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What makes your old friends quit MMORPGs?
leahriddle
Member CommonPosts: 16
I have asked many friends around that why do they leave MMORPGs. And regardless of differences in conditions of life, backgrounds and job contents, they all have quite similar answers. They don’t have time. Today we have developed game market filled with all kinds of games. “Since I can get the same fun, why should I spend my busy time in MMORPGs?”
They still remember those golden old days in WoW. We pull together to kill a boss down. But they just don’t have enough patience and leisure time as before.
When we go back home and open the client, wait your team members all gather up and dungeon for at least an hour, let alone the time being defeated by a boss encounter and starting over. After several tossing back-and-forth, we may just get an item with normal stats. Nowadays it is so hard for people repeating the routine over and over again; in addition?we can’t be sure whether we will get an equipment drop, and even sometimes you get a poor roll point and miss it.
The fun of leveling and dungeons? This process tends to become some kind of mechanized operations. As the pace of life is increasing, people become less patient. They can’t enjoy their slow leveling time, hardly enjoy the scenarios once they loved… Instead, they tend to care about awards for finishing missions…
So accumulating joys of MMORPGs tends to be cumbersome under that situation. They turn over and start to play MOBA and single player games which prove to be highly efficient.
Maybe one day, when MMORPGs realize our dream of making every hour fulfilling, I can eventually gather all my old brothers gone - those who had fought with in virtual world; and go back to MMORPGs, again.
Comments
This happens to many ppl. And it transcrnds MMO. Especially in Europe where unemployment is at 60% in some citiies, the requirements / stress / overtime ppl have to deal with is insane. Because if you won't do it, someone in India will for half the wage.
Many MMO players are from spain, bc of unemployment, but many are stressed, thinking about RL, talking about RL, unable to relax.
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
I think you should have a try with mid-core mmos where you could get rid of these annoying things. Spending a little time on it and then you don't have to pay much attenation. But when you are back, you can get back to hard-core play style immediately. Such as Conquer Online, you can work, date or feed your kids… do anything you like while keeping game hanging in there and let it auto hunting or offline training. Hope it will help.
Just lack of innovation across the board. Different skins, same crap.
In a lot of cases, same skins and same crap.
exactly.reminds me when i hear people say that can't afford a sub fee.......the game isn't the problem in these cases.i don't care how busy i am if a sequel to my favorite game was launched i will make time!!!
If your people still wanna play MMORPGs and don’t wanna spend too much time… There are a lot of other choices you are able to make. For example, you can find another mid-core MMO or even a mobile game. Games as CoC will help you. You could do lot of things when you have time, but when don't have enough time, your workers will help you to reach your aim. Fragmentation time is always in use! And I suggest another mid-core mmo, Conquer Online for you, very easy and fun.
Well, said. People rarely say exactly what they mean. Even to complete strangers, coupled with the near anonymity of the internet. I think most the things we probably hear along these lines are dismissive excuses. But, not the real reasons.
This is what i think might be going on (at least some of the time):
A lot of MMORPG end up being very similar (or one of a few major types). When you burn out on one. I imagine it's pretty easy to be burnt out on playing them in general. I think it might just be boredom at the point of mastery. I have not really played Super Mario Bros. for the NES since I was first able to beat it in under 9 minutes with 100 lives (well once in a long while when it is the case that someone has the system and the game lying around...just to show off).
I would suspect that many people don't typically think of MMORPG as having a point of mastery (like a platformer, or rpg usually does). But, I think they do. If you play enough MMORPG or you play a few to great enough extant. There is this point at which all features, of all the ones you might try, seem so familiar that you don't even think about what your doing.
When you can try out a new MMORPG, make a friend in a newb area. Then a few hours later your past the mid level mark (where they usually start to actually get grindy), glowing with a mount. And, you see them again. But, they are only one level higher and your like...what happened? The last few hours are a blur in memory and you realize..."This is all just autopilot for me now." That to me seems to be a point of at least partial mastery. A point at which i could see some people getting bored of the genre.
I hear a number of reasons: -
In terms of time there are two aspects to this. The first is that they literally have less spare time as they grow older and there are more real life pulls. The second is that they are far less willing to spend what free time they have on homogeneous games which offer very little by way innovation or unique experiences.
But the main reason I hear is simply boredom. MMORPG's are no longer a social experience due to the solo-centric gameplay and they have become rather bland and derivative. Most people I know would rather spend their free time on a fun and social activity be that down the pub or even a multi-player game than they would on another solo, anti-social MMORPG. In fact my friends who played vanilla WOW spend far more time on HALO multi-player these days than any MMO.
I doubt it.
To me, it is a drag to have to waste time with people before playing, and commit to schedules just because of a game. Plus, i prefer to play more games (than just one), and also have time for restaurant hopping with my wife, tv shows, and other entertainment.
MMO is just not that important in the grand scheme of things to spend major time on.
It depends. My friend list over the years has sort of whittled down as we've gone to different games. In a pure theme park game, many get to the end and just quit. The days of grinding a dungeon over and over again has lost its appeal. There is a feeling of nothing left to do. With quite a few offerings out there....MMO and single player....why be stuck on one game?
I have many guild mates in AA who are starting to reach their boredom threshold and it frustrates me somewhat. These are folks who played alpha to death, played AA at launch nonstop---one guy stayed up for 36 hours. Some have pulled all nighters grinding their crafting---drinking labor pots like I drink wine. Now they have burnout. For me personally, I only play in bits and pieces. Real life is so hectic for me now days that I hop on, do some farming or perhaps a quest and log off and I'm perfectly content. Unfortunately when I finally do reach max level, folks will be gone. This seems to be the way for me in every MMO. In TSW, I had hardcore guild mates who all geared up and then.....quit. It is hard to find a game where people stick around for years like we did in the past. For me personally, playing a game in moderation is key.
Then I have some friends who have stuck with a game for years. One of my friends has played WoW since servers went live and we can't pull her away. She is ultra casual yet plays everyday. She has max level of characters across multiple servers and is perfectly content playing her characters every day. She always finds something to do but then again, she is a bit of a RPer and makes her own fun.
I don't know. I never ask anyone why they quit any video game. I don't particularly care either.
A few have voluntarily stated why they were leaving a game or guild.
One couple broke up and both decided that it would be too hard to see each other in game, so they both quit. Kinda sucked they were really nice people.
One guy moved to a PvP server because he ended up spending most of his time pvping and realized that's what he enjoyed. No loss as he never participated in any PvE activities.
One teenager moved to another game because his family played it together, we were a bit perplexed why someone would want to play an MMO with their mother, but whatever.
A RL friend back in high school quit UO to join a travel roller hockey team.
And I think that sums up the people that I've known who outright stated why they left/quit a game in the last 15 years.
Which makes me think "Why?" Some of these games are almost the same exact game that they were back when they were considered highly social activities. So, what changed? My money is on the Wiki. A fan site is one thing. Fan sites historically received little support. And, a lot of what was known was through player testing. Their information was hit and miss. And, usually there was only 1-5 people working on and updating them. It also took time to get information about a newer game.
But, with the advent of full on wiki's (format which allows any one who knows anything about a subject to contribute). I think this really changed. Suddenly you have hundreds if not thousands working on documenting every aspect of a game in exhausting detail. And, because they got so big, so quick, it was in the best interest of game devs to provide a lot of stock information.When so much of a game is easily known. There is no need to ask anyone. No necessity to have help. Moreover, it lets players figure out all the shortcuts long before they have need of them. There is no more mystery that only other players can help you piece together.
I am sure eventualities like players running out of unique content, demanding more, getting it, and thus increasing the gap between entry level and end game play has something to do with it. And, there being so many MMORPG out there, that are so similar. So, as to make the general course of play all too familiar. Given that there are only so many ways yet employable to make an MMORPG and have it still fit within the genre...That likely has a lot to do with it, as well. But, both of those are only possible through players having the ability to blow through content on the back of thorough documentation.
So, how does this get fixed (if it gets fixed at all)? Well, I am thinking maybe what we should be asking for is for developers to focus on finding new spins on old content. Ones that are not very agreeable with heavy documentation. We can't ask players to stop making fan-wiki's. That just won't happen. But, if developers were keen on the idea of making MMORPG that were difficult to build a wiki around. That were good at holding their secrets for actual discovery through play.
In all honestly that(what you described here) was already boring and not worth the time(most of the time) back in EQ1. Don't get me wrong i enjoyed sometimes to play with people together, chat with them and camp a spawn point or in WoW make a dungeon/instance/raid or some quests.. however the interesting part was at least for me always the hanging together with a few friends and have good time.. you could do that pveing in a MMO, play a board game together or pen&paper.. but the actual gaming was (at least for me) always not worth it.
Something different was and is pvp. PvP in UO with a few friends or in DAoC that was thrilling, exciting and simple put "fun", with or without friends.. the friends you did socialize was just a welcome addition to the gaming experience.
And nowadays it is not that different from ten or fifteen years ago.. ok, you may have less time at hand as back then in school or college.. and yeap there may not be that many MMO with worthy pvp. And yeap indeed now i and a lot of friends play more MOBAs or FPS or nowadays more rarely RTS(because with RTS it is even worst as with MMOs.. not a lot coming out this days).
However.. if a good MMO with good and worthwhile pvp would appear again i have not doubt that i would play again a lot more MMOs.. on the other side i am well aware that i don't have that much time, that i could commit me in a game that heavily requires time at it is required in EvE or Darkfall, where community building, clan building, all the overhead, mostly nothing to do with the actual game, consumes so many hours and requires to play at least 20-30 hours a week. Yeap.. nowadays i don't have 20-30 hours a week.. maybe 2-3 hours evenings and 4-6 weekend.. so maybe at maximum 10-20 hours a week.
But in all honestly i do think that should be more than enough time to play a MMO decently.. and it would be enough time for a MMO like DAoC to play it rather competively. And so i just wait for a MMO worth it, and play anything else during that time.. because at the moment i just can't bother myself to play any MMO.. although i should at least give ArcheAge a shot.. but somehow i can't convince myself after playing it briefly during beta.