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Mr Jellinghaus's unhappy prophecy from 1997
pkpkpk
Member UncommonPosts: 265
Rob Jellinghaus wrote in article <5on2vd$8oe$1...@shell2.ba.best.com>...
>I have the following gloomy hunch that I'll toss out there to see what
>people think. This is not a troll, so help me it's not; this is a
>genuine speculation from my current funky mood.
>
>I think any really large online game will within a matter of months
>become overrun with jerks and anti-social behavior.
>
>I think most of the gamers who have the most time to play are poorly
>socialized kids with no lives, who really get off on being jerks, who
>haven't got enough interest in real role-playing to want to bother,
>and who will happily PK or cheat or harass people as long as it Look$
K00l.
>
>I think the dream of an online world filled with intelligent, interesting
>people, all playing richly realized characters and all acting together
>to create a lovely shared universe, is a crock. There just aren't enough
>good roleplayers in the world to populate such an online space. And
>even if there were, there are many, many, many more punks who talk like
>Beavis and Butthead and who want only to exploit the game world as much
>as possible.
>
>Note that most of you reading this post are probably not in this
category,
>since you actually bother to access netnews. The people I'm talking
about
>are the people who have overrun Diablo and made it (by wide acknowledgement
)
>virtually unplayable. Yes, the fact that they can cheat so easily there
>has made it simpler for them to ruin the game. But even when they can't
>cheat, they'll still be running around acting like brain-dead goons,
>ruining the fantasy-universe illusion that everyone seems to be counting
on
>to make UO a raging success.
>
>Basically, computer games up until now have been enjoyable regardless of
>whether most other computer gamers were people you'd actually want to
have
>anything to do with. Even Diablo is still fun IF and only if you play it
>with a small circle of people you actually know. Ultima Online will have
>FAR more clueless fools than it'll have smart, interesting role-players,
>and the people who actually care about telling a story will be swamped in
>the mass of "Wow, d00d, where'd you get that k00l axe? F**k off, b*tch!"
>trash-talking punks, to the point where people just won't bother anymore.
>And UO won't be able to kick the punks off, without chopping out most of
>their revenue base.
>
>Just a gloomy prognostication. And am I being an arrogant swine, wanting
>UO to go all my way, dissing people who happen to be different from me?
>Maybe... but six months after UO goes online, we'll see whether I turn
out
>to be right or not.
Rob Jellinghaus wrote in article <5on2vd$8oe$http://www.unrealities.com/robj
>I have the following gloomy hunch that I'll toss out there to see what
>people think. This is not a troll, so help me it's not; this is a
>genuine speculation from my current funky mood.
>
>I think any really large online game will within a matter of months
>become overrun with jerks and anti-social behavior.
>
>I think most of the gamers who have the most time to play are poorly
>socialized kids with no lives, who really get off on being jerks, who
>haven't got enough interest in real role-playing to want to bother,
>and who will happily PK or cheat or harass people as long as it Look$
K00l.
>
>I think the dream of an online world filled with intelligent, interesting
>people, all playing richly realized characters and all acting together
>to create a lovely shared universe, is a crock. There just aren't enough
>good roleplayers in the world to populate such an online space. And
>even if there were, there are many, many, many more punks who talk like
>Beavis and Butthead and who want only to exploit the game world as much
>as possible.
>
>Note that most of you reading this post are probably not in this
category,
>since you actually bother to access netnews. The people I'm talking
about
>are the people who have overrun Diablo and made it (by wide acknowledgement
)
>virtually unplayable. Yes, the fact that they can cheat so easily there
>has made it simpler for them to ruin the game. But even when they can't
>cheat, they'll still be running around acting like brain-dead goons,
>ruining the fantasy-universe illusion that everyone seems to be counting
on
>to make UO a raging success.
>
>Basically, computer games up until now have been enjoyable regardless of
>whether most other computer gamers were people you'd actually want to
have
>anything to do with. Even Diablo is still fun IF and only if you play it
>with a small circle of people you actually know. Ultima Online will have
>FAR more clueless fools than it'll have smart, interesting role-players,
>and the people who actually care about telling a story will be swamped in
>the mass of "Wow, d00d, where'd you get that k00l axe? F**k off, b*tch!"
>trash-talking punks, to the point where people just won't bother anymore.
>And UO won't be able to kick the punks off, without chopping out most of
>their revenue base.
>
>Just a gloomy prognostication. And am I being an arrogant swine, wanting
>UO to go all my way, dissing people who happen to be different from me?
>Maybe... but six months after UO goes online, we'll see whether I turn
out
>to be right or not.
Rob Jellinghaus wrote in article <5on2vd$8oe$http://www.unrealities.com/robj
Post edited by pkpkpk on
Comments
Edit - I just reread... Dude sounds like an extremely intolerant person. He even admitted to being “arrogant swine” that just wants things his way...
Yeah, from his perspective and those like him, what he writes is true.
Most mmorpg gamers are not intolerant arrogant swine.. He is most certainly in the minority.
Just as an example of this look at Age of Conan. It's a Role Players paradise. It fits the Robert E. Howard lore to the T. It's an extremely well written game from top to bottom and embodies the atmosphere and lore of the world he created mixed in with bits of Lovecraftian themes.
The zones are all lore correct, the attitudes of NPC's are all lore correct, the clothing the lore correct, the armor and weapons are lore correct and even the classes are lore correct. The raids have you fighting monsters and enemies that Conan himself fought.
If you like low fantasy and the Conan world, it doesn't get any better.
But almost everyone hates it once they leave Tortage. Why? Because they have to read the quests because the voice acting didn't cover the whole game. If you actually read the quests, then it brings you into the world even closer.
Everyone wants to fast click through all the words and run to the shiny thing to click on it for their XP boost. They don't even know why they're clicking on the shiny thing, they're just trying to get to the next level.
It's not so much punks that have ruined MMORPG's, but its power gamers who just want the best gear as fast as possible and couldn't give a squat about the world and it's lore.
I was screamed and yelled at once in SWTOR when I sat through the cut scenes in a mission with a PUG one time. A mission I had never done before and I even told them I hadn't done it before and wanted to see the story.
"Hammer your goddamn space bar so we can get our loot!" One player actually types in chat, and then promptly quit the group when I didn't.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
In the end it is either keep a tight hold on what players can do and get away with, or watch your game die a nasty death.
Only gotten worse over the years, cheating is rampant, literally millions of accounts being banned, professional matches plagued by a lack.of honor.
As for asshattery, worse than ever, game devs are forming alliances to figure out ways to bring bad player behavior under control.
To those who say they don't see it, they aren't looking or ....more likely are part of the problem.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Im not including cheating and hacking cuz it is a different story.
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
When you design a mmorpg in a way that is the anti rpg the anti mmo what do you expect for the kind of players you will run into?Geesus murpghy Wow doesn't even have housing,you think Blizzard has any idea how to make a rpg/MMO pfft lol,auto dungeon finders and THIS crappy design is what the majority studios have copied because it sells or at least they THINK it sells because of all the money Wow made Blizzard.
You would have to be living under a rock to not see gaming trends.Epic turned Fortnite into nothing more than a BR and gave up on their other game to cater ONLY to where the money is.This is what these studios are,BUSINESSES first and game studios a far distant second.When you design your games around bragging platforms it encourages spending,it encourages the type of gamer you DON'T want to see if your truly looking for a MMO/RPG.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
As a developer ,if you create a toxic game design,guess what you will get,i mean it is so blatantly obvious it is pathetic when i hear studios claim "we are clamping down on toxic players.
Oh yeah,well if you are ,can we ban your studio from making anymore games or at least fire the people in charge of making these toxic game environments?
To me it is like some dumbass setting up a FREE alcohol booth right outside an AA meeting,what o you think will happen?
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Developers notoriously have huge egos, lack social skills and make grand assumptions about what people want. One of those assumptions is that everybody should play together in this weird utopian environment.. and then when they throw everybody together they wonder why people act so bad.
Think of it this way, if I'm 40 years old would I got over to my neighbor's house and hang out with their 13 year old all day and have.. fun? Not, I would never do that because I'm 40, can't stand teenagers because they from my perspective they are ignorant of the world, say ignorant things and aren't enjoyable to be around. To be clear, I'm not bashing teens because the same applies the other direction.. no 13 year old wants to hang out with their 40 year old neighbor. I'm old, I don't get 'it', I'm slow and boring etc.
The point here is if I don't want anything to do with a 13 year old in real life, why would I want to interact with them in a game? I don't, but when I'm forced to in all these games over time bad things happen and that is the root of the problem.
When was the last time you logged into a MMORPG and you had the option to choose from the 13 to 19 year old server, 20 to 29 year old server, 30 to 39 and then the 40 and over server? I would pick over 40 in a heartbeat and wouldn't give it a second thought because I would be playing with players who have similar interests to me.
And before you say that's a stuipd idea.. it's not. In game likes DAOC and EQ2 they had roleplaying servers.. and on those servers the population was much more mature. The dream he spoke about above happened on DAOC's Guinevere server. And to be clear that was my dream when I was in my 20's and 30's.. on the other servers the teens were going crazy (from my perspective) but from their they were living their dream.
So yes it can happen but game companies need to provide an outline for gamers to follow.
I think it’s a tolerance thing. The 30% is why I need pvp games though. As long as I have a way of taking care of the issue(s) i’m fine.
people, all playing richly realized characters and all acting together
to create a lovely shared universe, is a crock. There just aren't enough good roleplayers in the world to populate such an online space."
There were and there are, but when your servers are flooded by those who don't want to roleplay you don't get very far. As the player base of MMORPGs expanded, which was what gaming companies were trying to do after the first MMOS came out, role players became a smaller and smaller percentage of the "roleplaying" server.
When MMOS began there was a presumption that all players would role play a bit and many did. But after a few years this changed to "needing" roleplaying servers, which were usually topped up with mature (in behaviour) players. Such distinctions became meaningless when the next wave of players arrived, the solo gamers. There was so many of them it did not matter what existing players wanted from a MMO, MMOs became what they wanted.
You could make roleplaying servers today, some exist but not sure if they are anything other than a name. But to work roleplayers would need to come together, they did not back then and I doubt they will now. But that's also true of mature players, groupers and so on, if you don't stick together the lol, swearing, pkers come to define what MMOs are about. And let us not forget this had set in before F2P, after which it opened a Pandora's box. After all if you don't want to put money into a game why would you have any investment in playing the game or its community?
UO ended up having to add Trammel because the " clueless fools " were ruining it for everyone else and they were leaving for EQ.
And also why games like UO with open PvP don't do very well long term.
I just don't play with a mic anymore. I also play on consoles if possible as cheaters are way less likely
. I play with my son and his friends on occasion but it's mostly light stuff. I do play online basketball with pickups teams but I usually dominate so very few complain in messages. Easy enough to block them.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Sissies.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Just let online games evolve to whatever they need to be. If you have particular community guidelines in mind ('enforced RP', for example), lay them out and ban those who are incapable of adhering. Successful game designs will rise, unsuccessful ones will sink or change. For a MMO, I consider community guidelines to be part of game design.
Did Mr. Jellinghaus expect MMORPGs to converge on idealized DnD sessions? It's a different medium, with different strengths and weaknesses.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
Yeah, from his perspective and those like him, what he writes is true.
Most mmorpg gamers are not intolerant arrogant swine.. He is most certainly in the minority.
The problem is that "roleplayers" come in many different types. They are not a "one game fits all" group. Some prefer Sci-Fi over Fantasy, or some prefer modern day or apocalyptic settings. Others roleplay to varying degrees. Some even just want to sex chat. If there was a way to get ALL the roleplayers to agree on what singular MMORPG to play, it still probably wouldn't be enough to keep a game afloat. So in come the non-roleplayers to help MMORPGs to just survive.
Are there roleplayers in MMOs? Sure. But one needs to "kiss a lot of frogs" to find them. After awhile, one just gives up, tired of the warts received.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
When the "minority" are willing to burn down everything...you are not left with anything...