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The Barbarians At The MMOG Gates
simoniker writes "Areae president Raph Koster is perhaps best known as a designer of Ultima Online and the previous CCO of Sony Online Entertainment, and in an in-depth Gamasutra interview, he discusses his views on 'game grammar', the uniting of MMOs and online worlds, and the software patent problem. In particular, he's been talking about the 'barbarians at the gates' for hardcore MMO makers: 'Even the creation of the MUD in the first place was that. It was the Internet-based reaction to the stuff that had existed on the microcomputers and the Plato network and all of that. All of a sudden, "Oh, wait! We can put a text MUD on Arpanet!" And it was like, "Whoa!" and it spread like wildfire, and all of a sudden, all of that other stuff went away. So it's really possible for that stuff to be happening now with microtransactions, with portals versus traditional publishers, with digital distribution publishers versus traditional publishers, and with MMOs from MTV versus MMOs from Sony or EA or NCSoft.'"
The only real selling point of any MMOG is "community",
I prefer MMOGs to single player, not for the chatting or guilds, but for the fact that humans make for more interesting teammates or opponents, than the computer does. On the rare occasion that you have teammates in a single player game, they never do anything interesting or novel. Having other characters in my game world that make choices that haven't been tweeked by a game designer make the game more interesting for me.
On the 99% of everyone is an annoying twat thing: I've spent hours in City of Heroes, doing missions with a good team, where hardly anything not game related was said in the chat box. Sure there are a lot of junior high kids in MMOs who want to talk trash, but the same can be said for going to a baseball game or the mall or anywhere else in the world were there are teenagers. Usually they adore the PvP aspects of a MMOG. Personally, I usually stick to the PvE aspects of the game (and out of guilds or clans or whatever) and have quite an enjoyable time, with a minimum of immature brats and idiots. If MMOs aren't you cup of tea that's cool, but as the genre matures so do a fair portion of the players, don't paint us all with the same brush.
We are all just people.
The world doesn't revolve around you. Learn to accept this.
More precisly, it doesn't revolve around your demographic, there are enough persons who are willing to play a monthly fee and who want to play in a multiplayer enviroment.
Different tastes, is that so hard to accept? No, it doesn't mean you are old, just means you have an over-inflated ego. Frankly that isn't age dependent.
Every single story about MMO's you get some person complaing about monthy fees and somehow the world is supposed to care. Here is a newsflash for you. Blizzard is RAKING it in. WoW should be closing in on the billion dollar revenue mark by now. That is hard to ignore. Game companies that struggle while they see thousands of people downloading their games for free and here is a company with an OLD OLD OLD game still raking it in. You think these companies care about you? They got a choice, spend fortune developing a single player game that will be obsolete in months, hopefully get them a onetime income and maybe some sparechange for the value release with tons of players using their forums for support a full week before the game is actually OUT (pirates move fast, and leechers have no shame) OR spend that money on an MMO and get a ton of cash each and every month. Gee, difficult one.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.