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Why play mmo's?
ScaryMonk
Member Posts: 97
Most mmo's are following a similar trend with dungeon finders etc. Basically you stand in the hub and wait for your game to ping; you do not explore a consistent, massive, populated world with other players.
This is basically what many games on the PS2 or XBox do with a greater degree of competence. You enter a multi-player game and you play with other players, the graphics are pretty and the game play in general is vastly superior.
Given the direction mmo's seem to be taking why bother playing them at all?
ps. If you enjoy a good story, unlike the amateurish SWTOR or GW2, then play The Walking Dead btw. Now that is how to deliver a story in a game.
Comments
So now onto your original OP: Why play mmo's?
Not for it's story line, not for its end game, but for everything else that I can not find in a normal multiplayer or singleplayer game.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Dragonage and Mass Effect 2, but I feel the story is somewhat diluted by virtue of it being an mmo in SWTOR.
I think it easy to me as I have comp but not PS or Xbox or wii.
may be also it bigger community and add a lot of social (good or bad) experience to gaming.
try before buy, even if it's a game to avoid bad surprises.
Worst surprises for me: Aion, GW2
i dont just enter "any" random multi player game in my mmo.
i have a set date for my clan, and we do dungeons together.
also, we dont wait in a text hub or anything. we do our dailies, push our crafting or do some pvp in the other time. we dont just sit in a tect based room and wait.
sure, i dont NEED to explre consistent massiv populated worlds, but that's what i do during my leveling (as hinted above, i dont realy like random dungeon grps). uh and you know what? the story they told me while doing so was actually quite good. for the 6th's year after another.
how many playstation games do you have that are running for 9 years?
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
my basic premise is "i want to experience a virtual world, but not alone", yeah i could play a singleplayer sandbox, but it feels empty, the problem is that today i cant find a game that feels like a real virtual universe.
I think this is exactly my point ^. MMO's do not deliver what a lot of people look for in an mmo, so why play them?
im currently not playing any mmo's. I am waiting for that feeling of "massive" to come back into the market. In the past 5 years everything has been scaling down.... if i wanted a multiplayer game with 20 ppl per map I would play TF2.
im tired of the entire game feeling like instance hops. I think they have a place, but they should not be the only focus.
I loved vanilla WoW. The instances made sense and before battlegrounds came out the PvP was done for fun. TM vs SS. An endless tide of battle where everyone from lvl 10-60 could be found.
Then more guards were added
Then dishonor points (or whatever they were called i forget now)
Then battlegrounds were added.
Then battlegrounds were shoved down our throats
Then they removed what made AV hard and fun (i loved 14 hour AV battles)
Now I will start to get out of order
Then they removed realm pride with cross server messes
Then they removed faction pride with lol-arena
Then they sacrificed any uniqueness of characters for "balance"
They destroyed anything resembling massive raids
They casualised the best gear.
They removed fighting on your server for pvp rank
They killed the community that built them.
WAR came so close... but 2 factions was the biggest mistake they made. Balance would have played out if they had just improved on DAoC instead of trying some weird hybrid between RvR and WoW
"Oh snap, I going to play XXX because I like was it offers...what? It's labeled an MMO? Man...guess I won't play it then..."
For me, an economy that involves other players is enough of a draw. Even without having a face-to-face interaction with them, the other players provide a benefit that I couldn't get from a single player game: unpredictability that doesn't come from a random number generator.
If I want to buy a Mythril Greatsword, someone has to have one for sale. Sometimes no one does. And other times, someone does but they're charging more than I want to pay. Other times, I find one for much less than the going price; lucky me! Same goes for selling. If I put an Astral Ring up for sale for a certain price, it might sell quickly or not at all. Someone might undercut me. If there are a lot already for sale, I might hang onto it until the supply dwindles.
If I were playing a single-player game, I would get no value from this randomness because it would be coming from the RNG. And I don't want to be told "No Mythril Greatswords for sale today. Why? Cuz I rolled a 3 lololol" It means more to me if that economic element is merely unpredictable and not purely die-roll random.
There are other reasons I want to play in a game with a massive amount of people, but even setting aside all other kinds of interactions, there is still this and it alone is sufficient for me.
I play mmos to get lost in the world away from my real world! You can't get all that lost in a multiplayer game. most of the times those type games are nothing but just a map! I absolutely hate hub based games WoW post Vanila and Tortanic.
Below is where we can disscuss and come up with new ideas for Sandparks!
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/5164689#5164689
What a dumb question. People play them because they find them fun.
Not everybody thinks the way you do.
I play MMOs because I want a good story or my RL friends play them.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Gee, It sounds like your better than us. I just have one question.........Can I have your stuff ?
i like messing around with different classes/races and exploring. Small dungeons are fun as well (they fell more personal than large raids with ridiculous hp bars)
that's about it. i honestly enjoy the communities in RTS and MOBA games more-so than in MMO's, so I can't really say 'the people', even though I like it when my wife is playing the same game as me.
That is the problem. It is not. In fact, some MMOs are good SP or online games, and i play as such.
STO is a good example. Tell me what is a good Star Trek ARPG with both ship & ground combat. I won't play a star trek MMO if there is such a game.
How about DDO? When is the last good D&D non-MMO game?
Sure, generic fantasy is pretty common, and i certainly don't need a MMO to get a good fantasy ARPG (D3, Torchlight ...) but there are MANY genre with a lack of games.
Even super heroes ... aside from DCUO, is there a recent game that allows you to design your own super heroes? Aside from Marvel Heroes (and marvel squad whatever .. whcih is also a MMO), is there a recent game that allows you to play a marvel super heroes? (The last one was Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, which is released couple of years ago).
How about steampunk? How about pirates RPGs?
If there are ARPG in all these genres, then sure .. no need to play MMOs. Before that happens, i will be playing lots of MMOs.
I don't think MMO is anything special regarding communtiies. It is just a bunch of people playing the same game. MMO communities are not superior to communities in other games. In all the games i have played, MMOs or not, i can always find someone whom i enjoy to play with, and make friends if i want to.
No players playing = boring game. The whole point of an mmo is interacfion with others... ie community memebers. Otherwise, an mmo would be asshat fps style gameplay, where what u do does not matter because no ome to shun you.
"No they are not charity. That is where the whales come in. (I play for free. Whales pays.) Devs get a business. That is how it works."
-Nariusseldon
I play games because they are fun. I don't restrict myself to any single genre of game. I play SP games, I play multi-player games, I play FPS and RTS and MMOs. I play because I have a good time playing them and if I stop having a good time, I stop playing them.
What I really don't understand are the people who become abnormally fixated on MMOs, they will only play MMOs, no matter how much they complain they all suck.
That's the question you ought to be asking.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
An mmo is the most wonderful possibility, it just has to be done right. The need to play them can get the better of people. It's like a starving man eating out of the garbage. If you only have 1 option you can only choose it. That being said I stopped playing mmo's for fun quite awhile ago, now I'm trying to get people to rethink them. The mmo is an amazing concept. What we have now are a bunch of bad jokes.
If a butterfly learnt to speak, to live in human society, paid its bills, had a job, lived in a fancy house and married a human, is it human?
Now what if that same butterfly knew how to write code better than any human and had years of experience in the game industry, would that make it a game designer?
If u wouldn't let a construction worker design your house, then why let a programmer design your world?
That's where I disagree with you. An MMO is just a game, it isn't some magical, mystical experience, it's a game. It's something done for entertainment. The problem is, you do have some people who are utterly fixated on only playing MMOs, they cannot imagine finding another genre of game to play, yet it seems they hate MMOs, they idolize some imaginary time in the past when they thought things were better, but in reality, they just have nostalgic memory and forget how bad it was in the past.
What we have right now are the golden age of MMOs, there are more MMOs active today and more people playing MMOs today than ever in the history of mankind. They are playing the games and having a good time. Far too many people here are wishing for something that never was and not playing games, they're trying to relive memories. No wonder they're not having any fun.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
The only thing that keeps bringing me back to MMO's is the justification of my time. Playing a single player RPG like Skyrim, or Fallout: New Vegas, really just drives the point home for me, that I feel my time spent collecting, killing, skilling or leveling is almost pointless, as I can never really show it off in a multiplayer environment. Only I get to see it, and while I realize that's all that matters in a single player game, I prefer my time to have more meaning than can be derived alone.
In the words of Chris McCandless, quoted more famously by Jon Krakauer, "Happiness is only real when shared." I suppose the same could apply to my gaming habits.
"This is life! We suffer and slave and expire. That's it!" -Bernard Black (Dylan Moran)