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Why mmorpgs will never be as hardcore as the "hardcore" want
melmoth1
Member Posts: 762
Been a lot of posts and rants and ravings about some people who are apparently "old-school" or "hardcore" or "sandbox" or some such other titanium plated adjective that implies that most of us are mmorpg wet toilet paper wimps compared to the king shits who played REAL mmorpgs "back in the day" when things were pure and "fo real".
I wonder what all the tough guy posturing is about. Who remembers the OLD old school of paper & dice RPGs? They were totally immersive and hardcore. The game was custom built for 4-6 players who you knew intimately. The gamesmaster had a scenario or campaign pre-built, but that could be altered, improvised, customised or totally changed off the cuff if the characters or story demanded it. Totally open world, totally unpredictable (by relative mmorpg standards) and much more immersive. The GM spent hours and days and months to make scenarios and campaign and the players (with a good group) really developed and fleshed out the details of their character and their motivation. No repetitive grinds, no conformity (in most games) to set definitions of "tank", "healer" et al, a great deal of variety of genres and worlds to choose from (Call of Cthulhu, Paranoia, Twilight 2000, Bushido etc), unique and original heroes with unique GM designed equipment, etc and so on. This was the real hardcore and it is still out there for the taking.
So you so-called king shit hardcore mmorpgers who are pissed at the lack of immersion and choice and open-world and death penalties and so on (yawn)...just go back to old paper & dice RPGS. You (apparently) have some brilliant and amazing ideas of what REALLY constitutes a REAL game that hey, just tailor pick the best parts of lots of paper & dice RPGS and make your own preferred game (heck, that's exactly what I did "back in the day" when I was a overly-opinionated high school student). That's the "real" old old school immersion. I used to be that old-school, before I graduated from university and before I started teaching and before I started a family and when my friends and I had loads and loads and frightenly obscene loads of spare time. I was a GM back then and had no other responsibilites other than the game. I played existing games, i customised existing games and I even made my own games. Those were heady days and great days but I had to move on as I got older.
Now me and my "old" old schoolers play modern mmorpgs because they are more casual and because my old RPG group live in different parts of the world.
So you "new" old schoolers who go on about the old-school and all those noobs and idiots and casuals who play easy-mode games, well I call your bluff. If you are really THAT hardcore then just pick up some old paper and dice RPG and play it real old-school. If you really have the passion and the time and the skill then you won't be disappointed.
MMORPGS are designed and pre-programmed for mass audiences and the gaming experience will be relatively similar for all the thousands of millions of players who play that - themepark or sandbox. The truly unique hero or anti-hero in a mmorpg is a contradiction in terms.
You think you're old-school? Go GM one of the tougher old-school games like Call of Cthulhu or Paranoia and then tell me your old school.
Evil knows evil.
Regards
Melmoth
Ed for spelling and grammar
Comments
what in the world are you talking about?
Difficult raiding in a VIDEO GAME is nothing alike being a GM in a PEN AND PAPER GAME
Also instead of telling us how "why MMORPG's will never be as hardcore as the "hardcore" want" you simply just ramble on about how they dont know shit because they dont play pen and paper RPG games.
I play all ghame
Success in a video game is pattern recognition. Nothing more. Apes do that. Even dogs and birds do that. Skill? Yeah right.
DnD game of 6 players vs. concurrent server usage by 1k+ players. Clearly, one environment will lend itself to being more dynamic and customizable.
What computers offer that pen and paper doesn't is the ability to work things in real time, where time is the common denom rather than an event.
But yet, everything DnD does is perfectly doable via binary. There isn't a thing 'hardcore' about DnD that isn't emulatable in an online setting.
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc.
We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be.
So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away.
- MMO_Doubter
Roy G. Biv says "Hello". Please fill out a Treason Confession/Spontaneous Organ Donor Release Form 1/777B and report for termination. The Computer is your friend.
"There is only one thing of which I am certain, and that's nothing is certain."
So a dog can play SC vs world's best players?
What you said is just as obscure as WoW is the McDonalds of gaming.
Admit it or not, there is skill in video games. Humans can be limited by so many things that won't allow them to complete with the biggest.
I like 'hardcore' MMORPG's in that I like them to move away from a heavily restricted linear progression for items and monsters with higher numbers. I'd rather see more focus on the experience and player freedom with as little artificial restriction from your chosen style of play as possible. Many consider this 'hardcore' as this usually means open-pvp with full-loot (My personal preference). Does this mean I have no right being interested in the MMORPG genre? Don't be silly. THAT'S HOW IT BEGAN.
word
I play all ghame
yeah one of the biggest issues of this term "Hardcore" is its constant miss use.
Well i get two completely different experiences out of my video games and pnp games. I've been DMing a few d&d campaigns for a few years now, and I play MMORPG's and singleplayer games. I draw totally different experiences from all of them. However, I would still like to see a modern MMORPG with a fair amount of polish and content to include harsh death penalty, grouping being the primary form of progress, difficult PVE at all levels, truly rare drops, and more world immersion in terms of no or very limited instant travel, and very minimal to no instancing.
All of life is pattern recognition.
Do you think the theory of relativity is anything except an attempt to describe the pattern of the universe?
Pro Chess or Football players are simply adept at recognizing how the game patterns work, and have perfected their ability to interact with those patterns.
A skilled writer recognizes the patterns of how readers enjoy his/her work, and the writer perfects his/her ability to produce those patterns. A skilled businessman identifies and successfully interacts with the patterns of running a business.
The assumption that pattern recognition somehow isn't enough for games indicates a lack of pattern recognition on your part.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
What a long wall of text. Can we get a TL:DR edition please?
FFXI got about as hard core as it could ever get imo. I have yet to see any other game where this has happened.
There was a Linkshell called Beyond The Limitation on my server seraph. They would actually phone call their members at any given time, 2am 4am 3pm and they would have to get on to help camp a Notorious Monster for the leader. The leader knew how to use his members so well, and how to get productivity out of them that he had 3 characters just to hold the Gil he had. Billions of it.
They once fought a boss which I believe has not been defeated many times I forget the name but the fight lasted 18 hours. Some of the members actually got very ill after and it made the news. They were so hard core and so dedicated to absolutely dominating the server that they became a joke for everyone in it eventually loosing all of the original members. They are still around and still hard core but not to that extent. The leader quit as well.
I think depending on the way you define hard core, thats about as hard core as it can get.
Edit Remembered the name of the mob Pandomonium ZNM Mob.
It's simple, people have accepted achievements over immersion.
Don't be terrorized! You're more likely to die of a car accident, drowning, fire, or murder! More people die every year from prescription drugs than terrorism LOL!