Developer Retrospective on the MMORPGs of 2004

An anonymous reader writes "The Corporation recently posted a four-part series asking a few well known MMOG developers their opinions of the past year in the genre. Participants include Richard Garriott, creator of the Ultima series and Tabula Rasa, Walter Yarbrough, Content Producer for Dark Ages of Camelot, Damion Schubert, former Lead Designer for Meridian59, the cancelled UO2, and presently the Lead Designer for Shadowbane, and Raph Koster, former Lead Designer for Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies, and present Creative Director for Sony Online Entertainment."

Comments

Re:Stole my wife!

[briaman]

Bet you've still got your mother-in-law though. :-S

EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[BigHungryJoe]

I hear a lot about WoW, and yes, it is fun if (1) you don't want a challenge in your game (I did 20 levels in 3 days) and (2) if you like the sort of cheap cartoony-type graphics most 7 or 8 year olds like.

Now, EQ2, on the other hand, is a fantastic game. The creative content is far and away the best, it has the richest backstory, the most unbelievable graphics, and finally, it is extremely challenging. Failure to pay careful attention to group strategy (and strategies differ inside and outside of a dungeon!) will lead to certain death.

So, yes, if you just want a game you can "win" and that will level you with minimal effort to make you feel good about yourself, by all means, play WoW. Otherwise, go EQ2.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[trentdk]

Ahahaha.. eq2 is SO lame. Quest in EQ have always been horrible. And cartoony 7-8 yrdold graphics in WoW? No, its called an art style.. and it is DAMN beautiful. The dungeons in WoW cannot be topped by any other current MMORPG. I've played them all, and blizzard got it right. Biggest thing about WoW-- dying doesn't ruin you're life. lol

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[Kohath]

The parent is flamebait, but EQ2 is a fun game. It's also commercially successful, so far.

I hear WoW is also fun and commercially successful.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[grasshoppa]

Whoa...you might want to turn that fan-boyism down a notch. Otherwise, people will think you are a raving luny.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[gclef]

Ah, see...that's the point that Blizzard understands and Verant has lost sight of: games are *entertainment*. So, something that makes me, as you put it, "feel good about myself" is much better entertainment than something that feels like work. I do enough work already. When I hit a quest in WoW where I had to log out & look it up on a hint sight, it was very jarring, and very, very rare...I had to do that all the time in EQ.

Challenging is fine, and I am playing one of the more complex classes in WoW for the challenge (warlock). But, at its base, this is still entertainment...I don't want my entertainment to feel like work. It should be fun.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[Raleel]

wow, that's an incredible piece of arrogant flamebait.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[dreamchaser]

YHBT YHL HAND

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[paitre]

Actually, I'm pretty "in" to FFXI.
Challenge? Good luck getting past level 12 (or so) solo without grouping. It -can- be done, but it's going to take you almost four times as long to get to 20 as it will if you party (the lone exception being them bastard BSTs).
I've already seen several people come -back- to FFXI from EQ2 (and don't get me started on the folks -running- back from WoW), so I -do- have to question even it's level of challenge (or challenge vs. frustration) against FFXI. That said, -any- MMORPG that allows you to hit max level in under a month of playtime (and -definately- under a month of calendar time) isn't worth playing, IMO. It'd have to have an -immense- amount of endgame content to keep people interested for very long. And yes - even FFXI has a problem here. You can only farm the Gods so many times before they start getting boring (from what I hear - I'm but a lowly WHM44).

Eh. We all have different tastes, and FFXI also gives me an environment where I can learn/practice romanji Japanese :)
If you a comparatively easy game - feel free to play WoW. You want a challenge with pretty eye candy (and EQ2 is fucking -gorgeous- if you have a beefy enough system) play EQ2. You want bleeding from your eyeballs challenge (and frustration), play FFXI.
And above all - pick the game that you have the most fun playing, and don't flame those that disagree with you :)

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[MrBandersnatch]

So, yes, if you just want a game you can "win" and that will level you with minimal effort to make you feel good about yourself, by all means, play WoW. Otherwise, go EQ2.

I think I'll play games that make me feel good about myself rather than every getting involved in another life sucking, relationship destroying camp fest like EQ/2 thank you.

EQ2 is prity, I loved the audio - but as far as RPGs go its about as dumbed down and carebeary as can be.

Funnily enough though it actually isnt very successful since its failed to appeal to both the hardcore EQ players AND the mmorpg newbies!! Hence SoE introducing the hidden subscription increase via "adventure packs".

Fingers crossed WoWs mass market appeal will ensure that the day of the EQ clone is long gone and that MMORPGs dont HAVE to require you to lose your job/home/wife/child in order to be financially viable.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[Anonymous Coward]

EQ sucks and so does SOE. Im never buying any of their products because they always forget to make the games fun.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, EQ2, on the other hand, is a fantastic game.
- You like to grind mindlessly don't you?

So, yes, if you just want a game you can "win" and that will level you with minimal effort to make you feel good about yourself, by all means, play WoW.
- You haven't been to Blackrock Depths haven't you? How about Scholomance? Stratholme? Please go into Stratholme with your "minimal effort" bullshit and we'll see if you get passed the zone in. You won't.

What idiots like you don't realize is that just because you can get to 60 (max WoW level) with ease, it won't make all content easy. Hell, most of elite instances starting from level 52ish are actually hard. 7 mob elite pulls in Maraudon, spiders in Blackrock, General, Emperor, whatnot. If you think your little waltz into instance and not pay attention will get you far then you are sadly mistaken.

Something else you fail to realize in your EQ2 fanboism is that WoW gives you a CHOICE. Choice to solo, group, raid, PvP, grind, quest, craftskills. EQ2 however points a gun to your head with a note attached to it: Group or die. WoW is a game of choice, EQ2 is a game of grind and forced gameplay. Funny though you bash WoW, go read the latest patch from EQ2 ... wait a second ... more solo content? Could be because players were getting fed up being forced to group?

But I guess, everyone with their own style! When you reach level 50 in EQ and have spent 4 years leveling, call us again.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want a game that's about having fun and playing the game, play WoW. There's significant challenge and it takes those of us who play 3 hours a day about 2-3 months to level up, which is perfect. If you want endless tedium, mindless reptition and to give up all hopes of living a real life, there's EQ1/2. The win argument is null. These games are meant to be "won" (where that's defined as beating the highest end content in game, in EQ this also means farming it 100 times so that everyone gets phat lewt), no one has yet "beat" WoW or EQ2. Getting level 60 is not "winning" in either game, it's a precondition for starting the real game. Games are intended to be fun, EQ is not fun. I've beaten it through time and I have no desire to go further. It's just not enjoyable past level 8. I'm level 40 in WoW and I've enjoyed every minute of it. Want to wait 1 hour for a group? Want to wait 3 hours for raids? Want to watch your hard work get dissolved when your 70 person guild gets fed up with bad management and leaves to different games? Want to make the startling discovery that your character really is no good on his own? Want to be slaves to a group of horny hormonal teenage boys so that you can have a group on demad? Play the EQ series. Also seek therapy.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[TooMuchEspressoGuy]

Without trying to start a flame war, I will say that, while trying to choose the next MMO to play in the past month or so, I did some research on both EQ2 and WoW, and talked extensively to people who play each game. Unfortunately, without trying to start a flame war, I can say that this poster exemplifies the general attitude of the EQ2 community. To them, challenge equals the amount of time you have to spend on a game and not how hard the game actually *is*. To offer an example of what I mean: I consider Contra on the NES to be one of the most challenging games ever made, yet one could essentially beat it within a few days of "hardcore" playtime.

No, what EQ2 and most other MMORPG's offer is not a challenge, but a timesink. You cannot solo past level 20 or so at any pace other than "unbelievably slow", so you are forced to spend perhaps hours seeking a group; you incur a penalty when *another person in your group* dies; simple things like crafting and travel take tons of time and resources; and so on and so forth. However, WoW, with its action-based gameplay, has been perhaps the most challenging MMO I've ever played, not in terms of the time needed to get anything done, but in terms of *real,* Contra-like challenge.

I won't address this poster's other points, since they're largely opinion. But I will say this: a game should not take "effort" beyond the effort required to have fun. I'm glad the WoW developers recognized this fact and made the game a *game,* rather than just another bunch of timesinks.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[Psmylie]

I'd mod you up for your post if I had the points... well, except for that "Bastard BST" comment ^^

Yeah, the fact that you HAVE to party in FFXI in order to get decent xp is a little annoying (and the main reason why I switched from level 62 RDM to BST, at least for the time being), but it makes a certain amount of sense in the game. If you're in a good party, it gets really fun. You can focus on your job and the xp just rolls in. The part that I absolutely hate is the crap shoot involved in trying to find a group... even as a RDM I'm sometimes seeking for a while, and a lot of times the party I get invited to just sucks. It's really too bad that my static party disintigrated, that was the best time I ever had leveling.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[EulerX07]

FFXI is the worst game for people who have a life. I should know, I had a THF50/WAR37/DRK30 with all jobs unlocked, most leveled to lvl 10+.

A typical FFXI session would be : log on at 6:00pm, get my 2 friends into a party and frantically search for a WHM and 2 damage dealers. Any evening where getting WHM was easy, there was no good damage dealers available. Around 7-7:30 if we're lucky, we can set out to go camp. Around 8pm, we're in position, we start killing, it's good. Around 8:45 pm the whm has to leave for whatever reason, the whole evening is shot.

Then you've levelled a bit, let's get some equipment! Great news : that amazingly good dagger for lvl 50 thieves is dropped by a lvl 76 HNM. In other words high levels are making you pay trough the nose for it because there's no way in hell a lvl 50 can go get it for himself, even if there's 18 lvl 50 trying together. So we go farm. 10k gil an hour is the best you can hope to, so there goes THIRTY hours of farming items because that dagger is 300k. Wanna camp a high value item instead? Well, join the 10 other campers at Mee Deggi/Leaping Lizzy/Valkurm Emperor/etc. The monster appears every hour to 1.5 hour, so keep a clock near your computer. Oh, and you might get 4-5 kills and still get no drop, the drop is rare.

FFXI was an exercise in masochism. The nice part of EQ2 is I can group with my 2 RL friends, play 2-3 hours and make progress, then stop for the week. Very casual friendly in my experience.

Haven't played WoW, but I've seen a couple of people say it's "revolutionary". I might be a skeptic, but if it's "revolutionary" like Warcraft was to Command&Conquer and Dune 2, then I'll have to disagree.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[Anonymous Coward]

Gah, FFXI isn't a challenge, it's more of a job. There's really nothing to do in that game that isn't a freaking chore. I played it for a while until I realized I was more stressed out playing it than I was at my job! I would go to work to take a break from playing FFXI. That's just not right.

FFXI has gotten the "waste time" aspect of most MMORPGs down. It's all about doing various things that could only have been designed to "waste time." Here's a good example: getting access to "chocobos," the messed-up chicken that FFXI uses instead of horses. (You'd think that those birds would be scared of the cat-people race, but, nope - everyone rides the same mount. Bland.)

The quest is designed such that it takes, at a minimum, five hours. You cannot do it in any less time, because it's triggered to take at least five hours. Here's how it works: you have to feed a sick "chocobo" an item every in-game day, which lasts about an hour. Due to the brilliant designers at Square, you can "skip" one of the hours you should have to wait because it triggers a "next day" every midnight in-game time. So if you start the quest at 23:59 in-game time, you can shave one in-game day (real life hour) off the six in-game days it requires.

This quest is required to get your mount, which is basically a requirement of doing anything in the game because as mentioned everyone does groups because you have to and in order to go with those groups you must have a chocobo to get to most of the areas in a timely fashion. So that's one quest you must do that is literally a "waste time" quest.

There's a huge difference between "challenge" and "wasting time." FFXI is a waste of time. There's no challenge. Combat consists of saying "Attack" and letting your character auto-attack the target. It's almost as exciting as Progress Quest, only you can't go take a (Bio) (break) while still making progress.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[Anonymous Coward]

WoW content is easy if you consider levelling up to 60 to be the only goal (which it isn't in EQ1/2 either).

Most people who say WoW is easy are also those who enter elite instances 10 levels above that which is intended, and proceed to slaughter all the greys (mobs that are 8 levels below you) with ease. They storm through mini-bosses and maybe only have a slight amount of trouble on the final boss. Sure, that's easy.

My wife and I play as a pair and take instances on at their intended level. That's very hard, and sometimes just not possible. I'd love to see anyone who can take on gnomeregan at level 32 with just 2 and call it easy.

The EQ line of games was designed by masochists, for masochists. The biggest mistake was marketing: they tried to hit a wider audience by exaggerating the focus. In fact EQ needs a hardcore team of 30-50 people who both play a lot and play at the same time.

WoW is for the rest of us.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[_xeno_]

I've played both. WoW is set up so that you can make some amount of progress on any amount of time. If you get a group together, you'll make more progress. If not, then you can still make progress, just at a slower rate.

The thing that WoW has down that a lot of other MMORPGs - and RPGs in general - lack is that they worked real hard to give you a sense of progress. While a quest in FFXI might be "hunt monster until you finally get a single rare drop" a similar quest in WoW might be "hunt monster until you get 6 of an uncommon drop" where "uncommon" means that it drops 10% of the time. So while it might take just as long to complete, you're slowly making progress, instead of slowly getting more and more frusterated. (On that note, my brother finally completed Genkai 1 and can stop bugging me about it...)

Crafting is similar - you're guarenteed to raise a level on certain clearly marked recipes, and you'll never fail. So unlike FFXI were you slowly try and repeat the same recipe endlessly without seeing much progress, in WoW you'll repeat the same recipe endlessly but actually see progress.

This is what people really enjoy in WoW - they feel like they're actually accomplishing something instead of just wasting time. There's nothing more annoying in FFXI than going on a coffer hunt for two hours and not getting a single key, or finally grabbing that rare NM and not getting a drop. (Stupid Ose.) WoW is tweaked to reduce the frusteration factor. That's what's really "revolutionary" about it. Other than that, it's really just a rehash of things that other MMORPGs have already done.

Of course, WoW has only really succeeded in making me more excited about what Square might do for a successor to FFXI. What can I say - it's just not fun if you can't get the Red Mage hat. :)

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[Mysticalfruit]

Although I haven't played EQ2, I have played DAOC and (while I'm waiting for a new HD, f*ing Fedex!!!) I'm watching my wife play (and helping when she leaves the room!!!) WoW.

Here's what I really like about WoW.

1. Just like the previous poster wrote, Dying doesn't ruin your life. In other MMORPG's the death penalties are such that people don't take risks. They won't explore an area until they are reasonably sure they can drop everything in that given realm with ease because if they die, they know they'll have to pay 100 silver and lose a pile of experience. When I played DAOC, all that did was frustrate the hell out of me. It was a game of shoots and ladders... two steps forward, 1 step back, etc. I like that in WoW, live or die, I'm progressing.

2. As for the original posters bitch about leveling too easily, that's just bunk. I think the other games have it the wrong way around. The experience ramp in WoW is right where it should be. Starts off easy and gets progressively harder. Nobody wants to spend 3 hours getting from first level to second. However, people do expect it to take them three hours to get from 8 to 9th. Likewise, when your 20th level, The expectation is that getting to 21 is going to twice as hard as it was to getting to 20. Putting this in the context of the dying aspect, when you combine excessively step experience curves with terrible death penalites, it makes the game only accessible to those people who are willing to spend 10 hours a day pointlessly grinding...

3. WoW is actually quest based. I HATE GRINDING and wandering around without purpose. Even when I'm off going to get some dudes claw so I can make some malajusted Troll feel better about his lack of wear withall as a warrior, I'm doing something. I'm not off in the woods killing bunnies for the sake of killing bunnies. Also the quests force you to actually go out and explore and tackle creatures that will challenge you. Which is exciting since, if you end up dying, you just go back, try a different tactic, etc.

4. Their GUI is great. I'm suspecting that Blizzard put out an email to all their employees that read "If you play an MMORPG, please come to the starcraft conference room at 1pm..." sat them all down and said "What do you HATE about the games your playing and if you had the chance would design better in an MMORPG. They then took all these ideas wrote them down and worked them into the spec for the game. Just stuff like you goto a vendor and if you hover over a weapon in their inventory it'll pop up a little window next to it containing your currently equipped weapon so you can easily compare them.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[Nasarius]

Haven't played WoW, but I've seen a couple of people say it's "revolutionary". I might be a skeptic, but if it's "revolutionary" like Warcraft was to Command&Conquer and Dune 2, then I'll have to disagree.

Buh? WarCraft came out before C&C. C&C was slightly earlier than WC2, though.

There wasn't too much connection between Dune II and WarCraft, either. Dune II had a terrible interface and gameplay that was nearly identical to C&C, not WarCraft.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, it is amazing how SOE (and pretty much all MMORPG developers) has forgotten that games are supposed to be FUN.
This is why MMORPGs have such a small audience... WoW put the "fun" into an MMORPG and now it is sold out everywhere -- try buying it -- I did. It is backordered everywhere.... They have probably sold 500k units already.... That is just amazing for an MMORPG.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[DrSkwid]

In what way does EQ2's method of having a Shard with a few stat points at your point of death ruin one's life ?

Sounds like one is basing one's opinion of EQ from 1999

And tbh. eq1 was a challenging game where fear of death was real. Just respawning is not punishment enough.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[redivider]

Maybe it's just me, but that sounds horrible. It takes 2+ hours to get into the game and get everything set up so that you can start really playing... and then if someone in your group decides to log off, you have to start over. I realize there are people who love the challenge of this kind of game, but my free time is just way too valuable to me to spend hours of it playing a game that isn't really fun until you have everything (other players, equipment, location, etc) just right. I can jump into WoW and play for an hour (or even less) and actually accomplish something. And when I have a larger block of time, I don't have to waste half of it looking for other people to play with or grinding to make up all the XP I lost the day before. Maybe that's too easy for some people, but for a *lot* of others, it seems to be just what they were looking for.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[DrSkwid]

Adventure packs (wow 2 a year for $10 apiece, backbreaking slavery! how dare the milk us so!) were announced as part of the game well before launch, not exactly hidden.

I don't want to knock other games but I enjoy EQ2. Can't play them all and still eat !

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[paitre]

Sorry to hear about your static - after about 40 or so they are the -only- way to level, IMO. Sure, you can do pickups all the way to 75, but you'll end up spending sooo much time LFP it's not funny. Even as a BLM or WHM (we have a 70WHM in my LS that has difficulty finding PTs except during JP prime-time).

Even with the static I'm in, we've had to make a "rule" that if 4 of us are on and ready, the other two get to play catch up.
This past saturday we actually ended up levelling with only 3 - our BLM was on, but was falling asleep at his PC and told us to go ahead.
3 hours later - 10.2k xp and went from 42 to 44. Hoorah.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[Anonymous Coward]

It is horrible. Look over all the other topics about MMORPGs on Slashdot and notice how infrequently FFXI gets brought up, except as a point on how NOT to do an MMORPG. Even in this thread, it's being used as a counter-point to demonstrate flaws in EQ2 by showing how much worse FFXI is. It's been losing customers steadily for the past several months, although it sort of made up for them with the European release (just a mere two and a half years after the original release - Square-Enix loves yah, Europe) - except that it looks like the European release of WoW will change that.

Put simply: if you ask most people who play computer games what MMORPGs they play, few of the people who play good games play FFXI. You're typical stereotypical "otacon" freak might play FFXI, but most people who play games for fun don't.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[Prophet of Nixon]

Contra is easy... try Mars Matrix (dreamcast).

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[gamgee5273]

My wife and I have been slowly moving through FFXI over the past six months. I was a hume RDM at one point (from the March PS2 release), then moved to a taru BLM when my wife decided to play (she's a taru WHM... we're very cute together).

My personal opinion is that FFXI player base is solidifying. The kids who wanted to check it out, and buy the hard drive for their PS2, are jumping ship to WoW and they were the ones that caused most of the crap in the groups, IMHO. That's not to say that players my age (I'm 31 going on 32) are always good in parties, either. But, IHMO, we're looking a stronger party-dynamic players staying on while the non-party types are leaving. Finally.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[paitre]

The RDM pimp-suit (damn it looks fine) is the -only- reason several friends of mine have for playing RDM. Once they get Refresh they start hating the job, but they just can't stop til they have that hat. *lol*

Me? I want my WHM AF. Got AF1 done (Marchelute's a pansy when fighting a level 70 PLD ^^), and I've got 6 levels to go before I have to deal with Genkai1. Luckily, I'll have a similarly levelled THF, so -hopefyully- we'll get the drops more quickly.

Hmm...you have me wanting to spend time on RDM this week...

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[paitre]

Amen.
My wife started playing at the PS2 release (only she's on the PC) and dragged me kicking and screaming into the game mid-July. I started off as a War, got to 20 and decided I'd really rather be the dude that -wasn't- getting hit all the time, and switched to WHM.
I -do- hate the PTs where people just "drop" and don't come back, or whatever. You can tell when a party is filled with people that are experienced and have a handle on their jobs - it's a blast getting through Qufim or the Jungles in one 4 or 5 hour sitting :)
My -biggest- complaint, tho, is that other NA players don't seem to want to level outside of the "standard" areas. Battalia and Sauromugue Champain can be decent alternatives to Qufim and the Jungles, for example :)

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[Anonymous Coward]

"Combat consists of saying "Attack" and letting your character auto-attack the target."

Obviously you were so frustrated by that little 5 hour chocobo quest that you never bothered to play the game beyond level 20. Either that or you just didn't know what you were doing in combat. FFXI is probably the best MMO I've played as far as group PvE combat. Each class (job) has a very well defined role and teamwork among players who really know their job is essential to being sucessful. Things like skillchains and magic bursts made well-organized groups even more efficient and greatly added to the fun of combat. Combined with all of the various skills that you had with various timers on them, you were almost never not doing something. Say what you want about the overall quality of the game, but your description of combat is just plain wrong.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[Rycross]

I loved FFXI, but this is the main reason I quit. I saw that I had two options:

1) Come home from work, log onto FFXI, play until I need to sleep.

2) Come home from work, log onto WoW for an hour or two, work on a project or socialize with friends.

For me, the choice was obvious.

I enjoy video games, but there is more I want to do with my life than play games. When I'm 90 years old, I don't think that a level 75 WHM would really make up for all the opportunities I missed in my youth.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[demachina]

" But I will say this: a game should not take "effort" beyond the effort required to have fun. "

I think the thing that is lost on people in all this "my game is better than your game" flame throwing is that different people are looking for different things in their games. Its cognitive dissonance, the kind of brain lock you see in Republicans, when people start lecturing other people that what I like in games is RIGHT and what you like in games is WRONG.

The challenge for successful game developers, especially successful online game developers, is that they design a game that finds an audience, enough of an audience to be successful and that they keep that audience satisfied. You could easily have two huge audiences, who will have nothing to do with each other, one who wants fun and fluffy games they can play in an hour and everything is obvious, and the other which wants their game to be bone crushing hard and time consuming.

The trick is there is more than one equation to reaching the goal of successful online game.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[Chris Burke]

I'm not off in the woods killing bunnies for the sake of killing bunnies.

But... you can go off into the woods to kill bunnies just for the sake of killing bunnies, can't you? I sure hope so. Damn bunnies...

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[NeoSkandranon]

Not only kill them, but skin the little bastards for leather. And yes, if i ever pass a bunny in WOW i typically take a potshot at it, even though i'm level 31 and my skinning is advanced to the point that I can't get any usable material off the corpse.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[ThePiMan2003]

Wait your skinning skill is so high you can't skin a bunny?

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[slide-rule]

I find it fairly interesting that one could `s/FFXI/EQ/g` and basically get my reasons for dropping EQ... never had large enough (4+ hr) blocks of time to get in a well-formed group at a spot that wasn't over-camped to ever get one of my characters out of the low 30's, and if RL-friends had slightly less life than I did, they seemed to outlevel me anyway. There wasn't any other in-game content (other than maybe guild chat channel) that made it worth me logging in. (No, I haven't played "2"; if it is honestly that different from "1", feel free to inform me how so.) Nevermind that items for level X are similarly only dropped by mobs for group level 2X, the hyper inflation on useful items when mobs around my level dropped jack for coin/items, etc, etc. Sounds very familiar.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[Mysticalfruit]

Oh, they can skin the bunny. The problem is the best a lvl 1 bunny will produce is "light leather". However for the type of goods that person at level 31 is creating, light leather can't be used. Instead they need to kill much more challenging creatures to get the type of leather they'll need.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[NeoSkandranon]

Oh sure, I can skin anything that is able to be skinned (basically any mammal) It's just that the returns change to reflect the fact that I'm killing something that's pitifully weak compared to my character.

At high levels of skinning (mine's at 221 out of 300-ish or so), your odds of getting usable material from super low level animals goes down (bunnies are level 1) --for an animal like a bunny, if you were a lower level skinner you could get light leather from it. I would be nearly guaranteed to get Leather Scraps, four of which could be made into one Light Leather.

The idea behind this is to prevent players from mowing hordes and hordes of low level animals to get stacks of low-level crafting materials which could be sold at inflated price.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[arkanes]

You need high level leather to create high level items, you can't get anything worthwhile for a high level character off a bunny.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[chickygrrl]

My -biggest- complaint, tho, is that other NA players don't seem to want to level outside of the "standard" areas. Battalia and Sauromugue Champain can be decent alternatives to Qufim and the Jungles, for example :)

I'm one of those NA players who actually wants to level outside of the "standard" overcamped areas that everyone else is in because I can't stand trying to play in a party where a powerleveller seems to be standard equipment and no one has any idea how to do their jobs. Unfortunately, getting a party to actually go to these areas is near impossible; when 3 of us tried to find people to fill the remaining slots for a party in one of the non-standard zones, everyone we talked to either told us that the areas weren't places you went if you wanted to level, called us noobs or flat out ignored us.

Like some of the other posters have stated, the game can become a job and easily suck up huge amounts of time. The only thing that I don't particularly enjoy is the monotony of crafting and farming, and some of the quests take an insane amount of time to complete. For instance, last night I unlocked the ninja and samurai jobs. Even with help from two higher level friends who knew exactly where to go and what to do, it easily took a total of about 6 hours. This includes the 3 hours I spent doing absolutely nothing in Norg while waiting for my katana to be completed because if I left the area I'd be dead and couldn't start my ninja scroll quests yet.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[ThePiMan2003]

Hell, most of elite instances starting from level 52ish are actually hard.

So you have to be level 52 to get to the hard stuff?

EQ2 however points a gun to your head with a note attached to it: Group or die

Because hey there are no raids or craftskills or quests in EQ2. Not a single one, really take a look all those tradeskill instances are really places where you are forced to group. And Sony hates solo'ers thats why they are giving them even more content to show them how much they hate them.

Seriously though I think the big difference between someone who enjoys WoW and someone who enjoys EQ2 is what they enjoy in a game. I like EQ2 more, I loved EQ1 ya know what I like about EQ? I like leveling. I like having to kill hundreds of mobs to gain a level. I like going into a dungeon and working my way deep into it knowing that if I screw up I will be in for a major headache. As a young player of EQ1 I was deep into splitpaw and had my invis drop. I had to run all the way to the zone border hoping I could make it, my adrenolin was really pumping. If death would have been meaningless like in WoW or even EQ2 I would not have had nearly as much fun. I want to be able to walk into a new zone, and look around in fear not knowing if I am about to get womped by something huge.

I get the feeling people drawn to WoW are more interested in getting to the end of the game and striding godlike over all they survey. Don't get me wrong, that is a perfectly valid world view and is a reason why people like you and people like me (who like being overpowered by most NPC's) won't really ever see eye to eye.

As for the ages old soloing vs grouping, if you only want to solo go play on your Xbox. There needs to be places where you cannot go alone, or if you do go there alone, you are not going to be able to kill everything. This is not Doom, you are not strong enough to beat the end guy by yourself. This is a GOOD THING! Because if Vox can be soloed then what is the point of grouping at all?

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[superpulpsicle]

The problem with all these games is they can't appeal to the regular joe. That's why Matrix Online will have a rare opportunity to appeal to anyone. Except so far, I haven't heard one good thing out of the beta testing.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[ThePiMan2003]

Thats what I thought you were saying, so in effect as a high level character you cannot get Light Leather without mowing down hundreds of bunnies making it much harder for level apropriate people to find bunnies to kill. I suppose it makes sense if you need to protect the economy.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[tremor_tj]

Adventure packs were announced last week there Mr. Smartypants. On or around the 7th of Jan.

And they DO milk you. They charge extra for everything from extra character slots to access to their extra "features" on their web site.

Some people find these things "worth it", but I certainly don't. I payed Sony for 5 years of EQ1, I bought EQ2. I played it for a month and watched them start nickle-and-dime people, watched the lame excuse for solo and casual content, and left.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[falcon5768]

Jueno... it CAN be your friend.

I hated partying in the standard zones. I have managed to get my MNK to 54 going to a lot of alternate lvling areas like Sea Serpant Grotto, Altepa, andd even Koroloka Tunnle (great for getting away from damned Dunes noobs)

Unfortunatly the trend is now spreading and Quicksand Caves a great 40 range lvling area is now crawling with people. But the nice thing is, this has freed up a lot of the older zones from being train zones of hell.... like Garlage and Crawlers Nest.

Your right though its atime sink which has always been FF trademark. You dont play FFonline thinking it will be easy, you play KNOWING that those people who cant hack it leave for EQII and WoW.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[Psmylie]

Leveling in non-standard areas is one of the great reasons to have a static party. My static avoided the standard spots like the plague. We were one of the first parties to try beetles at the anthill in Altepa (which has since become a "standard" spot, at least on my server). Absolutely no competition, anywhere up to chain 7 on IT beetles (LOVE the distortion chains with Blizzard MB!) and no risk of getting grief from other parties.

Still, on the odd occasion we needed a fill-in member for the party, we often had a hard time convincing them that Altepa was the place to go. Once they got there, however, all complaints ceased :)

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[paitre]

Yah. The PT I mentioned in another post was camping the anthill in Western Altepa - I, personally, hit 2 levels in 3 hours. I was 2k from 43, and ended up at 1k into 44. Much coolness there.
We didn't have a BLM with us, but we have a SMN with Shiva. Distortion chain with Blizzard II (and two-houred another one for fun) absolutely -ruled-.
We never hit chain 7s, chain 5 once, lots of 4s and 3s. We kept running out of beetle's to kill because another PT was on the other side of the hill. >.
But yeah - the advantage of the non-standard areas is the complete lack of competition. It's great!

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[tukkayoot]

People actually go back to FF11?

The same game that deletes your character after your account is cancelled for 3 months?

That alone ensured that I'd never be going back to the game.

FF11 is an excellent game in many respects, but a few things just kill it:

• * The absolute worst user interface of any MMO I've played (aside from the very early EQ interface). Very little customizability, stupid smooth scroll induced chat lag, no alt+tab capability. Just
• horrible. Square-Enix seriously needs to take a lesson from SoE or Blizzard in this department.
  * The fact that you'd have an excruitating time finding acceptable groups. This is where the real challenge of FF11 was ... finding a static party that's on your schedule. I played a Red Mage, which at level 41+ is was one of the most sought after classes in the game, and I played my character very well (received my fair share of compliments), had all my spells, fully leveled WHM/BLM subjobs, always wrote a descriptive LFG message using the translated text. And still I'd have trouble finding groups for hours on end sometimes.
  * The inability to do anything really meaningful in a 30 minute or so play session.
  * Terrible first generation MMO style trade skill and item drop timesinks. Seriously, camping the Valkurm Emperor for 2 hours? Man, that's like something out of pre-Kunark EverQuest.
  * Very annoying inventory system that basically would necessitate that you pay for an extra character slot for a mule ... having to keep equipment sets not only for your main job, but also any subjobs you actively play, and also keep lower level gear for level capped BCNM events ... ugh.
  * Despite having North American and Japanese players playing on the server, no *kana input method editor was included for the North American client. I learned a few Japanese phrases, and might have pursued a more serious attempt to learn to speak the language more generally, but when I can't be assured that all of the Japanese players will be able to understand my Romanji... eh, what's the point?

  Besides, you can get to the level cap in a month of play time in FF11 -- you just need a static group. In a solid static group, you can simply blaze through the levels.

And while it's cool that the game rewards player competency and the ability to form a good group, it's lousy because it means your advancement without a static group is very streaky. You can blaze through a few levels in day or two, then get stalled on one level for a week. With subjobs, the almost constant need to farm, etc. it makes keeping within a viable grouping range (which is notoriously narrow) with your friends very difficult.

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of things about FF11 that I think they did and still do better than any other game on the market, but there's just too many things about this game that add up to ever allow me to consider going back to the game (and starting from scratch, no less).

While playing WoW, I often wonder if there's anybody left playing FF11, because it's just hard to imagine there is. :\ But I guess there is. It's good that someone is still enjoying it though.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[DrSkwid]

Adventure packs were announced last week there Mr. Smartypants. On or around the 7th of Jan.

you shouldn't rely on /. for your news

So, let me see, they charge you extra for extra things you can live without.

How is this different from paying for more channels on cable or buying more bandwidth or your next meal ?

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[TooMuchEspressoGuy]

"The EQ line of games was designed by masochists, for masochists."

Wouldn't that technically be "by sadists, for masochists"?

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[iolaus]

1. A risk can not be called a risk if there is no penalty!! What a penalty free death system breeds in boredom and players who annoy others because of boredom.

2. Leveling in any game is a silly and antiquated idea. "Look, my strength unit went from 30 to 31." When someone asks you in real life if you're good at basketball do you tell them your basketball skill is 18.4? Skills and attributes should be measured by accomplishments e.g. "I can kill an Ogre single handedly". Applying arbitrary numbers and levels to characters only breeds must-do-X-to-get-next-level gameplay.

3. Quests with no true effect on the world or anything in it are silly. Why is it any more exciting to got to location X, retrieve item Y and return to location Z than say run back and forth between two points 600 times.

4. GUIs and fancy graphics are great, but the massive problems of redundant, number-watching, conformist gameplay are what really need to be addressed in MMORPGs!

It should be noted that these opinions are those of a 3+ year UO player who was forced (by the mindless tedium and repetition of UO) into a virtual mid-life crisis at the age of 21!

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[Anonymous Coward]

To be unnecessarily pedantic like slashdot requires, it is possible for a high level to use the "ruined leather scraps" you get almost all the time from lvl 1 bunnies by combining multiple low leathers into one higher leather. It's exponential, so slaughtering a couple hundred bunnies will give you a tiny bit of usable leather, which is why nobody does it. Except for bunny hating psychopaths, of who there are many. You guys know who you are.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[NeoSkandranon]

Correct.
And actually, the only reason a high level character would NEEED light leather is purely for making money (that is, selling it off in bulk) unless he's got a specific order for a low level piece of equipment

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, I don't know what game you were playing, but there was really no SKILL in what you were doing. You basically hit "Attack" and let your character hit the enemy.

Anything more complicated was relatively meaningless. You'd go look up an extremely complicated and never-explained skillchain (or just use one of the "standard" ones that everyone knows). Then combat consisted of the tank using Provoke (taunts the enemy) every 30 seconds, the healer healing as needed, the mage using their highest-level spell, and the ranged users using their ranged attacks as often as possible.

Once everyone agreed they had enough TP (similar to WoW's Rage, these are points that you gain after being hit or hitting something), you might execute a skillchain. This involved everyone using a specific weapon ability in order.

However, none of this really involved skill. The game had a fairly complicated "elemental weakness" system, which was made COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT because the highest-level ability, regardless of element, was always the most powerful. In fact, about the only time the element would matter is if the creature was "strong" against the element. Since there were eight elements, that meant that seven would be equally effective, and one wouldn't.

Basically, once you knew the basics of combat, there was no skill involved. You just pick the most recent ability you got, since it'll do the most damage. No challenge, no skill. Just mindlessly pressing a button when the time was right.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[tremor_tj]

I relied on the announcement from John Smedley, President of Sony Online Entertainment.
The announcement can be found on the eq2players website, dated 7 Jan 2005.
How's that relying on Slashdot for my news?

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[Richard Whittaker]

I would agree that WoW is NOT revolutionary. What they have done is taken a lot of elements from other games that work well, and rolled it up into one extremely fun, well presented package. The game is simply a hell of a lot of fun to play.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[emrysk]

Or it's for people who don't have enough time on their hands to hit level 20 in 3 days. Just a thought.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[Anonymous Coward]

FFXI is not really a game in my opinion... it is, almost your another life. how many time and effort you gotta on it? I'm a blm63/whm38/rdm33/bst31/war21/etc... at this moment.

is the "game" fun? yeah~ it was... when you're lv 1 to 25 it is really great fun. level up is easy, so you can keep doing missions (you would like the missions because they contain storytelling) after you achieve to certain level.

but I can't use the word of "fun" to describe this game after lv 50. it is not really fun when you gotta repeat the action again and again, keep killing the mobs with similar fact again and again for few nights just for one level up. because time required for level up become larger and larger, you gotta wait longer and longer until you can do the next mission (of course, you can ask high level to help. but... is it really fun?). I even haven't count how many time you gotta spent on farming, etc... to get some OK equipment for your level so you can really hit the mob (acc+), you can really nuke the mob without being resisted (int+, element magic+, etc...), etc...

the level gap big trouble with FF XI. you can level up with ppl whose level is different to you more than 2 level. so once your friend go level up without, you gotta say byebye to him or expected for level gap racing.

FF XI is really not an easy game, but also not a difficult game... it is only a game you gotta spent lot of time on it. player skill? yes... required... for leveling party, the only skill you gotta know is understand your job, and then found out the golden rule every certain level. once you know the golden rule of your job, everything is crazy easy and repeatable. who plays crap in FFXI is only those who's not understand their job well, or... not willing to accept the limitation of their job (like lot of stupid RDM love playing like a WAR or BLM but going to think about RDM responsibility). being a high level, having lot of nice equipment doesn't mean anything, it is only to prove that you already wasted lot of time and effort in that virtual world.

challenge in FFXI? sorry, except some BCNM or level cap area, I don't see any challenge.

so.. am I still playing FF XI? yes, I still keep my character and play it almost everynight. but most of the time I spent is chatting with LS fellow, helping others, or going to do some stupid adventures (please expected for death) together. death penality in this game is horrible... but, it is not really adventure and fun if just using a lv 60+ character to explorer those area with lv 10 mobs only.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[gamgee5273]

My biggest grudge with a fellow just dropping out of a party was: I was out in the Dunes with my wife (when we were working on the subjob quest), and we had a good group going. However, two of the members were Japanese and a third was very, very new to the game and had no idea how to handle macros, chain attacks, etc. Thus, my wife and I spent most of our time speaking with the autotranslator and explaining how to create a voke macro to the newbie. The party leader, who really had gotten a good group going, just up and disappeared! The party suddenly disbanded, he went running off, and I blacklisted my first ever player.

All things considered, since my wife and I are a BLM/WHM team, we really have been getting good parties in the past few months. Static ones have been difficult, though, because real life just collides with FFXI. But, man, my fishing rocks! :)

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you that there's really no skill in FF. we only need the KNOWLEDGE, but not skill. once you master how to play the job, that's all... the rest is something repeatable and repeatable.

but if talking about the magic and elemental... hmmm. "elemental weakness" system is very important in the game and it is a knowledge that all magic caster must know (at least, to BLM). it is COMPLETE RELEVANT... I found that lot of NA players just never care about the "elemental weakness" system. the rest of the seven magic you mention is NOT equally effective. the effectiveness I'm talking about, is MP effectivness. it does damage even if you cast a wrong magic, but just you can fully ultize the MP you spent.

although the game does not require any skill, normal IQ and background knowledge about the game system is a MUST, esp. you're a mage. think about why the party next to you can chain #5 while the BLM in your PT always gotta rest. black mage in FF XI is only a job for nuking without the brain.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[will_die]

Community: The one in WoW is slightly better bnet but still rather bad. EQ2 is alot more adult and the majority of people are alot nicer. original poster looks like it came from a WoW board and EQ2 and WoW were exchanged in post.

Grouping: I don't play MMORPG to solo everything, if I did thier are solo games that do it a whole lot better.
However I do want to solo when I cannot get a group and when I feel like it. In EQ2 I can solo OK and thier is plenty to do solo, however it is much more group based at all level, and most(95%) of the better stuff requires a group to get at a resonable level. Groups usally stay around for the whole night adding and dropping people as needed. EQ2 devs have said they are adding alot more for solo based quests, and recently just released a bunch more solo items with more to come. WoW group not really needed at low levels(you can bybass the quests that require them) but come high levels is more required then EQ2. High level is designed around raids(some w/40 people) and PvP all are group based, will be interesting if people can switch to that mind set. At lower levels groups tend to be created for a specific quest then break up; I found I spent more time looking for groups to solve a single quest then I ever did in EQ2. WoW devs have also said that alot of the new content will be more group focused, from past MMORPGs(AC2 is but one example) it is alot hard to go from a solo MMORPG to more group based then to go the other way.

Alternate characters: In WoW it is more create alternate chars as you quickly reach max level. EQ2 has more life to the character. I like my single character and am not a create a new alternate because you new quests and have maxed out your old char.
PvP: Not into it in RPGs. EQ2 primarily PvE; WoW alot of focus on PvP. the devs of WoW consider PvP 1/3 of the foundation of the game, and are spending alot of time on it. Will be interesting to see how thier "hero" levels work and if they require PvP for raising them or if they will have something else as the PvP rewards. EQ2 has said they will be adding direct PvP in the future but thier main immediate focus on what they call interactive PvP(iPvP), yes a very stupid name. Where instead of just killing people on the other side, plays on the two sides will compete for items/status/etc, more of a cold war type of thing instead of direct conflict. WoW battlefields could be interesting putting a RTS twist on MMORPG PvP, will have to see once they every come out.

That all said WoW is definatly the most polished MMORPG to be released. Everything looks great, a few of the quests are alot more complex then EQ2, but that polish is just the surface. Once you get below the looks it is rather shallow of a game(something the battlefields may fix). EQ2 has the foundation but lacks the polish. You could do as I and other have done purchase WoW initially for 2-3 months until the polish is gone then get EQ2. That was my initial idea but the better gaming experience from EQ2 pulled be back quicker then I was expecting.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[EulerX07]

Maybe it's just me, but that sounds horrible.

Oh it is horrible, that's the feeling I was trying to convey in my write-up. Kinda like eating your brain with a toothpick for hours on end. It's painful, tastes bad, takes forever and you know it's killing you.

I quit back in August (detail I should have included I guess).

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year

[EulerX07]

There wasn't too much connection between Dune II and WarCraft, either.

Blizzard took Dune 2, polished the interface, cut the the number of opposite sides to two instead of three, use a medieval theme and the roster of unit is mirrored on both sides, save for spells. Blizzard have always been king at making perfect interfaces for their game. They optimized and themed Dune 2, and released Warcraft. I know Herzog Zwei was the first RTS, but Dune 2 established the PC RTS era, Warcraft was an imitation. They only started shining from a strategy standpoint with the amazingly good game "Starcraft". My whole point is that Blizzard is not a "revolutionary" company, they take established concept and optimize/"pastheurize" them for massive consumption by the most possible consumers.

Dune II had a terrible interface and gameplay that was nearly identical to C&C, not WarCraft.

This is like comparing:
Coors Lite vs Vintage wine
Mozarella vs Brie

Easier to consume in large quantities, but not of higher quality.

Making things easier to read

[Anonymous Coward]

http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000095.htm

There are Other MMO's also....

[shamowfski]

I think these articles need to look at the more independent titles as well. While I have found them to be more buggy, I would like some pressure put on the bigger companies to lower prices and/or increase content. Currently i'm fumbling my way through Planshift, and (because i'm a glutton for punishment) Planetside.

Mod Parent Down

[Anonymous Coward]

EQ2 vs. WoW Trolling.

I'm not impressed...

[Urger]

with the MMORPG's that came out in the last year. I can't quantify that with any data, alas. It's just my general feeling towards the lot. Oh well....

Re:I'm not impressed...

[Anonymous Coward]

with the MMORPG's that came out in the last year. I can't quantify that with any data, alas. It's just my general feeling towards the lot. Oh well....

There has yet to come a new MMOG to thrill me. Yes, i'm still playing EQ, but more out of habit and less and less so. SOE ruined what they put their fingers on (like a reverse Midas, who turn things into shit instead of gold) and WoW never really impressed me - never liked their games anyway. Anyway, i'm not going to spend a single cent on either EQ2 or WoW. I'd rather stand under a cold shower ripping 5$ notes apart.

my personal current fav MMORPG

[compro01]

i personally like the MMORPG maplestory, yes, it's a silly name. the site is here one thing i like about it, is that it is free, at least to play. at present, it's in public beta for the global version, but if you understand chinese, japanese, or korean, there is a release version of those languages already, which can be found here as i said, the game is free to play, but they have a creative idea on making money off it. in the game, there's something called the cash shop. there, you pay real world cash to be able to get unique items. go ahead and give it a try. you've got nothing to lose, except maybe time, as this game is addictive.

Re:my personal current fav MMORPG

[Anonymous Coward]

"the game is free to play, but they have a creative idea on making money off it. in the game, there's something called the cash shop. there, you pay real world cash to be able to get unique items."

So basically what your saying is that its free *but* if you want to be able to compete with other players you have to pay to get the items. And I'm making a humble assumption that after everyone buys those items, they make better items, hence forcing you to pay more if you want to have the best stuff.

How is that any better than just paying a monthly fee?

Re:my personal current fav MMORPG

[OwlofCreamCheese]

how is it any better?

you do realize that not everyone in the world is a competitive dick? right? some people don't care if they are the best in the game.

Re:my personal current fav MMORPG

[Anonymous Coward]

Many unique items are simply cosmetic. If you've ever played Ragnarok Online, you know what kind of demand there is for the newest "cute hat" -- it's just a sprite but there sure is a lot of demand for it. I think Maple Story is onto something here.

Player hardship vs gaming challange

[Anonymous Coward]

Walter Yarbrough: I'm also curious about the success of Vanguard's approach of "We're going to make this hard, and you'll like it!" Particularly when compared with the much more casual and penalty-free playstyle of WoW.

I can tell you about the success of that approach: Bollocks to that!

I abandoned EverQuest because the high-end game was a boring chore rather than an exciting challange. Camping for weeks or months on end for your mob to spawn is a "challange" only in respect of trying to hold your eyelids open. In reality, it's simply player hardship for its own sake.

It seems that because of the ambiguity of the word "hard", some designers can't tell the difference between the two things, and which is good and which is bad.

Re:Player hardship vs gaming challange

[ShortedOut]

The way every designer in every MMO made to date makes things "harder", is to require more people to kill the monster. I wish it would require more thought from the player. Or have the group meet other requirements rather than hit creature X with everything you got wile others heal you.

I guess it's just easier to program a ton of mobs rather than have the mobs and players interact with the world, and use the world to their advantage.

Re:Player hardship vs gaming challange

[No Such Agency]

Camping for weeks or months on end for your mob to spawn is a "challange" only in respect of trying to hold your eyelids open. In reality, it's simply player hardship for its own sake.

... or player hardship for the sake of stringing your gameplay out so you keep paying for that account.

Re:Player hardship vs gaming challange

[Dragoon412]

I don't know, on one hand, I welcome challenge in a game, but on the other, I think it'll be exactly as you describe.

So long as MMOs are nothing but graphical spreadsheets, with the game engine handling (read: mangling) all the subtleties of combat, "challenge" is sort of a misnomer.

WoW isn't any more or less challenging than any other MMO I've ever played. EQ, DAoC, UO, AO, WoW... they're all of roughly the same complexity, with pretty shallow combat. The only challenges that come into play are getting the smacktards in your group to do their job right, and your frustration.

Indeed, when I read that Vanguard will be challenging, what I understand is "Vanguard will have horendously bad death pentalties and a a mind-blowingly long leveling treadmill."

And like you said: Bollocks to that!

Re:Player hardship vs gaming challange

[bannerman]

Definte challenging. World of Warcraft is easy in the sense that you don't need to check the guide online in order to complete the quests. I can't speak for EQ, but in Dark Age of Camelot, quests often consited of spending 2 hours on a horse which lead up to a 2 minute fight. Or finding a mob that rarely spawns and is hard to see. Or finding a 100x100 space in a 65,000x65,000 unit zone with the hint "it's in the northwest section". That sort of thing is retarded. If I wanted to do that I'd have my wife throw my car keys out in the middle of the field next to my house evey morning, and then send me after them blindfolded. In World of Warcraft, quests are fun. The hard part is, as Dragoon412 put it, getting the folks in your group to do the right thing. That's the best challenge, imo. It shouldn't be difficult to make your character do what you're envisioning. The hard part should be cooperation, and devising a strategy for whatever it is you're facing.

Re:Player hardship vs gaming challange

[Demonspawn]

I usto be a programer for MUDs. Having designed several areas for different games, I've found out the following:

1. Some games require massive timesinks. People who play these games have an elieteism that they've spent more time on the game than you, and therefore are better. They actually consider the timesink 'hardness' to be an asset. These people played EQ1 ;) The easiest timesink to add is to require grouping. Nothing is as horid as waiting for the required class to log on so you can do something.

2. It is VERY hard to balance classes. Most games have 4 core classes (Tank, Healer, Magical Damage, Melee Damage) In graphical games, you can add on a 5th core class of crowd control. Since any class beside the core 4/5 is a class that can do more than one job, just less effectively, it becomes difficult to create an encounter that can be acomplished by non-cores without it being a cakewalk to a perfect core party.

3. The only real way to make a 'harder' encounter is to require more people or higher levels. Yes, there may be a 'trick' way of pulling off the 50 person EQ raid with 30, but someone will post that to a messageboard and then everyone is doing the encounter with 30. From a content creator's perspective, I had an encounter that required a full party (10) of high levels that probally required at least 6-7 of them to be core. It got stomped by 6 when they discovered a 'bug' in the encounter (a 'trick' that I did not intend). I congraulated them, and then quickly fixed the bug ;) Oh the messages I got when they tried it again....

--Demonspawn

Re:Player hardship vs gaming challange

[coupland]

Yeah I have to agree. I think 99% of all "video" games ever made are designed around a false assumption: that players enjoy failing. So games are all built around the concept of completing tasks of ever-increasing difficulty where you are rewarded for success and punished for failure. Punishment is usually doled out in the way of death, XP debt, item wear, lost money etc. What is wrong with this picture?

Surely in 1985 a puzzle was a sure way to keep people occupied, and increasing levels of difficulty is what kept people interested in what was ultimately an extremely repetitive and simple game. It was necessary. But no longer. Game designers are stuck with principles that only served them on a Commodore 64.

Now we have massively multiplayer online games with massive, sprawling maps that make up entire worlds. Games should be open-ended and engaging, players should be driven by a love to explore an amazing new world. To see and do everything they possibly can in a fantasy world that they relate to. Not continue to pursue a punishment/reward feedback loop. Kill, level, kill, die, kill, level, die... Games designers, wake up!

Re:Player hardship vs gaming challange

[JaredOfEuropa]

It seems that because of the ambiguity of the word "hard", some designers can't tell the difference between the two things, and which is good and which is bad.

I have always thought that MMORPG levelling should take a *long* time but cost little effort, so that the system slows down powergamers to prevent them from maxing out their levels overnight, while at the same time not making those higher levels impossible to attain for casual players, and still granting an edge to those who choose to grind. Ultima's Guaranteed Gain System was a step in the right direction: if you worked on a skill, you'd get a 'free' gain right off. After a number of hours (or days, depending on your current level)), you'd be eligible for another free gain. In the meantime, you could grind it out and earn extra gains. If I was in charge, I'd have capped the extra gains at some maximum per time period though.

This way you can accommodate both playstyles (powergamer and casual player), and both can spend more time on enjoying the game rather than mindless drudgery.

Re:Player hardship vs gaming challange

[Anonymous Coward]

So long as MMOs are nothing but graphical spreadsheets, with the game engine handling (read: mangling) all the subtleties of combat, "challenge" is sort of a misnomer.

That specifically only relates to MMORPGs. I've been playing Planetside (an MMOFPS) for a couple months now, and I'm enjoying it. It's challenging, and requires skill, yet it's easy enough to get into the fray.

I don't think it's perfect, and they could definitely build on the idea more, but I enjoy it more than SWG and UO.

Re:Player hardship vs gaming challange

[Auraveda]

I agree. Most MMORPGs are the same thing, which is why I'm starting to tire of the genre. It's more fun to sightsee and check out the design than level up. I think it's the stat driven combat/leveling that irks me the most. If I could have a MMORPG that had puzzles in it, reminiscent of Ico or Zelda, and had a fighting control equivalent to a fighting game like Soul Calibur, well that'd be just about perfect. I don't want time spent leveling to be the deciding factor of how good I am in game. Basicly, I want a twitch / platform / puzzle MMORPG.

Re:Player hardship vs gaming challange

[fitten]

Yup, folks who claim the EQ raids are boring have never lead them. There's nothing like trying to get 71 (plus you = 72) crack monkeys in line and hitting on all cylinders in order to beat some encounter. Those folks who say raids are 2 hours of waiting and 10 minutes of fight don't understand the stuff the raid leaders go through in that 2 hours to actually pull the raid off.

Also, there's nothing like the feeling of being the raid leader for the night and having the backing of the entire guild as your 'sword' to 'swing' as you see fit in the game and the feel of the virtual 'power' of that. Having been a member of the top guild on an EQ server for 4.5 years and having lead a few raids, it's *the* challenge of the game to lead successful raids.

I did quit EQ in the end because it did take too much of my time. For years I'd rush home after work to get online in order to get with my guild in order to get the ball rolling for the afternoon. In the end, it was a second job. 10 hours at work everyday followed by nearly 8 hours every night during the week and usually 12+ hours on each day of the weekend. The reason I kept playing for the last year of that was because of the people in the game. We had had several guild gatherings over the years so many of us had actually met and hung out IRL.

Re:Player hardship vs gaming challange

[Anonymous Coward]

Vanguard, read Verant Resurrected, will produce a game that is not challenging, just long, tedious and frustrating. It's perfect for accountants and marines who seem to enjoy grinding through tedium and believe it builds character.

Since Brad McQuaid did not understand that EQ was tedious, not challenging/entertaining (and led SOE to continue producing tedium into the new millenia), I have put together a list to help him before he hurts the world again.

- WoW is challenging (mostly), EQ is tedious.

- Chess is challenging, winning 50 tic-tac-toe rounds is tedium.

- Solving a mystery (e.g. the Da Vinci Code) is interesting, sitting on a tree stump waiting for Jesus to return is tedious.

- Visiting new cities and learning their history is entertaining. Getting home in the same city rush hour traffic is tedious.

- The Sims (offline, original, uncut) is entertaining, actually performing the "daily grind" is tedious.

- Watching a street gang get busted is entertaining, personally beating up every single street gang member in the world is tedious.

- Building something good and having it be sold and used is entertaining. Building 100x of anything personally is tedious.

- Building a profitable company is exciting. Wiring it, doing the plumbing, doing all the xerox/printing, holding everyone's hand, dusting, cleaning the bathroom for it is tedious.

- The great epics are exciting (to read). Boot camp, while a great struggle of the spirit over adversity, is painful and tedious.

- Creating, solving, exploring is entertaining. Work is tedious.

I hope this helps Brad in his future endeavors so that his next MMOG will appeal to a group of people who are not quite so in to the concept of personal suffering.

Re:Player hardship vs gaming challange

[Negatyfus]

It will be interesting to see if Dungeons and Dragons Online will ever see the light of day. They say combat will be real-time rather than turn-based. Of course, dungeons will be instanced...

D&D Online FAQ

Re:Player hardship vs gaming challange

[Anonymous Coward]

There are better things to do than lead 72 crackmonkeys on a raid. Having to have 72 players at one place for a single raid smacks of designer incompetance.

Re:Player hardship vs gaming challange

[Warskull]

Difficulty is not only a problem in MMORPGs, but with all games in general. I think most developers have lost sight of what makes a "hard" game good. As a result their version of hard is "add a bunch of zeros to its HP" or "make it so there is only one obscure way to complete this." What made games like that fun is they were challenging, but fair. You had a decent shot at completing whatever task was at hand, you just might have to think a little or change your strategies on the fly. These days most developers are just better of making an easy game with shiny graphics though. At least they are good at that.

Re:Player hardship vs gaming challange

[Dr. Trevorkian]

Of course, dungeons will be instanced...

Not only that, but most of the adventuring will be instanced, if I recall a developer interview correctly. The idea is to bring the table-top feeling to the game, where it's you and your party, rather than the much less intimate experience we're used to in MMO worlds.

I'm keeping an eye on this game. It could be an interesting new take on MMO gaming, despite the worn-out subject matter.

Re:Player hardship vs gaming challange

[Anonymous Coward]

Raids are in fact the only fun part in EQ, if you have a good guild. If you have a good raid-guild people will show up at the indicated time and be ready to go. At most 15 minutes of waiting. Our guild even did 'pre raids', things that required fewer people but entertained us while we waited to get moving on the real thing.

Good raid guilds already know how to do the right thing, you just need to give them instructions and strategy for the indicated fight. "TT spawns butterflies at 75%, kill them. Dispels at 50%, all but MT & CH leave the dome. Gargs at 25%, kill them" are all that a good guild needs to hear (forgive me if this is out of date, wrong, not your favorite strategy, etc. it's just an example). If you find yourself having to tell people how to play their class, I personally think raids stop being fun fast.

But guilds are often clique-ish, and fall apart easily as newer better designed games come along. Rebuilding a good guild in a declining population is hard, especially when the company that runs the game is letting it go to pot.

Most people only get to see open raids because of the clique nature of good guilds. Open raids are pure, unadulterated torture. Unfortunately good guilds often require you to be flagged to a certain level to join (part of the elitist practice which hurts everyone). This is part of what is killing the game. Bad game design from Sony, bad responses from players who are "in", all driving new people out.

Re:Player hardship vs gaming challange

[taernim]

WoW isn't any more or less challenging than any other MMO I've ever played. EQ, DAoC, UO, AO, WoW... they're all of roughly the same complexity, with pretty shallow combat

I disagree wholly with that assessment. I have played WoW since it opened and I have played FFXI Online for a year prior to that. I also spent time playing EQ, SWG, etc.

WoW, while I admit it is quite fun, has relatively little challenge. While it is true you can have a crappy group, it does not seem to take a lot of skill to be "decent." Final Fantasy, on the other hand, takes a lot of skill to be really good at. You need to understand your class, as well as how it should interact with various creatures with your group.

The people I play with had a very high level of coordination in the game. Despite playing with the same group of people in WoW, we have found we can basically "Half-ass" it in WoW and do fine.. whereas FFXI requires a lot more timing and sophistication.

I think this is a credit to FFXI's design, not to WoW's, because who wants to play a game which a "button masher" can win? We all disliked the kids in the arcade who had no skill and literally just pressed anything and everything without any rhyme or reason. Why should that be rewarded?

I still play both WoW and FFXI, but for two different things. WoW is a fun "Casual" game... but long-term I think it has minimal staying power. FFXI is a more long-term payoff.

Re:Player hardship vs gaming challange

[Thangodin]

EQ uses trial-by-boredom: difficulty = time. And I think the way EQ2 is tanking tells the story on that. I'm sorry to say I bought this turkey, and killed it after the first month.

Difficulty should be about strategy, but this is hard--not for the players, but for the game maker. Real strategy requires more options in play, not just higher numbers applied to the same thing. You know the game works if, given the same situation and stats, a good player gains a lot more XP, loot, etc, than a bad player, and the difference should be apparent in minutes. If it takes you five hours to get anything happening, your game is broken, and I won't bother with it.

Apparently, no one else will either. It's gratifying to see EQ2 tank, WoW soar, and CoH recover nicely after the dip it took when these come out. Bot WoW and CoH actually treat their players as if their time mattered.

Re:Player hardship vs gaming challange

[will_die]

How exactly is EQ2 tanking?
They have sold over 300,000 copies, more then CoH and 1/2 the number of WoW.
The servers are being filled and they are adding new ones.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year NOT TRUE

[redKrane]

Your WoW comments are horrible. 20 levels in 3 days implies nothing more than you playing the game for the better part of those 3 days. It says nothing about the "challenge" of the game.

Cheap cartoony graphics? Well there are 1000's of adults who truly enjoy those "cheap" graphics. Tell that to the Blizzard artists while you're at it.

Richest backstory? EQ's story is nothing more than another rehashing of Tolkienesque characters and lore. At least WoW has its own back story which I remind you has existed a lot longer than EQ.

WoW is just as strategic as EQ, and you will die if tactics arent in order. You wouldnt know that cause you stopped at lvl 20, right when quests start to get a lot harder.

WoW is a great game that is literally saving the genre whilst you whine about returning to the glory days of EQ.

At least Garriot hinted at it!

[Skynet]

He mentioned he liked the MMO offerings from Blizzard, claiming that they were more far reaching that previous MMOs.

Garriot 4 Life!

WoW - best mmporg of the year

[lscotte]

Bah, WoW is an awesome game. The cartoon graphics are perfect for this game, nice to have a game with reasonable system requirements.

I did 20 levels in 3 days

Seriously, how many hours did it take you to get to level 20? "days" is a useless unit of time unless you mean your /played time or played for 3 days straight. Be honest, if you can.

Having said that, I do agree you level too fast in WoW. There's a simple solution to that - put less focus on trying to level, and work on your tradeskills and help support the in-game economy instead. If grinding is your preference, go create a char on a PvP server which makes questing significantly harder and frustrating.

Re:WoW - best mmporg of the year

[BigHungryJoe]

In terms of hours, I probably played 10-12 hours per day.

I meant the original post to be more provocative and less flamebait, but as I reread it, I can see I failed at that.

I think one of the reasons I saw a lack of challenge in WoW was that there seems to be no real death penalty. EQ2 punishes recklessness/carelessness with a shared group penalty, which I love.

Re:WoW - best mmporg of the year

[Anonymous Coward]

I think one of the reasons I saw a lack of challenge in WoW was that there seems to be no real death penalty. EQ2 punishes recklessness/carelessness with a shared group penalty, which I love.
- No penalty? Lay off the crackpipe. Go to a General fight in upper BRS, have someone make ONE SINGLE mistake. Wipe because of it. Then tell me there is no penalty. The fact that you cannot ressurect in combat is a HUGE penalty for death. The fact that you have to reclear trash mobs just to get back to named/boss fight is a HUGE penalty. You lose a metrick fuckton of time just getting back where you were before someone made a mistake.

Go play more high/endgame WoW before yapping about no penalties. There are plenty of penalties.

Re:WoW - best mmporg of the year

[patonw]

If grinding is your preference, go create a char on a PvP server which makes questing significantly harder and frustrating.

Especially when you get someone ten levels than you camping your body for kicks.

Re:WoW - best mmporg of the year

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the thing: most people with money have jobs. I'd say, my day's fairly typical, so I'll use that for numbers. I'm away from home for work about 10 to 11 hours a day (including commute and lunch). If you shoot for 8 hours of sleep and getting ready for work, that leaves 6 hours per day of time not spoken for. I have a family that takes a fair amount of that chunk of free time. On week nights, typically, I'll get 2, maybe 3 or 4 hours of reasonably free time (still with interuption) for games, tv and stuff. Lots of people work much longer hours than I do.

Now, games are getting over 100,000 subscribers. How many people without jobs and/or families will be able to afford to pay $10 to $15 per month to play a game which in the end is as much of a waste of time (or lack of) as watching TV, going to a ball game, or playing cards with friends.

Now, this could easily turn into a flame, but it's not. It's just the facts -- most people can not play a game for 10 hours a day. Most people have real life responsiblities that will prevent it and our country would be really screwed if that wasn't the case.

Re:WoW - best mmporg of the year

[lscotte]

In terms of hours, I probably played 10-12 hours per day.

Fair enough... So you played for say 30 hours to get to level 20. You'll find now that it will be progressively harder to level. My char is level 34, and it's now taking me a significantly long time to gain enough XP to level.

I meant the original post to be more provocative and less flamebait, but as I reread it, I can see I failed at that.

It was your opinion, not flamebait. In typical /. mob attitude your post was unfortunately modded down.

I think one of the reasons I saw a lack of challenge in WoW was that there seems to be no real death penalty.

That's a fair point. On the other hand, I still try to avoid dying because I don't feel I've accomplished anything if I play that way...

Fluff & Softballs

[Anonymous Coward]

Must be a slow news day if this is getting slashdotted. Stuff like this can be found on shacknews and bluesnews, not to mention it getting linked weeks after it was posted. C'mon editors, there's gotta be better news out there.

So where are the good linux MMORPG's?

[Trigun]

Anything of notice out there?

Re:So where are the good linux MMORPG's?

[xZAQx]

Isn't NWN a MMORPG?

I dunno...all those fantasy-type games look the same: gay.

Re:So where are the good linux MMORPG's?

[Trigun]

It's an RPG, but not massively multi-player. There are some map hacks to get persistent items, but the online portion is essentially to gather a few of your friends together for a dungeon crawl.

I imagine that if the source were opened, then it could act as a client for a MMORPG, but as it stands, it is not.

Re:So where are the good linux MMORPG's?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.vendetta-online.com/

Just look at the box:
http://www.vendetta-online.com/vendetta.box. jpg

Re:So where are the good linux MMORPG's?

[Trigun]

Thanks, I didn't realize it was out of beta yet.

Re:So where are the good linux MMORPG's?

[jgnatzer]

Try this one: http://www.neocron.com/ No Elves there, good ole Cyperpunk atmo, offers free trial.

Interview?

[agtwilight]

Those are some pretty short interviews considering the body of work those folks have done.

I have cancelled UO, SWG, EQ, and CoH for WoW...as an old fart of MMO I can tell you that WoW is where it is at - I think every person I know online has switched to it and have no plans of going back to any of the above games. Oh wait there is this one guy at the helpdesk playing EQ 2 and is a miserable whiner about it.

If you like MMO then just go buy the darn thing - play on a low population PVE or PVP server as per your fancy...if you pvp just remember there is a more uber player over that next hill so dont cry when you get ganked after picking on some n00bs.

Bladedawn on Blackhand

Re:Interview?

[I8TheWorm]

I just started playing SWG a few months ago, and I have to say, I'm having fun. Of course, the forums are filled with both whiners and satisfied people, but my guess is you get that in every game. Since joining SWG I've mastered a profession, started a couple of others, joined a guild, etc... the usual MMORPG rituals.

So I wonder, why is it you've switched to WoW and are not looking back?

Re:Interview?

[trentdk]

Woot Woot, blackhand! Long live the Alliance! I've played EQ, AO, Shadowbane, SWG, and Horizones. WoW overcomes all the aformention's problems.

Re:Interview?

[aztektum]

I'll tell you why I dropped SWG (though I haven't played WoW).

I liked to go out and actually do some battling. But everyone I knew in the game sat around crafting things to make credits. And the missions themselves are pretty boring. I got tired of shooting the same critters over and over.

The game is also more than a lil buggy, even a year after launch when I went back to it, there were still bugs I'd dealt with at launch.

Finally I don't really like the Teras Kasi Masters profession and those that choose it. It just seems wrong to me for a Star Wars game.

Re:Interview?

[NeoSkandranon]

I've not played SWG but my brother has, and the complaints I gathered from him were like this:

Lots of sitting around waiting on people, cause no one actually wanted to go do missions/quests/whatever (too busy crafting?)

Game ran like ass in a major population center

Economy was fubar/ hard to make money unless you were a powergamer

Personally I've played EQ, Lineage II and UO and would never even dream of going back to any of those after playing WOW. The PVP delieation (can't get PK'd if you dont want to be), quest rewards (most of your XP comes from completing quests, not grinding monsters) and treasure system (like Diablo II--items acutally drop, and you CAN find good things frequently depending on your level) I'd never dream of going back to any of those, especially EQ or lineage II, which i deeply regret spending a dime of my money on

Re:Interview?

[Etone]

> So I wonder, why is it you've switched to WoW and are not looking back?

That's easy.

One-line Summary:

You get the least amount of value for your money in terms of gameplay and content in SWG than you do in any other game in its genre.

Details:

1) Combat is the dullest and most lifeless affair of any MMOG I've ever played. (AC, UO, DAoC, EQ)

2) Every other MMOG offers about 100 times the quest content.

3) The SWG devs stubbornly refuse to fix anything or patch in any content at a pace faster than "tortoise". I was in since retail and in the year I played, nothing ever got fixed except minor bugs in the five quests that did exist.

Re:Interview?

[mallie_mcg]

The interviews were more blurbs than anything else :(.

I tend to find that WoW is the sweet spot as far as MMO games go (i once said there was no way in hell that you would get me playing a pay for play game) I find that WoW allows me to play and play at a pace that I can find comfortable and I get rewarded for in game for coming back. I dont have to play 4-8 hours a night to get anywhere and I am satisfied with what I am paying as per in game "progress".

I work and my hours are sometimes annoying when I get home I dont want to play a character for 4 hours to get to the next level or find some peice of equipment I want to be able to get instant satisfaction when I want it, allowing me to have time for friends family etal. I think WoW allows for this nicely.

M

Netcraft confirms it: EQ2 is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

The success of WoW really surprised me. I expected WoW to be a successful but not THAT successful. Currently WoW is so popular that it threatens the viability of EQ2 and every MMOG currently in development. EQ2 continues to suffer from dismal sales due to WoW releasing their open beta one week before EQ2 went retail. If Sony can't find a way to increase subscriber numbers soon it will be impossible for them to recoup their development costs. WoW, on the other hand, is completely sold out across the country.

By Summer WoW will have the largest subscriber base in the history of online gaming and be the #1 MMORPG in the world. The only thing preventing WoW subscribers from growing exponentially is the speed at which the WoW team can expand their datacenter and ship new CDs of the game to distributors.

It's hard to argue with success: soon WoW will be the most successful game of all time. Netcraft confirms it: EQ2 is dead.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: EQ2 is dying

[MrBandersnatch]

Ive been looking for subscriber numbers for WoW/EQ2 - can you point me to the details you allude to?

Re:Netcraft confirms it: EQ2 is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

WoW Census - game demographics, statistics, etc.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: EQ2 is dying

[EastCoastSurfer]

Take the WoW Census numbers with a grain of salt. The most accurate numbers about games sold/subs have come from Blizzard in press releases. Keep in mind their latest release is only from Dec. 1 though.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: EQ2 is dying

[skrolle2]

3 million Koreans say: KEKEKEKE! Lineage!

http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart1.html/

Lineage and Lineage II completely dwarves the other MMORPGs, but on the other hand they don't seem to be very popular outside Asia. I think WoW will be very successful, but I *highly* doubt they will capture the #1 spot.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: EQ2 is dying

[DrXym]

I wonder if EQ2 didn't get bitten because so many people are ex-EQ or ex-SWG. I know from my experience of EQ (playing for close to 2 years) and from SWG (just a 2 week trial) that I wouldn't touch anything made by Verant with a bargepole without deliriously positive reviews appearing for it first. I know from experience that their customer service stinks. I know from experience that their games are based on the concept of camping, grind and all around tedium. I know from experience that they'll happily use their paying customers as beta testers for some broken new game engine. I know from experience that certain features are half baked with promises that it will be fixed in an expansion (costing $$$). I know from experience that they don't care about casual gamers.

Now EQ2 got reasonable reviews which might suggest Verant have learned something, but WoW got *great* reviews. So if I were choosing one I'd know which I'd pick. And since I played WoW in the beta I happen to know its a great game with a great UI. Unlike EQ, you feel you can just pick it up and play. Furthermore, the graphics are pretty are not *demanding* so it runs great on older machines with huge zones and brief loading times.

My only concern with MMPORGS in general is how much they cost. My belief is that if someone is going to charge me $15 a month to play it, then the client had better damned well be free to download. WoW had the right idea to release the beta as a modified bittorrent - it's just too bad they didn't follow the idea through with the final release. What difference does it make to them if I buy the game retail or not? I actually believe that making it a free download would substantially increase their subscriber base.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: EQ2 is dying

[1c3mAn]

"Why go retail?"

Blizzard is a division of Vivendi Universal. VU is a large distributor of all kinds of games for many platfroms. They have contracts with retailors, for many products. Advertisement and shelf space are all in these contracts.

Thus, inorder for a mediocre game to get that prime shelf space, they need to give part of the pie of one of the hottest games to come out in a while.

Remember that while a large chunk of people knew about World of Warcraft, the biggest buyer is still the casual buyer. VU and Blizzard needed to attract those people.

Now, WoW has been sold out in a number of places, and getting your hands on a box is difficult now, BUT I dont believe that VU or Blizzard expected this much of a demand.

Retailors needed to be included or they could just cut VU out of some other game that would need the shelf space. Remember also that most of the development cost is recovered from box sales while the monthly cost is more for server up keep and GM salaries. Expansions boxes pay for the programmers to keep developing. Just how the industry works.

Direct download will come, but I dont think it will happen before the summer.

Iceman

Re:Netcraft confirms it: EQ2 is dying

[DrXym]

I don't see why retail and download should be mutually exclusive. The fact is there is a place for both of them. Direct retail satisfies the impulse buyers who see it and want the game and 30 days of play *now* versus 20 hours of downloading. The direct download is for those who'd *like* the game but aren't going to fork out $50 when they might dump it in a month.

I truly believe that you could do both and make much more money than if you did one alone. Its clear from the number of people who bothered to download the public beta (myself included), weighing in at 1.7gb that there is an untapped market there to exploit. I don't see that it matters to Vivendi *how* they get their subs so long as people are handing over the money in one way or another.

My Take on 2004

[Bruha]

It was a interesting year. Horizons no long was vaporware yet has met little success. Several games came and went such as Rubies of Eventide as the eq knockoffs continue to meet difficulties garnering subscribers in the face of the MMO big 3 (EverQuest, World of Warcraft, and Star Wars Galaxies)

We saw Asian gaming hit US shores with Final Fantasy and Lineage but as with the Asian MMO culture these games resemble 1st gen MMO's at best in many aspects.

Turbine continued to drag players along with it's failed Asheron's Call 2 release. With monthly content patches mostly rebalances every month since launch only to produce a few decent patches before announcing a move to patches every 2 months. Effectively doubling the price per content push (PPCP). Doubt remains wether they can produce viable MMO's that will succeed even with big names like Dungeons and Dragons online and Middle Earth Online. The forgotten realms series supports EQ's success as much as the game itself. Middle Earth Online is late and with no Hobbit movie forthcoming as of yet there's little out there to rekindle the Lord of the Rings fever to the point that this game may succeed. I also do not see where DND online can succeed where Neverwinter Nights did not.

We also saw many successes such as World of Warcraft which is undoubtedly the best game of the year. SOE continued their fame with SWG with the jump to light speed expansion and EverQuest 2 all three of which will continue to dominate the MMO landscape in the US for the forseeable future and beyond with no apparent contender in sight.

Re:My Take on 2004

[Bleck]

Can't help it ... must post reply...

I just noticed your mentioning Rubies of Eventide. When I was just out of college, I worked for the company that was making that, way back in 1995. It was ... interesting! The president of the company was convinced that the internet would go away (to be replaced with dial-up BBSes), and that AT&T was spying on the company, using a 14-year-old boy, so that they could steal his ideas before we published. For data packet processing, we were re-writing UUEncode routines, since (remember!) the internet was bad, and everything had to be strictly X-Modem connection.. ... and then there was the day we got our first beta tester (a friend of mine in California) ... he finished the current content in about a day, and said, "Er, what now?" ... this was the content the designer had thought would take three months.

Ah, good times! Our final conclusion was that the company was just a money-laundering front, but we could never prove it :)

City of Heroes

[ParadoxDruid]

I just wanted to bring up City of Heroes here for discussion.

It's an MMORPG that I think has succeeded largely by finding a different niche than most of the other offerings in the market: It's set in modern-day cityscapes with superheroes, rather than a fantasy world.

Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, it's simple and elegant: There's no equipment, what money exists is rarely useful, missions (quests) always tell you where to go with no ambiguity, and the GUI is top-notch.

After an old EQ addiction, City of Heroes is a breathe of fresh air-- I can meaningfully log on and accomplish something in half an hour, even at the high levels (I'm level 44 right now, with 50 being the cap).

Re:City of Heroes

[MrBandersnatch]

I cancelled my subscription to CoH a month out of beta because they launched with too many balance issues and the nerfs started flying... My 7 year old still plays it on occasion though...however he also play toontown *grin*. But yes one of the better releases of the year - may well get squished by Marvel or DCs online games though.

Re:City of Heroes

[Phrogman]

I gotta echo the above comments. COH is a fantastic game, very well designed, very stable and (sadly) largely ignored.

I have stopped playing WOW and went back to COH. WOW was a fanstastically well designed and polished game, but it is far too solo-focused, and while almost anyone *can* solo in COH, it is a much better game for group-play. I play with a stable group of RL friends as my guild. As a result the quality of my grouping is undoubtedly far superior to that of most pickup groups and that is an advantage that not everyone can enjoy I admit, but I think the strengths of COH make it outweigh the strengths of WOW for my particular preferences.

Both are excellent games, but MMO players who haven't checked out City of Heroes really should give it a shot. It is a truely innovative game, and really pushed the genre and the industry.

I expect that all future games will end up adopting the COH Sidekicking/Exemplaring system (allows players of different levels to play with each other as if they were similiar levels - so a level 13 and a level 45 can go do a mission belonging to either player and still gain experience (well the 45 would work of exp debt when doing the 13 mission). The complete lack of any economy (effectively no drops), money (influence is similar but not quite the same), and crafting is quite refreshing. While fun, all of those things served as time-sinks, and COH is relatively free of timesinks.

You can jump into the game and accomplish something worthwhile in 30 mins, and as such its is very casual friendly. Its only major weakness is that the leveling curve is rather steep at higher levels. I expect that to change in the future - and the new difficulty slider for missions may have in fact changed it.

Re:City of Heroes

[TedTschopp]

But the type of missions that you go on gets to be a bit of a treadmill (kill x y's, Stop x from destroying y before timer z runs out, Click x buttons before y timer runs out). And as you get into the higher levels the amount of time required to change the dynamic of the game (gain an ability or attack) grows.

Also in the end, the city setting was nothing more than pretty graphics. There was little interaction with the world, and the story line quests and arcs were nice, but the game got old after a while.

I got to around lvl 35 before I quit to play WOW. And the main reason I did this was that I wanted a change in the game dynamics. Had they introduced new concepts, or given me places to explore (the indoor maps were just tile based) I would have stayed around. But as it was, it had turned into a treadmill, more work than fun.

Ted Tschopp

Re:City of Heroes

[Phrogman]

"But the type of missions that you go on gets to be a bit of a treadmill (kill x y's, Stop x from destroying y before timer z runs out, Click x buttons before y timer runs out). And as you get into the higher levels the amount of time required to change the dynamic of the game (gain an ability or attack) grows."

How does this differ from any other MMORPG? They all generally boil down to Kill X, kill Y number of X's, or take this item to NPC A etc. WOW is certainly no different, although its questing system is superb, and they have tried to maximize the variety I admit.

I do think that the new skills arriving further and further apart at higher levels is a bit of a weakness because players see those skills as mini-goals. In the intervening levels you do get to add slots to your current skills, so its not like you don't gain anything, but fewer people are probably excited about that I admit. It undoubtedly seems like much less of a reward. Now admittedly, on some of my characters I find I am waiting for the slots not the next skill, because I am highly aware of where I can improve things.

"Also in the end, the city setting was nothing more than pretty graphics. There was little interaction with the world, and the story line quests and arcs were nice, but the game got old after a while."

I personally think the city setting is pretty well done, but I can see how it might seem like a lack of variety. I agree that it would be great if we could interact with the local environment a bit more - and they have talked of making improvements along those lines I believe.

As for the game getting old, that is a matter of personal experience of course. I admit that when WOW was released, I was overjoyed to switch from COH to WOW. A new game is always exciting, but I found the experience of playing WOW was less than stellar for me. It does everything very well, but its just a highly polished version of what I have done before in previous games. COH is much more dynamic and fast-paced, and its combat system puts all other current games to shame. Collision detection makes a massive difference.

"I got to around lvl 35 before I quit to play WOW. And the main reason I did this was that I wanted a change in the game dynamics. Had they introduced new concepts, or given me places to explore (the indoor maps were just tile based) I would have stayed around. But as it was, it had turned into a treadmill, more work than fun."

Ah, I have Dewclaw - alevel 39 Claws/Invulnerability Scrapper, Doctor Tomorrow - a level 25 ForceField/Energy Blast Defender, Silver Spirit - a level 22 Illusion/Radiation Controller, Master Li - level 20 Katana/Super Reflexes Scrapper, Captain Canuck - a level 18 Ice/Ice blaster (whom I may reroll to Ice/Energy),
and Odin All-Father - a 14 Invulnerability/BattleAxe Tanker. When I get bored or frustrated with a character, I load up an alt and play the same game from a different perspective, which can help a lot.

In the end it boils down to personal preference of course. Play what you enjoy playing. I am enjoying COH immensely, and while I may renew my WOW again, I am not sure I am going to do so. City of Heroes is a very strong, and well designed game and I think that Cryptic has a bunch of very clever developers and programmers. As such I think we can continue to look forward to new and innovative game design from them.

Re:City of Heroes

[MrWa]

I can meaningfully log on and accomplish something in half an hour, even at the high levels

I think that is an important point - some time along the history of these games the idea that long and tedious became synomous with fun. I blame EQ for this. EQ was popular for other reasons - good grouping, graphics, and scope - but the bad parts, that people most complained about, is what developers learned. The dreaded treadmill.

Can we go back to games being challenging for more than death penalties, long waits, and tediousness?

slashdot meme for teh win!

[Anonymous Coward]

" predicted that computer gaming was dead. And that we should all welcome our new console overlords."

lol!

Re:slashdot meme for teh win!

[ShawnMcCool42]

Don't lol at your own jokes.

Deserving a look

[TheTiminator]

Not quite sure I understand why Eve Online http://www.eve-online.com/ keeps getting overlooked. Maybe it's becuase the genre mostly aims toward cut and slash type games, or those that have huge sponsors (Sony, Lucas, etc.)? I think this one deserves a closer look by folks. Just the fact that the Eve universe is a single universe for all players, and not divided into servers or nodes, is very impressive (30,000 + solar systems for over 30,000 players). And another appealing point is the constant improvements and expansions to the game, the most recent being the Exodus expansion. I just feel that if the topic is going to be how creative and original the development process has been for a specific MMOG then Eve-Online deserves a look.

Re:Deserving a look

[Anonymous Coward]

Eve is certainly a MMOG, but somehow it doesn't seem to be to be the same genre as WoW, EQ, or even AO.

Eve seems to really be a space trader game. One I long ago decided I couldn't hope to be a significant force in so I dropped it (not that there was anything wrong with the game, I just knew i couldn't invest the time).

I guess I always thought it was fantasy for MBA's.

Re:Deserving a look

[Anonymous Coward]

I played EVE for a while but one thing always drove me nuts was the missions sucked. After completing 1000 "transport garbage from point A to B" mission I quit. Sometimes I wonder if things have changed but I'm not willing to spend $15 to find out that my role in the EVE universe is intergalactic waste disposal technician. Also I found EVE to be the most AFK game I've ever played. So much can be done away from the keyboard that the game practically plays itself. I used to cook dinner and play EVE at the same time. I used to mine ore while I slept. Your character 'leveled up' automatically whether you were logged on or not. This was mind numbingly boring. It reminded me of Progress Quest.

I played EVE the first month it was released. Back then there was actually some chance of meeting a space pirate and having your ship destroyed or your cargo stolen. Transporting 20 million $ in cargo from point A to B actually had some risk and excitement and there were big profits to be made. Apparently this was unpopular because I saw the developers nerf PvP piracy in every single patch of the game until they completely destroyed it. When I finally quit the Devs had kicked all the fun out of the game.

Re:Deserving a look

[Dragoon412]

That's probably because EVE requires the same degree of dedicated masochism that FFXI does.

I was excited about EVE, but after a friend got into beta and described what was, essentially, a sadistically slow-paced, frustrating game where most of your activities didn't even necessitate your being at the keyboard, but where you could lose [i]everything[/i] rather rapidly, I completely lost interest.

EVE isn't talked about because everything about the game reaks of elitism, and it's a far cry from accessible to more casual gamers.

Re:Deserving a look

[Smiffa2001]

There's just a little more to EVE than a space-trading game. Sure, you can spend your online hours messing about in a hauler/industrial trading commodity items or even sat starting at an asteriod whilst mining it. Or, you could be tooling around player-alliance controlled space and systems with your wing-mates etc doing in enemies and opponents in small skirmishes right up to huge fleet battles. Even more, there's the not-so honourable pirates life, where income is solely provided on PvP kills and selling the loot on.

I see the game as a cross between Elite/Privateer and Homeworld - and even that's a shallow comparison. The point is, you can make what you will of EVE, just like any other MMORPG.

And finally, you'd think the client being heavily dependent on Python would endear it to the /. crowd as well....

Re:Deserving a look

[decairn]

EVE is the most open ended game out there. It rewards ruthless capitalism, industrialism, piracy, bureaucracy. It doesn't hand the fun to you on a plate like the fantasy RPGs do, and that's where many people just don't get it. No new level or uber item every day or so and people lose interest. Not for your average gamer for sure, but I for one love it.

Re:Deserving a look

[hyphz]

Because the time-sink in Eve is even worse than the time-sink in other MMORPGs.

The time-sink in most MMO games is having to level up and fighting things on the way. The time sink in Eve is *WARPING*. Yep, you click on a star system to go to and then you have to sit and wait - often for hours on end - while watching a warp animation until you get there.

Why not go do something else? Because - here's the brilliant bit - you can be knocked out of warp at any time for a fight, and if you're not at the keyboard at that time, you're gonna die.

Re:Deserving a look

[Anonymous Coward]

EVE is the most open ended game out there. It rewards ruthless capitalism, industrialism, piracy, bureaucracy. It doesn't hand the fun to you on a plate like the fantasy RPGs do, and that's where many people just don't get it. No new level or uber item every day or so and people lose interest. Not for your average gamer for sure, but I for one love it.

Sounds like real-life, why would I want to pay for what I get plenty of for free?

physics chips, says Garriott

[CeramicNuts]

Corpnews: What emerging trend do you see as most affecting future MMOG designs?

Richard: Physics. MMOs try and create realistic worlds to explore and interact with. Thus, physics is a natural next step in crafting a real place. Plus, physics chips are now on the horizon, so we will be able to compute complex scenes quickly!

Another point on CoH/WoW

[agtwilight]

As I mentioned above I have cancelled all for my new overlord WoW.

However CoH is the only game with some features and ideas that I would like WoW to get on board with.

The mission radar in CoH is vastly superior to the quest log in WoW - just tell me where the damn mobs are already and dont make me go to www.thottbot.com (only WoW spoiler site u need)

I think the death system in CoH has a better penality than WoW - I think it is ok to dock someone some time instead fo basically no penality except running back for your corpse and a little item durability.

Both games allow you to solo/small group which I find key in todays environments - only the people I support with my tax dollars in the cheese line can play as much as EQ1 wanted you to play in the high end. And students! its not fair! Chicks! Beer! Games! I wish I was 21 again.

The cell phone in CoH rocks - running back to quest guys is lame in WoW. I think speed buffs should be around earlier in WoW than level 40 - I know a few classes get them, but running is painful.

Overall I would give WoW a 9.0 moving to a 9.5 as performance issues and minor bugs are worked out.

Enjoy
Bladedawn on Blackhand

Re:Another point on CoH/WoW

[king-manic]

in wow the death penalty is really a time penalty. You have to walk to the place you died, then find a place to rest for a bit.

Re:Another point on CoH/WoW

[smileyy]

Not to mention having to deal with the monsters that have respawned while you were dead.

Damage Studios - REKONSTRUCTION

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, too be these guys couldn't make it happen. They had so many great interviews and stuff. It sounded like it was going to be top notch. I guess they ran out of money or something.

WoW player from day 1 of retail

[Guru1]

My wife and I have been playing WoW from the first day of retail. We play a few hours every night, and it's a blast. It's incredibly easy to play "casual", which is an important feature for all of us working professionals. I can't play 8 hours a day, I get a few hours after work, yet my character is progressing just fine.

It will take a few months to hit 60, then I can spend another month getting gear, then maybe I'll do some PvP. Who knows. I'm glad that I get to experience the whole game, rather than the first few levels as I would on many other MMORPGs.

As for the appeal of the game. My wife and I started, then mentioned we were playing to a friend who lives nearby. He bought the game. Over the last month or so, we've been mentioning the game to our old college friends, who have all gotten online. A couple of their wives have mentioned an interest in playing (these are women who have never played a computer game before).

My wife and I played DAoC a little, didn't get into it too much. Blizzard is very good at making very user friendly games, and I agree that it will probably do a lot for the entire field. All of these people who are playing these types of games for the first time are most likely now confident enough to try out new games in the same field.

As for complaints about the game. I'd say that most of the complaints I've heard about WoW is from the "hard core" gamers. They've complained about how easy it is to level, how much of the game is for "carebears", or those who want to play and cook dinner at the same time. I think Blizzard has hit their market pretty well. They may have sent away a few hard core gamers who will "beat" the game within a month, but in return they've caught the wives, parents, and children of those who normally wouldn't play.

Re:WoW player from day 1 of retail

[Docrates]

I'm genuinely curious. How do you play WoW with your wife? Two computers, one for each? Both sitting in front of the same screen? if so, who "controls" the character?

Although my wife is pretty cool (we watch stargate, and galactica together, sometimes play old games like some flavor of mario bros. or tetris and play a lot of scrabble together), I don't see her playing an MMORPG with me.

Re:WoW player from day 1 of retail

[glsunder]

"How do you play WoW with your wife?"

2 computers, 2 accounts, 1 room, broadband, switch, couple of network cables.

Re:WoW player from day 1 of retail

[gethane]

Shh.. hon, don't tell him about the network cables!

Re:WoW player from day 1 of retail

[fitten]

Well... as geeky as it sounds, my wife and I met through Everquest. We knew each other in-game and from guild meetings for about 3 years prior to our first date.

Even when I was single, I had several machines and would frequently 2-box or 3-box as needed (in addition to having a box or two for other uses like web surfing for walk-throughs and my Ranger2k box). Between us, we had six EQ accounts as well and we regularly played four of them each night (2box each).

Anyway, we both played EQ and now EQ2. We each have two boxes to play on as well as a Linux server for whatever and another machine or two to look up stuff while we play.

We have broadband, some switches, a router, etc. for networking and a few computers :)

Re:WoW player from day 1 of retail

[GoofyBoy]

>"How do you play WoW with your wife?"
>2 computers, 2 accounts, 1 room, broadband, switch, couple of network cables.

There is a joke in there somewhere.

Re:WoW player from day 1 of retail

[glsunder]

"There is a joke in there somewhere."

sort of along the lines of:
patient: my arm hurts when I do this.
Doc: dont do that.

I was simply stating the obvious. It just doesnt seem that odd to me. Today's kids arent the first generation to grow up with video games, they're the 2nd. My parents grew up with TV and no one thinks it's odd if they watch tv together. I bet if you look really hard, you'll find couples that play cards together too.

Oh, and a small correction, 4 network cables: mine, her's, the kids' and the router's.

Re:WoW player from day 1 of retail

[Quill_28]

Are you using NAT or do you have more than one IP address at home?

Re:WoW player from day 1 of retail

[agildehaus]

Just admit that your wife is your hand already.

Re:WoW player from day 1 of retail

[fitten]

NAT. Games that you connect to a server to play should work fine. Games where you have to run a server and/or are peer-to-peer may have issues. However, if you have a game that requires an IP to connect, you can use port redirection in your router to deal with it. Unfortunately, this means that only one of you can play it at a time as all the traffic will go to that one computer.

Many ISPs will allow you to get multiple IPs from them but it usually costs a bit extra.

Re:WoW player from day 1 of retail

[Quill_28]

I will assume then than WOW needs an IP to connect, and you have more than one IP Address at your home.

Re:WoW player from day 1 of retail

[fitten]

WoW (EQ, EQ2, etc) all work fine using NAT.

Re:WoW player from day 1 of retail

[Quill_28]

But you could have two different people on at the same time correct?

PVP in WoW

[Sheepdot]

Disclaimer: I am a former Blizzard "fanboi". I quit that position with the ill-fated release of Diablo 2, where I had a scratched CD and Battle.net was down for the first month of gameplay.

What is so great about PvP in games other than WoW is that you have an impact and can make a name for yourself. You *are* the school bully, if even for only a few months. Everyone knows you, and some may even fear you. Others might have bested you, and gloat in their accomplishments.

In WoW PvP, you've got about 300 school bullies, none of them are unique, and no one really fears any of them. Since they are all pretty much nameless, you can't tell the one that turns tail and runs back to the guards from the one that stands up to fight. As time goes on, you realize that those that stay and fight become less and less active, simply because the game is *so* balanced and there is absolutely no reward for PvP, that it is ridiculously lame.

Blizzard is notorious for killing "powergamers". Unfortunately, these people are what make MMORPGs fun. You get rid of the powergamer, and you get rid of the idea that someone can make a name for themself in a virtual world. And, IMHO, making a name for yourself in a virtual world is what MMORPGs are all about.

Re:PVP in WoW

[hyphz]

> Unfortunately, these people are what make
> MMORPGs fun. You get rid of the powergamer,
> and you get rid of the idea that someone can
> make a name for themself in a virtual world.
> And, IMHO, making a name for yourself in a
> virtual world is what MMORPGs are all about.

And that's why, IMHO, the MMORPG genre as it is is fundamentally broken.

As you've said, the key extra value of a MMORPG is the ability to make a make for yourself, or to stand out, or to be better than others in a virtual world. None of the other vaunted advantages of MMO games are actually unique to them. Team play? Ordinary (non-massive) multiplayer games have that; on Diablo 2, say, the process of finding a team in the chat lobby then creating a game is identical to that of finding a group then going hunting in a MMO. Persistent world? Any single player game with a save function has that.

No, what everyone wants in an MMO is to be better than the crowd. But obviously, not everyone can have that. And if those people who can't have it decide to quit, then there is no crowd left for the others to be better than.

Raph Koster gave a talk called "Small Worlds" (slides are available on the net somewhere, but I can't recall the URL I'm afraid) where he basically justified levelling treadmills in these terms. His claim was that if "betterness" was distributed in any way other than treadmills, then the 10% of players who were most attuned to that distribution method (most skilled, richest, cleverest, etc.) would consume 90% of the "betterness" and no-one else would play. Treadmills are thus the best method because a) anyone can do them, b) the people who lose out are the people who spend least time playing the game and therefore logically should care least about their character within it, and c) it ties obtaining "betterness" to activity that makes money for the MMO firm.

The example he used of a case where rare individuals got all the "betterness" was Tiger Woods. Yet it's worth noting that the existance of Tiger Woods does not prevent other people from playing and enjoying golf. But the claim that, as long as Tiger Woods exists, going to play golf at a massive tournament with a crowd (at which Tiger will be playing) offers no more, or even less, entertainment than playing with your own local club (with no crowd, but also no Tiger). Which makes a lot more sense.

AFAIK the only MMO which has absolutely zero treadmilling is Planetside, which is also IMHO *seriously* underrated.

Re:PVP in WoW

[Kwil]

Sorry.. what MMORPGs are about is making more money for their owners.

The formula for making money is simple. Pay out as little as you can, while taking in as much as you can.

Catering to the power-gamers requires paying out a lot in order to keep up with them in terms of content, as well as providing bandwidth for the 24/7 no-lifer.

At the same time, it reduced the amount you take in because the audience of moms & tots (a much larger for a longer period) gets alienated.

Catering to the mom & tot crowd means your content generation costs are lessened, your bandwidth cost/user-month is lessened, and your subscription revenues are increased both in quantity (larger audience available) and length (takes them longer to plow through what you've made).

Blizzard seems to have figured out that power-gamers are a poor audience if you're looking to make money from a game.

'bout time somebody did.

Re:PVP in WoW

[hashmap]

Blizzard is notorious for killing "powergamers"

"Powergaming" as you say it is only fun for power gamers. No one else. One of the few bold moves that Blizzard did is nerfing them.

I think they have learned a few painful lessons from Diablo, I quit playing after the third instance of teaming up with someone only to get killed by them right when we entered the dungeon.

All "power" features will be abused. For a casual gamer like me WoW is the best game I have ever played second to Civ and xcom maybe. I have tried many times to get into the genre, tried Everquest and Anarchy Online dead ass boring stuff, killing bunnies with litte overall story. WoW has an amazingly well crafted story and locations most immersive experiences I ever had on a computer.

Did you notice how they ganged up on WoW. I can see how simplifying the MMOG genre yet being more succefull at it can be annoying.

Re:PVP in WoW

[TedTschopp]

Blizzard is notorious for killing "powergamers". Unfortunately, these people are what make MMORPGs fun. You get rid of the powergamer, and you get rid of the idea that someone can make a name for themself in a virtual world. And, IMHO, making a name for yourself in a virtual world is what MMORPGs are all about.

The reason to play a game is to have fun. If beating people up is your idea of fun, please do it elsewhere. Me personally, I like getting together with a group of friends who are located around the world and doing something together, even if in the end all it means we are balancing a very complex spreadsheet of numbers.

Perhaps I'll close with a nice quote from someone else about making a name for oneself.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear -
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'

Percy Bysshe Shelly 1817

Re:PVP in WoW

[Anonymous Coward]

AO has improved dramatically in the past years. It's an interesting game now. I still wish they could remove the huge amount of camping required though. There are some quests that are completely casual and rqeuire little organizization, and some hugely obnoxious ones that need 35 people. It's still way too much in the EQ levelling treadmill vein and if they can get rid of that they'd have a better game all around.

Visually the game is now dated, and performace is horrid on modern hardware. (20fps on athlon 3300 with 256mb radeon)

Re:PVP in WoW

[NeoSkandranon]

Apparently our MMO experiecnes were a little different. Each one I've played has had 300 faceless "school bullies" trying to make a name by griefing or randomly killing players. The only way any of them ever had a name for themselves was a brief mention in a chat channel accompanied by a burst of profanity. WOW prevents this, and is one of the reasons I enjoy the game. I don't have to put up with your bullying if I don't care to.

What's more, there *never* was any reward for PVP, other than making the killer feel more adequate. Powergamers do not make MMOs more fun, except for the powergamer him or her self. They generally are more of an annoyance to the casual or semi-serious gamer than anything else

Re:PVP in WoW

[king-manic]

Blizzard is notorious for killing "powergamers". Unfortunately, these people are what make MMORPGs fun.

You mispelled "PK shitfest" "F-U-N". No one likes the bully. It's only fun for the bully. So Blizz is prioritizing the 598,000 casual players over the 1000 hardcore players and the 1000 or so bullies pk players. In the end it works out for us, the less PK idiots there are the better. PVP isn't meant to be used to harass the lowbies. It's meant to test your stength against others and maybe build an interesting "war" between factions.

Re:PVP in WoW

[Sheepdot]

Wake up. Seriously.

UO is the *only* game to have PVP "required" other than Shadowbane and Planetside. It is ironic that 8 years later, we would have individuals still under the impression that PVP = griefing on weaklings.

Exactly how do you describe games like Counter-Strike? UT 2004, Tribes, Black and White, Starcraft, etc? They all have some form of attrition that get applied by one character to another.

The idea that you can have a fantasy world where everyone gains is what EQ2 and WoW are trying to embody. Yet there is no true reward. If everyone gets it, then no one truly wins. The idea that people actually walk away from a game like this happy, is ludicrous. You're paying 15 bucks a month for someone to blow kisses and brownnose you for a few hours a night while they do the same to the guy paying 15 bucks right next to you.

Turbine (maker of Asheron's Call) did a report to see how often their "GMs" and/or "Advocates" had to handle mitigation between two parties and help requests. The PvP and PK server, "Darktide" was in the order of three times less likely to have complaints or issues. An amazing feat since at the beginning of AC's inception, it had equal - if not %50 more - the number of players.

Re:PVP in WoW

[Sheepdot]

Wrong. You miss the point, EVERY gamer is a powergamer, they just intend to exceed in different areas. If you have a game where anyone and everyone can exceed your ability, with little or no work involved, then you get frustrated, upset, and quit. It's a guarantee.

I predict World of Warcraft will drop 25% of its current playerbase by 2006. Quite possibly 30%.

Re:PVP in WoW

[Sheepdot]

Power gamers are not necessarily PKrs. They can be hardcore crafters or undaunted explorers. WHY IS EVERYONE MISSING THIS?!!? Of all the responses to my post, half of them are people whining about PKr's. It's a friggen game, people.

Instead of "keeping up with the Joneses" is it now, "bringing them Joneses back down to our level"?

You see a man driving a Lexus. Do you think, "God, I wanna be like him someday," or do you think, "God, I can't wait till our countries tax laws make him dirt poor someday."?

You're fooling yourself if you think the Meritocrat is someone that cannot adapt. They are exactly who we idolize and yet loathe. They are far more paces ahead in the game than you ever will be, and the hinderances you try to create for them only serve to trip you up.

Like how your new Tauren Warrior in WoW drops in front of a Paladin? Your damage does literally nothing? Guess what, the developers *want* it that way. It'd be too powerful if you could kill the opposing melee class.

Re:PVP in WoW

[Sheepdot]

Powergaming != PKing.

Get a clue. Seriously. Read any of my other 4 replies to the others who have somehow arrived at this conclusion.

Powergamers can be anyone, not simply "PKs". Diablo 1 is a horrible example, that game was nothing compared to Diablo II. It was not meant to be played online with anyone other than friends or enemies. It was certainly not meant to "meet" people. And this is not a fault of Blizzard, this is a fault of all the other competitive games of the same era. They had little to no community appeal.

Final Fantasy Online simplified it even more. Asheron's Call 2 has it simplified still more. It won't work, it fails, and people leave because they see nothing that they like after three to four months of play. Essentially, they "win" the game.

Re:PVP in WoW

[Sheepdot]

I agree about Planetside in a BIG way. I did play it and pay for it, but unfortunately, it was too pricey for what amounted to a glorified version of Tribes 2. I would consider playing again, but they'd have to give me expansion items for free.

What I am talking about to make a character feel like someone is following a trichotomy where the three main "food groups" of MMORPGs rely on each other.

And no, contrary to public belief, the three are not: mage, ranged, melee. In fact, that's only the PvP way to look at it.

The three types of gamers that come to MMORPGs are the crafter, the competitor, and the achiever.

The crafter wants to simply be known for his crafts, and wants everyone to come to him or learn their crafting from him. These people can drive an economy.

The competitor wants to be feared. Or have everyone on the forums associated with such a game singing tales of their deeds. They want to be envied, reviled, and lauded on their might alone.

The achiever wants to accomplish something that gets the developers response, usually in some way of breaking or bugging the game. He or she doesn't care so much about the user's input as they do the developers.

There is also the griefer, who wants negative attention from the developers. They want to be a thorn in the side of the devs. Generally speaking, they are VERY few and far between. A *real* griefer will not talk to you in game, unless they are exploiting a chat bug.

Re:PVP in WoW

[serano]

Nearly all FPS/RPG/strategy games condition you to expect to be the champion of the world. The game revolves around you, and if you lose or die in a scene, you re-do until you win. In MMO games not everyone can be king, and the hard-core players who have the time to commit get more rewards. The casual players take a noticably lower role. It's a different paradigm. I don't know that everyone realizes this going into a MMO game. They might be expecting a single-player king-of-the-world experience, but instead they they have to be an inconsequential grunt. Some people drop out figuring they get enough of that role in real life.

Re:PVP in WoW

[king-manic]

Wake up. Seriously.
Lol, I am a compedative player. I'm #18 us west for 2v2 in war 3 ROC. But the vast majority want their hand held and have nothign happen to them. Thats why there are pvp and pve servers. Some people don't have fun being ganked at anytime for any reason. Others liek the competition and your asserting the ones who do like it are majority is wrong. IT's the ones that don't that are. In war 3 notice the vast majority of games are custom maps. why? because the vast majority of players aren't good and have no desire to see me or you annihalate them in 5 min. They want to play an hour long game in DOTA. Your free to do what ever you like. go on a pvp server, have fun. But there are very few of you who have fun pvp. Most people don't. They play mmorpg to have fun in a rpg with friends and level their char. For the pvp's theirs duels and contested lands.

also this sentence makes no sense, please clarify:
"The idea that you can have a fantasy world where everyone gains is what EQ2 and WoW are trying to embody. Yet there is no true reward. If everyone gets it, then no one truly wins."

Notice the lowbie friendly WOW is kicking all the others MMORPG's asses. why? because pvp is there but mostly optional. Get it into your head that you are an exception. Just like I know 90% of my friends won't play versus me in war 3. They hate losing.

Re:PVP in WoW

[Quill_28]

You see a man driving a Lexus. Do you think, "God, I wanna be like him someday," or do you think, "God, I can't wait till our countries tax laws make him dirt poor someday."?

Or you a republican or a democrat?

Re:PVP in WoW

[ripsnorta]

Darktide, or Dorktide as it was commonly known, had far fewer players on it than the other servers. IIRC, the more popular servers had 1500+ players on at peaktimes, DT didn't have much more than 500.

Re:PVP in WoW

[NeoSkandranon]

It goes both ways. If you look around and realize that you'll never get anywhere in the game without putting in lots of time and work, you'll get frustrated at being PK'd, being lower level than your friends and etc, and quit. That's why up until now MMOs have been horrible for casual gamers--they require a large time investment to "get anywhere" in the game. WoW's time investment to get to see worthwhile content is significantly less.

Re:PVP in WoW

[Anonymous Coward]

"Blizzard is notorious for killing "powergamers". Unfortunately, these people are what make MMORPGs fun."

heh..I call it wishful thinking. ;)

No offense but if you want so much to be known as a bully, I really think you might have some personal issues to deal with first. Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps you are talking about something else but as I recall, the "bullies" are the level 30s picking on the level 10 noobs. Now how exactly does that make it fun for everyone? I thought that was the thing which drove most people away.

I don't want to judge but from the sounds of it, you seem like one of those bullies who pick on the easier to kill, which generally ruins their experience in the game. Of course all I have to base my opinion on is your post, but perhaps you might want to broaden your horizons on what exactly is meant by "fun", especially for others.

Cheers

Re:PVP in WoW

[Sheepdot]

K, I catch *that* aspect of it. You're saying from the individual that wants to compete in PvP, but doesn't because there is too much time required to be "the best". Like when Trial of Atlantis came out and in order to be the best in Realm vs. Realm you had to be ML10, which required 40+ hours of work to do.

If that's what you're talking about, hell yeah, I understand it. But just the fact that someone died to some higher level I don't understand. If someone does not wish to compete in PvP, they certainly do not have to.

Re:PVP in WoW

[miu]

I disagree that everyone is a powergamer. One of the drivers you mention, prestige, is a primitive social phenomenon. People do play games and MMOs for different reasons and not everyone cares about power, it's rare for someone to be totally disinterested in power - but fairly common for it to be a secondary or lesser desire.

Even if everyone were a powergamer, there would be more people disappointed than gratified by extreme rarity. Only those powergammers who also seek fame are unhappy in a system like that of WoW.

Re:PVP in WoW

[Sheepdot]

Not for the first six months or so. Which is when the advocates reigned. I moved over around the time that everyone was complaining about how hard it was, actually calling it Quaketide. You must have been introduced to the game sometime after that period of time, because I never remember it being called Dorktide (though I can see why some might call it that after 3 years of AC). I absolutely loved it and the fact that I got to be a determining factor in the play of the world. At least, for a short while.

Re:PVP in WoW

[Sheepdot]

There were those of us that petitioned Blizzard to make a "hardcore" server where anyone could be attacked at any time. Since they didn't implement one, I didn't buy the game. I intend to stick to that promise.

My statement clarified is this: Warcraft 3 players will begin to hit end game in droves sometime around February and March. They will be frustrated with the game and many will quit. Specifically, I predict that by this time next year, 25% of the current population will be gone, perhaps as much as 30%. Many more will follow.

Re:PVP in WoW

[Sheepdot]

Neither, I'm Libertarian. Both Republicans and Democrats would say: "Spend, Spend, Spend!"

Re:PVP in WoW

[Sheepdot]

I agree not everyone seeks power.

But the definition of powergamer should probably be explained. Gamers expect to devote time in an MMORPG. It's a given. They are driven to game in one form to achieve whatever their goal is. I would say as far as goals go, crafters, competitors, and achievers all want to excel in what they do. They might not be after power itself, but their one-track mind constitutes them as a powergamer.

The term power I am defining as: "driven; especially to accomplish an objective".

Re:PVP in WoW

[will_die]

The powergamer is just a another name for the achiver type in Richard Bartle noted paper.
Achivers most often do NOT go around killing lower level people.

Re:PVP in WoW

[miu]

A lot of the people I play with are not powergamers according to any definition, they don't care if their character excels - they want to have fun. I think such players are the bridge to the mass market and maybe even long term sustainability for an MMO world. None of the first or second generation MMOs have managed to last and maintain a high server population, I blame that on their pandering exclusively to powergamers.

There are actually a fair number of players who look on an an MMO as entertainment. They play a couple hours in the evening and pay as much attention to voice chat as they do the game itself. These players are desirable from a business perspective as they are not likely to spreadsheet the economy, dupe money, grief noobs, wander to every new MMO beta that comes out and take their guild with them, post poorly spelled flames in support forums, or fly like a plague of locusts over every new bit of content within an hour of it going live and then post a walkthrough on a web page.

Bartle's old player types article is fairly simplistic, but I think correct in essence. An MMO needs to find a correct mix of all player types to succeed.

Re:PVP in WoW

[ripsnorta]

I played AC for about a year ending a couple of months after the Crystal Defence episode. The DT players were always giving the regular players a hard time calling them carebears, so the regular players called DT, Dorktide. :) I gave DT a go once... appropriate name I thought.

Re:PVP in WoW

[rpillala]

That's only true if you're competitive. I'm not and I'm perfectly happy without the powergamer.

What you've identified is what I'd call player-created social status in the game world, and that certainly does seem missing from WoW. I remember reading about this in some post or interview or something from Blizzard. Someone from the development team said that Blizzard has intentionally designed WOW as a game, not a social experiment. Many MMOG feature too much DIY society and not enough game. I played Lineage II a while and that was the complaint I had (and heard) most.

Maybe I'll get tired of it later but for now it's a nice change.

Re:PVP in WoW

[Sheepdot]

Ok. Yeah. The reality is though, the only DT players that post on the forums fit the bill of "competitor" and thus didn't care what others on other forums thought of them. The reality was that I met some of the best *real* roleplayers on DT. You definitely had to get out of "n00bville" (for lack of a better word) to meet them, though.

Only the trash hung around newbie towns. Or the PKs.

Re:PVP in WoW

[king-manic]

There were those of us that petitioned Blizzard to make a "hardcore" server where anyone could be attacked at any time. Since they didn't implement one, I didn't buy the game. I intend to stick to that promise.

My statement clarified is this: Warcraft 3 players will begin to hit end game in droves sometime around February and March. They will be frustrated with the game and many will quit. Specifically, I predict that by this time next year, 25% of the current population will be gone, perhaps as much as 30%. Many more will follow.

So your predicting the demise of a game without ever playing. As well as naming the wrogn game. Some War 3 players hit the end game about 3-4 days after it was released lol. Then the rest fo the people did it about a month later.

You assume every player is grinding WOW at a ferce pace. However most people I know have taken the last month just to hit 20. Why? because they aren't power gamers. Power gamers are few and far between. Most people have lives. So while 40 people per server will go through all the content soon, these people don't matter. It's the 5000-9000 other people who pay and play less who matter. People who enjoy pvp are even fewer then the power gamers. These are power gamers with a competative streak. Rare indeed. So while you may have hit the end game in a month, you didn't. And yo sound like a ass by declarign somethign dead without ever tryign it. Like declarign BSD is dead. Or MAc is Dead. Don't be an ass. play it before you make stupid statements.

Re:PVP in WoW

[Sheepdot]

The problem I have with his "Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades" article is that Bartle takes a stance of "action/interaction" to rate players. These two terms are not mutually exclusive of each other, however.

I also think that rather than world vs. player, it is "dev vs. player" for the social aspect of the game. Granted, world is a key component of that, but so are skills, abilities, and others.

Bartle's assumption comes down to the belief that every player cares what the others think, and actually respect the other players' desire to be a "God" as well.

Re:PVP in WoW

[Sheepdot]

Actually, I did play it. I just never *paid* for it. I'm not calling its demise, I'm calling its failure for those that think it's the "next great RPG". It's not, whatever RPG you play first, is the the best.

Re:PVP in WoW

[king-manic]

Actually, I did play it. I just never *paid* for it. I'm not calling its demise, I'm calling its failure for those that think it's the "next great RPG". It's not, whatever RPG you play first, is the the best.

Lol, you don't seem to understand mmorpg players very much. People who played eq1 stuck with eq1 for years due to commitment to their characters. It's onyl with the releases of eq2 and the eminent lack of support for eq1 that made many quit. I know about 6 people who reached the end game of eq1 (lvl 65 with almost the best gear available for thier class) and they still played it religiously. You fail to understand what their motivation is, their not you. They don't continue playign for pvp. They continue to play for community and they have a lto vested. They all switched to EQ2, didn't liek it and switched to WOW. None of this has anythign to do with pvp. And the next great RPG isn't anywhere on the horizon. By that tiem a significant % of the WOW players will have too much invested. It is the one you play first, the one you spent the most time on that grabs you. There are still hardcore UO players. As for your awkward english alluding to how people feel about it, it fails to satisfy your needs. Thats fine. If you want pvp play DAOC or AO. Theres a lot of pvp there.

Go there and stop bothering the 600,000 of us who are happy with what we got from WOW.

Re:PVP in WoW

[miu]

If you read discussions by Bartle on mailing lists or web forums you will see that he freely admits that his axes are to a certain degree arbitrary. He draws up some alternate and extended versions and explains that the version he used for the original article was the best to convey his observations and conjectures. I believe the essence of the article is correct, players have a variety of motivations and the success of an MMO largely depends on how the world and game reward the various types and allow (or encourage) them to interact.

I really think the best example of rewarding powergamers to the detriment of all other players (and the game itself) is SWG. They made the "prestige class" level of power extremely rare, wound up making it more common by degrees (while lavishing massive amount of attention on it and ignoring everything else), then decided to make it rare again. The result wound up alienating everyone. I think the SWG servers are probably populated by a few die-hard jedi at this point and not much else. The publisher took an innovative game and flushed it down the toilet by only paying attention to powergamers after launch.

Re:PVP in WoW

[Sheepdot]

Yup, I played SWG and know exactly what you mean. The way they had it before was the best. To a certain extent, the way Asheron's Call spell casting originally was designed also allowed those willing to take the time to research brand new spells. It was great, but you can only keep secrets for so long before players figure out how to do it and thus everyone has access that knows where to look.

Re:PVP in WoW

[miu]

I always believed they should have stuck to what Koster wanted and left jedi out. Maybe they could have done an expansion in a few years when the GCW storyline had been run.

I hear AC brought up again and again as a successful MMO that managed a number of innovations. I never did get around to trying it (I tried AC2 and developed an irrational hatred of the name), but I've read quite a few discussions of attempts throughout the years to reward research but discourage players broadcasting the results - some interesting ideas, but I've never seen anyone claim success in any large scale setting.

Re:PVP in WoW

[Sheepdot]

Asheron's Call did surprisingly well. It wasn't the cash cow Microsoft wanted it to be, but then again, very few things actually are reliable sources of revenue in the gaming industry.

I'm horribly sorry you had to play the tripe that was AC2 before playing AC1. For your information, the engine of AC2, which IMHO was beautiful and the "shining point" of the game, is currently being worked into the original AC, for a "1.5" of sorts. AC2 suffered from pressure from Microsoft for Turbine to release the first "successor" to a MMORPG, when the first one wasn't over yet. Turbine themselves have finally been able to buy back their property from MS, and will take them great places.

I have only good things to say of Turbine. There is very little that they cannot do, and they provide such a unique perspective into gameplay and interface design that it can be frustrating to try to play brand new games that have yet to properly implement things Turbine has done right for going on 6 years now.

I know of no other developer that has running storylines and engaging lore in their MMORPG. While the quests themselves were never much to speak of, the story and characters really impressed me.

Not only that, but they abandoned the archaic trolls and goblins in favor of unique monsters and races to kill. All in all a *very* impressive show of game design.

As luck would have it, Turbine is also working on these games:

Re:PVP in WoW

[Sheepdot]

Whoops, hit submit too soon:
The Lord of the Rings(TM): Middle-Earth(TM) Online and Dungeons & Dragons® Online.

Re:PVP in WoW

[miu]

I'm actually really looking forward to D&D online - it looks to have a very interesting setting and some very cool ideas. I just hope that 30 years of experience with game play and balance are actually put to good use - not the usual random (and often inferior) game with a franchise label slapped on top.

I'll probably give AC 1.5 a shot when they release it, I'm without an MMO right now - hoping against hope that SOE pulls their head out and applies drastic surgery to fix SWG, I'm betting they just write it off and flush it though. A fun and involved PvP system is pretty much essential for me to enjoy an MMO, and I've always heard that AC had one of the best.

Re:PVP in WoW

[Sheepdot]

Yes, the problem with Darkside right now (AFAIK from what ppl have said on forums) is that Darktide has a vast middle between populations. Right now, there are the 1-20s and the 100s-126s.

Basically, The players that abound in the starting towns get no support unless they already know someone on Darktide that can help them get "in" with some clan on the server.

They were going to introduce a new PvPish server to balance that problem, don't know what all happened with that.

Re:PVP in WoW

[miu]

I've pretty much given up on being late to join a "vintage" MMO for that very reason. Even if you can deal with stone age graphics without an existing attachment to the game, there is always that unclosable gap, it's always been easier to head to one of the new MMOs constantly coming out.

Re:PVP in WoW

[Anonymous Coward]

The three types of gamers that come to MMORPGs are the crafter, the competitor, and the achiever.

Four, you forgot socializer. Oh, and most gamers, while one motivation is often more pronouced, are a mixture of two, three, or even all four.

Acronym pain

[Ride-My-Rocket]

I have cancelled UO, SWG, EQ, and CoH for WoW...

IMO, TLAMMWTSMEIWARF

(Three Letter Acronyms Make Me Want To Stave My Eye In With A Rusty Fork)

Vendetta

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who knows Vendetta?

check it out - you have 8 hours to play for free.
http://www.vendetta-online.com/

And yes, Vendetta runs on Linux, OSX and the other system out there.

WoW deserves its game of the year awards

[5n3ak3rp1mp]

You have to try WoW. It's the MMORPG for people with offline lives. Grinding is kept to a minimum, the experience focus is on quests, and there are thousands of quests. You'll have so much fun doing quests that you'll hardly notice your leveling. The content itself is really interesting too (creatively designed environments/npc's/quests/enemies/sound/graphics)

Market share + growth of MMORPGs

[dannytaggart]

For some cool charts, check out this site.

I'm confused

[n0nsensical]

Raph Koster seems to dislike the fact that instancing destroys the sense of world and community and that "there weren't a lot of large group goals," yet this describes exactly what's going on with EQ/EQ2 lately. And he's the creative director for Sony Online Entertainment? What's the deal? Who's really running the show at SOE? Also "the 'play single-player games alongside multiple people' trend." These are some of the developments really driving me crazy about new MMOs, ruining a lot of the things that I liked most in original EQ. There seem to be a number of developers talking about these problems, yet I don't see solutions in new games (though it's looking hopeful for Vanguard).

Re:I'm confused

[hashmap]

yet this describes exactly what's going on with EQ/EQ2 lately ... What's the deal?

Sour grapes. After all EQ had a great many year lead time, yet WoW is better in great many ways.

Re:I'm confused

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I like the idea of playing a single player game alongside my friends. I talk to precisely 4 people in WoW, my wife and our two friends who play. Between us we have all the tradeskills and everything we need to succeed (at least at the group content). We can tune out the nonsense.

There will be no cheating. The game system is maintained by someone else. We all go through the same experience at the same time. We can play with, or without each other. It's very nearly exactly what I want in a multiplayer game. We're just not in to meeting new people or socializing with strangers. It may not be how OTHER people live life, but we're happy with what we have.

WoW has no challenge to it

[kird]

gee, after your first week of playing in this Disney Land pastel colored land, you get to fight your first dragon! oooooh...
after the second week of playing yow will cap your level too! aaaaaah...

PvE? you will kill everything and die to nothing

PvP? gank fest. if its higher level than you, wave! maybe he wont attack (too busy leveling). if you see a noob, kill him! laugh at him as he franticly waves at you shouting "PEACE! PEACE!"

oh joy, oh fun.

WoW looks like move fun than DAoC, but really no challenge to it. skills in PvP still reign in Quake style games not in MMO's*

*exception would be Asherons Call 1 - skill was generally more important. too bad the game is old and dated.

Re:WoW has no challenge to it

[EastCoastSurfer]

gee, after your first week of playing in this Disney Land pastel colored land, you get to fight your first dragon! oooooh...
after the second week of playing yow will cap your level too! aaaaaah...

If you play 15 hours/day then yes. I think what WoW got right is that they realized the majoriy of the population doesn't want to or can't play a game 8hours/day. It's nice to be able to log into a MMO play for 1-2 hours and actually accomplish something. Since even the casual player can reach a high level and get decent gear the playfield in WoW will end up being much more equal when it comes to PvP. Hopefully this will allow what little skill there is in any MMO to be the deciding factor in fights.

WoW looks like move fun than DAoC, but really no challenge to it.

What if you had gotten WoW and never looked up the quest details or items on the web? Challenge doesn't have to come from insane death penalties or how fast I can click my mouse.

Doesn't matter anyways. Skill time played in pretty much every MMO. I'm interested to see anyones ideas on how to fix that though.

Re:WoW has no challenge to it

[Anonymous Coward]

Implement something like "Empire". Sure, you can move around all you want, etc., but you can only do "real" things periodically, bracketed out in different levels.

If you're on a "quest" then your time frame is a bit different than if you're just killing time [sic] in the city, just like your time schedule is different if you go camping or hunting than it is during your real life.

Wanna spend 8 hours on-line (and have a spouse/family that puts up with it?), then you gotta go questing. Otherwise, you'll have about 1 hour of "prime time" "get stuff done" time in the city per day, which won't bank up to 7 hrs total per week... Or, if you go over, your character pays in some way that will take longer time to recover from than time expended.

The "Empire" effect is trying to maintain a normal work/school life while engaged in an Empire battle, only to log in in the morning and see your country decimated because someone else stayed up all night and attacked you during thw two updates while you were in bed, because only during updates is combat resolved in Empire...

All current MMOs

[Anonymous Coward]

Are quite boring and each new one only suceeds in being worse then the last one. *sigh* For a look at something new and innovative that will forever change the genre goto Shadowpool.com

WWIIOL anyone?

[dosboss]

OK, so the only MMPOG I have not seen mentioned is World War II On-Line. I know it has 'ghetto' graphics, and the initial learning curve makes climbing the north face of K2 look easy by comparrison, but it's got legs.

Consider: It has been around since mid-2001; there is an active and vibrant community; it is not condusive to the "quaker" or bunny-hopping crew, so older gamers without super-reflexes can wrap thier heads around it too; you can play alongside people from anywhere (there are people from all over Eroupe, India, South Africa, various South American countries, Japan and throughout Asia, Australia, etc.); it has people that have been in the game (regular subscribers) for the entire run; most of these people at one time or another (some cases multiple times) have either left for another MMOPG and/or dual subscribed and found the other games to be wanting (and subsiquently came back); the compatriotism and friendliness of players to one another is so phenominal that the publisher, Cornered Rat Software, hired the most popular person from each of the two sides to be community reps/liasons; the dev team not only listens and *resonds to* to suggestions, complaints, and compliments, they sometimes do so *in game*; the new soundset makes it seem as if you are "in the trenches" in a WWII battle; and the game is constantly updated, to the point that they are going to release a new theater (North Africa) using new dev tools, then go back and *re-do* the original current theater with the new dev tools.

Oh, yeah, one last thing: The developer releases *concurent*, interoperable versions for Win** and MacOSX. They don't run a seperate server for Mac users, they don't leave out functions/graphics on the Mac platform. That in itself is almost unique in the MMOPG world. As for Linux, yes the Win** version will run under WineX/Cedega (at least I can get it to), and there is a Sourceforge page for an easy (Perl-based?) launcher.

Well, am I an anachronism?

Re:WWIIOL anyone?

[ozp1]

WWIIonline should be there, is a awesome game!! As far as I know it wont run on linux anymore (since version 1.14) It is on 1.18 now.

Koster?! When will you people LEARN?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does the guy who is responsible with the most buggy launch that had the least features, and the least enjoyable MMO to date ALWAYS get interviewed for this stuff?

They even had him compete in that Game Design Panel thing:

Sims Creator Will Wright, Deus Ex Creator Warren Spector, and...stain on humanity Ralph Koster.

Seriously. If there's anyone you DON'T want to hear about MMOs from, it's obviously him. Stop interviewing him. I have zero interest in what the guy thinks about the future of anything, when it's patently obvious that all he cares about is the future of his own wallet.

Raph Koster's interview.

[mcguyver]

What was your favorite new game from the past year?
I'm sure you wanted an MMO here, but the MMOs I played the most in the last year were made by us.
What was your favorite new or innovative design from the past year?
...there wasn't a ton of innovation in the last year, in the MMO space anyway.
What was the most disappointing game or design from the past year?
I think if you were looking for a sense of world or community, you were out of luck this year.

Was Raph Koster rejected for a job at Blizzard, NCSoft or Sony? There were plenty of major releases in 2004 but he seems unable to recognize even one.

Re:Raph Koster's interview.

[Anonymous Coward]

Having worked with Raph at various occasions, and listening to him talk. The man is an idiot. SOE was a botch, and I flat out told him so in front of a room of 200. He had a wonderful opportunity to make SOE in a wow-style, but instead they took the level-treadmill idiocty and tried to graft skills onto to it, to create some complicated 'skills over time vs experienece' growth model.

He's just jealous that wow is basically going to outnumber his precious EQ/EQ2 in a few months.

The Truth

[uud2]

What everything posted here is going to come out to show is that people like a certain MMO for a certain reason. This is why many different MMOs exist. The game that appears to be the best is the one that appeals to the largest number of the populus that is willing to pay for it. The game is only a good game if it pays the developer back for time well spent, after all.

Re:EQ2 - best mmporg of the year NOT TRUE

[NeoSkandranon]

Well said.

Lvl 31 hunter here, and I am lucky enough to be a member of a guild of players who don't dive for a dictionary when someone mentions tactics. Even that considered, if 3 of us group with 1 or 2 idiot players, and go do a difficult quest or instance, any screwup could easily get us all killed. Tactics and strategy are def. a large part of the game once you get into the middle range of levels (and the less forgiving quests)

Koster's Idea of Community

[akisugawara]

"People just didn't seem to gather. There weren't a lot of large group goals, and a lot of games, in the name of simplification"

"Community" in SWG meant waiting 10 (later 5) minutes for the cursed shuttle to arrive in the starport and having absolutely nothing to do--forcing you to chat to pass the time. Or waiting 15 minutes to have a doctor buff you so you can wear the overpowered armor you bought--why social bonding of course.

Past MMOs were so dull that "community" had to be formed to prevent players from dying from boredom. Grinding the same frikkin mobs over and over (Quenkers for exp, Moks for money), the guild channel was the only thing sustaining your sanity.

"I'm just disappointed that we couldn't manage to do fun and innovative at the same time"

Me too.

You don't have to be a powergamer to make a name

[Stone316]

I disagree 100% with your post. You don't need to have be a powergamer in order to make a name for yourself, it all depends on game design.

I used to play Asheron's Call and there was one particular event which I double will ever be replicated again in an MMORPG. In AC there was a heavy storyline which progressed each month, (something I haven't seen in other mmorpgs since btw). During this one particular month there was a quest where Bael'Zharon (sp? been a long time) was contained in a crystal shard deep inside a dungeon. If this shard was broken he'd be released and wreak havoc upon the world. Even tho releasing him was against the 'beliefs' of most players the developers counted on us to release him or the storyline wouldn't progress. They assumed that because the quest was there players would do it just 'because'.

Anyways, to make a long story short on our server one character decided to make a stand. He, along with his guild, solved the dungeon and found the shard but instead of destroying it he said, lets protect it and mounted a defense. You had to be pk(pvp) to get into this dungeon and soon the server rallied around 2 sides. One side protecting it, which was a pretty big task. This shard had to be protected 24x7, any lapse would allow someone to destroy it. And the other side bent on releasing their master.

The defense mounted was astounding and surprised the developers, they were at a loss what to do. One server couldn't diverge from the storyline, the tech could only support one, so this shard had to die. Fruitfully they watched attack after attack fail, although there were a couple of close calls.

You didn't have to be high level to participate in this quest. Even low levels played a part, they shipped supplies, patroled looking for groups of pk'ers preparing to attack. I dunno how many times a report would come in and we all get prepared for battle. The thing about PK in AC was that there were consequences, you dropped your most valuable equipment on death. And it while being high level helped it didn't guarantee success, there is skill involved. (Thats another debate but you get the point..)

But back to my original point, this guy Mithrandia (sp?) made a name for himself because of the game design... The game allowed him to make a decision which had direct consequences (even if they were unintended). But it wasn't the only factor, the biggest factor was that he had the personality/social skills to persaude people to do what he wanted. Sure, he was the max level in the game but it wouldn't have mattered if he couldn't convince others to make a stand with him.

So its a combination of factors, game design and personalities and unfortunately todays MMORPGS are lacking in both. But I firmly believe that if the first is there people will rise to the challenge.

Re:You don't have to be a powergamer to make a nam

[Mage Inq.]

That's an entertaining anecdote, but I think such opportunities for players to affect the world at large are very rare. In a game with thousands of players, not everyone can be the hero. If this happened in a shard-less game, this would've been very interesting indeed. Too bad Wish got cancelled. Maybe Dark and Light will see the light of day.

Re:You don't have to be a powergamer to make a nam

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, FFS, get back to work! You tell that stroy every time!

TFOAE.

Moderators, lisen up

[nyri]

Parent is moderated as troll and flamebait. Only reason I find is that parent embraces EQ2 over WoW. Similar posts which embrace WoW over EQ2 are moderated as +5 Insightful. More over, I think that the parent poster has a point.

This is no WoW forum, so I think we should accept people who think that WoW is not perfect. Hell, some people might really think that WoW is boring compared to other more challenging MMOs.

Moderators, in arguments regarding preferences there is no right or wrong. Therefore, please, moderate the way how the opinion is argued not the opinion itself. That way we will have more fruitful discussions and people won't be afraid to put forward opinions that disagree with the majority's opinion.

Re:Moderators, lisen up

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, I moderated him troll and I stick to it. I did not moderate him as a troll because he endorsed EQ2. I moderated him as a troll because his post was offensive, unsubstantiated and (in my opinion) designed to pick a fight. Let's examine:

I hear a lot about WoW, and yes, it is fun if (1) you don't want a challenge in your game (I did 20 levels in 3 days) and (2) if you like the sort of cheap cartoony-type graphics most 7 or 8 year olds like.

Possibly valid points for discussion:

WoW is not challenging.

Offensive (generally ad hominem attacks):

People play WoW because they're afraid of a challenge.

People who play WoW must be 7 or 8 years old if the like the graphics.

Now, EQ2, on the other hand, is a fantastic game. The creative content is far and away the best, it has the richest backstory, the most unbelievable graphics, and finally, it is extremely challenging. Failure to pay careful attention to group strategy (and strategies differ inside and outside of a dungeon!) will lead to certain death.

This is an opinion, with one fact (i.e. group death penalty). Left at this I would not have touched this post.

So, yes, if you just want a game you can "win" and that will level you with minimal effort to make you feel good about yourself, by all means, play WoW. Otherwise, go EQ2.

There is no factual, arguable or redeeming points in this (beyond EQ2 is better than WoW!). He does belittle people who play and enjoy WoW in two ways. This is not helpful on an open forum.

If the author wanted to justify why EQ2 is better than WoW, he could have attempted to argue his points. I for one would be interested in hearing how EQ2 is better than WoW. Done well that would have got mod points from me. If he wanted to just state his opinion he could have cut out paragraphs 1 and 3, I'd have ignored it. Instead he went cheap and attacked people, -1, Troll.

I agree there is no right or wrong, especially on this post. His opinion is argued in the worst possible way: he attacks his detractors. This is not how you argue to change opinions, this is how you make enemies and draw them out. Sorry, no dice.

Your post on the other hand was just fine. You made your point against people without insulting people, even me, one of the people you disagree with. I charge you with the duty of making a pro-EQ2 post that is fair, I'm sure it can be done.

A message to the MMO designers

[phorm]

I suggest you don't abandon traditional RPG's for the temporary money-pot that is MMOs. Competition is already high, and chances are that it will be moreso in the future. Many people are already signed up for their favorite MMO, and with monthly subscriptions and the necessity of putting in time chances are they won't sign up for too many different ones.

In the meantime, the rest of us are waiting for some decent new RPG's. FFX-2 was a joke, and I haven't see much else. Maybe you can make some cash on those who are hungering for a real RPG, and even perhaps snatch up those who have been introduced to the concept by existing MMOs.

Thought I'd mention Anarchy Online

[Anonymous Coward]

Which you can now play for free, as long as you register your account before jan. 15.

You don't have access to the expansions, so won't really be able to compete with paying players, but having fun is what matters, right?
Also, the influx of freebies has been massive, so lots of players in the same position as yourself.

You can of course upgrade your account with one or all of the expansions, but at that time the subscription fee starts running (like ~12$ or whatever a month really matters to any of us).

Re:You don't have to be a powergamer to make a nam

[Sheepdot]

Fortunately for me, I happen to have played on Thistledown in AC and know exactly what happened: NOTHING in the long run. Despite your entire post, the plot and story continued, and not in Myth's favor. Which is why he left. I would know, I *KNEW* him, he cursed at me in my chat window. I was one of the first to kill him along with a guy named "DC" (you might recognize the name if you played on Thistledown) and some other guys, who were around his level when we hit Mayoi.

Everyone actually hated Mythrandia in their own way. Many also hated and respected him: like me, which was why it was such a victory for him to have won that. They (the devs) erected a statue in his favor, but that's it. And he left the game shortly after that event.

It's not the same as having a player craft a sword that is one day found again and requires his/her touch to be a great sword once again. I want to see the game where the adventurer (a PC) finds the sword that he takes to the original crafter(a PC) who makes it be the sword that takes down the great Bael'Zharon(a PC).

That's the real ultimate game.

Re:You don't have to be a powergamer to make a nam

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a good point. This is the inherent problem with shard-based games; it's virtually impossible to create events in which players can actually affect the advancement of the plot. With 100 servers, there would be so many forks in the story based on the outcomes of player events that it would be completely unmanageable for the devs. The result is that these games have (at best) only an illusion of players actually being able to affect the events of the world.

Re:You don't have to be a powergamer to make a nam

[Stone316]

Thats true not everyone can be the hero but there is something exciting about being part of something that could change the outcome. In the end the dev's 'cheated' in order to get the storyline to progress the same as the other servers.

In this case, I wasn't the hero, I didn't organize the defence but taking part in it was the most memorable experience I have had in 5+ years of playing MMORPGS.

Re:You don't have to be a powergamer to make a nam

[Stone316]

I went by the name Dergan, first person to organize a defeat of the white bunny. I, myself, hated Myth but after that event I came to respect him greatly. Just like everyone can't be the hero, not many people have the same level of charisma to persuade others. Now, he may be totally different in RL. :)

Like I said, in this case player controled outcome wasn't expected but I think you'd be hard pressed to find people who took part in the event that didn't have an awesome time. Yeah, we were all ticked off with the outcome but realistically the dev's hands were tied.

Like another said, its impossible to have divergent story lines with the number of servers these days.

Re:You don't have to be a powergamer to make a nam

[Sheepdot]

Yeah, I ended up playing again on Solclaim and did not stay on Thistledown for more than maybe six months. I actually sold my character at a paltry level 26, but that was enough to get like a hundred bucks. I went on to play on Solclaim where I made it to level 60 or so before selling that one for a hundred as well.

For me it was not about the money, but playing with friends. When they left, I did as well, and recooped some of the monthly fees I had paid in the process. I don't think I have ever actually played a game and ended up with MORE money than I put into it, but I've found that with Asheron's Call, it ended up getting to be about free.

WoW is the first MMORPG in a while to make me say

[llevity]

WOW!

Okay, bad pun. But since there are so many people giving their opinions here, I figured I'd share mine.

First, to temper this, I'll go ahead and admit that I'm an old school MUD addict. I got introduced to MUDs by a friend, and was quickly consumed.

So, at some point I heard about Everquest. I got into the beta, and was completely amazed. It was a MUD game design, but with graphics and sound! I got through the beta, and bought the release version, but eventually quit. I hated having to blindly hunt for my corpse (or beg a bard for help) upon dying. I hated the slow leveling up period. I just wasn't getting enough for what I was investing in it.

Since then, I've tried a few others including City of Heroes and SWG. They've all had similar problems, though.

My biggest problem with SWG is how much time investment they required. For example, I wanted to go the route of a crafter. I got into at first, with the goal of getting machines to do my resource gathering for me, with the end goal of having my own shops and stuff like that.

But then I found out, you still have to spend a lot of time maintaining this crap. I can't go away from a week and come back with a pile of doodads made for me. Maybe it's a balance thing, but I want the game to be there at my demand, not the game demand me to be there at its demand. So I scrapped it.

CoH was actually very close to what I was looking for. I liked the quest/mission structure, and the pace of the game was good. But there was still a death penalty. Not a horrible one compared to some other games, but at one point, I just got too frustrated. Why do I have to repeat all these kills to get rid of this XP debt, just because I made one misstep? Death penalties make me feel like I'm punished for exploring, trying something new, or just testing the limits. Sure, I could grind away until I was sure I could make it in that new area, but then the game becomes a cookie cutter formula, where I look up what to kill, how high to get before going to this area, and what to do there.

Fast forward to my experience with WoW. Since CoH, I'd given up on MMO games. I'd heard rumblings about WoW, but I dismissed it as just a Blizzad flavor of everything else. So I did not pick it up at retail.

Several weeks after it came out, however, I happened across a review for it on one of the big gaming sites. It got a very high score, so I was at least intrigued enough to read the text of the review.

Thankfully, it was a very well done review. Instead of just a bunch of empty words praising the game, it was critical in explaining not only that the game was well done, but also how it was done well.

I read about a quest system that eliminated some of the tedium of the grind. I read about unique races and classes that were all fun to play in their own right. But best of all, I read about the lack of a serious death penalty. So I said, sign me up!

Later that day, I got him with the game. A little over a month later, I'm level 36 (out of 60), and my wife not behind far at 34.

I can honestly say that it seems that Blizzard sat down and said "Okay, what are the 'tried and true' features of the MMO game that suck?" and systematically eliminated them.

To me, it requires a fairly brilliant leap of logic to take something that is the core of just about every game, and eliminate it. But in thinking about it, what purpose does a death penalty serve? I'll grant that it adds a sense of tension to dicey encounters, and bestows a sense of greater reward when you manage to avoid death. But that does not balance with the other side. In other words, in most MMO games, the penalty does not balance well with the reward. Sure I get a bit of a thrill by surviving, but that thrill does not outweigh the sense of frustration and annoying I encounter when I do die. Futhermore, it also limits the willingness to explore, try new stuff, and just freely experience the sense of wonder that a well done

Why We Like Instancing

[zoomba]

I've played for at least a time, just about every major MMO out there. I know exactly why the trend towards instancing and the small-group/single player movement is gaining so much momentum over the old style of MMOs.

We want to *PLAY A GAME*

Now, lets think about that one for a second. For a contemporary example let's look at Star Wars Galaxies (w/o the JTL expansion). It's all about massive numbers of people milling around together. It's a great world simulator, you're in a Star Wars sandbox essentially. The problem? Not much fun to be had in the game unless you invent it yourself. Why? Because it's not a game, it's a simulation.

Lots of games have done an amazing job of creating a great game world to play in, good professions, crafting etc... The problem is they spent so much time developing the great shell and framework that they didn't have time to put in the game elements. So we're all just left to mill about and try and come up with something to do aside from grinding levels.

Instances typically imply short-duration objective based missions for a single group. The experience has a beginning, middle and end. There are objectives so you can "win" and feel you achieved something. Plus, it's a more controlled experience since you get to choose who plays with you and you're not competing with 243,423,422 other people who are camping Mob 486 for UberLOOT Sword of TEH WIN. These experiences are FUN. They are much more like the games we all grew up playing. In most MMOs you're eventually left sitting around going "Ok, what now?" Instances lead you through the experience partially.

I'm tired of developers bemoaning the use of SP aspects in an MMO. They forget that they're not only building social environments, they're supposed to be making games too, and games should be fun and not work.

Best MMRPG

[MemoryDragon]

Real life, you even can get sex... But be warned dying is final (unless you are Buddhist of course)

Why MMO? I'd much rather play the RPG part.

[Behrooz]

MMORPG. It's of a contradiction in terms, because under the current paradigm, increasing the scope of a MMO game reduces the amount of game that is actually available to any given player. For several years I've watched new MMO releases with anticipation, hoping that someone will find a way to break the flawed mold. It hasn't happened, and I've given up hope that it will happen in the near future. Creating real game content in the current MMO paradigm just isn't cost-effective.

Give me a real RPG anytime, with actual story and some way to empathize with the characters in a meaningful way. A game where your decisions have some tangible effect other than "Ooh, this sword gives me +3 damage". The only recent RPG I've played that is worthy of the name is Vampire: Bloodlines, IMO one of the best games of 2004.

Powerleveling? Treadmills? My god, people! Those terms should not be complementary to anything pretending to be a real game. The only thing that current MMO games have going for them is social interaction, and even in that respect they fall somewhere under the quality of IRC.

How do I know this? My roommates play World of Warcraft. One of them has been playing since the release, and has levelled to the high forties. My other roommate just bought it. What do I hear when they're playing at the same time? "Goddamnit, this is so boring when you guys are all too high level to play with me!" Their screens look the same... usually a perspective of a couple orcs hacking at a large spider-like thing for a while until it dies. It's not a game, it's a screensaver with slightly complicated clicking patterns!

Get off the MMORPG treadmill. Buy some of the incredibly good single-player games that have recently been released, like Half-Life 2, Vampire: Bloodlines, or Rome: Total War if you're a strategy fan. I have a feeling that it's going to be a very looong time before MMO games have even the potential for fun factor and immersion of high-quality PC games.

The MMO genre is only a few years old, is based on incremental improvements, and has longer development cycles than conventional design. Worse, evolutionary considerations for MMO games favor the least common denominator of complexity and involvement. It should come as no surprise that they still suck, even though I keep hoping otherwise.

Re:Why MMO? I'd much rather play the RPG part.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a feeling that it's going to be a very looong time before MMO games have even the potential for fun factor and immersion of high-quality PC games

So, I guess those people who spend hours of their time just don't understand "potential for fun factor" in the same way that you do. Is is possible that they just have a different concept of fun than you do?

I really enjoy cryptic crosswords, all of you who don't obviously don't know the "potential for fun" associated with them and are wasting your time in lesser pursuits like PC games should learn. So there.

Re:Why MMO? I'd much rather play the RPG part.

[ZB Mowrey]

The MMO genre is only a few years old, is based on incremental improvements, and has longer development cycles than conventional design. Worse, evolutionary considerations for MMO games favor the least common denominator of complexity and involvement. It should come as no surprise that they still suck, even though I keep hoping otherwise.

It certainly comes as no surprise that you think your opinion should determine the fate of the market. With very rare exception, I think that first person shooters are 'teh suxxors'. I feel like asking people how they can derive enjoyment from a game with such a limited story/plot line, that essentially becomes "walk down this corridor until you see something, shoot it, pick up its ammo and keys, move on."

Do you see my point here? Just because you think something is stupid doesn't make it stupid, stupid. It just means your whiny ass doesn't like them, and I'm fine with that.

Cyberpunk MMORPG - FPS Style

[jgnatzer]

http://www.neocron.com/ First Person MMORPG, plays like a shooter, 10 day free trial, no fluffy bunnies or gay elves. Check it out its worth it.

Re:Why MMO? I'd much rather play the RPG part.

[cmacb]

Get off the MMORPG treadmill. Buy some of the incredibly good single-player games that have recently been released, like Half-Life 2, Vampire: Bloodlines, or Rome: Total War if you're a strategy fan. I have a feeling that it's going to be a very looong time before MMO games have even the potential for fun factor and immersion of high-quality PC games.

Or buy into an open-ended online 3D-VR program where users can build their own games.

Just a thought.

Define Irony....

[grimsweep]

The original UO2 preview video looked kinda neat. Lots of model animation, brief combat, a few glimpses of the proposed HUD layout, and what looked like an attempt at dancing in a non-descript bump-mapped stone room.

Ironically, during the entire video, the song repeated the chorus 'this is not superstition'.

A cyberpunk MMORPG may kindle the fire

[FusionDragon2099]

Look at things: WoW, EQ, RO, etc, etc. All fantasy settings.

What we need are more modern/futuristic MMORPGS. Raise a hand for Shadowrun Online, people.

Re:WoW is the first MMORPG in a while to make me s

[Anonymous Coward]

CoH was actually very close to what I was looking for. I liked the quest/mission structure, and the pace of the game was good. But there was still a death penalty. Not a horrible one compared to some other games, but at one point, I just got too frustrated. Why do I have to repeat all these kills to get rid of this XP debt, just because I made one misstep?

Uhhh.....I hate to say this now, but after the initial learning curve in CoH, which I'd say is over at about level 15 for your first character and level 10 for subsequent types, if you die you did more than make one little mis-step. It's true earlier, too, but but you might not yet have learned to recognize the signs you've made a mistake.

It takes a fair amount of experimentation to figure out what works, but part of that experimentation is paying attention. You obviously weren't. Debt is a fairly minor penalty for that kind of error

Re:Koster?! When will you people LEARN?!

[Anonymous Coward]

He is also totally out of touch with the gamer market. He repeatedly says he likes the community building type MMORPGs which is what SWG and EQ2 sort of are, they try to create a "world" rather than a game. that is why they are such failures. And despite relatively large subscriber numbers, rest assured they are failures.
If Blizzard had done SWG, they would have about 2 million subscribers....

Re:Why MMO? I'd much rather play the RPG part.

[daskrisk]

>The MMO genre is only a few years old, is based on
>incremental improvements, and has longer
>development cycles than conventional design. Worse,
>evolutionary considerations for MMO games favor the
>least common denominator of complexity and
>involvement. It should come as no surprise that
>they still suck, even though I keep hoping
>otherwise

I think you are a bit new on this neh?

Graphical MMO are a bit new yet I have heard of them not just a few years ago, like U-O, yet if you go for MUSH-MUD are MMORPG, so WTF, those games can be played even in the times of BBS... those are not new and if you play Aardwolf , Achaea or any other TEXT based MUSH-MUD you will se how RPG you can get, Ok a graphical MMORPG will take some(long) time to achieve the depth of one of those, but they are on a good way.

AND GET REAL, A SINGLE PLAYER GAME IS DAMN BORING!! (except for nethack, yet we'd love a MMO version of it, CROSSFIRE :P)
Even those games you said are not great by their Single player capabilities.

Ugh... Maplestory

[IdahoEv]

I played maplestory for a couple of days. Now I can't convince myself to open the app, even at times when I'm bored off my skull with nothing to do.

Maple learned NOTHING from the problems and failures of previous MMORPGs. There is no balanced economics (the economy is already developing the same problems as EQ due to an infinite influx of money and items).

Gaining experience happens at a reasonable rate for the first few levels. Then it takes so long that there is literally nothing else to do ... after the first 5 quests or so you need to get your character to level 35+ to really be able to work on the rest of them. There's nothing to do during this time but kill monsters. So players go to "training grounds" where low-level monsters spawn rapidly. After level 20, expect to spend about an hour per level pretty much standing in place holding down the "attack" key while mushrooms spawn in front of your swinging sword. I gained two levels by taping down the key on my keyboard and reading a novel. There's nothing else to do, as I'd long since done all the quests I was powerful enough to do, and bought all the armor and weapons I was experienced enough to equip.

These training ground rooms are by far the most efficient way to level ... so they're packed with players. As a result, Maplestory runs twenty identical channels. Most of these worlds are pretty empty, but the training grounds are totally packed, all the time.

There is no player interaction, at all, besides trading and chatting. (Oh, you can form parties, the only apparent effect being that you share experience from kills among the group. This is cool if you can talk a higher-level character into joining your party, but sucks if you are the higher level character).

Seriously, it's kind of fun for the first 20 levels or so. Then it becomes utterly mind-numbing, worse than any other game I've played in years. You have to spend an hour just levelling on monsters that can't hurt you for every minute worth of actual content you experience.

Re:Ugh... Maplestory

[compro01]

well, each to their own. millions of people who tried Everquest didn't like it.

BTW, i wouldn't reccomend trying that tape trick very often. in the rules, that qualifies as "botting" and can get you banned.

i happen to like it, but i'm fine if you don't.

just a small request, if you've quitting the game, please withdraw your account so that dead names don't build up and prevent someone from having a name they like. though i would reccomend just giving away all your stuff before withdrawing your account, just to be nice.

Re:WoW is the first MMORPG in a while to make me s

[llevity]

I don't recall my level, but my mistake was grouping with people I'd never grouped with before, and we went somewhere new. It went okay at first, but then we turned a corner, and were swarmed.

It's not that I wasn't paying attention, it was that I was taking a chance, exploring somewhere new, with people I didn't know.

Sure, you could say that was stupid, but that's what I like about WoW. I can group with complete strangers and take a chance on making new friends, go to a completely new place together, and if the crap hits the fan, the only penalty is a relatively low equipment repair cost and a run back to my corpse (which is shown on the map).

Re:Why MMO? I'd much rather play the RPG part.

[geminidomino]

Now THAT could be interesting... it could solve the and content-free, static plot problem.

Re:Stole my wife!

[kevinx]

The above comment was intended as a joke. A play on the fact that spam is sent stating that it can help fix your marriage. Since the parent poster had made a joke that WOW had stole his wife followed up with a silly way to get her back. Unfunny?, perhaps. Off topic?, it might be, but no more than much of the babble that is passed off as interesting.

they boo'd andy off the stage as well....