time.
--Cam aka Slithy Toves of Tholuxe Paells
Typical open source groupthink.
Who's going to pay for the bandwidth usage of hundreds of thousands of users? There would still be a need for a monthly charge even if the softare itself was free.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
I was under the impression that this would be an actual article about the game, not some addict whining about how Sony and Alan "Absor" VanCouvering have personally wronged him. Suck it up.
Stop whining and quit the game if you hate it so much. Join a support group, and deal with your problem.... it's YOUR problem, not Sony's. May as well be a junkie claiming someone else is lighting up the rock for you.
--- http://foo.ca
I seriously doubt that verant specifically sought to create an addicting game for addictions' sake. Neither did they create anything groundbreaking. Most people that have played the text-based MUDs will tell you that the concepts and gameplay in EverQuest are extremely similar. What's new is the 3D interface (whih .
However, Verant was probably "exploiting psychologicle theory" as much as any other game developer does insofar as they wanted to make it fun and engaging enough for people to keep coming back.
In my opinion, when we cast the blame on the developer, we are infantilizing the consumer. A trend that is becoming all too popular.
A couple corrections first. Sony did not develop the MUD game system and EQ is largely a graphical DIKU MUD named Sojourn. There's no conspiracy to addict gamers. Gamers play to compete. They want to level or get the staff of smacking or whatever for primarily social reasons. I think its safe to say EQ wouldn't be such a hit if it was all offline and AI based.
So we're back to the old MUD problem: how to keep people playing for fun without it becoming a big social competition. Restricting hours playable a day is one solution, but I'm sure that would lead into more complaints about being ripped off by Sony.
I've played alot of everquest, and it was definatly a fun game. When it wasn't fun any more, I stopped playing it.. It was that simple. I have a few friends who you might consinder "addicted" to the game, but I think the term addidcted is slapped on to easily these days when it comes to gaming. One of the most important and "fun" aspects of everquest is actually not the fancy dancy magic spells or any one of the many quests you can do, its actually conversing with people in a group. The social aspect of everquest is what I think makes the game a lot more fun than just a plain hack and slash game would be. your talking to real people with real problems, its quite similar to MSN/ICQ/AIM out there only you have a common medium to converse about (Everquest itself).
Your comments re: teamwork and community are right on.
WWIIOL is built with the ultimate monsters one can face- other organized humans out to get you. Balrogs have nothing on the Wehrmacht.
The WWII Online forums are very very active, keep people very involved becoming friends with each other, and are instrumental in helping the designers determine what changes they will make.
The EQ article made me sad that so many people are giving so much money to such an unresponsive company.
The squads also promote the teamwork/ buddy aspect of play.
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
One solution is just to accept that the game is a bad neighborhood, like Ultima Online. Making that work is tough. The game design has to be bulletproof, not just in a software sense, but in a social and ecological sense. MMORPGs have tanked because the players used up all the resources and turned the place into a wasteland. While this is realistic, it loses customers. UO seems to have something that more or less works, although it's getting old.
Trying to solve the problem with an army of Game Masters and related flunkies doesn't work. You end up with endless complaints about the Game Masters, plus you have to pay for a big call center to take the complaints.
Everquest is in the middle; the world isn't stable enough to run hands-off, and the operators aren't numerous to run it like a fascist state. It's like living in a third-world country.
It will be interesting to see how the Sims Online manages this problem. That experience will drive the next generation of MMORPGs.
Read the Farmer/Morningstar paper on Habitat, the first graphical MMORPG. Those guys figured out this problem a decade ago.
Everquest is a game full of people who want to "win" and "be the best" at any cost.
Nah, the author is that kind of person. I don't play EQ, but a good chunk of my friends do. They don't seem interested in "winning" and "being the best." They are interested in improving their character, and spend a good chunk of time doing it, but life (for them) comes first.
When we're all downstairs smoking, I never hear them whining about how tough it is, only happily planning their next session.
Like so many other people here, I think the author should get a life so that his EQ "life" isn't so important to draw out this sort of vitriol.
The second thing you have to know is that slashdot stops begin fun and informative. By that time, though, you are "addicted" to slashdot comments but you don't realize it. Comments become a source of frustration and anger instead of news for nerds, stuff that matters. It becomes a chore, a job. You plod away at the keyboard, obsessed and consume with getting modded up, or seeing how many people you can get to respond with flames to you "troll" post, while so comsumed you begin to hate the website. Vehemently. It goes on forever, and one that you can never win.
After posting to slashdot for a while, you'll start conversing with other users, and you'll see the one thing all users have in common is they hate OSDN. (It should be noted that CmdrTaco and Hemon, the original developers, "sold out" to Andover and ownership changed hands again during the dot-com boom, so we will refer to them as OSDN for simplicity). This is baffling at first glance, because users view the banner ads every day and some even pay the volentary subscription service, and yet they despise them! Look a little deeper though, and you'll see that most people who dislike OSDN are the ones who no longer have fun posting to slashdot. They aren't getting what they want out of slashdot anymore, and they look to OSDN, being the source of all changes and improvements/breakdowns on the website, as the cause. Right or wrong, this is the state of addairs; the users hate the company providing they with the website they think has "stuff that matters".
Let's go back to the parts about OSDN not caring about their readership. Recently, they changed their moderation system such that, instead of a dedicated team of well know moderators to handle problems, ordinary users would temporarily be assigned moderator points roaming the various discussions infrequently.
----------
Ok, that's enough......
For the humor challenged, this feeble attempt at parody was intended to compare this whiny Everquest piece to the whining often heard about slashdot. There's plenty more in there... changes to the game causing loss of power analogous to changes that might impact someone's karma... the section about players determined to "win" and playing dirty analogous to trolling, karma whoring, gaming the site.... players harassing each others analogous to trolling and flame wars.... bugs and patch problems analogous to slashdot's regular not responding problems and Taco's inability to spell check.... the level of whining is just perfect.
Anyone else want to continue this?
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
I was starting to read that article, then I realized it was just an attempt to suck me into wasting time on everquest.
I'm not sure if it's more sad that this chap wasted so much of his time playing EQ, or that he wasted even MORE time writing pages about it afterwards.
paintball
I frequently see the anti-capitalist rant. "The companies don't care about me. They care only about making money!"
When was the last time you bought something from Sony and gave them an extra $5 to help them out? No, you paid the minimum amount--just enough so that you could legally acquire what you were purchasing. Must be that you care only about keeping as much money as you possibly can. Your motives are selfish and greedy.
Sure Sony doesn't love me. I'm okay with that. I don't love Sony. Every now and then, they offer a product or serivce I want for a price i like and we do business. That's where our relationship ends. They provide me no more than I pay for, and I pay for no more than they provide me.
There are some exceptions--times when I've acted specifically to support a particular company. However, my efforts are primarily greedy because it's always a company I want to survive and grow, or a situation in which the company owner is a friend of mine.
Love your family and friends and get it in return from them. Business is just business.
char *mySig;
I guess you've never seen "The Neverending Story". What a crock of shit that was. 94 minutes!!
mstyne: real name, no gimmicks
You can tell when someone live at home with mom. I was just doing my math to find out how much electicity a month will be to run my web server at home. It must be nice when your greatist worry if someone stole your karma points.
Shut up Chris, you can't say anything now!
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
Help! Help! Sony has taken control of my arm and hand and forcing me to write checks, stick them in an envelop and mail it!! Help!!!!! aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!
There is more to this victimization than meets the eye. These people are already known to be "rejected" by society. Even in a society thats completely fabricated, they're still "victims" in their opinnions. Sounds like they're the problem and not Sony, society or . Either way, it still makes me fall out of my chair laughing when I think about the oppressive regime of a fantasy online world made by Sony.
You don't tell a diabetic to just give up diabetes, do you? Just because the process by which a psychological addiction exerts its hold over you is a black box, that doesn't mean it's any more trivial to resolve.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
If you really care about playing a good MMORPG, devote some time to one of the open source MMORPG projects like WorldForge. Or just teach yourself how to make good 3D models of game objects and put those out under the GPL for programmers to use. (The reason there aren't a lot of great high-end open source games out there for you is because there isn't enough great high-end art for the programmers.)
If 1% of the Everquest addicts had put 1% of their dedication into helping create open source games, the situation today would be much better than it is. It probably seems like a lot more effort to help make a game than to simply play it, but in the end it can be much more rewarding in the sense of being a hobby/craft, instead of just a hobby/game. You still get the sense of seeing things improve, being part of a community, and building up a good reputation.
The game industry hasn't quite reached the same point as other media, where the *only* way to make it big is to prostitute yourself to the corps - theoretically it should still be possible to make games via grassroots means. But not unless grassroots people (i.e. YOU) put some dedication into solving it.
Also, computer games are actually *important*. Seriously. Look at the list of reasons why people are still using Windows - up in the #1 or #2 slot will often be seen, "No games". Yet ironically, many open source developers will scoff at game efforts, "The project will never fly", "It'd take too much time", "Open source can't work for games", "They should be coding it in [C|Python|Java|etc.]", et al. The plain fact is that there are not enough creative and skilled people making open source games.
Open source games are particularly important, because unlike proprietary games, they have "longevity". This is due mostly to the fact that there are so few of them, to begin with, but also because of the intrinsic nature of open source. For examples, look at Hack, NetTrek, FreeCiv, etc. Games that originated a LONG time ago. A single good/big open source game can have a vast and long lasting benefit to the open source community.
Many of the problems mentioned in the articles can be avoided via open source. Bugs can be fixed by anyone who can read source and has an afternoon or two to kill. If the people running the server aren't providing decent service, find someone else that's running a copy of the game - or set up a copy yourself just for you and your friends. If the game seems too long in the tool art-wise or feature-wise, well grab a copy of the content and/or code and start making patches.
Anyway, unlike the problems of the RIAA, Globalism, suppression of freedoms in the US, etc. etc., this is a problem that YOU can _directly_ do something about to fix, without risking anything but some freetime.
If you have a flair for art, create some good 3D meshes. If you can do photography, build a massive library of texture images. If you're good at making or performing music, or have a good voice, or just like to wander around in the wilderness with a microphone, then create sounds for games. If you can do code design, then come up with modules for game logic (like a perl module for simulating vegetation growth, or a C code for making snazzy spell effects, or a library to go with SDL). Design nifty looking GUI interfaces. Make maps of an imaginary world. Scan in your fantasy drawings and post on the web for 3D artists to use as sources.
If you know none of this, well, at least you can (presumably) write. And it turns out that writing is the 100% MOST needed skill by most open source projects, games in particular. Write a paper summing up good ideas for certain game rules you've seen, and your thoughts on improving them. Invent a new race for a RPG and put in intricate detail into every aspect of it.
Can't write? Well, likely you can read web pages and make lists. Find some topic of relevance to games and start building a table. Create a spreadsheet of different kinds of real-world flowers, with data about how they grow. Collect a database of riddles, sorted by difficulty. Invent a list of futuristic handguns. Build a solar system with details for each planet.
The important thing here is to create reusable *components*. Games are *hard* to make. They take more time than you have yourself; more time then you and your clique of friends. (Well, except for dinky little arcade or card games, but of course those aren't what we're talking about here.) In order to make these big games, we need to leverage open source's strength of _modularity_. We as a community need to have lots of really good "bits" that someone can gather together in a year or two and turn into a good game. Or, hopefully, a bunch of people can take and turn into a bunch of different games.
If you don't like working alone, no prob - there are still a bunch of game development projects/communities out there that you can join for feedback/help/encouragement/friendship/etc.
Whatever you choose to do, please, PLEASE put it out explicitly under the GPL license (or BSD, or Public Domain). If you do, then open source game developers will be able to make use of it in their game efforts. (There is tons of content out there on the web right now, but most of it is unusable due to license issues.)
So, next time you feel a sense of frustration over some proprietary, closed source game, that disempowers you from being able to fix it, grab Blender, or emacs, or Sodipodi, or Timidity, or whatever, and create something to help the game developers out there.
That's a great idea... All I have to do is get hooked on Everquest and I can SUE! You probably just gave some lawyer a great idea for a lawsuit, though.
I don't get it. I really don't. I've been playing EQ since the last expansion came out, off and on. I hvae a lvl 19 Rogue.
I've gotten bored. There are only so many times you can kill something and 'get the power up' without things getting really boring. I'm getting ready to cancel my account on there.
I've started playing Dark Age of Camelot. Another interesting game. I've not heard 'the evils' of it. But it has a slightly better graphics interface and it's 'fun' for now.
Seems to be easier to 'get the power up' and the Realm vs. Realm part fills your interest in competeting against another player without it being a free for all where lvl 90 people stomp the newbies and think it's funny. You go into RvR you know you're in a world of hurt and they are out to get you, in EQ if you're on a PvP server, walking through the forest means some weenie will anally rape you for 3 copper pieces.
not that much fun in my book
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
"Even better, why do people always scream and moan about it?"
First of all, I didn't hear anyone screaming or moaning. It was an intelligent article about the true nature of EQ. And yes, it's no surprise that most people are greedy, but despite most people's greediness, there is still such a thing as a product worth buying. People scream and moan, as you put it, in order to inform people that this game is built from the ground up just to suck time and money out of people, instead of, gasp, crazy idea, to be fun. Yes, games are supposed to be built from the ground up to be fun. The screaming and moaning is to inform people.
And the difference is, this isn't just a bad game. Sometimes (too often) games are made that just aren't fun. But this game is designed deliberately to not be fun and to suck money out of people. This is why the games as a service business model sucks.
I used to play EQ years ago and every single point made in this article was exactly how I felt every time I tried to quit. I quit and restarted a couple times and now im off the crack :-p tho I still have urges every now and then. I no longer buy MMORPGs until ive played the beta to make sure its not like EQ. Of the people I knew who played with me, some of which I still talk to, every single one of them felt this way too. The game is like a drug, without the part where you enjoy the high. RUN AWAY :-p
I disagree with a number of things this poster came up with.
I've played Everquest off and on for about 2 years. I don't make a habit of jumping on between 9 and 11pm every night nor do I consider my online persona to be an extension of my real life one. I play it like a game, whenever I'm in the mood to go gaming.
I've talked (online) with a number of other players that I group with, and I haven't really found anyone that shares this author's attitude that Sony is evil and the game is just there to rip them off. They play because they enjoy it.
Sure, you are rewarded for the time you spend playing. I enjoy increasing my skill at crafts or hitting a new level and gaining strength and nifty new spells. People start to need you in the game, and it feels good to help others reach your level.
Whining that the game is sucking your life away is retarded. Don't play the damn thing if you can't control yourself. Cancel your account! For those reading this and thinking of avoiding EverQuest (or any MMRPG), please take all of this with a grain of salt. It's a game like any other, except that it never ends. There's plenty of things to do, places to explore and quests to perform, and if your character gets stronger and you get wiser along the way, so much the better.
I'm still trying to get my ass out of those super bat-snatches..
but my play is stalled since its a bitch to get parts for my broken trs-80 model 1.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Most of the long-term players I see on the MMORPGs seem to be into the social climbing aspects of the game. The longer (most of) you play, the more good loot you get. Though this creates problems for new players, it seems to me the system could be adapted to online games that terminate more quickly -- how about outfitting quake with a title/tier system where the more wins you have, the higher tier you can play? That'd let the newbies advance while letting the really incredible players duke it out at their skill level. Tradewars has the social climbing aspect too, though those games don't last as long as the commercial MMORPGs.
I've heard there are now companies that apparently reap enough profit from Everquest items that they can afford employees. Kind of hard to believe (Maybe CmdrTaco could set one of his roving reporters on the subject?) If true, THOSE are the people you're competing with in the game, and you KNOW how a company will behave to maximize its profits...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
"It was an intelligent article about the true nature of EQ."
To me it came off as a crotch grabbing 'member holding' rant on the flaws of EverQuest.
The author may have a point, but it was blown away by the repeated use of the same metaphors and a style of writing equal to a 12 year old having a tantrum.
Sony bad! Beer Good!
That all EQ players are really male afterall?
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
Actually, I think the author's point is that nobody's EQ game goes the way they would like. This point seems well supported by numerous examples of the mechanisms by which this happens. He doesn't give much explantion about what keeps most people from figuring this out, or doing anything about it, but that's really not too suprising: from many of the posts here, it's obvious that nobody understands addiction in the first place. At least he had the sense to not mouth off about it anyway. To me, a Slashdot article that sticks to concrete facts and avoids sophomoric speculation is a pleasant change of pace. Naturally, everybody else here hates it.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Nope. Original work, not based on a prior mud. Of course, all the programmers were mudders of one sort or another but it was a new world concept and storyline.
$you = new YOU;
honk() if $you->love(perl)
EQ can be fun, if you don't take it too seriously.
If you play EQ to "win" then no, it won't be fun. Because "winning" means being one of the top people in the game - the best equipment, the biggest kills, etc. And you run into the high level timesuck that the original article writer described. Yes, I know exactly what he's talking about. At one point my enchanter was probably one of the top 10 in the game. But it meant spending all my free time in the game, and I eventually learned that sucked.
Play just to talk to friends, maybe kill a few things (but not the top stuff), get a new toy every now and then, then it's probably fun. I know a number of people who quit EQ for months or over a year and have gone back to do exactly that. They seem to be enjoying it too, which is good for them. I personally won't go back because I'd be too drawn to the power game -- I generally play games to win (and my wife will most certainly agree with that), and EQ is not a winnable game. The challenges are never ending, although at the high end of the game you're not trying to beat the monsters - you're trying to beat the code. Most high end players have a better understanding of how the game works (and where its weak points are) than the authors do. Not surprising. The authors don't spend 80-100 hours/week in the game.
As far as the money sucking goes -- the only thing that costs real money in EQ is the monthly fee and the yearly expansion. Sure, you can buy plat, or items, or whatever on auction sites, but that's optional. All of that stuff is available in game, and buying it outside won't get you to the high end either -- at that point the stuff can't be traded and you have to actually put in the time to get the pixels.
I played EQ for a while (about 2 months). At first it was fun to go into a world with lots of people in it. Unfortunately, it didn't remain fun for very long.
The community of players turned out to be not very interesting at all. It took an hour to find a good group, or even meet with someone I knew. It eventually became boring and repetetive to build my character. The strange thing was that I
felt that I had to keep playing and building my character, because I was paying for it. EQ quickly became a part time job that I was PAYING FOR.
I discovered that my character was essentially meaningless as well. Everyone around me was an adventurer just like me. No matter what I did, the world was always exactly the same. People would eternally continue to raid the same zones, full of the same monsters, to get the same treasures. Nothing any player does really effects the game world.
I quit EQ, and subsequently tried DAOC, hoping it would be better. DAOC was slightly better, but still eventually had the same problems as EQ.
Honestly, it is much more fun to play the countless NWN mods out there. It is much more enjoyable, honestly, because these modules have plots where your character is important. You can also play as little or as much as you want without worrying about wasting money.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
So basically EQ is just Statbuilder, with a UI designed to obfuscate that fact until you've invested too much time and money to just drop it?
If so, it's a a lot different from Chess, I'd say.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
So the game isn't fun for everyone. Just because you realized that you spent however many months of your life playing this stupid thing doesn't mean that other people don't enjoy it. Instead of bitching about the game, why not find out why YOU have an addictive personality and deal with it. Though some people may joke calling "Everquest" "Evercrack", it isn't physically addicting. The game isn't the cause of this, you are. This isn't an excellent article, it's an inane rant on why some guy got turned off from some game because it stopped being fun.
"The bottom line being, you can go to bed one night with a great character and items, and wake up in the morning to find all that has changed; leaving you holding your member..."
Well, it looks like the author still has his priorities straight...he grabbed his member before logging back in....
Ed Wedig
Graphic design services
docbrown.net
Cancel your subscription, uninstall the game, delete the remains from your hard drive, break the game CDs in half and throw them and the manuals and other material in the trash. 5 minutes of resolution and the monkey is gone permanently. If you hate the game so much, you should be able to manage that in the heat of frustration.
I'd also note that the author's complaints about EQ don't differ much from problems in any RPG. Way back when AD&D came out, there were similar problems with campaigns after characters reached a certain level. A good DM could postpone the inevitable for a while, but the only permanent fix was to start a new campaign in a new world with new low-level characters.
ALL Online RPGs are like this.
There are a couple of reasons to make multiplayer games. First, it's a cheap way to get good AI. Good AI is hard, and it's easy to slap a people in chairs.
Second, there can be positive interaction, like chatting with friends. That can be good for the player experience.
Third, and this is not insignificant, it's much easier to stop piracy if the player *must* log into a server to play.
Okay. That pretty much sums up the pros of multiplayer gaming. Now for the cons.
First, player interaction can be pretty negative. I think Penny Arcade said
it best: "And those you encounter online are, almost as a rule, complete and utter cockmongers." Players will happily cheat, get angry and harass people, attack connections, etc, etc.
Second, multiplayer games with a central server frequently have monthly fees.
Third, single player games can be played...well, just about forever. If you loved X-COM, you can still sit down and play a good game of it. Players of the (much more recent) Weapons Factory Quake 2 mod are far more difficult to find.
Fourth, a computer can lose and lose and lose, and doesn't care. Players generally like to win more than half the time, which doesn't work too well for competitive multiplayer games (and purely cooperative games, while really neat, are *very* rare). So if players are playing an RTS, someone is probably getting unhappy.
Fifth, multiplayer games are much more open to failures. Firewalling, network problems, a slow connection, traffic from other users...all can contribute to be a real annoyance to the player playing the game.
Sixth, multiplayer games (with a *few* exceptions, like play-by-email games) must be real-time. To avoid inconveniencing other players, there is no pause feature. You can't get up and stretch or answer the door or do what you want whenever you want.
Seventh, it's very difficult to do a reasonably good plot-based multiplayer game. I can't think of any multiplayer games that use plot to much advantage.
I've looked at the shift towards online games with a profound lack of excitement. Sure, it's great for game companies, but it isn't all that great for game players.
Already, game companies are so eager to get on the game bandwagon that they've thrown a glut of games into every "fad" multiplayer genre that's come out. Three years or so ago, it was multiplayer FPSes. Everyone and their brother had to have a multiplayer FPS. More recently, a glut of "realistic" multiplayer FPSes has come out. There was a *huge* explosion in MMORPGs...and companies kept entering a market that they knew was already saturated.
Few really good single player games have come out in the past few years. Max Payne -- I didn't play it, but it was so cinematic that I watched a friend play through the entire game. Very impressive piece of work, sold very well...and yet, unlike multiplayer games, it didn't spawn twenty clones the next year.
The single-player RPG market for the PC is also pretty weak. There's a few, mostly obscure games. Arx Fatalis is pretty impressive. Blade of Darkness.
Kind of sad, the shift away from single player games. It used to be that you could play a fifteen-year-old game. People did too, and loved the nostalgia. Pac-Man, 1943, Centipede. Four years from now, all of today's games will be dead, because there will be almost no one playing them.
May we never see th
Aside from the obvious ("don't play it then, vote with your money"), the problem is more general, it seems.
/., but 99% of us are lazy cowards and wouldn't lift a finger to change things, much less save someone they don't even know from harrassment (except if it's a cool chick).
People have become used to live with all kinds of shit. Windows constantly crashing? They just take it like the weather. "Improved" service at the gas station? Oh, no use complaining anyway. My rights taken away by a fascist government? Nothing I can do, so why care?
I'm told by old folks that there was a time when there were no young punks being cool on the train. If they'd start harassing someone (especially a women), a bunch of local dock workers would stand up and put them where they belong.
That was maybe 30 years ago. Last year, a bunch of students in my city made an experiment. They staged all kinds of harassment, from mild to bad up to a knife fight during various hours at a train station (with knowledge of authorities, yada yada). If I remember correctly, the record was that nobody did anything, and one women used one of the many available emergency phones to call for help.
So what's that got to do with Everquest? It's that most of us rant here at
Disclaimer: I'm more of a coward than I like to, but I've done the occasional stepping up, and I've written to my representative a couple times. I also keep a list of shops where I don't buy anymore.
It ain't that much, but it ain't that hard either.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Life is all about addiction -- an uncanny obsession that provides focus and the means to ignore distractions. Einstein was addicted to physics, Lance Armstring to training. How many of the heroes in the computer industry can be truly said to be free of the long nights of coding and social destruction that stem from a "computer addiction." Time spent performing an addictive action passes quickly and transparently...we don't notice the outside world, we are just totally and contentedly enamored with what we're doing. And that contentedness is important. It's not the same as happiness, and it's not an easily packaged thing, easily deconstructed thing. The elation of an olympic athlete or a nobel prize winner can be yours in part simply by knitting the last stitch on a scarf, killing the final boss in a game, or organizing a delicious meal. But if all you do is buy the scarf, cheat to win, and heat up the meal, your elation is diminished. The longer the wait, the better the results -- this is true even if the results themselves are as pathetic as they seem to be in EQ.
We become addicted to things which aren't immediately simple...that allow us to shine, but that require much hard work and practice. Nobody becomes addicted to games like twisted metal or jet set radio. Games which are easily finished are easily set aside. The tedious parts becoming boring. But in an addictive game, the tedious parts becoming suspenseful. They become a time for nervous intropspection and mental preration for the task ahead. Like weight lifting, or jogging, or tuning a guitar. If the drive is great enough, any reward is worthwhile. I've seen people bust their asses and destroy their family lives for free movie tickets and a piece of paper marked "Employee of the Month." I can respect EQ players for wanting to do the same.
The problem people seem to have with Everquest is that it's an artificial environment. So? Who cares! If that's what it takes for the players to enjoy themselves, why is it any of your business? Every environment is artificial...it's all constucts of the same arbitrary stuff obeying the same arbitrary rules. Politics is an artificial construct of mass interpersonal relationships, and sports are VERY artificial constructs. Your average athlete has dozens of stats which dictate his skill on the field, and even the best athlete can lose on a "bad day." To me, that seems a lot like Everquest -- a lot like any RPG. Huh, maybe that's because fantasy games are an attempt to capture the elation of success and bestow it on people who might otherwise never feel it. We can't all be Doug Flutey, but we can be with NFL Gameday 2k3.
Furthermore, the comments people have been making -- that EQ players have no other friends, that they should enjoy the outside world, that they are wasting their time -- are defeatest, rude, and useless. For one thing, I think it's true that a lot of EQ players were failed by the outside world for some reason. Maybe they are shy, or have trouble speaking, or just don't know how to make friends. For these people, environments like EQ are a godsend and can actually be helpful outside the game itself. It doesn't matter to them whether you think it's "real" or not. It may not be apparent to people who undertake the folly of trying to talk to the player while they're zoned out, but it can be effective therapy. My years as an online Quaker turned me from a quiet, nervous introvert to a rather cocky extrovert, and that attracted a lot of my friends who've never even seen Quake. Just don't try and talk to me when I'm behind that mouse.
And finally: what did you think the EQ world would be like? The real world is full of those who will cheat to win and gang up on the weak. Real systems are always decaying. You can see real life as one crushing defeat after another, interspersed by minor victories such as finding a good deal on a PDA or a funny website. Expecting games which are supposed to spin a new reality to do so in a way that is unrealistic is kind of foolish. This is what you get in a public system, boyo -- get used to it, or go back to playing Magic on the steps of the community college.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Most high end players have a better understanding of how the game works (and where its weak points are) than the authors do.
Heh. I'm a MUD coder, and precisely the same thing applies there, too. Which is why listening very, very carefully to what high-level players tell you is a Good Thing.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
s/Everquest/Slashdot/g
Stupidity is mis-underestimated.
Everquest is a game centered on rewarding you for how much time you put into it.
Then play something else. I'm running a (free as in beer) online game called BattleMaster that is explicitly built to allow you the full game even if you can only log on twice a day for 5-10 min each.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Is it Sony's fault you continue to do something you no longer enjoy?
$you = new YOU;
honk() if $you->love(perl)
Your the problem and only you can fix it. People get addicted to all sorts of things, and other people do the same things and don't. People with addictions when they really get tired of it, do what they have to, to beat the addiction. You'll never beat it blaming someone else. Beating an addiction is not easy, but people do it everyday. Something you slip back and eventually have to break the addiction again. But if YOU really want to stop you will do what ever it takes to stop it.
Just remember Oprah love ya honey!
Double bonus points!
Yet, my unemployment rages on. There's a good definition of irony.
More to the point, I meant "what other people call work, but I'd call doing a wicked job on a device driver of some sort"
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
LAN Party?
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
Your metaphor reveals how little you know about illness in the frist place.
SO what I actually read was a long post about this guy's psychological addiction to a video game? not.
People can become addicted to anything, I understand. In fact, I think this is a great way for Sony to make money. They are hitting the balance of support vs. suffering just right if this guy posted this huge rant, and then logged in for few more hours of paying to kill pixels.
In fact, most consumerism is based on impulsive and compulsive behavior. Your own company job may rely on it.
mug
With a name like Dolalin Bonewielder, is it any surprise that the author's left "holding his member" as he puts it?
There's more than enough injustice in real life, and you're wasting your time whining about this?!?!
Anyone with common sense already knows all of what was mentioned above when it comes to subscription games and the companies that run them. The same comparisons can be made to other subscription services. The same corporate mentality is common.
I think that this article is just an example of an addictive personality (and it's painful to read, as well. This is a very sad person). I have played UO and the new Camelot game and never got into them this much. To me, they were games, and after a few months they got old and I quit. The company that runs the Camelot game sent me a free month's voucher, so I am playing for another month. Besides, my new mainboard and CPU aren't here yet, so I can't do any worthwhile FPS.
Sounds like great alternatives. I hope they perfect the idea of Pay To Play games to everyone is happy.
However, this doesn't address the concept of gaming addiction. Combined with the "PayToPlay" online game issue, we'll always have these whiners.
When I bought Thief II, I knew it was a hugely addictive sequel to Thief and accepted the issue. After finishing, I went back to other segments of life happy to have spent the time. All things in moderation.
A fountain-of-youth quest would offset automatically expiring (dying) players. Alternatively, you could have "rebirths" to a different/better character.
science is a religion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
My sister hassles me so she can play Kingdom Hearts for hours at a time. If she discovers EQ, she's gone.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Other changes can render a class' or items' abilities weaker, slower, or even drastically altered or removed from the game. Again, the players have no say in the matter officially, and rarely get these changes reversed through massive online signature petitions. It is quite common now for these sorts of changes to come completely unannounced and unexplained, leaving the players themselves to bug test, figure out what happened, what is wrong, and leaving them again to wander off to the Dev Board asking what the purpose of the change was. ...
The bottom line being, you can go to bed one night with a great character and items, and wake up in the morning to find all that has changed; leaving you holding your member and your opinions mattering less than a pig's squeals in a slaughterhouse.
[Note: I don't work for Sony, nor do I play Everquest]
In defense of Sony...
I code on a MUD, and we have to deal with the same thing fairly often. The point that a lot of players don't realize or don't accept is that a lot of times, these kind of changes are necessary for long-term play balance. If your equipment gets "nerfed", or your numbers aren't as high after the change, well, sorry, but sux 2 B U. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. What usually happens is that someone introduces an item or a command that seems OK at the time, but due to not-enough playtesting, or as a consequence of other, later changes, it turns out the item is too "powerful" to the point that it unbalances the game. When that happens, problem has to be addressed. If that screws over 30% of the players in favor of the other 70%, so be it.
Now, to attack Sony...
Players aren't paying $12.95 a month to play our MUD, so we can afford to be a little lax. If you're a professional company, you ought to be expected to playtest stuff extensively for the long-term before releasing it to the wild. Also, we try to post to the public bulletin boards before any major changes are made so that players can comment or suggest possible alternatives.
So yes, I can understand how and why it happens in Everquest, but I think it shouldn't, and it sounds like they handle it badly.
You've basically said the same thing the author of the article said, only stupid.
One of you presents a well-reasoned position, supported by verifiable factual statements and personal experiences. The other presents a trite invitation to "get a life", with the equally trite option of suicide.
One of you lays out your position on the matter clearly, allowing the reader to consider what you've said, weigh it against what else they know, and make their own decision. The other assumes the matter needs no discussion, and that anybody who doesn't "get it" is better off dead.
One of you, in fact, communicates an idea in a mature, thoughtful manner. The other contents themselves with childish flaming and empty catchphrases.
While I'm sure you're quite proud of your stunning ability to cut through the crap and get straight to the point, I greatly doubt that your insight and wisdom are in high demand anywhere rational people gather to discuss the issues of the day.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Many moons ago I played EQ (when I quit the WTC was still standing), and once had to do the Testament of Vanear quest. The quest is to get a book that is really great for clerics and druids (i.e. healer types). One part involves waiting for a certain rare MOB (moving object) to spawn. Basically this guy appears, and you have to kill him. He's such a pain to get that people OFTEN try to kill-steal him (i.e. kill him before you can), so like most people I called in guild members to ensure that I got the kill. How long did it take? Let me put it this way: I went to the appropriate place, called in my guild buddies, and then WATCHED AN ENTIRE THREE-PERIOD HOCKEY GAME while waiting for the guy to appear. About a half hour after the game was over, POP, there he was, and we killed him in 30 seconds. The mob has an EIGHT-HOUR SPAWN TIME. That means, once he's dead, he doesn't reappear for another eight hours (REAL TIME). That's what we EQ players mean by needless timesinks. The sole purpose is to waste your time so you play longer.
I eventually quit the game, when it got to the point that raids were lasting until AFTER SUNRISE. That was well over a year ago, and I haven't been back. My character is dead, may it rest in peace.
and everything else as well. I mean, this guy was a *serious* drug user. If you could swallow it, shoot it up or inhale it, he did it. All the time.
Hell, he's even mentioned in at least one book as a case study.
He's been clean and sober for 25 years now. for the last 20 of those he's been a full time substance abuse counseller. He likes to play a game with people. He asks them their drug of choice. From that he can do a pretty good analysis of the person's personality, even he's never met them before.
I once asked him why people get drunk. I don't get it, I really don't. Everything about being drunk is unpleasant to me. Even being under the influence I find unpleasant. So how can someone be so addicted to this that they'll throw away everything to wake up in a gutter in a pool of their own vomit and immediately go looking for a drink?
He looked at me and said, "Ah, that's because *you're* not an alcoholic."
The point being that by my *personality* alcohol has no positive virtue to me. To the alcoholic it *does.* To an alcoholic *alcohol* is like heaven. Heroin may well be quite detestable to that person because the "high" of heroin isn't the "high" that, ummmm, gets them high. The alcoholic doesn't *want* "high" per se. He wants to be numb, or dance around with a lamp shade on his head and beat his wife and try to avoid repercussion by saying, "Hey, I was drunk."
The pothead, conversely is the *sort* of person who wants to sit quietly in the corner saying, "Oh, wow man."
Your friend was the *sort* of person for whom the heroin high is heaven. There are, in fact, many, many casual users of heroin for whom it's pleasant, but not "heaven."
I find it telling that the writer of the article mentioned casinos. That's what the EQ "junkies" ARE doing. It's the same obsessive compulsive behaviour that a gambling "addict" experiences. Neither gambling nor EQ are drugs. There is no *actual* physiological componant to the behaviour as there is with heroin. Any "withdrawl" is purely psychosomatic.
So why don't these people just up and quit?
Because they have the sort of personality that, even while they are experiencing distress, in some way are getting more positive feedback from playing than negative.
They "want" the experience they are having, whether they realize it or not. It's their "heaven."
Take a page from the "Big Book." The first step to overcoming the problem is admiting there's a problem. What's more, the problem isn't the "game," it's you, and *you* have to take responsibility for it. If you find you are powerless against it then *get help.*
Which is what the article is, really. Not a warning, but a plea for help. Public therapy is never pretty. Find a good specialist in obsessive compulsive behaviour and get help.
KFG
So, not only is the author saying my friends are lying to me about EQ...he says this is the usual situation with my friends? That's rather presumptuous of the author!
Diabetes and EQ are different? Fair enough.
I admit it's not really a good metaphor. What I was trying to get at is that quitting a psychological addiction through willpower alone may be more like trying to cure diabetes through willpower alone than it is like not jaywalking through willpower alone.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
You're absolutely right that diabetes isn't like psychological addiction in a large number of very important ways.
What I was attempting to argue (very poorly, I admit), was that psychological addictions may be very difficult to resolve, and not susceptible to willpower alone--that telling someone to "just get over it" may be just as silly when you're talking about a psychological addiction as it is when you're talking about diabetes.
My sincere apologies to any diabetics. I'm not trying to trivialize that condition at all, and I'm very sorry if I've caused offense.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
The author also greatly overstates the problem of expansions not being finished at release. Sure, the very high end zones of new expansions have sometimes been unfinished, but only a very small number of guilds are powerful enough to reach those before they are finished.
Sure, EQ has plenty of problems, but mostly the author is just whining pointlessly. Take the switch to a GM pool instead of per-server GMs. For everyone I've heard complain, I've heard someone else praise it as decreasing response time (ever need a GM when your server GM was off duty under the old system?)
evercrack has all of those things you were trying to escape from, but couldn't. greed, tyranny, impotence (not sexual) and all of the other bad things that computers never do to people, but people do to people. and yes, those developers, support people and gamers are made up of people, just like me and (perhaps) you.
So, your escape dreamworld isn't working out for you? Try starcrack, its simple, quick and painless. Battle.net is free, u can get off it quick (down to ten hours a week, easy), and the backstabbing is only a loss.
grant
on the Bnet {mv}kraksmoka
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
How is this rant any different from the rants on EQVault circa 1999? Same shit, different year. But here you are almost THREE YEARS LATER ranting about the same stuff most of us already quit playing over long long ago.
I played it, it wasn't fun. So you know what? I quit. This article, while it has some valid points, is mainly just whiny. This guy is pissed that EQ is not the game he wanted it to be. Fine, so I was I so I did the capatalist thing, voted with my dollars, and stopped paying them. I play a different MMORPG now, that I like a whole lot more.
However, just because I don't like EQ, doesn't mean that all epopel don't like it. Most of the guys I work with play EQ. Some of them have been playing it since it went out of beta (that's over 3 years). All, however, are casual players. They play the game when they want to, and have fun doing it. They enjoy it and it is worth their money. Well, more power to them, I'm not going to tell them there are wrong in having fun playing EQ.
If you like a given online game, and you find that it is worth the money, then by all means play it to your heart's content. However, if it isn't fun, quit playing. Games are for amusement, and what is amusing varies from person to person. If you find a given game, online or offline, unamusing and no fun, just don't play it. Simple solution.
I hate people in online games that whine about how much the game sucks and how much they hate it, yet won't stop playing. If you don't like it, don't play it. If enough people quit playing, they'll go out of bussiness.
I think you mean "Thse r! teh Dr0ids ur lukn 4"
;-)
It's subtle but the difference can mean life or death
Sounds like someone got bored of the game and decided because they didn't like it any more that nobody should and they were stupid too. Why has this article even been posted? Many, Many people think it's a great game.
Sig is taking a break!
Gee, I hate to be a buzzkill on the whine party (would you like some cheese with that?) but I think this guy is complaining just a wee too much. The thing that I enjoyed most about Everquest was
the MMO aspect (massively multiplayer online). The game itself is only roughly mediocre (though quite a lot of that is offset by the sheer size of it), but the experience can be quite enjoyable. The most fun I ever had came about through making friends in the game, playing with those friends, and interacting with other people. The "reward" for playing for me was not gathering phat lewt and uber-levels but meeting new people, earning a good reputation, and above all having fun with other people. If you're an anti-social cave dweller (and I suspect this guy is) then the MMO, and the entire fundamental design of the game, is completely wasted on you, you might as well go play Morrowind and save your 13 bucks a month.
n/t
I have never played the game nor will I ever play it.
I have just one single comment for the guy who wrote the article above: Stop playing!
If you don't like the way it is done, then don't play it. If more and more players stop using it Sony will figure out that something is wrong, the company isn't that stupid.
Bottom line: It's your choice. Play if you like it, but don't complain. Stop playing if you can't live with the conditions of the game. Simple, eh?
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
About four years ago I was stupid enough to lose control of a classic sportscar on a mountain road and I broke my back. This, as you can imagine, doesn't feel too good. A very competent ambulance crew scraped me up and took me down the mountain. And there I was, lying with a broken back in the back of an ambulance driving quite fast down a twisting, bumpy mountain mountain road thinking that I was probably going to be paralysed for the rest of my life...
And he's right, you know. That very competent ambulence crew shot me full of morphine (which is basically the same stuff as heroin) and I felt absolutely wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. I'm not the least surprised that people get addicted to it.
Oh, yes - thanks at least partly to that very competent ambulance crew and great medical staff at Ayr hospital, I made a full recovery.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
I have been playing games for the better part of 2 decades (right from when I was but a wee boy), and though I've been addicted to my fair share of games, there's never been a point where I've not been able to put down the controller so I can go and do other stuff.
Though I have no basis for the following claim, as I've never played EQ (though I have played other open ended higly competitive online games), I seriously doubt that people are actually addicted to this as badly as they claim they are. I would suggest that anyone who does consider themselves addicted to EQ, or any other game take a step back and think "is it worth my time?". If you honestly consider the answer to be "yes", then keep playing, otherwise stop. There's heaps of better games out there ; )
On another note, I personally got a kick out of this quote: "Playing EQ is a lot like playing in a casino; you can see your winnings vanish in the blink of an eye out of sheer bad luck." - So what you're saying is playing EQ is EXACTLY the same as playing in a casino...... he's obviously never been to a casino.
Looks can be deceiving. Or CAN they?
And you know this because...?
I have never played EverQuest.
Translation: "Don't tell me all of the negative aspects of the game! Just tell me enough about it for me to decide if it's worth playing or not!
If you want to know what the game is about, read the advertising copy on the box (conveniently, the box also includes screenshots). As far as I can tell, it's basically Dungeons&Dragons, with no other goal than eternal leveling. Like Statbuilder, but with more eyecandy in the UI.Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
This article posits the observation that EQ works via operant conditioning and shaping to guide the user to spending ever increasing amounts of time in pursuit of steadily decreasing rewards.
The real Webmaven is user ID 27463. I don't rate an imposter, because my ID is such a lame-ass high number.
%.|?T disgruntled former players posting here come off sounding like abused wives or escaped kidnapping victims, and the current "addicts" and Sony astroturfers sound like Scientologists and Amway reps.
Obviously, something about the game is seriously fucked up, and exposure to it makes you fucked up, too.
Not knowing anything about this game is evidence that your life is, in this one respect at least, a better life than those who speak here from experience.
Smile.
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
Recently I became semi-addicted to the online Magic the Gathering card game. I was really enjoying building up a good deck in the league I was playing in and was doing pretty well and couldn't seem to get enough of it. I found myself playing for hours on end when I knew I had better things to do. I found myself staying up too late, telling myself "just one more game" repeatedly.
... usually after an hours-long binge of game playing. I have microwaved several game CDs to get myself to stop playing. I used to play a MUD too much, and I committed suicide in the game repeatedly until the character was reduced to level 1 from level 15 and in doing so forced myself to lose interest in it. I've smashed cartridges with a hammer. At some point my will to stop playing the game overcomes my desire to keep playing and so in a moment of clarity I do things like this to keep myself from playing again.
Pathetic, for sure. I don't know why, but for me games easily become addictive. Almost every game that I have ever owned and really liked, I found myself playing too often and had to "destroy" to get myself to stop. In every case, I'd play more and more until one day I would finally cave into that inner voice that was telling me that I was playing too much
At any rate, getting back to the Subject of this post. The way that I quite Magic Online was, I opened a text editor, looked away, and mashed the keyboard to produce a sequence of random characters. Then I looked askew at the editor as I copied the text for copy-and-paste purposes. Finally, I ran the "change password" dialog for the game, and pasted the text that I had just copied, and did not know, into it, thus giving myself a new password that I did not know.
Viola. I can no longer log onto the game. I no longer have to deal with the temptation to play at all hours of the day. It's a very cleansing experience, and very shortly after destroying a game, or removing my ability to play the game, I always feel as if a weight has been lifted off of my shoulders.
I'm just suggesting this as a way for people who are addicted to online games, to cure the addiction. If you stop yourself from being able to play, it is much easier to get over the addiction. I suppose that if there were some way to, say, make yourself unable to use drugs, then drug users would have a much easier time giving them up. But computer game addictions are easy to get over, you just have to be willing to destroy the game, or change your password as I have described, or whatever.
Anyway, I'd really suggest this password technique to the guy who wrote this Slashdot article. I think he seriously needs to use it.
It was pretty fun but mostly the fun was working with other people and chatting.
When you get a good group and it's clicking and folks are joking and having fun... that's what it's all about.
When you see a greedy person or one who is being a jerk, they get ostracized by nearly everyone in the zone.
As for the nerfs, bugs and inattentiveness of the GMs. The nerfs are there to keep balance. The bugs are there because nothing is perfect. The inattentiveness is perceived relative to the personality of the plaintiff.
You have to understand, you are playing an online game - linkdeath happens. It sux but hey... what can you do?
There can't be a GM standing around all the time keeping an eye on folks. Usually, they are quite like judges. If enough folks complain or verify something, then they usually act.
As for the timesink, well you got a point there. It does eat up alot of time.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
...all in all, thank God I quit.
At one point, I was extremely active in the various communities for those games. I played Everquest since the beta; I was personally invited into the beta for DAoC; I was an active poster on Lum's (a site anyone who follows these games will at least have heard about), on the appropriate newsgroups, and I had emails from Brad McQuaid in my inbox a time or two.
I was also a depressed teenager that was using these things as an escape from reality, just like most of the other people who play them.
I got off easier than most of the hardcore addicts; even though I was addicted, I knew it to be more to the community based around the game than to the games themselves. For most of those three years, it was more fun to talk about, critique or explain certain parts of the games than to actually play them- after all, although the games were, more often than not, buggy, unfinished, incredibly frustrating timesinks, they also had a large number of incredibly smart, creative, and imaginative people that congregated around them at all times. It takes a certain mindset to want to escape into a fantasy world like this in lieu of anything else- and, more often than not, the people you'll meet in such a game are much funnier, more able conversationists and more brilliant than anyone around you in real life.
Of course, they're also addicts that'll do anything up to and including pissing in a bottle, shitting on the floor and going without food for two or three days at a time to get the next item in a chain of a dozen that'll increase their character's power by 5%. These aren't just stories; I've seen them all firsthand and know for sure that there are still thousands (yeah, thousands) of people like that out there.
Because of the properties of my addiction, in the end, once I snapped out of my depression it became far easier for me to quit. I'll never touch an MMOG again; I remember what it was like, and even though Star Wars Galaxies or EQ2 might be tempting, I'll never buy a copy. Like I said, I got off easy; all it really cost me was about eighteen months of my life (which I'd have wasted anyway, because the depression was from outside sources) and I even made an equivalent of fifty cents an hour selling my stuff afterwards.
Most of the people I knew, though, probably haven't. In fact, I'd put money on half of them still being there a year after I stopped playing, probably worse off than when I last talked to them. (Don't kid yourselves; I made some good friends in that time, but most of them dropped off the face of the Earth the minute I quit. What do you have to talk about when one of you is in the game at least 12 hours a day and the other is desperately trying to put it behind him?)
It's not the games' fault; there are people I once knew that dropped out of high school due to playing MUD's. Stephen King wrote a story about twenty people failing out of college for playing Hearts, a card game, back in the sixties- something most people probably find harder to believe than I do. But there's no question that advanced technology makes it easier for people to lose themselves like this.
Today, I'm fine. A lot of people that were there when I was...aren't.
Because the addicts probably cause them more problems than they're worth. Yes, an addict is apt to be paying for the service, but it's not like playing the game 5, 10, or 18 hours a day is going to make Sony any more money. A player that simply enjoys playing and is sufficiently engrossed in the game (as in like an hour a day) will pay the same fixed rate, no? So then why would Sony want people to abuse it if there's no marginal benefit?
An addict is more apt to: cause problems for other players, engage in anti-social behavior online, consume more network/cpu/db resources, demand more of customer service, and so on. Addicts are almost certainly a relatively small part of the population too and not Sony's real target market. What's more, The paranoia of getting addicted and social stigma that is created by the actual addicts is far more likely to scare away the 99.9% of potential and existing players-far more than the addicts that they might lose by controlling it appropriately (if that's even necessary). This is not even bringing up the potential costs of lawsuits and so on.
If anything, I would think that preventing players from over-playing the game would prolong the play time or even amongst the more addicted players. The addicts are apt to burn themselves out more quickly, whether it's the result of their parents forcing them, them getting fired, their girlfriend's threatening to leave them, etc.
Of course, I've never played even a single MMORPG, so what do I know?
Those with mod points, please read the parent post, realize that it is a joke and an extremely funny, not to mention witty parody of the original post, and give it a +1 Funny rating. Thanks!
"that they can't will themselves to give it up. They play on instead, hoping things will get better, and nursing a great and deep hatred for Sony and the game itself."
Ironic I'm using one fantasy world to describe another fantasy world, but this system sounds much like the 'One Ring' in LOTR. I am not an EQ player and will not be. I certainly know I would enjoy the game, for a while, but then I know I will fall in the same trap as just described. I don't have to be a player or even know an EQ player to realize that what was said would be true. Of course it is a money making venture. For the same reason EA Games won't fix bugs in 'Battlefield 1942' or enable ways to remove team-killers, it just isn't profitable. Why spend resources fixing the problem when it won't really keep new players away and that same time can be put into an expansion pack that just ads a few new maps and weapons (easy to create after the game engine is done) and sell it for nearly the same price as the original (which of course must already be purchased). After going through countless hours in Counter-Strike playing the same damn 4-6 maps over and over, I can understand how bad it is. I will not even try the Star Wars: Galaxies for the same reason. Same idea, just different graphics.
Every player in EQ, to me, seems to be like Gollum. Reading the article, if I replaced 'Sony' with the 'Ring' or 'Sauron' I would swear I was reading a synopsis of Tolkien's world. The plays both love and hate the game and cannot be rid of it.
Cave, wreck, and deep diver.
This is an interesting article, in a way. But it sounds remarkably like a heroin user complaining to his dealer about how his product is fun at first but it really begins to suck after a while, that the dealer isn't really his friend but a money-grubbing bastard, and that he's upset that the roller coaster has to stop sometime.
Well guess what. This is always what happens when someone starts hawking addictive wares. The gladhands inviting you back to the casino are psychotic sharks. There is no support, and the complaints inbox goes directly to the shredder. Suggestions aren't wanted because as far as the dealer is concerned, it couldn't get any better. After all, you're still coming back, right? Why change anything at all? It's a perfect way to extract money from the public in large amounts and abuse them at the same time.
This sort of industry needs to be regulated closely by the government because normal captialistic tendencies do not benefit the customer.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
You probably played in college...I played in jnr. high school where the only other kids interested in D&D (it seemed) were anti-social losers (I'm including myself). Unsuprisingly, they didn't make for the best role-players (although I would like to think I gave it an honest try).
Funny memory from 7th grade: I happened upon the personals of an alternative weekly that my parents had lying around, was excited to find many ads by people interested in "role playing." My parents had to tactifuly explain that the ads weren't talking about D&D. Yeah, finding people to game with was difficult back then.
Now I am AMAZED by how many kids play RPGs - but it's in the form of Final Fantasy so I don't know if it really counts.
Yawn. Every single point you have raised - about the developers changing character stats, about lack of "sysops", about MOBs and high-level characters, and of course, most fundamental of all, about the addictive and time consuming nature of the game, has all been played out years ago on the classic BBS game Major Mud. These are rare games where the developers found the perfect balance between effort and reward. It IS difficult to get to the next level, but you get rewards for getting there. Once you've gone to all that effort, however, you feel stupid to ever give up the game. That's how the addiction happens.
-"I still believe in revolution; I just don't capitalize it anymore." - srini!
What You Really Get From an Online Game?
You get a life...
Few years ago I bought Ultima Online as a good-bye gift to my Microsoft Windows 95. What can I say, it's highly addictive. You can play few weeks for many hours a day and it's still not enough. Fortunately at that time I had already decided to go Debian-only, and I never figured out how to run Ultima Online on GNU/Linux (which was possible, as far as I know, using Wine or the unofficial port). I really hope WorldForge won't be as good as I'm afraid it's going to be...
root@aio:~# nmap -sX -iR -p1- # Ho, ho, ho! Merry Xmas, everyone!
You plod away at the keyboard, obsessed and consumed with getting that new item, or finishing that last quest, and while so consumed you begin to hate the game. Vehemently. It's a game that goes on forever, and one that you can never win.
Ummmm the game is called EVERQuest, not "Afternoon Quest" or "2 Months Quest." It's right there on the cover of the box you brought home for the store.
Moron.
Enough with the victimhood nonsense! Enough pretending like it is being inflicted on you!
Is this a sick joke? Everyone is a victim. Everyone is abused. Everyone is being held hostage by forces bigger than themselves. We are helpless! Ohh no! Panic!
GROW UP PEOPLE. It is only a video game. Play it, don't play it. Who cares.
Perhaps this site needs a new motto. SlashDot: There place where Libertarians (or whatever this idiot is) know more about addiction than Psychologists.
If you have some conclusive evidence that video game "addiction" is not real, then you should present it now. Otherwise, you'll just have to accept that perhaps video games can be addictive (the jury's still out on that: see the bottom of this page for a list of articles in academic journals on the topic).
Perhaps these people are talking about becoming addicted to video games, and perhaps their addictions are real. I don't think you can prove otherwise. In the overwhelmingly likely event that you cannot, then your blase attitude not only foolish, but perhaps downright harmful (Imagine what it would be like if people reacted like this to alcoholics!) So stop acting like you know more than everybody else, including the people who are actually studying this issue.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
ALL Online RPGs are like this.
There are a couple of reasons to make multiplayer games. First, it's a cheap way to get good AI. Good AI is hard, and it's easy to slap a people in chairs.
Second, there can be positive interaction, like chatting with friends. That can be good for the player experience.
Third, and this is not insignificant, it's much easier to stop piracy if the player *must* log into a server to play.
Okay. That pretty much sums up the pros of multiplayer gaming. Now for the cons.
First, player interaction can be pretty negative. I think Penny Arcade saidit best: "And those you encounter online are, almost as a rule, complete and utter cockmongers." Players will happily cheat, get angry and harass people, attack connections, etc, etc.
Second, multiplayer games with a central server frequently have monthly fees.
Third, single player games can be played...well, just about forever. If you loved X-COM, you can still sit down and play a good game of it. Players of the (much more recent) Weapons Factory Quake 2 mod are far more difficult to find.
Fourth, a computer can lose and lose and lose, and doesn't care. Players generally like to win more than half the time, which doesn't work too well for competitive multiplayer games (and purely cooperative games, while really neat, are *very* rare). So if players are playing an RTS, someone is probably getting unhappy.
Fifth, multiplayer games are much more open to failures. Firewalling, network problems, a slow connection, traffic from other users...all can contribute to be a real annoyance to the player playing the game.
Sixth, multiplayer games (with a *few* exceptions, like play-by-email games) must be real-time. To avoid inconveniencing other players, there is no pause feature. You can't get up and stretch or answer the door or do what you want whenever you want.
Seventh, it's very difficult to do a reasonably good plot-based multiplayer game. I can't think of any multiplayer games that use plot to much advantage.
I've looked at the shift towards online games with a profound lack of excitement. Sure, it's great for game companies, but it isn't all that great for game players.
Already, game companies are so eager to get on the game bandwagon that they've thrown a glut of games into every "fad" multiplayer genre that's come out. Three years or so ago, it was multiplayer FPSes. Everyone and their brother had to have a multiplayer FPS. More recently, a glut of "realistic" multiplayer FPSes has come out. There was a *huge* explosion in MMORPGs...and companies kept entering a market that they knew was already saturated.
Few really good single player games have come out in the past few years. Max Payne -- I didn't play it, but it was so cinematic that I watched a friend play through the entire game. Very impressive piece of work, sold very well...and yet, unlike multiplayer games, it didn't spawn twenty clones the next year.
The single-player RPG market for the PC is also pretty weak. There's a few, mostly obscure games. Arx Fatalis is pretty impressive. Blade of Darkness.
Kind of sad, the shift away from single player games. It used to be that you could play a fifteen-year-old game. People did too, and loved the nostalgia. Pac-Man, 1943, Centipede. Four years from now, all of today's games will be dead, because there will be almost no one playing them. [penny-arcade.com]
May we never see th
It's just not that easy. Once you're a little bit into the game, you get into the endless cycle of "just one more level and I'll...". So there's always some sort of enticement for you to spend time with the game and get some sort of incremental advancement. Once you have it, two things usually occur:
- The advancement has little or no noticeable effect
- You become enticed by the next incremental advancement, which you think *will* make a difference
Next, you'll probably join a guild. In my EQ playing experience, I was a member of four or five different ones, a founding member of one (present at the GM head-count), and the webmaster of another. The amount of inter- and intra-guild bickering and political masturbatory flagellation was easily several orders of magnitude beyond even the most caustic Fox News Channel broadcast. This was true for each and every guild I was in. No guild was interested in helping each other out, and no guild members posessed the least care for the welfare of the guild as a whole. Comments from others confirm my suspicions that my experiences were typical, that guild membership tends to make the game even less fun. That said, peer pressure in the game makes a player *want* to be the member of a guild.The two years of my EverQuest addiction, 2000 and 2001, were easily the worst two years of my life. I got my worst grades in college, a national merit scholar now with several Ws, an I, and a couple of Fs. My GPA was lowered by 0.4, forever preventing me from having any summa with my cum laude. I couldn't perform at work and ended up quitting my job to preserve what little chance I had of being rehired (which later turned out to be zero). I went from embedded software engineering to working at a call center for $9.25/hour. My wife and I got a divorce. I don't know how much of this to blame on EverQuest, but it *was* a factor. The last argument I had with my ex-wife, for instance, involved the rightful ownership of a set of shadow knight armor. Fun.
EverQuest is an evil force. Go ahead, plug in and ruin your life, too.
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
I installed Everquest. It took me three hours to get it to work. I never did find out why it was locking my machine up.
I finally got online, wandered about for a couple of hours, found absolutely nothing of interest, and quit. For good.
Similarly with Ultima Online, except I didn't have to screw around for three hours to get it to work, and it was interesting for a couple of days.
So I'm back to playing Nethack. It's free. It rocks.
But not necessarily in the best interest of the company hosting them, so don't bet on it.
- Characters can die. Instead of building a character that will last for years, you build a character that, if you're lucky, you can keep alive for a couple weeks. Sure, you can have your friend ressurrect you, but if your corpse decays after so many minutes, you're gone forever. This will give a finality to the game at some point, providing a good point to start over anew, or a good excuse to quit if you've had enough.
- The game can end. Certainly not easy, but say you have an artifact split into 24 pieces, each giving special powers to the one possessing it. Of course, anyone holding one of the artifacts can't drop it, can't permanantly leave the game, and is overly visible to the rest of the world, making him/her a prime target. Anyone who can gain all the pieces will have a special capability of wiping the planet, or wiping all the evil from the planet (depending on your desire at the time). At least this gives people a goal beyond finding the next monster to kill.
- Unconditional banning of cheaters. Permanantly removed from the game, and all other games hosted by the company. No refunds, and to even make it better, have the players put forth a deposit that they lose. Granted, this should only be done with adaquate in-house witnesses to the cheating, but when I played UO, they had unrefutable proof of HUNDREDS of cheaters on each server that they offered a no-loss amnesty option. This had to do with duped gold & other resources. Just give us back the duped stuff, and we'll forget it ever happened... Then a few months later there was another "warning for cheaters" that had been cheating for quite a while. They were encouraged to "fix the problem" over the next few days or get banned. They already knew who were doing it. They didn't even need witnesses that time.
Seriously, publically rid yourself of that 1% of your clientle that is cheating, and the other 99% won't even consider it.
- Balanced characters. In UO, everyone gravitated to swordsman and mage, with a few optional extras, since that was the only professions that you could really do anything with. Any of the other professions were only used by the mules. I actually played as a tamer early on, using tamed creatures as my weapons in battle, until OSI listened to a bunch of whiners about how hard it was to PK someone who had 6 tame dragons guarding him, that they decided to nix that as an option. Every character type in the game should have some useful benefit that gives them an advantage over one type, but vulnerable to another. In the old D&D rules for instance, a mage couldn't wear armor and had very low hitpoints compared to other characters. A useful ally, but you don't want to venture out alone.
Include the above elements, and make the game GOOD, and you'll have just as many hardcore gamers, addicts or otherwise. They'll all pay the same $10 a month, if they play for an hour a month or 12 hours a day. I finally quit playing UO and never looked back. All I could remember for the last few months was that I was miserable with the game, yet I couldn't wait to play it. There was just something wrong with that feeling....
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
That's really a misuse of the word. What you call 'chemical addictiveness' is addictiveness, period. What you're calling 'phychological' (sic) is not addictive and has nothing to do with it, the proper word is 'habit-forming'.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Get a life
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Sure, our culture may be crappy, but it's never been better!
That's right. To heck with some rich mom's lawsuit: let people move their money around. The reason things seem worse now is 24-hour cable news that is like a vacuum cleaner for ratings-provoking headlines across the country. Used to be, nobody in Arkansas cared what anyone in Oregon was doing. But now, somebody passes gas and it's the "Fart Heard Round the World!"
There is absolutely no way that virtual worlds will be regulated in any way remotely similar to the way all these drugs are regulated. Society will change, people will grouse, moms will file lawsuits, and Sony will make money.
We just have to make sure we remember to preserve the REAL world in the meantime.
Machines take me by surprise with great frequency. -A. Turing
1. Only takes a few hours to build a character to a decent "level"
2. Non-addictive
3. Free
4. Fun!
Blood Dusk
If you don't like the game THEN DON'T PLAY IT!! Duh.
Sig is taking a break!
This already exists. Just go play some Magic the Gathering sometime, and you'll see how this operation works. You go out and buy all of these decks of cards and if you get lucky you get good cards, but then if you want to be really good you need to go buy all these out-of-print rare cards from other people.
The major difference is that the buying of those out-of-print rare cards, though a big cost, is at least going to other players. Instead of having the company screw you for all the money you become part of the market, being able to buy and sell these cards.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
That, right there, is the game in a nutshell...Yes, that's the game. What people get addicted to is the in-game chat, the shared experiences and what people share when they've got little else to do.
I wish I could shake your hand, not many can describe how stupid the game really is. In my case, I've played both Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot and found them to be utterly boring. I mean, I would never get past the 9th level before getting bored and deleting my characters. Since I'm not really social person, I was looking more for epic, grand quests with some story or purpose of being in this 12.95-per-month-world.
But I found none. People only get addicted because they join clans or guilds who are binded together for a purpose--chatting, fighting together, and having a virtual beer.
And those pansies at McDonalds pan out at a measley 180F.
Point being, an old lady -- having grown up with teakettles, etc -- should be the first to realize that they use hot water to make coffee.
We'd have a lot less lawsuit idiocy if the money from punitive damages weren't shared out between plaintiff and lawyer. Just a thought.
Will we stop accepting whiny submissions from sad Everwhores who bitch about how much they hate the game and how much it sucks, then sign themselves "Level 99 Goober-snitch". This isn't about Everquest, it's about a sad, lonely person who hates that they have no life.
I recommend a healthy dose of Progress Quest, getting laid, and spending less time on Slashdot as well.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Just a data point here.
I think we'll see a lot more MMORPGS come out, some come and go, because people want to interact with other human beings, not a bot, not a macro, not a program. I find a great sense of teamwork having 4-5 other humans from around the world,
*some* people - I find it a nuisance having to depend on others to before I can do things...
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Thank you! Though I should warn you that positive responses like yours do little to help me reconsider my aggressive and adversarial approach to Slashdot :)
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
"Which is basically what I meant, if not exactly what I said."
I wasn't so much correcting what you said as I was clarifying for others.
[I'm not talking about you, kfg, in this part] So many people hear something they think is smart, but don't understand, and repeat it as if it were a clever thought they just had. It's happened so much with the "the first step is admitting there's a problem" that it is cliched (sp?).
I guess I just read your comment and felt like adding my thoughts on the topic. Here's another tid bit... I've discovered in myself that the more I talk about doing something, the less likely I am to actually follow through and do it. I know a lot of alchy's that talk about quiting, and none of them have. I never talked about quiting, not seriously anyway. I just decided I had to one day (after a binge). Having decided, I didn't feel any need to tell anyone.
I could write a lot about that, but if I put a summary of it here I'll never expound upon it later.
I've been playing EQ for years, and it's still fun. The guy who wrote that article just wants to blame someone else for the "problem"...HIS problem, and libel Sony in the process.
I think all the people who despise Everquest are people who mainly play games that have that large blinking "GAME OVER" screen at the end.
I understand that there is no 'end' to the game (it is called Everquest now, isn't it?).
I don't plan on ever 'finishing' the game. I play because I enjoy the interaction. I have been playing for 3 years and never once have I 'needed' to speak with a GM.
I can think of one time when my server crashed that I sat in a chat room waiting for my character to be reset.
Everquest is a game, just like any other game. If you don't enjoy playing, don't play.
"Doctor, it hurts when I do this..."
Everquest didn't become a cultural phenomenon by being a boring, repetitive game. Any game has a certain repetitive nature to it. The trick is to bury it into content and make it interesting. Everquest has done that in my opinion.
If you have been playing so long to ignore that content and only pay attention to the repetition, that is no ones fault but your own.
That doesn't make it a bad game, it makes you a bad player.
--wal (many characters at many levels, on many servers)
Wow, I hope you never try to hold an intercession for someone.
This kind of attitude is actually very harmful. The attitude of "the addiction is your fault," is horrible.
Psychochemically there is actually little difference between what you dub chemical addiction, and addiction to joy. Stimulate the pleasure centers in your brain and it wants more.
Now it's been a couple of years since I had psych, but let me see if I still have this right. A dopamine reaction occurs to supress the stimulation (which is what happens with all nervous stimulus). The dopamines are designed to terminate the stimulation, and are quite necessary in a healthy brain because otherwise you'd still be laughing from when you were tickled at birth.
Some people's brains are a bit over-zealous at producing dopamines, and so produce a glut of them after an intense stimulation. That means that later stimulations are absorbed in to the dopamine glut before any measurable stimulation can occur. This is a state, when applied to pleasure and self-worth centers, known as depression. I speak here specifically about pleasure center depression.
In order to rise out of this depression, one must stimulate the pleasure center, and in classic Pavlovian learned style, when one has separated themselves from the particular stimulus that sparked the initial pleasure and subsequent depression, they learn, largely subconsciously, that when one is engaging in this activity, they experience pleasure, and when not engaging in the activity, they experience depression.
Therefore, to the subconscious logic processors, there can be only one reaction: something that this activity provides is essential to existance, it's time to stimulate the desire centers for more of this.
Those who exercise this activity in moderation at all times, even if susceptible to addiction of this sort, due to highly zealous dopamine output, will not have induced high enough pleasure from it to really suffer from the later depression. In fact, the over abundance of dopamines is far easier to experience given long periods of moderate pleasure, rather than short bursts of intense pleasure.
Those who can successfully always practice in moderation minimise their susceptibility toward addiction of this sort. It's those who cannot or do not do this that become addicted.
For those who suffer badly from this, they can no more easily separate themselves from this activity than you could voluntarily stop eating. Their body has identified the activity as necessary toward proper functioning, when the activity is absent, deep depression and longing occurs. This now frequently translates to a state commonly known as "obsessive compulsive behavior," where yes, a person "can" prevent themselves from engaging in a behavior, but in actuality, they cannot, no matter how hard they try, their psyche is simply too dependant on the behavior, in a very chemical way.
Whether or not the person becomes physically ill, instead of merely mentally ill, is irrelevant toward the conclusion of whether or not the activity is addictive, there are merely different symptoms depending on which chemicals are present or over present in the body.
"If you can't quit its because you made it so, because you are a weak person." That is a horrible horrible statement designed to demean those who actually have a problem with this.
Now for a little exercise to help you understand the compulsion. Stop breathing. That's right, hold your breath until you pass out. Don't worry, it's quite safe, when you pass out, you will begin breathing again. You "can" do this, it's physically and mentally possible. I defy you to. In the same way that breathing has been determined by your subconscious to be a positive behavior that removes unwanted carbon dioxide from your system, and supplies wanted oxygen, these addictive activities remove unwanted dopamines and supply wanted stimulus to one's pleasure centers. Breathing is based in your brain stem, it's why you can continue to do this while sleeping or not thinking about it, but it is also a voluntary and motor-simple behavior, while engaging in addictive activities are voluntary and motor-complex behaviors, thus not capable of being managed in your brain stem, and therefore being voluntary yet unconscious behaviors.
Let me know when you've successfully passed the breathing test. If you can't do this, then it's "because you are a weak person," "it's your own fault, no matter what, there is no one to blame but yourself, you are defective." Your addiction to conscious breathing is because "you blessed it" and were too weak to prevent yourself from doing so. And even if you do successfully force yourself to pass out, wasn't it horribly difficult? Many other people cannot do this no matter how hard they tried... they are defective.
One final note, not all diseases are viral or bacterial based. That's a flawed assumption. Alzheimer's is a disease. Cancer is a disease. Downs Syndrome is a disease. Arterial plaque is a disease (heart disease). Addiction is a disease. They are all disorders of the body, therefore a disease. The final two are even environmental, and frequently cancer also, all with out requiring dead rats (unless you got high cholestorol from eating dead fatty rats, or cancer from hanging out with dead radioactive rats, in which case you have a bigger problem, I think, than your heart disease).
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
"Playing EQ is a lot like playing in a casino; you can see your winnings vanish in the blink of an eye out of sheer bad luck." So what you're saying is playing EQ is EXACTLY the same as playing in a casino...... he's obviously never been to a casino.
Why do you get a kick out of not knowing that the words "is like" implies the use of a simile?
The enemies of Democracy are
Your statement is the opposite of the truth. Addiction is "Psychological Addiction", period. Some substances such as heroin, caffeine and chocolate(to take an example from the original poster's list of non-chemical addictions) work a direct chemical change on the body to which it becomes accustomed over time. This acclimatization can greatly increase negative withdrawal effects. It is not however the case that only substances which produce this acclimatization are addictive. In fact, most so-called psychological addictions can, in certain cases produce physical withdrawal effects at least as potent as those observed in "chemical addictions". In fact, in scientific studies of "chemical addiction", the physical acclimatization has been shown to be one of the least significant factors.
On another note. To all those people who say that if you want to stop an addictive behavior, you simply need to stop doing it: you might as well tell a schizophrenic to stop hallucinating. Addicitive behaviour is not under direct conscious control. Behaviour patterns which have ceased to be rational can not be corrected by rational arguments.
-transient0
cognitive scientist
lysergically yours